Chihaya: I've done every sidequest and I clocked in at under 50 hours.
I just found that there was so little content. I understand that next-gen assets cost a fortune to make, but the amount of areas to explore, and dungeons filled with treasure was abysmally low when compared to Baldur's Gate. Even most towns and other such areas are ridiculously small. The game lenght was artificially extended by making you fight the same enemies over and over again in the dungeons.
None of the plot appealed to me, honestly, although the game had its moments. For the most part it was typical fantasy trite, coupled with stereotypical, awkward BioWare writing and characters. I kept getting flashbacks while playing the game, wondering in how many past BioWare games I encountered the same thing.
Both the Shale and Warden's Keep quests sucked; short as hell, and completely uninvolving stories.
Well, what can i say ? That's fast.
I mean figuring out plot, lore, classes, specializations, stats, spells/skills, gear, unique gear, for your char and your char's companions, going through all the dialogues, cutscenes, squeezing quests/lore/stories from companions and NPC's, doing all the sidequests, the assignements, the mainquest, etc., etc,. in under 50H on the first playthrough, well, that kind of makes my point: We don't play RPG's the same way, or at least we don't play this particular RPG the same way, which is quite understandable seing how you were put off by the plot, writing, gameworld, characters, i.e. pretty much everything.
I'm not going into your views regarding plot, gameworld, dialogues, etc., as they reflect your personnal opinion, and as such, they're as valid as my own opinion, or anyone else's for that matter, so there's no point, really.
I agree with you on Warden's Keep being too short. And the fact that you can't go back in once you're done kind of robs the player of what little sense of accommplishement he got by finishing the quest in the first place, not to mention Avernus' vanishing act doens't make any sense (if you let him stay on), so yeah, all in all it does feel like Warden's Keep could have been alot more. Still, The Armor, Starfang and 'Avernus' skills' are useful at times, so it's not a total loss i guess...
As for Shale, nope, i can't agree with you on that one. I really enjoyed both parts of her quest. The only thing i didn't liked about it was Felix and the way the PC gets his/hers hands on the control rod. Felt...awkard to say the least, but other than that i think Shale is a very worthwhile addition to the game.
Anyway, i'm sorry you didn't enjoyed the game.
