What a fucking game, my dudes and duderinas. I played Pillars of Eternity when it came out way back in 2015 and while I loved it then, I think I still didn't quite get it. The game throws a ton of lore and setting exposition right at the very beginning and it never lets up, which made it difficult, for me anyway, to connect with the setting. However, deeper into the game things do start to fall in place, and as a setting, Eora is incredibly rich not only in history, cultural diversity, and storytelling, but in its ideas and prose as well. Every character the player will meet in Pillars of Eternity comes with his or her own set of flaws, ambitions, and perspective of the world around them that are grounded in the same storytelling and universe that the player experiences, and while they do have realism woven into their personalities, the character writing is more literary mythic than anything else. Eora and its denizens are heavily steeped in historical context within the game-world as well as within the philosophical context of their real world inspirations. Memory, history, and reconciliation of past and present are ever-present throughout the game's narrative and companions.
While the dense writing and lore may cause a barrier to entry on the writing side, Pillars of Eternity's combat and RPG systems are wonderfully CRPG beginner friendly. Every attribute is meaningful and can contribute to any build which makes it difficult to brick a character, allowing for roleplay to take precedence across builds. Obviously, as with any CRPG, min-maxing optimization can occur if a player desires to powergame, but the system does not punish more casual players, resulting in a positive experience for both ends of the spectrum. I played a rogue who wore heavy plate armor and used a gun, but the standard light-armored sneaky rogue would work just as well, for example.
However, the real highlights of Pillars of Eternity happen when the game turns all of this worldbuilding on its head and finally considers the implications of the ideas it sets forth. Themes of post-colonialism, ontology, historical relevance, nihilism, and imperial exceptionalism all are not only represented within the game, but are confronted directly by the player. It's not enough just to represent these ideas within the game world - the player is specifically tasked to think about philosophical questions in order to progress through conversations and form plans on how to move forward.
Few games seem to do this as openly and bluntly as Pillars of Eternity does, and while the game may have originally existed as a kickstarter project meant to placate fans, like myself, of Baldur's Gate, narratively Pillars of Eternity is much more in line with something like Planescape: Torment or Bethesda's post-modernist take on fantasy lore via Morrowind. Like all celebrated and dissected mythologies, Eora isn't afraid to get both historical and weird in order to confront our idea of humanity and the world we live in.
While the dense writing and lore may cause a barrier to entry on the writing side, Pillars of Eternity's combat and RPG systems are wonderfully CRPG beginner friendly. Every attribute is meaningful and can contribute to any build which makes it difficult to brick a character, allowing for roleplay to take precedence across builds. Obviously, as with any CRPG, min-maxing optimization can occur if a player desires to powergame, but the system does not punish more casual players, resulting in a positive experience for both ends of the spectrum. I played a rogue who wore heavy plate armor and used a gun, but the standard light-armored sneaky rogue would work just as well, for example.
However, the real highlights of Pillars of Eternity happen when the game turns all of this worldbuilding on its head and finally considers the implications of the ideas it sets forth. Themes of post-colonialism, ontology, historical relevance, nihilism, and imperial exceptionalism all are not only represented within the game, but are confronted directly by the player. It's not enough just to represent these ideas within the game world - the player is specifically tasked to think about philosophical questions in order to progress through conversations and form plans on how to move forward.
Few games seem to do this as openly and bluntly as Pillars of Eternity does, and while the game may have originally existed as a kickstarter project meant to placate fans, like myself, of Baldur's Gate, narratively Pillars of Eternity is much more in line with something like Planescape: Torment or Bethesda's post-modernist take on fantasy lore via Morrowind. Like all celebrated and dissected mythologies, Eora isn't afraid to get both historical and weird in order to confront our idea of humanity and the world we live in.
I've been grappling with this game for a little over two years now, and I feel like throwing in the towel. The same thing would always happen: I'd open it every couple of months, play it from a day to a week, then I'd quit out of disinterest or pure repulsion. There is nothing here that I like. Lore is dumped in ungodly amounts, the prose is purple, the music sucks, the combat is micromanagement hell, companions are too flat, it looks ugly, backer NPCs are fucking EVERYWHERE and deliver nothing of value, and the story is boring.
Of course, you could pick any of the aforementioned elements and go "nuh uh, that was actually good!" and sure, you could do that. I think combat is the most easily defensible of my complaints: it's reactive, requires no pre-buffing, and forces you to use everybody and their abilities to best your foes. In-practice however, it felt like driving during rush hour - watching companions slap around enemies in place while stopping very frequently to cast new spells and abilities in the hopes of ending the encounter quicker - it's a dire equivalent to slowly inching your car up in traffic while you sit there, bored with nothing to do. What's most annoying is how by default companions stand slack-jawed after killing an enemy: there's a whole battlefield out there dickhead, go get some action! What the hell happened to auto-attack!
I don't like this game very much.
Of course, you could pick any of the aforementioned elements and go "nuh uh, that was actually good!" and sure, you could do that. I think combat is the most easily defensible of my complaints: it's reactive, requires no pre-buffing, and forces you to use everybody and their abilities to best your foes. In-practice however, it felt like driving during rush hour - watching companions slap around enemies in place while stopping very frequently to cast new spells and abilities in the hopes of ending the encounter quicker - it's a dire equivalent to slowly inching your car up in traffic while you sit there, bored with nothing to do. What's most annoying is how by default companions stand slack-jawed after killing an enemy: there's a whole battlefield out there dickhead, go get some action! What the hell happened to auto-attack!
I don't like this game very much.
Beaten: Aug 14 2021
Time: 28 Hours
Platform: Xbox Series X
Pillars of Eternity is a great game, my rating above surely gave that away, but almost more interesting (to me) is it's place in gaming at large. If you don't know, Pillars started as a Kickstarter campaign, put up by a financially strapped Obsidian, called Project Eternity. Project Eternity was pitched as a return to the Isometric CRPGs of old, the kind of games that Obsidian had built a genre out of back when they were called Black Isle, filled with hand-painted backgrounds and thoughtful writing. It was an interesting pitch, an appeal to fans of an all but dead genre, and one that'd never exactly sold gangbusters to begin with, but it worked. In fact, it not only worked, it both saved the company AND started a new wave of Iso CRPGs, bringing them to a level of cultural importance they've pretty much never had (coming to a head with Divinity Original Sin 2). So that's the scene that Pillars came in on. A successful kickstarter to save a company and a similar set of goals to the DOOM reboot, albeit in a much more niche genre. Where do they take this? Well, right back to Baldur's Gate.
The original Baldur's Gate is an interesting game. Not the greatest of the old school iso RPGs, but certainly one of the most important to the genre, let alone Bioware as a company. It's more interested in letting you explore the world at your own pace than telling you a great story, more interested in being a tone-setter and an exploration of the brand-new-at-the-time Infinity Engine, and Pillars is largely going after the same thing. There's a great new setting to explore, one that's very Obsidian, and very Josh Sawyer; It's full of factions, philosophical allegory, and an ever-present somber tone. If you've played New Vegas, imagine a dark fantasy version of that setting, complete with paranoia and riots and religious persecution. It's really an amazing setting. It splits the difference between the Forgotten Realms of the Infinity Engine games, Middle Earth, and a healthy dose of Obsidian's own obsessed with the past flavor. It's all very... prescient.
The unique aesthetic touches of the setting really shine here. The maps make a gorgeous use of Unity in their attempt to recreate the Infinity Engine's particular viewpoint, and the interesting lighting and color effects really pop in ways that the old games just couldn't do. The particular style of the Glanfathan ruins (that's the old creator race) mixed in with more classic medieval architecture and wide, grassy plains hits a spot not many renditions of a similar concept can. On top of that, there's a bit of Welsh flavor in some of the names that are supposed to be ancient (Bîaŵac, Eir Glanfath, etc), and that kinda worldly flavor is always super welcomed by me. Broadly, it's a very grounded fantasy setting, grounded in the struggles of it's people, the wars they'd lived through, and the longer histories they share.
