Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

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4.2/5

( 437 Reviews )

4.2

437 Reviews

English & 8 more

Posted on: April 30, 2020

AzbhaelNex

Verified owner

Games: Reviews: 1

Boring in most ways.

I'll throw in a tldr for those who have better things to do than read reviews. There will probably be spoilers for those bothered by such things, and I'm also reviewing the 5.0 version. tldr: Story. I found it both boring and uninteresting. Combat. For a tactical RPG it is boring and tedious. Gameplay, or the stuff outside story and combat. Frustratingly boring. Graphics/Art. Backgrounds and characters are nice, but you'll be spending most your time staring at a rather bland boring book, so basically a draw. Personal peeves. So many it's frustrating. So here starts my longer review. Basically the game starts out by you getting interviewed by your new boss. It's so slow and boring they helpfully included a skip button. Your boss sends you on your way and so begins your job as a middle manager in what can be best described as Office Space fantasy edition. You'll have multiple bosses and they'll all want to talk to you about your TPS reports. Which is basically why, for me, I couldn't care less about the story. It's probably why the first time I played I chose to leave the interview, which was and still is the best choice and most logical choice. After that you'll get to enjoy the exciting world of combat. By exciting I mean leisurely swinging your weapon, using your now limited ability/spell and then leisurely swinging your weapon until you're dead or your opponents are. It's honestly a joy when it ends. This leads us to gameplay. You'll quickly realize that this game is long winded reports in a bland book with some lazy art. Ship to ship combat, here's your report. Encounter with a group/ambush/enemy unit, here's your report. This lead me to rapidly dread exploring. The art is okay, but you'll be staring at the bland book, mostly. Finally my personal peeves, the narrator/voices are irritating, leveling is fairly terrible, and their ham handed story messages are generally off-putting. Basically it's a badly written book combined with a boring game.

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Posted on: May 8, 2018

Machinators

Verified owner

Games: Reviews: 77

Pirate sandbox CRPG - one of a kind

There aren't many pirate-themed games, not to mention CRPGs, so the change of scenery was a great move. Set in the Deadfire Archipelago, you shortly become captain of your own ship with a customisable crew with their own unique dialogue, stats and traits. Unlike the original Pillars game, Deadfire is a sandbox where the player decides their own pacing and choice of exploration. This can both hurt or heighten your experience but thanks to scripted interactions and world map incentives it's also easy to find adventure and the way to "progress" the story. There is now a turn-based mode option, which is my preference, because you can sit back and properly strategize like a tabletop game. The mode has ups and downs, for example the Dexterity stat is heavily reworked to be weaker, but a wizard's AoE spell is now much more applicable. Also, NPCs are all almost fully voice acted and some companions from Pillars 1 return! You can import a save game or create a game state at the beginning. As for the world I really love the setting, the mature (but less dark) approach to the characters and dialogue and locations being less historical fantasy and more tropical and dark fantasy. You have places like wizard's workshops, a bathhouse to a mansion with wondering mechanicals - it reminds me a lot of Thief 2: The Metal Age. As for gameplay, it's similar to Pillars 1 but expanded and improved but also streamlined a little; all per-rest abilities are gone. There are more CYOA text events, dialogue has more skill, attribute and companion influence, along with the reputation system, bounty hunting and generally more roleplay ways to immerse yourself is staggeringly good. To me, Deadfire is an enormous improvement over Pillars 1 in almost every way, let down only by the ship combat system that is more frustrating than fun. The sandbox approach was absolutely the right thing to do and I love naming islands I find. Just a small thing to expect! Go, go play this CRPG!

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Posted on: May 24, 2018

Vilcapaza

Verified owner

Games: 167 Reviews: 9

I like the first one better.

I'll keep it short. The plot is less interesting than in PoE1. The open-world aspect makes a lot of odd quests seemed forced and lazely written. There are gamebreaking bugs keeping me from ending the game - which seems more interested in distracting me with tedious ship-battles and uninteresting encounters, than actually telling an interesting story with flow .

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Posted on: August 1, 2019

kruze

Verified owner

Games: 366 Reviews: 2

One step forward, two steps back

Currently clocked 400 hours in deadfire, made through the game in potd difficulty multiple times. Played all old obsidian games (even alpha protocol...) and really love crpg. That said deadfire is a inferior product even compared to the direct predecessor. The good: - solid ruleset similar to D&D, combined with many subclasses can provide high diversity in building your characters. - looks pretty. The bad: - horrible performance, the more maps you load the worse the fps and stability, which eventually will crash your game. It's truly puzzling how mostly 2D ingame graphics can have such poor performance. - many bugs still remain. From the most recent playthrough: magical items losing enchantment; stuck in enemy pull effect animation (had to reload after combat victory...); enemy charm effect killing your character in sanctum dlc area; final boss fight in beast of winter crash due to incompatibility with AMD GPU. And many more... The worst: - as of patch 5.0 there won't be any more patches, considering the bugs still remaining, it just leaves a bad taste. - class balance could use a closer look at, especially because this is what i think the game does the best, currently some classes just outperform in majority of situations. - story pacing feels weird, the main quest is very short and doesn't really feel engaging. The tone of the game also changed somewhat to a lighthearted one, maybe due to how almost all companions are flirty and joking all the time. Spaking of companion, because of the new relationship system, especially the returning old characters from pillars 1 got reduced to stereotypes. Pallegina's personality got hit hard. Overall a mixed bag of a game with more tedency into the negative. Many features feel shallow (just look at the shipcombat), which i think is a pretty good description of the game as a whole.

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Posted on: January 21, 2021

dengog

Verified owner

Games: Reviews: 7

Played on Linux

This game is a worthy successor to PoE and Baldur's Gate What this game does perfect is the world building and the storytelling. Ekera! It's too bad that Microsoft bought Obsidian. They'll ruin this great studio like they ruined everything else. Shame on you Microsoft, shame on you!

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