Years ago I got to the end game and had nothing but a ball with it, I shelved it before I beat it. Coming back I don’t know if it’s my state of mind? My mood? Or maybe my taste in games has changed as a whole. After 15 hours I don’t know how anyone can stand for these characters to walk this slow, and the combat is not my taste anymore but if you’re a fan of a good and very articulate RPG and you have 40 hours to kill I would suggest trying it if under $20 or free on whatever platform you have a game pass on.

Pillars of Eternity is an Obsidian RPG running at full steam. Set in the fantasy world of Eora, characters embark on a journey to combat the apocalyptic tale that is permeating throughout Dyrwood. With mature themes surrounded around a nationwide stillbirth pandemic across the nation, PoE finds interesting topics of the meaning of life that not many RPG’s (let alone games of all genres) have never explored.

The art style, in the spirit of classic CRPG’s such as Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment, is absolutely stunning and adds a wealth to the plethora of fantasy worlds in games that isn’t really explored anymore with a mix of dreary lands and mystical buildings blasting with color not seen in similar worlds such as Dragon Age or Elder Scrolls.

Though a bit flawed in some of its changes to the character leveling that most CRPG’s are known for (DND 2.5), this is a masterclass in fun yet challenging combat. Tyranny (another Obsidian CRPG game that was funded through Kickstarter) was my first foray into the genre, and I immediately gravitated towards this one for its complexity when compared to the more stripped down version of Tyranny. Though it can get a bit crazy in terms of difficulty spikes and readability, I found myself always having a great time. I did play through most of this on Normal but ended up changing to Easy towards the end due to this spike. I do put some of the blame on the game for having unneeded difficulty at times but I do believe my inexperience in the genre had something to do with it, too. Regardless, it’s really my only gripe with the game, and I have no shame in finishing this on Easy as it’s much more like Normal for more traditional RPG’s.

Obsidian is known for its deep storytelling, worldbuilding, and choice. With PoE, that is front and center. Throughout the 40+ hour experience, you will gather companions of many races and vastly different beliefs. Not only does this add flavor to your journey, but it adds a sense of depth when making choices. Unless I’m mistaken, I don’t believe going completely against a companion’s belief with a story decision strips away your ability to have them around, it does make you think about that choice in terms of immersion. On paper, the ability for them to leave based on your decisions sounds cool, I believe having your cake and eating it too with this mechanic would make it far less infuriating and I am thankful for that.

PoE is a flawed masterpiece. It absolutely nails it in terms of storytelling, worldbuilding, art design, and player choice. It does stumble a bit with its combat in terms of readability during hectic fights, difficulty spikes, and its overly complicated changes to character leveling, but it never truly gets in the way of a combat system that is addicting from beginning to end. No game is perfect, but I would suggest this game for anyone who loves Obsidian games like Fallout: New Vegas and aren’t afraid to try something new. If it’s intimidating, I would go into this on Easy mode as again, from my playtime with the game, it feels much more like Normal in other games.

Not an Infinite Engine Fan
I never got into the Infinite Engine games. I’ve tried– god, have I tried– but I’ve bounced off Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment about a dozen times collectively and I’ve scraped other similar titles too, like Arcanum. I eventually finished Planescape: Torment but that was in spite of the clunky and dated PC control scheme and the overall jankiness that’s shared among other CRPGs of its vintage. Most damningly, I’ve never been a fan of the look of traditional western fantasy. It’s very bland to me and absurdly dorky and those IE games are no exception.

So when Obsidian, developer behind one of my favourite RPGs: Fallout: New Vegas, made Pillars of Eternity as a throwback to that era of computer role-playing games, I was a little curious since it would be modernized and maybe some of those rough edges would be sanded down. Plus, the artstyle looked pretty decent to me with a fresher look and more ethereal colour palette. PLUS– and I think this is what sold me on it– the game allows you to play a werewolf from the getgo. You can choose to play a druid who has the ability to turn into a were-animal during battle for some primo lycanthrope action.