The story itself is interesting more in it's themes than it's plotting. The first half of the game focuses on setting up the world, but the second half of the game really has some hard hitting questions. I don't want to get into them, because they're spoilery, but I'll just let you know that it apparently heavily references Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, which is exactly the kind of high brow I like in my CRPGs. It really does a good job of working the themes into the characters too! My personal favorite character was Eder, an early companion you get who'd fought in the last war, against his own god. He's written very much like the farm boy he is, but he's got a real depth to him, a believeable ability for self reflection you don't often see in side characters like him. The rest of the companions in my opinion don't quite measure up, but I enjoyed them all, particuarly Aloth and Durance.
Mechanically, the game stumbles a bit. The actual composition of the dnd-like system they've built isn't the issue, in fact it's a great replacement for using actual dnd rules, since these rules are much more tied to usability in a video game. My issue comes with the encounter design. For the most part, I've got no issues, but every once in a while you'll encounter either enemies that are much stronger than the enemies around them, not bosses or anything just particularly tough enemies, or groups of enemies that can mob you and take you out much quicker than your characters can get spells off. Encounters with spirits are the big offenders here, a group of 4 spirits can quickly turn into 8 and surround your spellcasters, even on easy. This isn't a big issue with the game, but it doesn't feel like a considered decision like the harder parts of, say, Baldur's Gate 2 or Icewind Dale felt. These just come out of nowhere, and when you get past them the difficulty drops back down.
Regardless I still liked the system here. Your stats are easy to understand, the skills all make sense, and there's an extensive amount of range that each class has for its role in combat. On top of that, there's ample opportunity to talk through tough encounters, to find a peaceful solution, and it's not even just by attempting persuade checks every time you see them!! You really have to think through these conversations to get them to go where you want. It's ideal for roleplaying, even if you're just roleplaying "nice person who doesn't wanna do too much combat because it's hard" like I always end up doing lmao.
It's a great game, and a great RPG, and I completely understand why it caused such a huge splash when it dropped. It could stand to modernize itself a little more (see Tyranny for that), but as it stands, it's a great update on a classic forumla, rife with interesting creative decisions, often bearing fruit. And what a delicious fruit it is.
Time: 28 Hours
Platform: Xbox Series X
Pillars of Eternity is a great game, my rating above surely gave that away, but almost more interesting (to me) is it's place in gaming at large. If you don't know, Pillars started as a Kickstarter campaign, put up by a financially strapped Obsidian, called Project Eternity. Project Eternity was pitched as a return to the Isometric CRPGs of old, the kind of games that Obsidian had built a genre out of back when they were called Black Isle, filled with hand-painted backgrounds and thoughtful writing. It was an interesting pitch, an appeal to fans of an all but dead genre, and one that'd never exactly sold gangbusters to begin with, but it worked. In fact, it not only worked, it both saved the company AND started a new wave of Iso CRPGs, bringing them to a level of cultural importance they've pretty much never had (coming to a head with Divinity Original Sin 2). So that's the scene that Pillars came in on. A successful kickstarter to save a company and a similar set of goals to the DOOM reboot, albeit in a much more niche genre. Where do they take this? Well, right back to Baldur's Gate.
The original Baldur's Gate is an interesting game. Not the greatest of the old school iso RPGs, but certainly one of the most important to the genre, let alone Bioware as a company. It's more interested in letting you explore the world at your own pace than telling you a great story, more interested in being a tone-setter and an exploration of the brand-new-at-the-time Infinity Engine, and Pillars is largely going after the same thing. There's a great new setting to explore, one that's very Obsidian, and very Josh Sawyer; It's full of factions, philosophical allegory, and an ever-present somber tone. If you've played New Vegas, imagine a dark fantasy version of that setting, complete with paranoia and riots and religious persecution. It's really an amazing setting. It splits the difference between the Forgotten Realms of the Infinity Engine games, Middle Earth, and a healthy dose of Obsidian's own obsessed with the past flavor. It's all very... prescient.
The unique aesthetic touches of the setting really shine here. The maps make a gorgeous use of Unity in their attempt to recreate the Infinity Engine's particular viewpoint, and the interesting lighting and color effects really pop in ways that the old games just couldn't do. The particular style of the Glanfathan ruins (that's the old creator race) mixed in with more classic medieval architecture and wide, grassy plains hits a spot not many renditions of a similar concept can. On top of that, there's a bit of Welsh flavor in some of the names that are supposed to be ancient (Bîaŵac, Eir Glanfath, etc), and that kinda worldly flavor is always super welcomed by me. Broadly, it's a very grounded fantasy setting, grounded in the struggles of it's people, the wars they'd lived through, and the longer histories they share.
The story itself is interesting more in it's themes than it's plotting. The first half of the game focuses on setting up the world, but the second half of the game really has some hard hitting questions. I don't want to get into them, because they're spoilery, but I'll just let you know that it apparently heavily references Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor, which is exactly the kind of high brow I like in my CRPGs. It really does a good job of working the themes into the characters too! My personal favorite character was Eder, an early companion you get who'd fought in the last war, against his own god. He's written very much like the farm boy he is, but he's got a real depth to him, a believeable ability for self reflection you don't often see in side characters like him. The rest of the companions in my opinion don't quite measure up, but I enjoyed them all, particuarly Aloth and Durance.
Mechanically, the game stumbles a bit. The actual composition of the dnd-like system they've built isn't the issue, in fact it's a great replacement for using actual dnd rules, since these rules are much more tied to usability in a video game. My issue comes with the encounter design. For the most part, I've got no issues, but every once in a while you'll encounter either enemies that are much stronger than the enemies around them, not bosses or anything just particularly tough enemies, or groups of enemies that can mob you and take you out much quicker than your characters can get spells off. Encounters with spirits are the big offenders here, a group of 4 spirits can quickly turn into 8 and surround your spellcasters, even on easy. This isn't a big issue with the game, but it doesn't feel like a considered decision like the harder parts of, say, Baldur's Gate 2 or Icewind Dale felt. These just come out of nowhere, and when you get past them the difficulty drops back down.
Regardless I still liked the system here. Your stats are easy to understand, the skills all make sense, and there's an extensive amount of range that each class has for its role in combat. On top of that, there's ample opportunity to talk through tough encounters, to find a peaceful solution, and it's not even just by attempting persuade checks every time you see them!! You really have to think through these conversations to get them to go where you want. It's ideal for roleplaying, even if you're just roleplaying "nice person who doesn't wanna do too much combat because it's hard" like I always end up doing lmao.
It's a great game, and a great RPG, and I completely understand why it caused such a huge splash when it dropped. It could stand to modernize itself a little more (see Tyranny for that), but as it stands, it's a great update on a classic forumla, rife with interesting creative decisions, often bearing fruit. And what a delicious fruit it is.
Sometimes I feel like I'm one of the few people that really loves PoE, though I can see where people come from. Lol Despite the walls of text, I love PoE's world and lore.
The game doesn't tell you this but any golden named NPC is a backer reward - there are many of them, they all have have a text dump written by backers and are completely irrelevant.
I didn't know this and burnt myself on inane literal fan fiction.
The game itself teases a very pretty and rich world but suffers from tell don't show.
I didn't know this and burnt myself on inane literal fan fiction.
