Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

First, the corrections: 1. You cannot finish this game in 30'. That's fantasy. 2. "I like the first one better" is not a review, nor is "the title was disappointing". 3. There are no game-breaking bugs, especially none that will prevent you from ending the game. Now . . .while nearly all games are poorly written, this one is well-written, by comparison extraordinarily written. It's compelling, dynamic and has real depth. While I, too, found the Leaden Key thread in #1 more inspired and more compelling, this one is just simply something different. The Leaden Key is retained, to an extent, but the main plot cannot be the Leaden Key, and so it is something different . . . in itself compelling and complex. In all PRG's, in all honesty, including Planescape: Torment (whose sequel, by the way, was disastrous), I would suggest first Pillars of Eternity and second Deadfire.

Usually in RPGS, the main plot is rather bland while the small side quests and characters are the real stars of the game. Not so in PoE2: The whole main plot of Eothas and the Wheel is one of the best ones if have seen since probably Mask of the Betrayer. The highpoint of PoE1 was its ending, and this game continues just as great. I just had to know how the story continous, every time the game focuses on its main story, it absolutely shines. Gameplay is improved a bit, from the first title, I especially like the dual classing options. The only two real downsides for me are that some of the sidequests and characters could be more interesting. Oh, and the loading times. They are abysimal, UGH.

Short: If you like classic, iso-style RPGs with an engaging story, just waiting for you to sink countless hours into, buy this. I finally finished this monster of a game, and I was loving it all the way through. I found the game, with it's story's twists and turns, with spot with no "good" answers to choose from, a great ride. Sure, there is that thing where you can get 'sidetracked' from the main story by all the side quests (since when is that a bad thing in an RPG?), and I certainly fell into that rabbit hole a few times. Especially with the three DLCs added, that's hard to avoid (which I btw finished none of them - they are bloody hard). But all that does to me is show how big that part of the world is. The main story line if really well done. Caught in the web of a political power struggle you have lots of options, factions to engage with. And none of those are plain 'bad guys' either. The one thing I was unhappy enough with to score this only 4/5: Loading times: This has been a huge issue early on, got a little better towards the last patch. By now, going into smaller maps is ok, but going into Neketaka (biggest city in the game) is still a real pain. Visuals themselves are really well done. Especially some of the maps in the later part of the main storyline, anything with the statue in it, is breathtaking.

This is, like any other really involved RPG, a VERY long game. It is made longer by the dlcs, which add quite a bit of content. If you like to get immersed in a world of wonder and vast, moving events, this will be your thing! If you are the kind who is impatient or twitch happy, this probably won't be. I loved the exploration of the entire game and it's massive amount of lore added gravity to the entire situation. I, who usually fast forward through conversations nowadays, listened to at least half of the conversations and still speed read through the rest. The characters are colourful, the places unique, the music very nice and suited. The bad things are mostly technical: 1) Moving from PoE 1 to 2 is VERY jarring. They have changed many of the ways the mechanics work and several of those are definitely for the worse! Spellbooks are no pre-defined; you can't collect spells in them... spells are either in your found spell book or you select them as a perk. Given that collecting things, including spells is a great hobby of mine, I was rather annoyed by this! 2) Next they decided the summon statues, which were formerly once per day were now going to be a small number of uses and then self destruct. This is absolute shit! I like collecting stuff like this, so losing them after a few uses is painful; so I got a mod that changed them back to being 1 use per day. This works out perfectly as you NEED a lot of little distractions in certain battles or you are guaranteed to be overwhelmed. 3) Last major problem in the game is the devs who made the dlc bosses outright cheated. You can only cast 2 spells per combat, of each level, but some of the dlc bosses have infinite uses of their spells. It also sucks that you can only cast 2 spells per level no matter what you do, with a possibility of a 3'rd use of each by empowering your character in combat. Use empower every difficult battle; I kept forgetting to do this until all the spells were gone.

First I have to say that I enjoy the game very much. The story isn't as catchy as PoE 1 was, but still decent. Most major gameplay mechanics change is the penetration quality which imho works really well. But the game has some bad things as well, namely: ENDLESS LOADING (since there are openable doors ingame, why didn't you make all of them like that? It gets really annoying if you have to get from one house to a second one in the same location and you have to load: the area, the second house, the area....) I've experienced some unpleasant bugs (the transition-between-area-circle disappearing or appearing so briefly it cannot be clicked on/ the game doesn't work very well with Alt+Tab, because it sometimes makes things disappear [like the Fast Forward is on sign]/ Scordeo's Trophy pistol buff called Opening Barrage has got some bugged status [though it seems to work nonetheless] and some others...) But even so, I recommend you buy this game, where else can you talk back to a god? ;)