@herkzter - I remember you (?) being interested in Dread Delusions, so here's my opinion on it. tl;dr it's shit, don't bother, the only worthwhile aspects are the exploration, but you can get that from any Bethesda game. This feels more like a sketch of what the game was supposed to be, rather than a finished product.
Woke content - not much, at least by today's standards. There's a bunch of swarthy people around, strong women in position of power, the antagonist feels more like a protagonist than you do (she finds the magic McGuffin, gathers a party of unique weirdos to her side and is trying to fulfill a prophecy - meanwhile you're a poor schmuck pressganged into going after her). Only instance I found is that an old god of life is referred with a "they" pronoun, but since said god is reputed to be a deformed, disgusting abomination that spreads mutations everywhere it goes, I'm not sure what the devs were trying to say here.
THE GOOD
Premise: The setting is a combination of magitek and steampunk, with a dash of more modern concepts thrown in. The gist of it is that 400 years before the start of the game a cataclysm of unknown origin rendered the surface of the planet uninhabitable, leaving the scant few humans up on the Skylands (floating islands, basically) as the sole survivors.
40 years before the start of the game the God War took place, where all the human states banded together to overthrow the gods that ruled over them, in which they succeeded. Now the Union, the new human government, is hunting down the few remaining gods and their servants via the Inquisition, of which you are the newest recruit of.
I generally like the setting and how it is laid out, the game presents you with quite a few mysteries and questions that you slowly get answers to, or at least some notion of what is going on.
The factions are all reasonably logical in their behavior, and the game does a good job of illustrating that both have a point - the gods were oftentimes cruel in their demands, but they also provided things that the human government is struggling to offer .
As an example, the main point of contention on the first landmass is that the population is starving, the Union government is having difficulties delivering food supplies, so people have begun worshiping a god again in hopes that the crops could get better.
Map: When designing the map the devs obviously took notes from the likes of Bethesda. The main "city" for the first landmass is in a central location, with quests and points of interest you can see in the distance encouraging you to explore in every direction, and along those paths there are numerous other smaller locations, buildings, dungeons, NPCs etc. that pull you away and get you to explore further. It's a well-executed loop.
As your progress further in the map slowly opens up, and you get access to fast-traveling mechanics (teleportation buildings and mirrors), which helps cut down the tedium of running across the map so often.
EDIT: A caveat here is that while the points of interests are properly positioned, the rewards for exploring them are usually underwhelming. You can sometimes find a unique item, which is good, but usually it's just more potions or items exclusively for trade. Also, while many locations have "puzzles", these mostly consists of finding candlesticks, busts or paintings that are positioned wrong and activating them, or lockpicking. Even Oblivion's and Skyrim's dungeons are move involved and rewarding than this.
Art direction: You'll either like or hate the low-poly art style the game is going for. I generally like it, and the game does make it work for the most part, but that's generally subjective.
THE BAD
Lack of challenge: Every system the game has in place is undermined by the simple fact the game is not challenging. In my 10 hours of playtime, I only ever died once, and that was because I misjudged a jump and fell to my death, but even that is free of consequences, since the game is littered with "vita chambers" where you instantly respawn upon death without any negative repercussions.
Melee combat has a few mechanics that could be interesting, you can either slash or stab at an enemy, you can block attacks, your attacks cost stamina, enemies themselves can block if they have a shield, but all of this is rendered completely and utterly moot since the go-to solution for any encounter is to just spam your melee attack and walk backwards. You can also sneak and backstab enemies, but again, there's no reason to ever do this when you can just spam attack.
At a maximum you will ever only face 3 to 4 enemies, and regardless of your character build (more on this later) they go down in 2 to 3 hits with your sword, so it's pointless to bother with any finesse, or stealth, or magic, or with ranged weapons - the game being so laughably easy renders all these mechanics completely pointless.