The game itself teases a very pretty and rich world but suffers from tell don't show.
there are worse games than this but i am frustrated by its choices and execution across the board in so many different ways that i have to actively restrain myself from barging into people's discord conversations about the game and talking about why i don't like it
unfortunately everyone seems to think the sequel is better so i'll probably end up playing it in six months and get mad all over again
unfortunately everyone seems to think the sequel is better so i'll probably end up playing it in six months and get mad all over again
+Mostly interesting story and characters
+Good writing and lore
+Good environmental visuals, game is at times pretty
-Story is at times too high concept and hard to follow
-Character stories occasionally end anticlimactically
-Lore is often dumped on you in a hard to parse way
-Music is repetitive and the main combat theme gives me trauma and makes me shake and shit myself
- -The combat system is... not good. I may be spoiled from other CRPG:s with turnbased combat, or the Pathfinder games where you are allowed to choose, but in a lot of cases fights are way too chaotic which means you either end up not using each companions full potential or pausing every three seconds to look over your options. This especially becomes a problem with priests and druids, who always have access to a wide range of spells.
Despite some classes "large" amount of spells, the character building simultaneously feels... insufficient. It could be because I played a monk, but most levelups felt fairly insubstantial for my party's power. This coupled with the relatively few levelups (I may have rushed through a bit, but I finished the game at level 9) made it feel like I wasn't really getting stronger as I progressed.
There is a lot of good here, but the meh and frequent combat made me really tired of this game by the halfway mark.
+Good writing and lore
+Good environmental visuals, game is at times pretty
-Story is at times too high concept and hard to follow
-Character stories occasionally end anticlimactically
-Lore is often dumped on you in a hard to parse way
-Music is repetitive and the main combat theme gives me trauma and makes me shake and shit myself
- -The combat system is... not good. I may be spoiled from other CRPG:s with turnbased combat, or the Pathfinder games where you are allowed to choose, but in a lot of cases fights are way too chaotic which means you either end up not using each companions full potential or pausing every three seconds to look over your options. This especially becomes a problem with priests and druids, who always have access to a wide range of spells.
Despite some classes "large" amount of spells, the character building simultaneously feels... insufficient. It could be because I played a monk, but most levelups felt fairly insubstantial for my party's power. This coupled with the relatively few levelups (I may have rushed through a bit, but I finished the game at level 9) made it feel like I wasn't really getting stronger as I progressed.
There is a lot of good here, but the meh and frequent combat made me really tired of this game by the halfway mark.
I think the setup is cool, but I never manage to get very far into this game, it's dense and slow and pretty frustrating for me. I'm not a fan of RTWP combat systems but can usually power through them if the writing is good - the writing is good (if a bit dry), yet I can't power through the gameplay.
Ultimately dropped for the simple fact that combat becomes basically impossible to read.
Plus, the story kinda goes all over the place and the characters kinda fail to keep my interest up.
It's a good game, but not my game.
Plus, the story kinda goes all over the place and the characters kinda fail to keep my interest up.
It's a good game, but not my game.
A resurrections of old school RPGs that recreates all of the problems of the genre. A great start gives way to questlines that consistently end with an anticlimax, surface level companions with little to them, overly linear quests that force you into combat, and endless waves of combat against boring trash enemies that only serves to slow the game down. One of my biggest gaming disappointments.
maybe one day i'll be able to stomach a crpg but today is not that day
I've tried to play this 3 times now, going to accept the combat system is not for me. I might revisit this on story mode in the future because I want to play PoE 2
Really, really good
The combat isn't for me but I'm absolutely in love with everything else
Had a great time
The combat isn't for me but I'm absolutely in love with everything else
Had a great time
loved the unique aspects of the game, and I appreciate a fantasy setting based on the united states, even under several layers of fantasy jargon (what the hell is a palatinate?).
the game does move kind of slow, but it feels more like a relaxing, patient type game rather than a slog. I wish your character's background affected the main game more than stat boosts.
the game does move kind of slow, but it feels more like a relaxing, patient type game rather than a slog. I wish your character's background affected the main game more than stat boosts.
Outside of Disco Elysium, I haven't found a single crpg which was entertaining enough for me to play past the 10 hour mark and PoE hasn't changed that. The world is woefully boring, the quests are terrible and the combat is a snooze-fest. I think this genre just isn't for me.
in the first dungeon of pillars of eternity, there's a moment that really stuck with me. you encounter a xaurip - a classic fantasy racism beastman that trades in aesthetics uncomfortably pulled from indigenous american stereotypes. it indicates that you go no further, that you do not follow it down a path into it's territory. there's no option to convince it to step aside and let you past: you either respect it's wishes, turn around and find another path, or you walk forward and kill it as an enemy. it's a moment with, i think genuine nuance, where the agency of the xaurip is respected, a moment that actually asks the player to respect the culture of this people or defy it, preventing them from taking a empowering middle road where they can do whatever they want if they have high enough numbers.
anyway, in the very next area you immediately encounter a bunch of them that attack on sight and that you have no recourse but to slaughter.
this moment is pillars of eternity in microcosm. on every level of it's construction, it is a game that feels simultaneously genuinely aware of the fraught nature of many of the images it is evoking and the things it is doing, aware of the stain left by games of this ilk in the past, and also resignedly committed to doing those things anyway without the brazen dumb confidence of a game like divinity: original sin 2. progressive and regressive, inventive and derivative, evolutionary and counter-evolutionary, pillars of eternity is the fascinating attempt to harken back to bioware's baldur's gate and the crpgs of it's era made by a game that doesn't wholly see the value in going back there.
i won't speculate on director je sawyer's intent any more than the man has directly said himself, as he has shown real discomfort towards people suggesting his opinions on certain games, but i know from my mercifully brief visits to the fascist haven that is the rpgcodex forums that sawyer is a quite strong critic of how the classic infinity engine games actually played, and despite my fondness for RPGs of that style, i find myself very much on his side. there's a reason these games struggle to find new fans that aren't just going to turn the games down to the lowest difficulty to sidestep most of the actual playing of it as much as possible: advanced dungeons and dragons is not, by any metric, an elegant or intuitive system at the best of times, and while real-time with pause was an elegant solution to just how long combat in d&d can go on for (larian's proud statements that BG3 has an authentic, turn-based translation of 5E rules should absolutely terrify any prospective players), it only raises the barrier to entry for those not already au fe with ad&d's eccentricities.
pillars of eternity feels utterly unique in that it is a real-time with pause CRPG based on rules that were designed for a video game, and not for a very different medium, and as a result it is...actually good and fun. the rules and statistics are far clearer, the resource game is far more sensical, and the pace of encounters is such that individual moves are less frequent but far more impactful, maintaining the weighty impact turns have in a traditional turn-based game at a speed far more under your own control. experientially, pillars of eternity feels closer to FF12 than it does baldur's gate, with a sliding scale of playstyles ranging from making each move with care and precision, to writing full AI scripts for each member of the party and letting battles play out automatically at hyperspeed.
when i play games in this genre, i usually keep the difficulty low and drop it even lower if i encounter friction. but with pillars, i kept the difficulty on normal the entire way through because I genuinely enjoyed the gameplay and tactical puzzles it presented. it helped me to see, for the first time, why someone might prefer rtwp over turn-based, and when i started a pillars of eternity 2 playthrough shortly after playing this, i decided to stick to real-time rather than playing the game's new turn-based mode, because i became genuinely enamoured with this system.
pillars of eternity is in the unique position of being a baldur's gate homage that doesn't feel like it holds any particular reverence or great love for baldur's gate, and makes good on that position by well and truly killing bg's darlings where the system design is concerned. this isn't exactly uncharted territory for obsidian: but despite it's progressive approach to it's combat, it feels much more burdened by it's legacy than either kotor 2 or neverwinter nights 2, neither as caustic as the former nor as quietly confident as the latter. it sits uncomfortably among many of the things it does, inherited and otherwise.