General
So I bought it and played it found out that a lot of problems with how the old games felt and behaved were improved in PoE. The general play of Pillars of Eternity (combat, navigating) is quite comfortable and– side note– this quickly became my favourite integration of being a werewolf in any video game. However, over the course of a playthrough, many problems revealed themselves...

Combat
The combat, although pretty good, is very busy and its hard to keep track of all the different resistances, buffs and all the minutia of battle. As the game went on, I got better at quickly identifying enemy weaknesses and internalizing all the spells at my disposal. My handle on combat got a lot better and a lot of nuances and strategies revealed themselves to me, but that took a long time. I didn’t feel like I actually got combat until the last leg of the game.

Customization/Levelling Up
Maybe the worst aspect is the character growth. On level up you get a bunch of skill points to spend on five field skills and there isn’t a strong inclination to choose any of them. One skills grants you and upgrades the Second Wind ability which is a one-time revive ability in which the higher the skill level, the more you recover. Another skill is exclusively for lockpicking. The class skills are usually not that interesting either. Each couple levels you get the ability to choose a new combat skill and while they’re not benign, it’s hard for me to be hype about some passive that gives 10+ to Deflection or one extra use of Knock Down per encounter. Furthermore, you only get a handful of these upgrades over the course of 11 level ups so your final build will have only a handful of these minuscule improvements. The character growth is profoundly unsatisfying.

Story
Obsidian is known for their writing but I found the main thrust of Pillars of Eternity to be uninteresting. Granted, I did play this on and off for six years so take my words with a grain of salt but even in consistent sessions of play, I didn’t find the main villain captivating. Obsidian has a reputation of having great writing and Pillars of Eternity holds up to that standard. This is a non-linear story bound together with rich theme and tone. The companion cast is very good with Grieving Mother, Sagani and Durance (as misanthropic as he is) being excellent characters. The dialogue trees are bountiful and provide the most opportunities for player expression.

Player Expression
In contrast, the on-field verbset is truncated compared to the classic era of Infinite Engine. I never played much of Baldur’s Gate nor Neverwinter Nights but as I understand it, those games weren’t so stringent with player action. To use an example of Pillar of Eternity’s rigidness, there are several moments in the game where you will enter a room, and player control will cease, the camera will pan over to an NPC stepping forward, and a dialogue will begin and there’s not any way around it. You can’t burst into the room and throw a fireball. The dialogue has to happen and it also effects your ability to prepare like setting traps. That wasn’t common in the old IE games. There was also a moment where the game wouldn’t let me preemptively attack a group of enemies by casting a spell up a cliff which felt like the game wagging their finger at me for trying to be sneaky.

Overall
In the end, PoE wasn’t the all-time new classic CRPG I expected. It feels surprisingly small even if it objectively isn’t, but again that can come from me ignoring a lot of the world to focus on the Watcher’s main objective. It’s less Fallout 2 and more Fallout 1.

I did have a special time with PoE, though, because this was the first time that I really tried to roleplay a character. I wasn’t Me in the PoE world, I was Artoxas– a snooty noblewoman who hates the idea of taking handouts and finds herself becoming a more compassionate and considerate person while dealing with her role as the Watcher. There are other, better role-playing games out there but I don’t know if they would have served my ambitions with Artoxas as well as Pillars of Eternity. Did Fallout 2 ever let you play as a prissy noblewoman whose opening move in most fights is to turn into an eight-foot werewolf? No, it did not.

