EthernalMoment

--- Remarks: this is a summary review of EP1-EP37, not just EP1 (no better option where to leave review).

But rating 8 is for EP1. Scores for the other EPs are below.

In terms of review, comparison was to the 1-2 best of ~10 Critical Role campaigns, and some other series in this genre. Only 1-2 best of them were watched in full, others just glanced on some EPs.

Also, I think this genre (DND table) max should be 9/10 because in the end it's way too many weeks of watch time. Quantity vs quality, almost always works.

---- About EP1-EP37: Guess is that Altheya was consistently inspired by Baldur's Gate 1 (not BG2, it was worse). Which is a recipe for perfection, especially if implemented by DM with whole set of skills and passion. And Mark surely is exceptional, one of a kind DMs by storytelling and voice acting.

The amount of details the High Rollers team did is also impressive. Room and ambient are essential parts.

The slight imperfection were probably team actions - good, yet sometimes unfocused and lacking immersion. But may be that's exactly optimal.

If this ended on the specific city battle (no spoilers on which), I'd give overall 8/9 for the first story part.

But quantity vs quality rule always works, after that battle it's too obvious that main characters cannot die.

---- Each EP rating: Noticed my scoring goes almost opposite of YT ratings, so posting them for the people who focus on storytelling and would like to skip some EPs to reduce total watch time.

8: definitely watch 7: enjoy 6: possibly skip 4: definitely skip

EP1: 7, 7 EP2: 7, 7 EP3: 7, 7 EP4: 4, 5 EP5: 7, 7 EP6: 7, 9 EP7: 7, 8 EP8: 7, 9 EP9: 7, 7 EP10: 5, 5 EP11: 7, 7 EP12: 5, 7 EP13: 8, 8 EP14: 8, 8 EP15: 8, 5 EP16: 8, 7 EP17: 4, 4 EP18: 5, 5 EP19.5: 2, 2 EP19: 8, 8 EP20: 7, 5 EP21: 7, 8 EP22: 5, 8 EP23: 8, 5 EP24: 7, 8 EP25: 7, 5 EP26: 7, 7 EP27: 7, 2 EP28: 5, 7 EP29: 7, 7 EP30: 5, 4 EP31: 4, 5 EP32: 5, 8 EP33: 4, 5 EP34: 7, 7 EP35: 4, 7 EP36: 5, 7 EP37: 4, 7.

This is the type of art which just gets better with years.

It's about human behaviour - but without repulsive modern templates, i.e. Honest, correct, and even inspiring.

The feeling this episode creates in the end matches perfectly the feeling you have when you check any modern social platform and think about crucial large scale events related to overall mankind progress and struggle to solve trivial problems.

P. S. And it's simultaneously completely obvious due to biological reasons, expected and beautiful that nothing changed in the recent 65 years from the episode release (my note: -10k to +10k also correct due to how biology works) - it only makes the core episode idea even more solid.

It could be quite interesting and worth playing 8/10 adventure that has the historic place and recognition and not perfectly trivial essence, but at the current buggy and unpolished state it should not be remembered or played.

The list of ~must be fixed~ problems is:

• bugs, including breaking bug on items disappearing during talk skip
• alt tab crash
• ingame save dates not shown
• object detector NOT reacting on re-spawnable items,

way too annoying

• map scale kept, not resetting on every location
• visible NPC names after first discover instead of tons of spawned dummies
• quest log properly fixed, no leftovers entries everywhere

Without all the fixes, it's only 3/10 unfourtanetly.