to demonstrate: this is, in many ways, a d&d-ass setting. it's a roughly-medieval setting in a temperate forested coastal region, and yet the dyrwood is not medieval france/britain like the sword coast is, it's far closer to colonial canada both in terms of regional politics and technology. you have humans, you have elves, you have dwarves, and things that are kinda like gnomes but with the serial numbers filed off, you have the godlike, which are a twist on the aasimar/tieflings of d&d, each with their own gygaxian race science bonuses to stats, but aside from the aforementioned fantasy racism with the beastmen, these fantasy races matter less in the actual story than national identities and cultures, which makes one question why the race science stuff is even here. even stepping into the mechanical dimension, most of the classes are reasonably interesting interpretations of classic stock d&d archetypes like fighter, wizard, paladin, etc, but the two unique classes, chanter and cipher, are so obviously the design highlights and work in a way that would be incredibly difficult in a tabletop game but are beautiful in a video game. they eagerly invite the question of what this game would look like if it wasn't obligated to include the d&d obligations within it.
while i can't speak for every member of the development team, i know that for je sawyer, pillars of eternity was not necessarily a game he wanted to make - at least not in the way that it ended up being made. elements like the traditional fantasy setting, the real-time with pause gameplay, and even the presence of elves, were all things that were there to fulfil the demands of a kickstarter promising a baldur's gate throwback from a company that had fallen on difficult times. these things that feel like obligations feel like that because they are obligations: concessions to appeal to expectations and desires forged by nostalgia for a game that obsidian didn't actually make. these aren't the only visible compromises that mark the game - "compromise" being perhaps a generous word to describe the game's obnoxious kickstarter scars - but it is this tug of war between the parts of itself that wish to remain within the walls of baldur's gate, and the parts that cry out for escape, that ultimately defines pillars of eternity.
while maddening dreams and an epidemic of children born without souls is what drives the plot of pillars of eternity, the story is really in the conversations between tradition and very colonialist notions of progress, and the very opinionated characters you converse with along the way. likeable characters will hold quietly conservative worldviews that feel natural for them, people will say the right things for the wrong reasons, or the wrong things for the right reasons. friendly characters will have beliefs that are extremely distasteful to you but are so deeply held that there is no way to use the power granted to you by being the player character to dissuade them from their belief system with a few honeyed words. this is not a game where each element works towards a clear thematic conclusion, one that confidently knows what is right and what is wrong when discussing the things it brings up. it is a messy world filled with ugliness and argument and contradiction, and no clear definitive statement on its themes. it has a perspective, but it is not one held with immense confidence. it is a perspective mired with doubts and second-guessing that feels very conscious and deliberate. in particular, the final hour of the game has a twist that recontextualises the nature of the setting, but it's noticeable just how much of the cast, both in this game and in the sequel. find this not to be a redefining moment of their lives, but simply something they have to let sit in their gut like a millstone. it lets them see with new light things they once valued, but they feel unable to simply cast those things aside.
i have a particular distaste for critiques in geek circles narrow their focus on what a work is saying to only the series or genre the work finds itself in, and ignoring whatever resonance it might have to the world outside the fiction, subconsciously because the author has little experience of that world. and yet, it's difficult to read pillars of eternity without looking at it's relationship to baldur's gate and it's ilk, especially given how it kickstarted (lol) the late 2010s CRPG revival that led to breakout hits like divinity: original sin 2 and disco elysium. it walks in the meadows of the past with an uneasy rhythm, constantly expressing it's discomfort with being there but never quite being able to find the way out. even at the end of the game, there is delightfully scarce resolution to the weighty philosophical questions raised by the final act - the immediate crisis dealt with, certainly, but the game ends on a world that has raised questions rather than answered them, and while you may have your own thoughts and perspectives, there is no great victory of ideologies to be found, no grand, world-defining choice about what to do with the wisdom of the past. it's a game that simply ends with you emerging back into a world that is materially largely unchanged but colored so different by the new perspective you have on it. it is a game that is deliriously inconclusive.
one could word that as a criticism - and indeed, a strict formalist lens would probably find it as such - but honestly, it's what i find delightful and resonant about pillars of eternity. i'm someone who thinks generally very poorly about d&d as a game, but my intermittently weekly d&d games with my friends that have been going on since the first lockdown have made some incredible memories, a world and story and cast that i find myself hugely invested in. despite my disdain for a lot of the recurring cliches and tropes of the genre, some of my favorite stories are fantasy stories. and despite my active distaste for a lot of the decisions pillars either makes or is stuck with, and indeed for some of the creative minds involved in it's production (chrs avellne's characters were substantially rewritten after his departure from obsidian to such an extent that neither he nor je sawyer recognize them as "his characters" but whoever was behind durance specifically is doing such a conscious avellone impression that i would be remiss not to note that his presence is certainly felt) i still enjoy it immensely regardless.
frequently, engagement with art is a negotiation with the parts about it that speak to us and the parts that fail to do so, where we may be able to excuse or enjoy parts that others find to sink the entire work for them, and it's unexpectedly moving to find a game that was so visibly having that conversation with itself as i played it, and rang so true for the relationship i have with the things that inspired it.
it's a game that embodies the sticky and troubling way all the games and stories of it's ilk sit in my mind and expresses them emotively through a story that, in fits and starts, writes quite powerfully on the unique pains and sensation of memory and tradition and progress. it's a game that feels all the more true, all the more real, for it's contradictions, compromises, and conversations capped off with trailing ellipses, leading down two roads to an uncertain future and a depressingly familiar past.
anyway, in the very next area you immediately encounter a bunch of them that attack on sight and that you have no recourse but to slaughter.
this moment is pillars of eternity in microcosm. on every level of it's construction, it is a game that feels simultaneously genuinely aware of the fraught nature of many of the images it is evoking and the things it is doing, aware of the stain left by games of this ilk in the past, and also resignedly committed to doing those things anyway without the brazen dumb confidence of a game like divinity: original sin 2. progressive and regressive, inventive and derivative, evolutionary and counter-evolutionary, pillars of eternity is the fascinating attempt to harken back to bioware's baldur's gate and the crpgs of it's era made by a game that doesn't wholly see the value in going back there.
i won't speculate on director je sawyer's intent any more than the man has directly said himself, as he has shown real discomfort towards people suggesting his opinions on certain games, but i know from my mercifully brief visits to the fascist haven that is the rpgcodex forums that sawyer is a quite strong critic of how the classic infinity engine games actually played, and despite my fondness for RPGs of that style, i find myself very much on his side. there's a reason these games struggle to find new fans that aren't just going to turn the games down to the lowest difficulty to sidestep most of the actual playing of it as much as possible: advanced dungeons and dragons is not, by any metric, an elegant or intuitive system at the best of times, and while real-time with pause was an elegant solution to just how long combat in d&d can go on for (larian's proud statements that BG3 has an authentic, turn-based translation of 5E rules should absolutely terrify any prospective players), it only raises the barrier to entry for those not already au fe with ad&d's eccentricities.
pillars of eternity feels utterly unique in that it is a real-time with pause CRPG based on rules that were designed for a video game, and not for a very different medium, and as a result it is...actually good and fun. the rules and statistics are far clearer, the resource game is far more sensical, and the pace of encounters is such that individual moves are less frequent but far more impactful, maintaining the weighty impact turns have in a traditional turn-based game at a speed far more under your own control. experientially, pillars of eternity feels closer to FF12 than it does baldur's gate, with a sliding scale of playstyles ranging from making each move with care and precision, to writing full AI scripts for each member of the party and letting battles play out automatically at hyperspeed.