Pillars of Eternity is designed in the style of the old real time with pause Infinity Engine games of the late 90s and early 2000s and it does an excellent job of improving on what came before. The game has eleven different class types that each feel unique and give you multiple ways to build a character. Each of the stats are useful to all characters depending on how you are building your class, which is a great update when old games of this style usually had one to three stats that served no purpose for characters. You need camping supplies and drawing one enemy towards you usually brings the entire group so you are unable to just draw one or two strong enemies towards you then rest like you could in older games. Inns now give reason for paying to rest in them because different rooms will give your characters stat bonuses. You can turn on a faster game speed that will save you time traveling around environments, it's great to see a developer care about your time instead of trying to waste it so they can pretend that they made a longer game. Reputation makes more sense as it ties in to individual cities and factions, and can be used in some conversations. Experience is only given by completing quests and will only be gained in combat the first few times you kill certain enemies to complete their bestiary listing, this allows you to play the game with a more nonviolent or stealth play style instead of needing to kill everything to level up. Many fights can also be avoided through conversation if you have the right information, stats, reputation, class, or background. In a recent patch you were given the option to respec characters which is nice if you want to try out different builds, you can also create you own characters instead of using the game's companions if there are certain party combinations you want to try. Unused party members will also gain experience when not in the active party which is nice as it allows you to swap people out at different times. There are also a few occasions where the game uses a choose your own adventure story style mechanic where you can make different decisions or use different abilities and companions to get through different dangerous locations in a text and picture based format, which is a nice addition.

Pillars of Eternity creates a new setting and the writers have done a great job creating their world, races, gods, and lore, with a large focus on souls that are reborn over time in different bodies. I found all but one of the characters to be interesting and likable, with each of them helping you to learn more of the world and the people and places that inhabit it. Combat is a bit more exciting than previous games in this style as characters can learn many different abilities allowing you to play a more active role with more strategic options, though this does lead to more micromanaging. Engagements when characters are touching and attacks of opportunity if you try to walk by your enemies makes positioning important and prevents you from just attacking or having your ranged or magic characters attacked.

The only negative things I found for the game is very poor in battle pathfinding, which can really be a problem with the new combat mechanics and that your stronghold really just isn't that interesting. The stronghold would benefit from more events and less random annoyances like small groups of enemies attacking, some of the things you build like the prison serve very little purple and it would have been nice to see more people move in to make use of some of the other things that could be added. It would have been nice to see conversations between party members involve more than two people since you can have five companions with you at once. It would have been a nice feature if the side missions that you can send your allies on where able to be played out through the choose you own adventure style story segments the game occasionally uses. Pillars of Eternity is a great RPG with mostly enjoyable combat, a well designed setting, and some great characters, I look forward to seeing what they do with this series in the future.

The expansions added a nice Icewind Dale style setting, as well as some content to the main area. A lot of combat but it added some great soulbound weapons that would bind to a character and improve as your fulfilled different objectives it would give you, strengthening the weapon also gave you more backstory on it. They also added three more characters that were all entertaining, one of them had the best companion quest (see final linked picture).

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/734157993277685761
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/734501126767181825
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/734853526791159809
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/737617166934016001
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/738248830991237121
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/738927239308283904
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/739456949771608065

(Escrito em 2015)

Pillars of Eternity foi minha introdução em um gênero até o ano passado considerado morto, revivido completamente em função do Kickstarter. cRPGs como Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment e Fallout são considerados por muitas pessoas os melhores jogos que já existiram. Infelizmente, eles vinham com certa dificuldade técnica e muitos eram densos e longos. Com a popularização dos jogos eles acabaram não valendo mais a pena o investimento das suas produtoras. A recente explosão de popularidade de crowd-funding conseguiu nos provar que ainda existe mercado para esse niche e muitos outros. Pillars é produzido pela Obsidian Entertainment, gigante do gênero do RPG que produziu os RPGs modernos mais criticamente aclamados por quem entende da coisa e é composta por muitos veteranos da época dos cRPGs, e esse jogo é a carta de amor que eles criaram para a era de ouro dos RPGs.

