Posted on: June 5, 2023

dd4279

Games: 67 Reviews: 17

One word: Epic

Great storytelling, fantastic world-building, interesting characters, lots of cool spells and real-time RPG combat. With Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian takes the best of classic, story-driven isometric role-playing games from the past and polishes these attributes until they shine. There are many wonderful things I could say about this game, but if I was forced to pick just one, it would be the writing -- hands down. Everything from monster, item, and environment descriptions, side-quests and character dialogue, is phenomenal. And where do I even being to describe the main story arc! Suffice it to say, if you like stories that question reality, faith, truth, and religion, you will LOVE the plot. Words simply can't express the wow feeling I got when everything came together at the game's climax. If you have any interest in good storytelling, this game is a must have for you.

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Posted on: April 4, 2019

ipeople

Verified owner

Games: 69 Reviews: 5

It's OK and just that.

The AI isn't wonderful, enemy or companion. Your companions need constant(!) micromanagement. The AI assist for the companions is spotty at best, as in you learn all the ways it is broken. As for the enemy AI, it gets pretty tiring when wild animals use the same tactics as humans, meaning go for the glass cannons in the back. It breaks immersion. Since the AI for companions doesn't work and you have to micromanage your team, it is pretty disappointing to see a UI that pays homage to old CRPGs instead of making the micromanagement smoother and more efficient. You end up hovering over each little thing on the battlefield for information, googling spell effects, opening character sheets for stats. It is a garbage way to fight a battle and I think they could have made better UI design choices. I like the story. It may be the best part of the game. I like the reputation system because it gives more heft to the dialogue and makes the world fill more developed. The atmosphere of the game is pretty good too. I enjoyed wandering around and exploring. The game can be a touch too verbose and it would have been nice if was a bit more concise. It also would have been nice if the companion dialogue was fully voiced, but it is only voiced sometimes. Nothing wrong with buying this game, especially if it is on sale. Because of the combat system, I think it is probably more fun to play on the easier settings and just enjoy the story. Also, I hope you have a SSD because you are about to enter loading screen hell.

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Posted on: June 7, 2021

galuskaistvan

Verified owner

Games: 219 Reviews: 30

Baldur's Gate 1 nostalgia

Depends on personal preference * PC is "chosen one", the events are world changing * generic fantasy setting * heavy on combat * MMO style cooldown counters on abilities * fake names: Fampyr instad of vampire, orlan instead of hobbit, fan of flames instead of burning hands * engagement (attacks of opportunity) mechanic enforces MMO-style "puller-aggro" mechanics on the game Good * the maps are pretty * writing quality is better than average (with unexpected low points) * some dungeons are well designed (temple of Eothas, Raedric's hold) * no pre-combat buff spells * every weapon has it's niche * some well written and voice acted companions * unique items are really good in this game. Some have drawbacks, some have interesting mechanics, etc. * runs smoothly, very stable Bad * hissing with every "s" sound of female voice sets * main story was unoriginal/boring * quest design has some low points (parcel service quests in Defiance Bay) * on exotic characters "fake accents" (italian-spanish-romani mix?) were used. The voice actors couldn't cope with this and the result is very bad. * the only source of player feedbac is the combat log. Spell effect description disappears instantly, active icons are very small to see. * majority (95%+) of fights are very easy trashmobs without any design consideration. No challenge, but eats up time. Very big step back from IWD 1! * the AI settings are not usable. No possibility to write DA:Origins style macros. (would be useful: you will use the same abilities in the same order in every trashfight) * most dungeon designs are very linear, corridor-ish. There are some exceptions. While I stated more bad points than good, Pillars is not a bad game. It is... a safe bet, generic, a bit bland. I had big problems with the combintaion of: cooldown mechanics+ lots of trashmobs+ bad AI scripts+ no way to set detailed AI. But I understand this is a personal opinion.