when i play games in this genre, i usually keep the difficulty low and drop it even lower if i encounter friction. but with pillars, i kept the difficulty on normal the entire way through because I genuinely enjoyed the gameplay and tactical puzzles it presented. it helped me to see, for the first time, why someone might prefer rtwp over turn-based, and when i started a pillars of eternity 2 playthrough shortly after playing this, i decided to stick to real-time rather than playing the game's new turn-based mode, because i became genuinely enamoured with this system.
pillars of eternity is in the unique position of being a baldur's gate homage that doesn't feel like it holds any particular reverence or great love for baldur's gate, and makes good on that position by well and truly killing bg's darlings where the system design is concerned. this isn't exactly uncharted territory for obsidian: but despite it's progressive approach to it's combat, it feels much more burdened by it's legacy than either kotor 2 or neverwinter nights 2, neither as caustic as the former nor as quietly confident as the latter. it sits uncomfortably among many of the things it does, inherited and otherwise.
to demonstrate: this is, in many ways, a d&d-ass setting. it's a roughly-medieval setting in a temperate forested coastal region, and yet the dyrwood is not medieval france/britain like the sword coast is, it's far closer to colonial canada both in terms of regional politics and technology. you have humans, you have elves, you have dwarves, and things that are kinda like gnomes but with the serial numbers filed off, you have the godlike, which are a twist on the aasimar/tieflings of d&d, each with their own gygaxian race science bonuses to stats, but aside from the aforementioned fantasy racism with the beastmen, these fantasy races matter less in the actual story than national identities and cultures, which makes one question why the race science stuff is even here. even stepping into the mechanical dimension, most of the classes are reasonably interesting interpretations of classic stock d&d archetypes like fighter, wizard, paladin, etc, but the two unique classes, chanter and cipher, are so obviously the design highlights and work in a way that would be incredibly difficult in a tabletop game but are beautiful in a video game. they eagerly invite the question of what this game would look like if it wasn't obligated to include the d&d obligations within it.
while i can't speak for every member of the development team, i know that for je sawyer, pillars of eternity was not necessarily a game he wanted to make - at least not in the way that it ended up being made. elements like the traditional fantasy setting, the real-time with pause gameplay, and even the presence of elves, were all things that were there to fulfil the demands of a kickstarter promising a baldur's gate throwback from a company that had fallen on difficult times. these things that feel like obligations feel like that because they are obligations: concessions to appeal to expectations and desires forged by nostalgia for a game that obsidian didn't actually make. these aren't the only visible compromises that mark the game - "compromise" being perhaps a generous word to describe the game's obnoxious kickstarter scars - but it is this tug of war between the parts of itself that wish to remain within the walls of baldur's gate, and the parts that cry out for escape, that ultimately defines pillars of eternity.
while maddening dreams and an epidemic of children born without souls is what drives the plot of pillars of eternity, the story is really in the conversations between tradition and very colonialist notions of progress, and the very opinionated characters you converse with along the way. likeable characters will hold quietly conservative worldviews that feel natural for them, people will say the right things for the wrong reasons, or the wrong things for the right reasons. friendly characters will have beliefs that are extremely distasteful to you but are so deeply held that there is no way to use the power granted to you by being the player character to dissuade them from their belief system with a few honeyed words. this is not a game where each element works towards a clear thematic conclusion, one that confidently knows what is right and what is wrong when discussing the things it brings up. it is a messy world filled with ugliness and argument and contradiction, and no clear definitive statement on its themes. it has a perspective, but it is not one held with immense confidence. it is a perspective mired with doubts and second-guessing that feels very conscious and deliberate. in particular, the final hour of the game has a twist that recontextualises the nature of the setting, but it's noticeable just how much of the cast, both in this game and in the sequel. find this not to be a redefining moment of their lives, but simply something they have to let sit in their gut like a millstone. it lets them see with new light things they once valued, but they feel unable to simply cast those things aside.
i have a particular distaste for critiques in geek circles narrow their focus on what a work is saying to only the series or genre the work finds itself in, and ignoring whatever resonance it might have to the world outside the fiction, subconsciously because the author has little experience of that world. and yet, it's difficult to read pillars of eternity without looking at it's relationship to baldur's gate and it's ilk, especially given how it kickstarted (lol) the late 2010s CRPG revival that led to breakout hits like divinity: original sin 2 and disco elysium. it walks in the meadows of the past with an uneasy rhythm, constantly expressing it's discomfort with being there but never quite being able to find the way out. even at the end of the game, there is delightfully scarce resolution to the weighty philosophical questions raised by the final act - the immediate crisis dealt with, certainly, but the game ends on a world that has raised questions rather than answered them, and while you may have your own thoughts and perspectives, there is no great victory of ideologies to be found, no grand, world-defining choice about what to do with the wisdom of the past. it's a game that simply ends with you emerging back into a world that is materially largely unchanged but colored so different by the new perspective you have on it. it is a game that is deliriously inconclusive.
one could word that as a criticism - and indeed, a strict formalist lens would probably find it as such - but honestly, it's what i find delightful and resonant about pillars of eternity. i'm someone who thinks generally very poorly about d&d as a game, but my intermittently weekly d&d games with my friends that have been going on since the first lockdown have made some incredible memories, a world and story and cast that i find myself hugely invested in. despite my disdain for a lot of the recurring cliches and tropes of the genre, some of my favorite stories are fantasy stories. and despite my active distaste for a lot of the decisions pillars either makes or is stuck with, and indeed for some of the creative minds involved in it's production (chrs avellne's characters were substantially rewritten after his departure from obsidian to such an extent that neither he nor je sawyer recognize them as "his characters" but whoever was behind durance specifically is doing such a conscious avellone impression that i would be remiss not to note that his presence is certainly felt) i still enjoy it immensely regardless.
frequently, engagement with art is a negotiation with the parts about it that speak to us and the parts that fail to do so, where we may be able to excuse or enjoy parts that others find to sink the entire work for them, and it's unexpectedly moving to find a game that was so visibly having that conversation with itself as i played it, and rang so true for the relationship i have with the things that inspired it.
it's a game that embodies the sticky and troubling way all the games and stories of it's ilk sit in my mind and expresses them emotively through a story that, in fits and starts, writes quite powerfully on the unique pains and sensation of memory and tradition and progress. it's a game that feels all the more true, all the more real, for it's contradictions, compromises, and conversations capped off with trailing ellipses, leading down two roads to an uncertain future and a depressingly familiar past.
Tentei jogar mas infelizmente está bem feio e datado, a qualidade é bem meh até pra 2015.
Tempo de jogo: 20 minutos
Tempo de jogo: 20 minutos
Playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 a couple years back had me convinced that maybe CRPGs could be my kinda thing! That game was so good, it had me wanting to try out others of its kind - even though the general sentiment I hear online is that D:OS 2 is pretty much the pinnacle of modern CRPGs.
Yeah, certainly seems that way! CRPGs by-and-large seem to be designed with a very specific person in mind, experienced D&D players or people who grew up with similarly labyrinthine & complicated games like Icewind Dale or Planescape or whatever that I guess they figured out how to play through hours of sheer, laborious will. I want these games to be my kind of thing, but I don't think they do. Between this and Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which I honestly enjoyed slightly more than this for the brief time I played it before abandoning it also - it feels like these games make no real attempt to explain their mechanics; how to make certain characters lead the party, what the implications are of the 4 different types of defence, how magic and grimoires work etc. Pillars of Eternity tutorialises some very silly things early on like how conversation works but makes no real effort to explain any of the things I just mentioned without you taking it upon yourself to do copious amounts of reading. Again, if this game isn't made for people like me - then fine! But Divinity was able to ease me in and make things make sense to me to at least a reasonable extent, and it just seems a bit weird for a game to make so little effort to make new fans like most CRPGs do.