Pillars foi uma fantástica introdução minha a esse gênero. Embora não tenha jogado os jogos que o inspirou, é de conhecimento geral que os produtores visaram em pegar os elementos que os jogadores mais amaram nos RPGs antigos e em consertar os mais odiados. Com o talento da Obsidian, pela primeira vez livre de restrições de uma distribuidora, eles puderam fazer um jogo de incrível calibre. Uma das mais notáveis adições ao gênero foi a descomplicação de stats, que tornou o jogo mais aberto ao erro do jogador. Ao contrário de RPGs de mesa ou RPGs antigos, não se precisa ler um guia pra entender como criar um bom personagem. Basicamente todos stats dão um bônus para os seus personagens, não importa a classe. Se você colocou inteligência no seu Bárbaro, isso não vai ser algo que vai fazer você ter de reiniciar o jogo quando perceber que toda a fundação do seu personagem está mal feita. O backtracking extremamente comum em todo tipo de RPG foi parcialmente resolvido com um modo de câmera rápida, que faz tudo ir 2x na velocidade comum fora do combate. As opções de auto-pause são bastante configuráveis, podendo ajustar seu jogo a pausar imediatamente ao entrar em combate ou ao enxergar uma armadilha, por exemplo. Em termos de interface e polimento dos sistemas do jogo, a Obsidian fez um trabalho quase perfeito, que só peca em minha opinião em não explicar muito claramente todos os truques que você pode realizar com a interface.

O combate do jogo é em tempo real, com a opção de pausa em qualquer momento. Não existe inteligência artificial alguma para seus companions e você, além de auto-attack. Então considere um jogo de micromanagement. Todo o combate, até em dificuldades como Easy e Normal requerem que você preste atenção, pois um erro qualquer pode significar a morte de sua party, especialmente no começo do jogo. O sistema de combate é muito divertido de se usar e explorar todos os mecanismos de todo membro da party, e mesmo após 40h de jogo não me enjoou. Minha maior reclamação é a falta de balanço nas mecanicas de Dominate/Charm, que só existem counter direto no level máximo, o que torna elas um problema bem irritante em uma dungeon opcional do jogo, onde quase todo inimigo pode tomar as rédeas dos seus personagens. Tive a oportunidade de jogar com todas classes, menos Rogue e Monk, e achei que embora algumas sejam mais fortes que outras no começo do jogo, chegando para o meio todas começam a mostrar seus papéis definidos na party. Recomendo bastante ler sobre todas mecanicas de combate. Embora não seja tão rigoroso como D&D, o jogo ainda funciona em dice rolls e se você não entender direito cada mecânica pode se sentir injustiçado. Mas o jogo é bem justo e te dá bastante ferramentas para vencer o inimigo, só precisa que você aprenda a usá-las bem. O jogo possui muito combate que não é pulável, mas não vira exatamente um grind, visto que eles implementaram até mecânicas que não permitem isso. A experiência dos personagens é ganhada apenas por quests, exploração ou matar uma quantidade fixa de monstros de um tipo que permite a você encher uma aba no bestiário, que dá um prêmio de XP e os dados sobre as fraquezas e resistências dos inimigos. Embora você enfrente inimigos repetidos, o posicionamento e quantidade deles, além de variações de tipo numa batalha fazem toda a diferença, e a Obsidian realmente explorou isso para tornar cada batalha mais única e o combate menos repetitivo. Em minha opinião, eles sucederam bastante nesse aspecto.

