I decided to subscribe to Ubi+ for a month despite my better judgement mainly because I also wanted to play the Avatar DLC anyway.
I just left Toshara and my save file says I have 6 hours 19 minutes played... and it's my considered opinion that anyone giving this game a 7 or higher is full of shit. This game is loaded with jank and bugs and bad design. The speeder sucks to control even with upgrades. Combat is so bad. I can't even truly explain it but the blaster feels like a pea shooter with no weight to it; Shooting an unarmored bandit in the head only for them to flinch it off is insane. Stealth is fundamentally broken, and yet it's a core element of the game. Enemies will either never see you or they can see you from across the room through textures somehow. The inconsistency is infuriating. Everything you've read about the enemy AI being dumb is completely accurate -- you can sit in one place and watch as they all file one-by-one down the same path where you can shoot them all into a neat little pile.
Some elaboration on "jank and bugs": Of my 6 hours 19 minutes played time thus far, almost an hour of it was spent trying to get out of one particular mission because the game either bugged out or simply did not properly maintain the mission progress state. Without spoiling which mission specifically, it was a mission where I was inside an Imperial Base and had to shut down the turbolasers in the control room. I did that just fine, except, afterward, Kay fell through the floor, clipped a texture and "died" from falling (the fourth time I've had that happen, by the by). When the game reloaded at the checkpoint, my mission progress was accurate but all of the enemy mobs had respawned as if the mission was at its starting point. Including the two in the room where I respawned who were insta-aggroed as soon as the game loaded. In addition, the anti-personnel turrets, which had been disabled as part of the mission, were now back to their pre-mission default state -- so as soon as I walked out of any door, I was instantly targeted by them and the whole base was on alert. I finally managed to make it out, but this mission alone almost made me throw in the towel and uninstall it.
I could spend another several paragraphs on the absolute trash level writing and voice acting. Kay's constant 'winging it' dialog is beyond parody. Anyone with room temperature IQ would know she's lying. It's like the scene from SW Episode 4 where Han is winging it in the Death Star detention center except Vess always gets away with it no matter how ridiculous she sounds.
This game, in this state, doesn't deserve a 7. Six, at best. It looks great (except for facial textures) but plays like complete ass. I haven't even gotten to the space combat yet and I'm not sure I even want to. If my experience with the speeders and getting stuck in textures is any indication, I don't see space combat being worth my time. I'm going to go play the Avatar Skybreaker DLC now... maybe i'll come back to this in a bit. I have a month, hopefully they push some much needed patches soon.
