Finally finished it at 3am in the morning last night.
Man, what a ride that was! Act III definitely is the weakest out of all Acts for me. I think it is paced badly, a little bloated beyond what was necessary and could/should have been at least split into 2 seperate parts. But its also arguably full of the most important events and happenings in the entire game, and I think the game managed to land a lot of the big moments successfully.
Sadly, it is also the part where all of the bugs really start to add up in a bad way and where it feels like the game falls into repetition in terms of mechanics. Feels like by Act 3 you kinda 'figured it out', meaning you have your go-to party setup and ways to handle stuff. Everytime I was forced to mix up my party I felt annoyed, simply because I had to make redundant characters work for only a couple encounters before putting them back on the shelf for my regulars. The terrible party management when it comes to equipment, items and skills really adds up negatively here.
Close to the end it started to pick back up for me however, so I enjoyed the last couple hours leading up to the big bad. Especially Raphael and everything leading up to him was some of the best parts of the game. He was also my favorite character in the entire game I believe. Really hope we get more of him at some point in the future.
All in all I would rate Act I a 9.5/10, Act II a 8 and Act III a 7.5. Add another 0.5 points to each Act were the game in a better technical state and had more polish and QoL fixes included. Especially the crashes started adding up frustration.
Took me roughly 85 hours all in all. I don't think my social life will accept another playthrough anytime soon, so maybe a couple years down the line I will go for another playthrough as Dark Urge with the inevitable Complete/GOTY edition.
Great game for sure, but in my opinion does not quite match the hype around it in this state. Feels like a lot of reviews were done by people who stopped halfway through Act II.