Se você busca um jogo pra se perder no mundo, é esse. O mundo totalmente criado pela Obsidian é repleto de lore, politicas e questões filosóficas. No começo você pode até ficar perdido com o tanto de referências que fazem ao lore, mas com devido interesse nas conversas e lendo os livros e notas que você encontra, além de perguntando de tudo pros NPCs, você consegue rapidamente formar uma boa idéia do que está acontecendo na história. Vemos em Pillars diversas facções divergentes, geralmente comandadas por um deus, muitas brigando, outras que já acabaram de sair de uma guerra. Dyrwood é um país banhado recentemente em guerras. Isso o torna um poço político de rebeliões, instabilidade e muito pro jogador se envolver entre. A história em si é de uma fantasia bem feita e bem construída, mas em primeira vista genérica. É na questão dos deuses e das almas que o meu interesse foi tomado. A história do jogo nos mostra as almas como partes bem conhecidas do povo. Todos sabem o que é uma alma e o que ela faz. As almas dos mortos entram num ciclo e reencarnam em novas pessoas. Alguns nascem sem almas e vivem uma vida vazia, outros acabam tendo suas almas acordadas, vidas passadas de uma alma são lembradas e duas entidades ou mais permanecem no mesmo corpo. Para quem é familiar ao espiritismo, temos basicamente uma versão cientifica do espiritismo nesse jogo. Existem cientistas, muitas vezes olhados numa má luz pela sociedade, que buscam entender melhor como manipular almas, como curar pessoas que tem problemas na alma e muitos outros tipos de aflições. Assim como a ciência da vida real, ela pode ser usada também para o mal. Foi esse tema que diferenciou Pillars pra mim de uma fantasia comum. A sua interação com a história também é muito boa, e as opções de dialógo vão muito, muito além de apenas “bom” e “mal”. O jogo oferece muitas opções de moralidade neutra que dão resultados bem diferentes e acredito que você pode se articular muito bem o que deseja fazer pelas opções de diálogo fornecidas. Foram rarissimas as vezes que desejei falar algo que não era disponivel pelos diálogos ou que falei algo e tive uma interpretação errada. As opções de roleplay são muitas e de ótima qualidade.

Uma parte do jogo que pode ser considerada história também, mas que acredito merecer seu próprio parágrafo, são as companions. Temos 8 companions scriptadas no jogo, com a sua opção de criar a companion que quiser, a qualquer momento, não-scriptada. Vou falar apenas das scriptadas. Temos vários tipos de personagens, com várias personalidades diferentes, e todos (ou quase todos) bastante interessantes. Em diversos momentos do jogo eu parava apenas para conversar com eles e podia ficar uma boa hora aprendendo sobre a vida deles, a história deles e a visão deles sobre a história do mundo. Assim como qualquer RPG de party, eles tem suas próprias quests, que em grande maioria achei infelizmente bem curtas, mas satisfatórias. Porém, as quests deles normalmente ativam conforme você progressa na história, e isso ocorre de uma maneira bem natural. Existe uma companion cujo nome irei emitir por razões de spoiler, que acabei completando a quest apenas fazendo a história, e foi a mais interessante de todas pra mim. As companions tem muitos pontos de vista divergentes, sendo que alguns lutaram até em lados diferentes de guerra, mas embora há um conflito direto entre elas, e nunca cheguei a ter exatamente o risco de algumas delas sairem da party ou de acontecer uma briga devida. Essa falta de conflito mais intenso para mim foi um ponto fraco no desenvolvimento delas, mas que não pesa tanto em relação a tudo. Em termos de participação delas em diálogos da história e em “banter”, eu não tenho o que reclamar. Conforme sua disposição de party e quais companions você usa, temos muitos diálogos únicos entre elas e com a história principal. Realmente adciona um toque de um grupo de verdade que é bem agradável de se ter. Os diálogos são muito bons, e a voice acting é muito boa também. Obsidian realmente está de parabéns em mais uma vez entregar um diálogo e interação fantástico.

Os gráficos são uma homenagem aos jogos antigos, com cenários pre-renderizados que são absolutamente lindos. Foram muitas as vezes que o jogo me fez parar para admirar o cenário, o que é impressionante para um jogo isométrico. A arte é fantástica. A trilha sonora, embora curta (apenas 1h e 10min para um jogo desse tamanho) é muito bonita e encaixa bem no tema e ambiente, muitas músicas ficaram na minha cabeça após terminar o jogo.

O maior problema que tive com Pillars é observado nas coisas que foram adcionadas como strech goals do Kickstarter. É bem evidente que não foi colocado esforço suficiente nelas, visto como elas eram apenas stretch goals. O stronghold do jogo não serve para quase nada além de gastar dinheiro e os NPCs cujas descrições são escritas pelos backers não condizem muito com o tema do jogo. Porém, a Obsidian nos fez o favor de destacar bem esses NPCs, dando a eles uma barra amarela no nome, para sabermos o que não precisamos necessariamente ler. Porém, tivemos strech goals que deram bastante certo, como a área de endgame, classes novas, raças novas e companions novas.

