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 entirely 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 now twenty-plus-year-old games that Pillars models itself on, loads effortlessly and instantly on your grandma's laptop. It makes you wonder if the increased visual fidelity that comes with modern tech and development is worth it. Why should it take a full minute to go from what is functionally one 2D screen to another? Maybe in another fifteen years, Pillars will load just as quickly on contemporary 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. Ritually 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 fun. 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? We 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 stats, while well-thought-out objectively, lack the intuitive familiarity of more famous D&D rulesets. I sometimes grew disengaged from the mechanics to the point I wasn't able to make meaningful decisions in combat or character-building. Sure, I can intuit 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 feel it. 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 spent most of the game in Fast Mode, and still I wished for a faster mode so I could get through sprawling overworld areas or dungeons full of trash-mobs just a bit sooner. 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 completing 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'll 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'll 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 entirely 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 now twenty-plus-year-old games that Pillars models itself on, loads effortlessly and instantly on your grandma's laptop. It makes you wonder if the increased visual fidelity that comes with modern tech and development is worth it. Why should it take a full minute to go from what is functionally one 2D screen to another? Maybe in another fifteen years, Pillars will load just as quickly on contemporary 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. Ritually 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 fun. 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? We 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 stats, while well-thought-out objectively, lack the intuitive familiarity of more famous D&D rulesets. I sometimes grew disengaged from the mechanics to the point I wasn't able to make meaningful decisions in combat or character-building. Sure, I can intuit 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 feel it. 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 spent most of the game in Fast Mode, and still I wished for a faster mode so I could get through sprawling overworld areas or dungeons full of trash-mobs just a bit sooner. 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 completing 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'll 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'll 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.