I started it last night for an hour or two, I like it but it still feels like another MMO insofar. A pretty good one, but I'm not getting any of the 'this is so different' thing.
Female norn voice actor is almost unbearable lol, tempted to try something else just because of it. And I'm just not feeling the dialogue so far either, after my third or fourth 'face to face' convo thing I had to start skipping them altogether; the writers' brevity muscles seem to have collectively atrophied.
Graphics are good, character creation felt really good (once it worked, I kept getting a bunch of all black screens if I set that one graphics option [post processing?] to anything less than Supersample).
Gameplay is ok, skills look good and feel powerful/useful, but I don't think I like how they try to make abilities function as both 'skillshots' and 'targeted' abilities depending on your own target, maybe I'll get used to it but I think I'd prefer just one or the other. Also still unsure about the auto-attack 'chains'; and it feels kind of strange (as a Guardian at least) how a number of my abilities damage and heal and buff and debuff all at once, and in an AoE no less. Limited exposure of course, but if that's what they mean by no 'trinity' then that seems kind of dumb.
First impression is that the questing still seems to be questing, they've just taken all the side-quests/quest hubs and lumped them together as mini-objectives in "area" quests or "events" and provide more lump sum XP rather than smaller increments. Works well enough.
Well, it is still an MMO at its core, it wouldn't "feel" 100% different. Just like every FPS, no matter what they change. will still be a target + first person + shooter game.
I personally like the dialouge. The character in my characters story is Felicia Day's voice. And the conversations between the people I have talked to work for me.
Also character creation affects your characters story. Each choice you make ahs some impact on what your story evolves to. (Each race has a story, each story has uniqueness based on a decision or 2 you make, that evolves based on the decisions you make during them)
I don't understand what you mean by skillshots/targeted. The beauty of abilities is they have multiple uses. Like Water Elementalist usually has an aoe that damages opponents and heals allies in the aoe you place. It isn't a strong heal, but every little bit helps. It is fun switching between weapons and/or elements to make combos of buffs/healing/damage/so on to help manke a group survive to its fullest. This isnt the reason the trinity was removed however. The trinity is removed because most of the attacks a monster does isn't targeted at a specific person and can/should be dodged or you take a lot of damage. And that each profession can focus on 2 areas, and usually 1 has to deal with toughness (tank-like attributes) and Vitality/healing (healing-like attributes) to focus what gameplay you want from your character.
The golden hearts are like questing. However much better than quests of old in that you get 5-6 options of things to do to complete it. And when done the vendor becomes a merchant.
Events are nothing like quests. (A) Everyone can get involved and kill things, causing it to scale depending on # of players. (B) It actually affects what happens next. If you fail an event, sometimes it chains into another event to clean-up the mess. Sometimes if you succeed at an escort event, then there is protecting the camp they set-up, then hunting a strong monster. And some events will have lasting effects. (C) They can be repeated, and give rewards based on your participation.