Pillars of Eternity foi uma carta de amor aos cRPGs de antigamente e aos seus veteranos que tanto amam os jogos, e também um convite aos novos jogadores que não tinham muita coragem em mergulhar nos jogos antigos da época. E sucedeu muito bem em ambos os campos. Aplaudo a Obsidian por um produto que embora não seja perfeito, foi tudo que eu esperei e até mais, um jogo absolutamente estelar de ficar preso na memória e garantir a vontade de muitas outras playthroughs. Desde Dark Souls um jogo não me prendia assim e me fazia pensar nele até quando eu não jogava. Realmente uma incrível conquista para a Obsidian e um troféu que mostra que o crowd-funding veio pra chegar com força.

Pillars of Eternity has some of the best worldbuilding I have seen in a videogame, coupled with strong character writing for the recruitable party members. Learning about the world both through experiencing its major events and the perspectives of the various characters drew me into the game from the start. What did not pull me in at first was the combat. Combat plays in real time with you being able to pause at any point in order to issue commands to you party members. I found this system incredibly clunky at first, but as I grew to understand it, it became much more enjoyable.

I haven't played many other crpgs so my thoughts may change as I have more things to compare this game to, but I really enjoyed my time playing it
The story really gripped me, and the companions were all either likable, interesting, typically both. A couple were on the weaker sider, but the good ones 100% make up for it.
The gameplay was really fun and decently depthful, although there were some mechanics thrown in that I did not make use of at all (like consumables) and they felt a little bit unnecessary (granted that I was not playing on the highest difficulty)
I found the world very interesting, especially the religion which is great because it's a big focus in the story. A lot of the gods have overlapping traits and all of them proper reasons why people would follow them
The game is big and has a lot of reading. It's best played enjoying the story and world at a relaxed pace. If you feel like playing something like that, then I'd highly recommend it

This is my first venture in the C-RPG genre (as in, the first CRPG I ever managed to complete), and my first impressions are a bit conflicted.

Let's start with the positives: I loved the world, the intricate lore, history, gods, and factions. Although I do feel that the writing takes itself way too seriously a lot of the times: it could have used more light-hearted moments. But overall, I enjoyed my stay in the Dyrwood, and I slogged through the last act of the game (which unfortunately is severely underwhelming when compared to the strong first and second acts) just because I was invested in the narrative, and I had to see where how it would end.

To me, the glaring flaw of the game is its combat system. Obsidian went to great lengths to design a brand-new combat system that actually feels ancient and painfully outdated. With every action there are dozens of stats, systems, mechanics interacting with each other, and the game makes zero effort to make the player aware of any of it. There is no feedback whatsoever, if you want to know whether your attacks are effective you have to read a bestiary (tucked away in a menu somewhere) o slog through an overly verbose combat log. The fact that game areas are plastered with repetitive, uninspired encounters doesn't help, and neither does the pathetic excuse of a reward that are the items you get as loot after these encounters. There is also a mechanical clunkyness that permeates each encounter: for example, characters constantly block each other off and get stuck in doorways, and can't figure out how to go around small obstacles.

The graphical style is charmingly retro sometimes, and other times it's crusty and unserviceable, especially when fighting in crowded situations (good luck telling your characters apart if you ever find yourself fighting behind a couple of trees)

Overall, this game ha set out with the noble goal of reviving an old genre, and I'd say it is successful, at least in part. But in the end, it is faithful to its "ancestors" to a fault.

Okay, this is my re-review of the game after completion and all I can say is it is definitely one of the CRPGs of all time. I think what makes the game good is the story, by far, but the main issue that game suffers from is the fact that the first two acts DRAG for awhile and the DLC is just... not my cup of tea. It's good if you are willing to commit, but being my inclination to play the game was purely to play the sequel, there isn't too much praise I can give it overall, but I definitely would recommend it for those trying to get into the real-time strategy CRPG genre.