Man the starting area is gigantic. You can spend so many hours exploring and not really progressing your character and stuff. But it's still fun and it all feels hand crafted and there's cool stuff or boss doors or items or npcs or whatever beyond enemies/animals pretty much everywhere. I started playing at the same time as a friend and we went totally different directions and kept confusing each other when talking about say the "first" vendor cos he first went to the one at the coast so were like wtf are you talking about this or that isn't there, catacombs beyond the vnedor, what, etc. Then we co-oped the catacombs boss together just to check out what that stuff is like. Then again solod explored and found a bunch of different exits, took down a caravan and so on and so forth. My friend somehow managed to kill the golden mounted knight himself, I haven't as he one shots me but discovered all kinds of stuff exploring the areas, from the coast to the lake to whatever, both of us still not progressing where the game wants us to go past the site of grace you get the level up capability and horse at, only this little starting bottom right corner of the map. GOAT game. People are talking about beating it in 13-20 hours and I'll be in the starting region by then still, lol.
love exploring the lands though, you can find some nice items hidden away