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Edited on: September 23, 2025

Posted on: September 25, 2019

Wizeroy

Verified owner

Games: 124 Reviews: 20

Good, but could be better

1. Story 7/10 Setting: painfully generick, lacks charm. Main plot: really slow start with surprisingly great landing toward the end. Side Quests: Most good for one playthrough, with couple fantastic outliers. Expansions: White march 1 is meh but 2 is best part of the whole game. NPC: very well written, I wish those in my party had slightly more impact on the story though. Dialogue: Prepare for a lot of forced exposition. 2. Visuals 8/10 Fidelity: Amazing until you look closely at character models. Locations Design: it punches above it's weight. Best ones are in the expansions though. Character Design: minimum required effort 😬 Animation: Actually nice! 3. Sound 7/10 Music: Lacking in character but hits home at crucial moments. Speech: It's very good when it's present. Enviroment: My ears didn't bleed 4. Gameplay 4/10 Design: All points in character progression turning into % increases results in intriguing mystery box. As in you never know how bad you are doing. Combat: Feels old, which might be good. Outside of combat: you feel it's made for combat. UI: It's alright until you find out that as time passes your character sheet turns into a complete clusterfu...nk. SUMMARY: If I could I would give the whole experience exactly 7/10. Good, not amazing. It's more constrained in gameplay Baldur's Gate wannabe. Story-wise it lacks initial charm of old school rpgs. It does land eventually with grace, but you need to bear a lot before you get to the meat of a story. Expansions are much better simply because of how dynamic and focused their plot is. The thing that hurts it the most in my opinion is the setting. Generic, colorful fantasy just doesn't click with this kind of dark, bleak story. I believe much could be solved by simply putting it into a different world. That's one of the reasons why "Tyranny" game that followed works so well even though it suffers similar gameplay constraints. On the other note. Gameplay and roleplaying are completely separated where they shouldn't be. You don't really decide whom to fight outside of dialogue and for example you can't rob a character to find some "out of the box" solutions to quests etc. Too many limitations thrown on little old me who just wants to play the way Obsidian didn't intend me to. So why my overall score is so positive? Because I finished it. The main plot ending honestly knocks it out of the park for me. It actually made me think which is so rare nowadays that it warrants appreciation. Hence really nice aftertaste.

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Posted on: November 26, 2017

Heart In Light

Games: 384 Reviews: 10

Micro manage and endurance system...

First off, if you are interested in this because of the old classics. Its not the old classics. There are glaring flaws about the original pause based system. If you like micro managing and it doesnt bother you to pause so much then you might like it. BUT. The endurance system feels like it supplants the actual health of your character, why have a health system and an endurance system both. I have been waiting to play this till I got the white march season pass. And I am extremely disappointed with how bad it is. The frame rate jumps all over, fullscreen isnt really fullscreen. Bugs with some text being blurry STILL after 2 years. They would have been better off making this a turn based game. The pause based combat system sucked then, and it sucks now. People want to enjoy the game, not micro manage everything that happens in the game. The game gets high praise from many for its story, which I will admit is very well written and very good. But it doesnt take away the fact that you cant keep lootable items highlighted like the old games. Or that you cant roll for stats either so no matter what your main character and any other characters you make will feel very gimped. Classes are very restrictive and you CAN play as you want to play. But it is not efficient or very fun to do so. If you take paladin for example, you CAN go off tank dps support. But you will be less effective at everything and others will do your roles you are trying to do better anyways. So it feels less like "play your own way" than just about any rpg I have played other than mmo games. Overall very disappointed. And uninstalling it. The pause combat micro managing isnt fun to me, nor is alot of the choices they made with design. If my character has 450 health, and 77 endurance, once that endurance is gone they go down? Lay on hands restores endurance not health? I was playing on normal difficulty, and have played through baldurs gate many times over. This one just got where its at on the backs of the classics. While the story is amazing, the gameplay and systems are really really bad and I wouldnt recommend it for anyone, unless they want to play it just for the story and let their group auto combat like the old Ultima games. Which is probably what I will do just to experience the story, and forgo the terrible decisions made here. We need more turn based tactical rpgs! Not this...not this.

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