Hi Wolcen folks!
I'll begin by explaining my background in gaming. I've spent thousands of hours playing ARPGs since the old school diablo days. I've always enjoyed experimenting with build mechanics and theory crafting. That said, I'm a fan of Grim Dawn and a HUGE fan of Path of Exile. When it comes to mechanics and customization, there simply is nothing that compares to PoE in terms of depth/complexity.

My first impression is mixed but overall good. I very much enjoy the aspect of keeping the user interface as standard as possible. I was able to find most panels using key shortcut without even having to look them up. P for passive tree, C for character, I dig that! The graphics and cut-scenes are nicely composed. I'd say the CGI is very good, yet a bit of a Warhammer dopplegangbang. This didn't ruin it for me and I must say, the audio is top-notch. Everything from the metallic clunk of the 2H mace to the lovely accent in the female character's voice. The game is nice on the eyes and even better on the ears.

Then I ran into some bugs/shortcomings. I found it odd that I have to leave game, form a group, then create a new game. In other games you can simply invite your friends into your current instance. I encountered some flying bat-like creatures that my buddy nor myself could target. They were invincible! I found it odd that when attempting to use an ability which laking the required rage, that it unfortunately does nothing. The behavior I'd expect is for my free attack to serve as a fallback. Being a ranged build, I found the targeting mechanics to be typical, but not top-notch. Grim Dawn's targeting system is the best. In games like Wolcen and PoE, you'll find yourself having to click constantly, while in those same situations you could likely click and hold in Grim Dawn. Overall in terms of targeting I'd put Wolcen dead last in comparison to GD, PoE and D3. It's not terrible/unplayable, but clearly needs improvement.

There's also a relatively long list of things I enjoy about the gameplay mechanics. I like that I get a rather extended amount of attribute points to spend and only one passive skill tree point. This just makes sense to me. The process of acquiring crit chance and attack speed felt good and rewarding enough to make leveling up exciting. I died at a boss but almost killed it. I enjoyed the challenge and killed it very easily after learning the fight better. I'm still low level so I'll leave this where it's at for now, but I certainly feel the list of things I like will grow as I progress further.

One quick note on deployment. I'm not one of these players who will come rage if a server is down. I just wanted to mention nobody is better at deploying new content than Grinding Gear Games (PoE). I've witnessed seven years of near perfection rolling out anything from hotfixes to major content expansions. Any game that ropes me in the same way PoE has over and over will certainly need to be actively developed and rolled out smoothly.

Lastly, I find it odd there is no category for "General Feedback" in this forum. I guess I'll drop this under "Active Skills"...