The game works fine in my eyes. The Fix works well and is pretty easy manipulate to get the settings you need. Even with the fix at work I find the frame rate can be a mixed bag. It's a little jerky at times and the camera control isn't the greatest which means it can be a bit hard to look at sometimes. I play with a gamepad and couldn't see myself using the M&K controls.
The game is a great single player title. It's not as difficult as people make out, although it has quite a steep learning curve that's confounded by a start offering three paths - only one of which is newbie appropriate. Once you get to grip with the mechanics you'll be running up and down those roads with relative ease, barring a scarce few areas and bosses. One particular tag-teaming boss stands out as the high point of the "fair difficulty" that's banded around, and is an example of some of the best enemy Ai in a brawler to date. Secrets are few, but large and rewarding - being comparable in size to what could expect from a small DLC pack. These secrets are extremely difficult to find however, so it'd be my recommendation to read a guide to find the major ones in case you miss out. The lore for the world is interesting and fed subtlety through item descriptions and environments. It's all very open to interpretation and fun to contemplate. The game is let down by a lacklustre character creation system however. It's unbalanced and quite punishing if you make the wrong choices when assigning stats - though there's a nice selection of weapons to play with that offset this.
The multiplayer game is very novel, but ultimately falls short for several reasons. It all revolves around joining covenants, each of which allows the player to interact with others in different ways. These ways are never explained in-game, so the wiki is required reading. The matchmaking system is terrible. You will be put up against other players in end-game gear so often that you will eventually be forced to go offline until you reach NG+, taking a lot away from the roleplaying aspect of the game. Co-Op is let down by the lack of any way to play with friends. The other online elements take the form of ghosts (superfluous) and leaving messages (ultimately annoying).
I give the game my recommendation, but advise not to buy if it's the novel PvP that has caught your interest.