Another problem that plays into this is lack of enemy variety and abilities. In 10 hours I've encountered a grand total of 6 (human enemies - sword, sword & shield, bow & sword, mage, goblin, bigger goblin, butterfly, frogman, tentacle man, floating enemy) "distinct" enemy times. I put the commas there because 4 of those boil down to slowly closing in on your and swinging their melee weapon, while the remaining two fire magical bolts at you (and only that).
It's even worse when you realize that you can just run past nearly all enemies, unless you're within the confines of a dungeon, so almost all combat can be avoided.
Magic: The magic in the game is very underwhelming. There's very few spells, and even less spells that are worthwhile using. There's a few utility ones (return to the last savepoint, advance time), to buff yourself (increasing defense - pointless, increase agility) and a few offensive ones (direct damage and plosion were the only ones I found). In nearly all cases they are useless because, and you guessed it, the game lacks any incentive to use them. The only spells I ever bothered to use were the one to return to a savepoint, the agility one to make longer jumps and occasionally the magic attack spell when I got bored just hacking at enemies.
Quest design: Another issue that ties in with all of the above is that quests ostensibly offer a multitude of approaches, usually giving you the ability to sneak in via a backdoor, or talk your way past, but the stealth approach is pointless since combat is piss easy, while the diplomatic approach is trivialized via items (more on this later).
Another issue is that the dungeons are tiny, very sparsely populated and don't even have anything resembling a boss enemy at the end, the traps are blatantly obvious and in the open (so they can be easily jumped over or bruteforced), so the only reason to ever bother with lockpicking is that the game oftentimes forces you to do so, lacking any alternative ways to get into specific areas. Sometimes you can find an alternative path, or use your other "lockpicking" skill (lore), but oftentimes investing into agility is the only way to progress further.
Quests do allow for multiple solutions, but these rarely affect anything substantial. There are faction meters, but the rewards for being like/loved are underwhelming (a shitty room and a temporary boon for the Union). Also, many quests are incredibly simplistic. As an example, one quest has you go to a massive castle, where the duck is afflicted with a curse, he must suffer in agony for the land to remain fertile. When I enter the castle I'm greeted by the steward, the last remaining retainer, and he tells you that you should drink a truth potion to see past the illusory painting that mask the doors. Imagine my disappointment when I realized this "massive" castle consists of a grand total of four rooms and a staircase, the illusory painting are all the same model and easy to recognize, there are no enemies and the only "challenge" is finding all the statues and activating them (via your lore skill) to access a secret room with a vial of poison, or just put your persuasion hat on and pass a speech check.
The vial of poison you can then either give to the duke to end his suffering (dooming the land to a famine), or to his soon so they both share the agonizing burden. Yet neither of these choices affects anything, you don't get different loot, the map doesn't change afterwards, no new quests are unlocked. It's a completely pointless exercise.
Itemization: I do like how the game handles the equipment. There's very few items, but all are actually distinct and serve a clear purpose, and it's worthwhile to upgrade your equipment. Problem is that the game combines attributes and skills into one, and the only alternative way to raise your skills is via items, which are easy to upgrade. This further removes any aspect of challenge, and completely obliterates the need to actually build your character - why bother investing in might when the combat is easy, just dump your points in the other attributes and make up the difference with items. You met a persuasion check that is too hard? Just put on your persuasion hat on and you can easily pass it. A lock giving you trouble? Just put on your lockpicking hat and voila, you're in.
Another massive issue is how the loot is doled out. I'm all for not flooding the player with items, but the way this game handles it is ridiculous. Your first means of attack is a shitty sword, so if you didn't spec in melee you're a tad fucked (but not really), the first spell you get your hands on is one to charm enemies so they'll fight for you for a few seconds (read: useless), the first ranged weapon I found was a bow, 8 hours into the game, tucked in a random chest in a random building (and no, you can't buy one from a shop).
Basically, the game does not take into account your character build at all, and if the game was even remotely difficult, I could see how it would be immensely frustrating for players that didn't pick the right attributes at character creation.
Why they did it this way I have no idea, other than sheer stupidity.