I'm in the keep at Caed Nua after about 12 hours and I'm leaving this one behind unfortunately. I'm sure it's good for the hyper-specific audience it wants to serve but I was really ready to give it a chance and go in with an open mind, and found largely uninteresting plot and characterisation, incredibly unwieldy mechanics and systems and worst of all - AMERICAN VOICE ACTORS DOING BAD BRITISH ACCENTS. STOP ALREADY. JUST BE AMERICAN YOU WEIRDOS. I KNOW THAT FANTASY IS WAY COOLER WHEN EVERYONE'S BRITISH BUT GIVE UP, JUST ACCEPT YOUR SAD, AMERICAN FATE.
Obsidian are responsible for my favourite video game of all time in Fallout: New Vegas so I wanted to give more of their works a look; but this feels surprisingly rote to me. Companions join you with incredibly flimsy motivation that somehow compels them to stick with you even when you're in mortal terror fighting off bears and dark spirits, (a classic D&D-style RPG trope that I really dislike - give my companions compelling reasons to join me please!!) dungeons are all dingy, samey and visually and textually uninteresting and learning that this game is apparently up to a 100 hour commitment just sapped all the motivation to continue from me completely, especially considering how uninteresting and yet frequent combat seems to be. Let's leave the 100-hour runtimes to JRPGs please! We're supposed to be better than this!
Yeah, certainly seems that way! CRPGs by-and-large seem to be designed with a very specific person in mind, experienced D&D players or people who grew up with similarly labyrinthine & complicated games like Icewind Dale or Planescape or whatever that I guess they figured out how to play through hours of sheer, laborious will. I want these games to be my kind of thing, but I don't think they do. Between this and Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which I honestly enjoyed slightly more than this for the brief time I played it before abandoning it also - it feels like these games make no real attempt to explain their mechanics; how to make certain characters lead the party, what the implications are of the 4 different types of defence, how magic and grimoires work etc. Pillars of Eternity tutorialises some very silly things early on like how conversation works but makes no real effort to explain any of the things I just mentioned without you taking it upon yourself to do copious amounts of reading. Again, if this game isn't made for people like me - then fine! But Divinity was able to ease me in and make things make sense to me to at least a reasonable extent, and it just seems a bit weird for a game to make so little effort to make new fans like most CRPGs do.
I'm in the keep at Caed Nua after about 12 hours and I'm leaving this one behind unfortunately. I'm sure it's good for the hyper-specific audience it wants to serve but I was really ready to give it a chance and go in with an open mind, and found largely uninteresting plot and characterisation, incredibly unwieldy mechanics and systems and worst of all - AMERICAN VOICE ACTORS DOING BAD BRITISH ACCENTS. STOP ALREADY. JUST BE AMERICAN YOU WEIRDOS. I KNOW THAT FANTASY IS WAY COOLER WHEN EVERYONE'S BRITISH BUT GIVE UP, JUST ACCEPT YOUR SAD, AMERICAN FATE.
Obsidian are responsible for my favourite video game of all time in Fallout: New Vegas so I wanted to give more of their works a look; but this feels surprisingly rote to me. Companions join you with incredibly flimsy motivation that somehow compels them to stick with you even when you're in mortal terror fighting off bears and dark spirits, (a classic D&D-style RPG trope that I really dislike - give my companions compelling reasons to join me please!!) dungeons are all dingy, samey and visually and textually uninteresting and learning that this game is apparently up to a 100 hour commitment just sapped all the motivation to continue from me completely, especially considering how uninteresting and yet frequent combat seems to be. Let's leave the 100-hour runtimes to JRPGs please! We're supposed to be better than this!
I can recognize the craft here, but wow, did this game bore me to tears. Got up to the third act before I realized there was nothing up it's sleeve to excite me. It really is just not a game for me. Maybe it's for you. Who could say?
This review contains spoilers
Pillars of Eternity is the most boring CRPG I've played in a while. Maybe it was a sign that I dropped this game twice but I recently decided to finally sit down and finish it.
Honestly it was a waste of time, a lot of the game's problem comes from this obsession the writers had with making sure the player knew the inner workings of the world Eora, its people, its culture, its politics, and its gods. Hell they wasted no time with the excess lore dumps and dropped them right away in the character creator. Instead of giving a basic run down Obsidian really want you know the ins and outs and leaves nothing open to interpretation, There is a saying that less is more and clearly no one writing this game subscribes to that.
Another problem Pillars has is balance, The game is way too balanced that it is honestly unfun. Perhaps it's because I like to break games and feel powerful and like a god sometimes in my rpgs but in Pillars I never once felt powerful at all unless I was overleveled for whatever content I was doing at the time. Which made a lot of combat encounters when I was the intended level feel not only really sluggish but also didn't really promote me trying out anything new since I ended up cheesing what I could when I could. The dlc kicked it up a notch by having a lot annoying enemies and the first dlc having way too much combat encounters. Ultimately it was just a lot of forming choke holds because they work and not trying anything new. Even hitting certain weaknesses didn't' exactly feel particularly strong just did slightly more damage than usual.
The plot suffers immensely from the world building to the point where there really isn't any urgency which I get some people joke about in RPGs, going to do millions of side quests to level up or doing some mini game for something else. However in Pillars it generally doesn't feel like there is any urgency, because the plot is mostly preventing the main character from going insane due to becoming a Watcher. No real time limit or anything just kinda yea the main character might go insane. You can't even really say the main plot is even stopping the Leaden Key or stopping the hollowborn curse since that's just a side effect of preventing your character going insane and not really the main goal. Plot could at least be better if half the writing team had stopped focusing on world building and had instead wrote a half decent plot. No wonder Act 3 has you just talk to people for a bit then do a side quest and now your allowed to go to the point of no return.
Lastly your companions just kinda of exist, many of them don't really have any connection the main plot and the only one that kinda does only ever mentions that he's a member of the villain's cult but his companion quest is simply about him being schizo.
Pillars of Eternity was a very boring game that I really should have dropped it but decided to actually finish it and It was not a very good experience for me.
Honestly it was a waste of time, a lot of the game's problem comes from this obsession the writers had with making sure the player knew the inner workings of the world Eora, its people, its culture, its politics, and its gods. Hell they wasted no time with the excess lore dumps and dropped them right away in the character creator. Instead of giving a basic run down Obsidian really want you know the ins and outs and leaves nothing open to interpretation, There is a saying that less is more and clearly no one writing this game subscribes to that.
Another problem Pillars has is balance, The game is way too balanced that it is honestly unfun. Perhaps it's because I like to break games and feel powerful and like a god sometimes in my rpgs but in Pillars I never once felt powerful at all unless I was overleveled for whatever content I was doing at the time. Which made a lot of combat encounters when I was the intended level feel not only really sluggish but also didn't really promote me trying out anything new since I ended up cheesing what I could when I could. The dlc kicked it up a notch by having a lot annoying enemies and the first dlc having way too much combat encounters. Ultimately it was just a lot of forming choke holds because they work and not trying anything new. Even hitting certain weaknesses didn't' exactly feel particularly strong just did slightly more damage than usual.
The plot suffers immensely from the world building to the point where there really isn't any urgency which I get some people joke about in RPGs, going to do millions of side quests to level up or doing some mini game for something else. However in Pillars it generally doesn't feel like there is any urgency, because the plot is mostly preventing the main character from going insane due to becoming a Watcher. No real time limit or anything just kinda yea the main character might go insane. You can't even really say the main plot is even stopping the Leaden Key or stopping the hollowborn curse since that's just a side effect of preventing your character going insane and not really the main goal. Plot could at least be better if half the writing team had stopped focusing on world building and had instead wrote a half decent plot. No wonder Act 3 has you just talk to people for a bit then do a side quest and now your allowed to go to the point of no return.
