The wiki is also pretty much crucial to understanding things rather than doing it all by trial and error or just going through blindly.

It is essentially the manual to the game + guide + walkthrough. Stats, skills, feats are the 3 best sections to pore through and understand before playing (while doing your character creation is best, I think) and really get a sense of how everything goes, and then you can learn all about the weapons and in-depth crafting too.

I will also say that I had my fisrt synergy dialogue option yesterday, and, it was great. I am loving the entire dialogue system. Example: just because you can use intimidation sometimes, doesn't mean you should just because you can, you really only should do it if that is how you want to RP your character. Other times using intimidation is good or necessary, and not too aggressive for the situation.

It's truly a game that rewards roleplaying a character in the true sense of "role-play" - you aren't just "trying to do all of the things to get the most things and XP and ingest as much content as possible" - you are given an array of options and it is your option to choose if you want/what you want/how you want to be and handle things. The results don't just pile into a karma or alignment system that is black and white or all-encompassing. Alliances, deeds for differing factions, how you handle things feels dynamic in an existing world with consequences, even if there aren't even consequences at times!

Also, not every single option is presented to you explicitly and not every outcome is immediate or foretold. This awareness encourages the role-play aspect in my opinion greater than most games I've played. Be how you want to be not because you know the end result or branching options are "positive" or "negative", but because you want to PLAY a character that way and be that way and see how it goes.

This is doubly enforced by the oddity XP system and even classic XP system. It's not about killing the bad guys, accumulating XP to kill the bigger bad guys, etc., in a directed- feeling way at all. It's much more alive/organic and sensible. In most games you don't want to stealth by and never attack mobs because it means you are missing items, xp, money, reward of any kind, etc...here, it really doesn't matter for the most part, and isn't a hindrance either, but natural feeling and manageable/fun/well-implemented, just like the rest of it. Kill some rathounds if you want to, sneak by them if you don't, pop 'em with some grenades fast if you don't want to be bothered with any of that, whatever works for you.

One of the other really fun things is the viability of multiple offensive skills. I think it makes sense to have at least 2-3 skill lines that give you damage output options, because you will want to use them all and it will be fun to use them all, for different mob types, for different tactical situations, to split up resources, and because you have a variety of interests when creating your character and don't want to be restricted to "just 1 main way to hurt things."

That is one of the great advantages and fun things about traps. They have better implementation and utilization in this game than most other games I've played that have them. They do damage without costing APs, but they take tactical skill and learning in general on how/when to go about placing them to be an advantage or necessary to win.

I do crossbows, traps, and metathermics as my damage outputters. I also love how the other 2 psi trees (thought control and psychokinesis) have lvl0 skills that are useful at times (neural overload and telekinetic punch