The story which seemed so promising at its start, full of sidequests and fascinating characters across the first act, loses its passion once leaving New Barcelona. The great pleasure of finding historical figures - despite the problems of DaVinci and Shakespeare living in the same city much less at the same time - blended to situations with interesting parallels to history as we know it dissolves almost completely once leaving New Barcelona. A few more figures will show up periodically through your travels, often in surprising forms, but the game by then has become dramatically linear and so burdened by its failed combat system that it's hard to drum up enthusiasm at the relatively few sidequests offered.