Lastly your companions just kinda of exist, many of them don't really have any connection the main plot and the only one that kinda does only ever mentions that he's a member of the villain's cult but his companion quest is simply about him being schizo.
Pillars of Eternity was a very boring game that I really should have dropped it but decided to actually finish it and It was not a very good experience for me.
I enjoyed this both more and less than I expected. it's a great game to pick up if you are not experienced with or into crpgs. I was not sure of the combat, to begin with, but I found it really enjoyable all throughout, even though some parts of it felt fairly unnecessary, such as grimoires and the scrolls, at least at the difficulty I played at. but I wasn't ever getting annoyed and felt like I could overcome most challenges, even if the game was not really difficult. My main problem with the game is that there is just a crushing amount of lore. I love fantasy and adequate amounts of lore, but at the old ancient age of 22, I find it really difficult to get all the details. when you don't even call humans, "humans" in your story it is a sign of starting to go too far. the journal does heavy lifting but still moments in dialogue just go over my head 80 percent of the time. luckily the main throughline of the story was interesting and felt like it connected to other side stories, especially with your party who are all wonderful and have interesting stories, some of whom even fairly touching. I'm sure the extensive amount of lore is interesting and written in excruciating detail, and the bits and pieces I got are interesting and stray from generic fantasy, and it's impressive considering the smaller budget of the game. I guess it's just not for me at this point. still had a fun 30 hours with this and would recommend it as a testing place for modern crpgs.
This game really is the sum of its parts. Evidently made by an incredibly talented team, Pillars of Eternity is polished in so many ways, but weathered in so many others.
The world is interesting, I think, and some of the companions can be interesting, I think. But so much of the dialogue, especially early on when fluid exposition is crucial, feels like a text-dump. In its worst moments, it feels less like you're exploring a world full of genuinely interesting ideas, compelling mysteries, and richly developed characters and more like reading a history textbook about just such a world. That's not always a bad thing, but it doesn't always capture the spirit that set games like Baldur's Gate, Planescape, and Fallout apart.
One thing that can't be overlooked: the load times feel bad. It's perfectly playable, mind you, but even on an SSD, PoE is just a bit too heavy for its own good. I understand that there's only so much Obsidian can do, but Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced, a re-release of one of the twenty-year-old games that Pillars models itself on, loads effortlessly and instantly. It makes you wonder if the increased visual fidelity that comes with modern hardware and development was worth it. Maybe in another fifteen years, Pillars will load just as quickly on modern hardware. But in fifteen years, will as many people still be playing Pillars as are still playing Baldur's Gate?
The combat is, on most levels, an improvement over the clunky encounters of Infinity Engine RPGs. Pre-buffing before fights is a thing of the past; most spells can only be used in combat, and encounters are balanced around this. Enemies and their abilities are designed with fewer "gotcha" mechanics, so there's little need to research solutions to break some obscure magical protection or exploit poorly explained weaknesses. The resting mechanics are also better tuned to the GM-less play patterns of a video game, making resource management more meaningful. Martial characters have more active abilities, making strategy less automatic for them. Yet, somehow, for every fight I find more fun than the average BG2 combat (and there are plenty!), there's another that is less so. Pillars is, in many ways, deeper and more tactical than BG's semi-literal translation of AD&D, and it is far and away the better-balanced game. Its combat gameplay is unerringly fair. But in turn, it's markedly less electric.
Not being able to use spells out of combat means that, while preparing for combat is less tedious, there are also no creative applications of spells outside of combat. No invisibility spells to let you steal that item you need, no charm spells to manipulate NPCs in your favor, no reward for learning the mechanics deeply enough to cheese tough enemies. This is one of many ways in which the game streamlines out creative problem solving. If there's an alternative ending to a quest in PoE, it's probably a matter of choosing a different dialogue option or talking to a different NPC. It's almost never a mechanical solution. You're not going to pickpocket or problem-solve your way around an obstacle unless it's scripted in. It's Obsidian, so of course there's usually a solid suite of alternative choices scripted in, but I still find myself wondering: what if they took off the leash? You can already choose what to ride in their RPG theme park, but what if they let us climb on the tracks instead?
The game's original mechanics, spells, and stat allocations, while well-thought-out objectively, lack the intuitive familiarity of famous D&D rulesets. I often find myself disengaged from the mechanics to the point I'm not able to make meaningful decisions in combat or character-building. Sure, I've intuited that debuff and crowd-control spells are valuable, but I can never retain which ones actually do what, or are more or less effective. Oh, this spell reduces the enemy's might, and this spell reduces their DR, and this spell increases our accuracy... but which do I need right now? Do the enemies I'm facing have a high enough DR that lowering it would matter? Is their might high enough to be concerned about? Am I missing enough hits that accuracy would help? I truly can't tell. I can never tell. I don't have any frame of reference for how the enemies are statted to begin with, even after filling the bestiary enough to check in combat. Fights against enemies you're sufficiently familiar with to have unlocked their stats are rarely challenging enough to need to examine them. And because of how hectic the combat can be, even with generous auto-pausing, it doesn't always feel possible to suss out which spells have a noticeable impact and which may as well be whiffing through observation alone, or even trial and error.
Not to mention how slow the combat gets when you're stopping to read the log and analyze each move, or how tedious it feels to load a save if you spend all that time pausing and planning only to die. And with such hectic combat, martial characters having more abilities to micromanage--though a massive step up in terms of depth and engagement--also means even more pins to juggle in a crowded circus. Even easier fights can grow tiresome because of how many there are in some areas. I spend most of the game in Fast Mode, and still I wish there was a faster mode so I could get through sprawling overworld areas or dungeons full of trash-mobs just a bit faster. Where in Baldur's Gate 2 you might have cast a Haste spell and torn through lesser enemies in a few seconds, here, any level-appropriate encounter is going to demand your time and your attention, sometimes at the expense of the pacing. Yet, if you're doing the DLC and enough side quests, it's easy for the main questline to no longer be level-appropriate. The strange thing is, while being overleveled makes things a bit too easy, I sometimes feel like it's more fun just mindlessly clicking on bad guys and getting where I need to go than it is having to run through the flowchart of buffs and special abilities that I've devised for regular combats.
But then, just when you think you've had your fill of the game for all those reasons and more, Durance will say something that takes you by surprise. Or you'll learn something shocking about the world. Or you'll find a piece of unique gear that gets you excited for the next battle instead of exhausted. Or you make it to the ending, which has such interesting choices and engaging themes that you wonder why it didn't frontload more of its best ideas. Or you play the White March DLC, which is more dense with memorable quests and worthwhile content than most areas of the base game. In moments like these--of which there are still many--Pillars lives up to its promise. I just wish there were as many of those moments as there are unwelcome Kickstarter NPCs.
The world is interesting, I think, and some of the companions can be interesting, I think. But so much of the dialogue, especially early on when fluid exposition is crucial, feels like a text-dump. In its worst moments, it feels less like you're exploring a world full of genuinely interesting ideas, compelling mysteries, and richly developed characters and more like reading a history textbook about just such a world. That's not always a bad thing, but it doesn't always capture the spirit that set games like Baldur's Gate, Planescape, and Fallout apart.
