Posted on: May 22, 2018
PizzaSHARK
Verified ownerGames: 154 Reviews: 6
More derivative garbage
The good things: it's gorgeous, sounds good, the setting of Eora is interesting and you actually get to see an interesting area of the world rather than Dyrwood's "diet Forgotten Realms." There are more scripted "pick an option" events throughout the world and they're always fun. Exploring the world map feels almost like FTL in a lot of ways, but this is also a downside - see below. The bad things: Dude, where to begin? Combat is trash. It's improved from the first game, but a shiny turd is still a turd. There's no complexity or depth or any kind of thought that goes into combat because terrain is irrelevant and just for show. There's no high ground/low ground mechanics, no system of taking cover or using cover, and every battlefield is just a plain open field. All of the battles are just "hit them harder than they hit you" and forms of hard CC are largely removed from the game so it's mostly just a bland slugging match. There's no strategy, no tactics. And you're made to fight through 90% of the game, with only specific encounters giving you the option of talking your way through. Gameplay balance is terrible, even worse than Pillars was. Obsidian cut corners and it shows. Paladins and Rogues break the game and Paladin/Rogues can quite easily solo the entire game without even trying. Exploration is awesome, but also extremely shallow. There's no sense of cost or threat to exploring and literally everything involving the ship and its mechanics feels half-assed - expected of a stretch goal. It's frustrating because it's not hard to see how amazing it COULD be if Obsidian bothered to give a crap - or was competent enough to pull it off. I backed this game on Fig and I probably should've learned my lesson the first time, when Pillars turned out to be garbage. I've learned my lesson this time, though, and will be avoiding Obsidian products in the future. They clearly don't know how to make decent RPGs anymore.
Is this helpful to you?
