Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

You probably knew what you were buying, but in case you didn't: it's a great classical RPG, 11/10, like the old days.

About 17 hours into this game, I am truly enjoying it. Loved the first game as well, never got on this sequel. Funny enough, it took the release of Avowed to make me remember how great this world was. Really loving everything so far, an the pirate theme is great.

Since I love Baldur's Gate 1+2, once might think that I would love this game and initially there are many reason to. Superficially, Pillars of Eternity (PoE) 1+2 are real time with pause party based RPGs like BG 1+2 and the staff making them had some experience with the Icewind Dale series. The devil however is in the details and I would summarize it as follows: + great graphics, easy inventory management, many character builds. - Attacks of opportunity in a real time with pause game causes a lot of wonky behavior. This system should honestly never have been put in, because it causes weird character movements. - Generally quite bad and nonsensical main story. Similar to a lot of open world games, the main story has a lot of apparent urgency to it that turns out to be completely hollow. - Everyone behaves like a modern American and not like a character in a weird and fanstastical world. - The classes are quite unbalanced among each other. Some have regenerating ressources in combat, other do not and mostly suffer. - The buffing is obnoxious. Since you cannot buff outsied of combat, every combat starts with the same buffing routine, which can never be fully automated since the characters always end up doing something stupid. They should have removed buffing completely. - There is a turn based mode, but a lot of things (like dexterity) simply do not work correctly there and there are too many easy and stupid fights in the game for this to not become very boring. The game was simply not designed for this. - My favorite playstile in BG 1+2, the backstabbing rogue, is mostly not supported here since the mechanic is anemic. The placing of traps is also not a useful mechanic. I could go on for a while, but I'll stop here. I have tried to love this game many times and have started probably over 20 times, but I'm not sure if I'll ever finish it.

Improved Pillars of Eternity I. Continuation of the story while completely changing the area and some mechanics. + Story + Politics + Graphics + Atmosphere + The length is about right, towards the end, I was starting to get lost among all the isles. - Did I mention I really liked it?

I'm coming to this franchise after avowed, and after playinf POE I and being blown away I'm in POE II and after 10 hours I'm even more impressed.