One thing that can't be overlooked: the load times feel bad. It's perfectly playable, mind you, but even on an SSD, PoE is just a bit too heavy for its own good. I understand that there's only so much Obsidian can do, but Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced, a re-release of one of the twenty-year-old games that Pillars models itself on, loads effortlessly and instantly. It makes you wonder if the increased visual fidelity that comes with modern hardware and development was worth it. Maybe in another fifteen years, Pillars will load just as quickly on modern hardware. But in fifteen years, will as many people still be playing Pillars as are still playing Baldur's Gate?
The combat is, on most levels, an improvement over the clunky encounters of Infinity Engine RPGs. Pre-buffing before fights is a thing of the past; most spells can only be used in combat, and encounters are balanced around this. Enemies and their abilities are designed with fewer "gotcha" mechanics, so there's little need to research solutions to break some obscure magical protection or exploit poorly explained weaknesses. The resting mechanics are also better tuned to the GM-less play patterns of a video game, making resource management more meaningful. Martial characters have more active abilities, making strategy less automatic for them. Yet, somehow, for every fight I find more fun than the average BG2 combat (and there are plenty!), there's another that is less so. Pillars is, in many ways, deeper and more tactical than BG's semi-literal translation of AD&D, and it is far and away the better-balanced game. Its combat gameplay is unerringly fair. But in turn, it's markedly less electric.
Not being able to use spells out of combat means that, while preparing for combat is less tedious, there are also no creative applications of spells outside of combat. No invisibility spells to let you steal that item you need, no charm spells to manipulate NPCs in your favor, no reward for learning the mechanics deeply enough to cheese tough enemies. This is one of many ways in which the game streamlines out creative problem solving. If there's an alternative ending to a quest in PoE, it's probably a matter of choosing a different dialogue option or talking to a different NPC. It's almost never a mechanical solution. You're not going to pickpocket or problem-solve your way around an obstacle unless it's scripted in. It's Obsidian, so of course there's usually a solid suite of alternative choices scripted in, but I still find myself wondering: what if they took off the leash? You can already choose what to ride in their RPG theme park, but what if they let us climb on the tracks instead?
The game's original mechanics, spells, and stat allocations, while well-thought-out objectively, lack the intuitive familiarity of famous D&D rulesets. I often find myself disengaged from the mechanics to the point I'm not able to make meaningful decisions in combat or character-building. Sure, I've intuited that debuff and crowd-control spells are valuable, but I can never retain which ones actually do what, or are more or less effective. Oh, this spell reduces the enemy's might, and this spell reduces their DR, and this spell increases our accuracy... but which do I need right now? Do the enemies I'm facing have a high enough DR that lowering it would matter? Is their might high enough to be concerned about? Am I missing enough hits that accuracy would help? I truly can't tell. I can never tell. I don't have any frame of reference for how the enemies are statted to begin with, even after filling the bestiary enough to check in combat. Fights against enemies you're sufficiently familiar with to have unlocked their stats are rarely challenging enough to need to examine them. And because of how hectic the combat can be, even with generous auto-pausing, it doesn't always feel possible to suss out which spells have a noticeable impact and which may as well be whiffing through observation alone, or even trial and error.
Not to mention how slow the combat gets when you're stopping to read the log and analyze each move, or how tedious it feels to load a save if you spend all that time pausing and planning only to die. And with such hectic combat, martial characters having more abilities to micromanage--though a massive step up in terms of depth and engagement--also means even more pins to juggle in a crowded circus. Even easier fights can grow tiresome because of how many there are in some areas. I spend most of the game in Fast Mode, and still I wish there was a faster mode so I could get through sprawling overworld areas or dungeons full of trash-mobs just a bit faster. Where in Baldur's Gate 2 you might have cast a Haste spell and torn through lesser enemies in a few seconds, here, any level-appropriate encounter is going to demand your time and your attention, sometimes at the expense of the pacing. Yet, if you're doing the DLC and enough side quests, it's easy for the main questline to no longer be level-appropriate. The strange thing is, while being overleveled makes things a bit too easy, I sometimes feel like it's more fun just mindlessly clicking on bad guys and getting where I need to go than it is having to run through the flowchart of buffs and special abilities that I've devised for regular combats.
But then, just when you think you've had your fill of the game for all those reasons and more, Durance will say something that takes you by surprise. Or you'll learn something shocking about the world. Or you'll find a piece of unique gear that gets you excited for the next battle instead of exhausted. Or you make it to the ending, which has such interesting choices and engaging themes that you wonder why it didn't frontload more of its best ideas. Or you play the White March DLC, which is more dense with memorable quests and worthwhile content than most areas of the base game. In moments like these--of which there are still many--Pillars lives up to its promise. I just wish there were as many of those moments as there are unwelcome Kickstarter NPCs.
This "Totally Not Baldur's Gate" has a lot of potential, the worldbuilding, quests and dialogues are all masterfully written, however the combat system may feel a very steep difficulty curve, even to CRPG veterans. The Xbox version(And probably PS too) are NOT RECOMMENDED because they haven't released fixes to many quests and achievements, rendering them uncompleteable.
Has a much bigger emphasis on worldbuilding and creating a coherent fantasy realm than on character writing or narrative, which is super not for me.
when you gotta do a fetch quest in town so you count inside your head just how many loadings of eternityTM you'll have to go through
This was my first RPG of this style (BaldursGate - like RPG or not sure how to call it), and even that I liked it, I understand that is not for everyone.
For me the game got so much better when I turned the difficulty at minimum, it was annoying having combats so frequently and the combat system was a bit too complex for me (or I did not have the patience to fully enjoy it...). Same for the level system, I tried at first to understand it and choose the correct options for my characters but in the end I did not paid so much attention to it.
I was way more interested in exploring the different scenarios, some of them really beautiful and interesting, worth to check every corner.
The story was also a bit difficult to follow some times, because there seems to be so much names, locations, past events and lore in general that can be a bit overwhelming.
For me this was one of those games where the first 1/3 or 1/2 of the game is great, and you start doing all the side quests, and paying attention to the game mechanics, but then it starts to lose interest and you end up rushing the main story.
But even will all of this I enjoyed most of it, it was good to try something different, but I don't think I will play this again, maybe Pillars of Eternity 2 after some long time.
For me the game got so much better when I turned the difficulty at minimum, it was annoying having combats so frequently and the combat system was a bit too complex for me (or I did not have the patience to fully enjoy it...). Same for the level system, I tried at first to understand it and choose the correct options for my characters but in the end I did not paid so much attention to it.
I was way more interested in exploring the different scenarios, some of them really beautiful and interesting, worth to check every corner.
The story was also a bit difficult to follow some times, because there seems to be so much names, locations, past events and lore in general that can be a bit overwhelming.
For me this was one of those games where the first 1/3 or 1/2 of the game is great, and you start doing all the side quests, and paying attention to the game mechanics, but then it starts to lose interest and you end up rushing the main story.
But even will all of this I enjoyed most of it, it was good to try something different, but I don't think I will play this again, maybe Pillars of Eternity 2 after some long time.
You know it's a great RPG when you start thinking up new characters to create for future playthroughs before you've even finished your first.
Acho que existem opções melhores pra vc investir 30h de vida. Que tal jogar os clássicos primeiro?
Nobody has nostalgia for the Infinity Engine games because of the engine. Completely devoid of character, completely misguided.
Has some good ideas but is bogged down by what I think is a purposefully large amount of jank that obsidian inserted into the game to replicate the feeing of older crpgs. My biggest gripes with the game were that the game was pretty buggy, and that loading times were excessively long. There was also WAY too much combat for a crpg; maps are filled with enemy encounters and despite the combat system being pretty okay, about half way through it just felt like going though the motions. It didn’t help that both expansions are combat focused. Other then that, both the story and the companions were well written even if some of them had really short quests.