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
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