Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

As someone who has been quite fond of isometric CRPGs and Infinity Engine games in the past but had fallen off of them over the past 5 or so years because of a lack of free time and focus, PoE 2 was a great treat to come back to. Not overly long (~35 hours which is IMHO perfect). Paced in a way that I enjoy: Main quest thread that is there when you want to pick it up, but plenty of space created for side-questing, and lots to do. Exceptional production values, and a sufficiently thoughtful and quietly majestic storyline. This game definitely as good as the best of the Infinity Engine games, and arguably quite a bit better, thanks to better pacing, a smarter difficulty curve, and an adventure that consistently interests and never annoys or devolves into tedium, and which lasts just the right amount of time.

Few games get me as engaged as Deadfire did. From the interesting world, lore, factions and characters to the side quests, mechanics and exploration, I easily recommend this game to any RPG enthusiast (especially now that it has been extensivelly patched since released). If you've played an Obsidian game before, you will feel right at home: Various factions and gods, with their ups and (mostly) downs all trying to manipulate you into siding with them, characters are interesting and (mostly) very well written, the themes are handled with maturity, etc. It's great. The game also lets you choose between real time combat and turn-based, the latter being very effective in teaching you how combat works. Beware though: Since the game wasn't built around it, it makes combat really slow (I truly recommend disabling it later, using "SetTacticalMode Disabled", once you've gotten the hang of it). I've also had a few technical problems (the game consistently froze for a few seconds after loading during my whole playthrough) and I thought the romancing was a bit shallow. But my overall experience with this game was phenomenal and it's why I'm giving it a 5 star review. I'm excited to see what Obsidian has in store for us next.

Good: * Story is decent * Characters have personality * Most of the dialog is voice acted, and the quality is good * Lots to do Bad: * Buggy: crashes and missing NPCs. Some quests cannot be completed, but those have all been side quests so far. * Ship-to-ship combat could have been so much better done, now it seems like an afterthought.

Shortly saying the game is very good. As long as You can play. On my gaming 1070gtx unfortunatelly the game crashes when complicated spells, bombs, traps with numerous enemies etc are observed. Not to mention long loading screens. In general the game performance from technical point of view is poor. It is a pitty as ther story is good. Characters are enjoyable. Graphic is decent. Just would like to play. Not to restart game (so long) every 30 min.

So, I am doing a replay on mac a good while after finishing it on playstation. I remember at the end rushing through it on PS as I got bored of repetitive ship battles and a stale storyline. I tried going a different route this time and now after a good talk with Eothas and starting a new chapter in the storyline....I'm inclined to go to the next part in the story and just finish it ASAP instead of the 101 sideplots because....Well, as an RPG gamer both paper and PC for 30 years, this is just dull beyond comprehension. Often, things don't make sense, like liberating an NPC and telling them to go rest in your boat while you clear the area, and they're in your ship in ship management, but the next encounter the NPC suddenly speaks up, so they're present - But click on your boat and they're there, too? Same for a lot of quests, even the main one: If you don't follow the linear way of doing things (often you're told very heavy handedly), you will get a ton of text about things having happened or you supposedly did, but actually didn't. Sail to Ashen Maw where Eothas is in your first chapter instead of following the inear story for instance, it's hilarious. Also: If the history of RPGs taught anything, it's that people love high fantasy, green fields, lush exploration in them, etc., from Tolkien, to early D&D, to Baldur's gate, etc.; Ad&D in the 80s and 90s also thought people needed new textures, and tried to push them into Arabic settings, planeswalking, Pirate settings in far off lands like this game, and more. Guess where those settings were 5 to 10 years later due to popularity and sales? So yeah, POE2 didn't sell well even before people knew how it played, while a lot bought and liked POE1, maybe think a bit how the announcement about the whole pirate and sailing thing went down, eh? 100x the same boat fight gets repetitive and dull as hell too.