First Impressions

I am only a couple hours in, so bear with; these are my first impressions.

First, I have several criticisms:

1) The download

1.7 GB doesn't sound bad, but it does take a while at between 2-3 kbps.  Once the updater installed, I had to go through a number of large patches that took up almost half the day.  I was able to run several errands before coming back to find the game was finally ready for launch.  This is a commitment in an age where there are games I could play in my browser and games that have "rolling downloads" that install only parts of the game I will have access to at the beginning, etc.  The wait is the main thing; not a huge issue, but I thought that I would point out it is a commitment.

2) The UI feels cluttered.  A lot of real estate on my screen is taken up by what look like empty inventory / ability slots.  I want to see more of the world, which to me is the 3D environment.

3) Graphics feels somewhat dated... not a huge issue, but I definitely noticed some rasterisation on the tree outside the Gene Replicator in the starting area.

Now that that's out of the way;

The game did a great job of making it feel like there was a lot going on, and that I was taking my first steps into a huge world.  The player-housing is a very nice touch.  Kind of "Blade Runner" meets "The Matrix".  I had 5 emails I had to check when I first got to my apartment unit.  It was kind of funny that I had to wait to get to my apartment to check my emails, but that's another story.  I spoke to a guy who looked a lot like Morpheus who said I had to steal some data for him, and that I had 3 days to do so (nice touch!).  I took a look at the world map; there's definitely a giant, gritty world out there.

I didn't get into any combat right away, and that kind of has me worried; I know there's a chip or something I can take out to participate in PvP, but I had no indication of what said PvP would involve, only a warning that I would probably get Pwned unless I was in a clan.

I had the chance to step inside the Hacknet, which was an appropriately trippy experience.  It looked like something out of "Tron", the original.  I'm looking forward to seeing what else I can do there.

The UI is definitely going to take some getting used to; I just wish it was... smaller, more minimal.  It's almost as if the devs are hiding what there is to see from me.  2 hours in and still no combat, which is disappointing because I've heard Neocron virtually pioneered the FPS MMORPG genre.  Otherise the game feels moody, atmospheric; like I stepped right into a Cyberpunk novel or a movie by the Wachowski brothers.

/2c