Pillars of Eternity: Hero Edition

There are two ways of dealing with frustrating aspects of old CRPG games like Baldur's Gate. One is to do away with them entirely: no more resting, no more inns, make health regenerate! Stupid AI? Put in a cover system, make it tactical! Inventory management is tedious... armor comes in sets! Here lies the way of the modern CRPG, which sometimes feels less like an RPG and more like a first-person shooter or interactive movie. No offense, Shepard and Geralt. Another way of dealing with the idiosyncrasies of the Infinity Engine is to embrace them and make them work. This is what PoE does. The health system is redone to get rid of the rest-spamming that plagued the D&D games, while still making damage "hurt." Encumbrance is gone (good riddance), and inventory is unlimited, while weapons and armor can be enchanted if you get attached to them. Companions take all orders from the player - some reviewers don't like this, but it frankly saves me a lot of screaming at computer screens. Meanwhile, the environments are beautiful. You don't get any billion-polygon meshes covered with 4k textures in PoE, but you do get individually designed environments that show love and attention. Each area tells its own story, from the bloodstains on the dungeon floors to the rickety shingles on the inn roofs. I didn't even know that I missed this aspect of the old D&D games until I started up PoE today, but it really strikes a chord. This game is more than an homage to the old Infinity Engine games - it's a loving rework of the "D&D" type CRPG. It's spot-on, a masterpiece. That being said, understand what you're getting. If you need to mod your dragons into the "Macho Man" Savage, this isn't for you. If you like a click-and-forget combat system, this isn't for you. If your character needs BEWBS, this isn't for you. But if the first thing you felt when you beat Baldur's Gate II was sorrow at the thought of not having any more Baldur's Gate to play, then you *need* this game.

Many of us hold the classic Infinity Engine games close to our hearts. Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and the peerless Planescape: Torment are justly considered some of the most engrossing CRPGs of all-time, in regards to immersion and gameplay. Pillars of Eternity is the monumental attempt to try to take that lofty legacy into a new era. It succeeds by leaps and bounds. First off, the game is gorgeous. Nothing flashy or gaudy, just beautiful hand-crafted art. The mood is set in the first chapter that will instantly remind you in many ways of the flight from Candlekeep. Yet it would be criminal to write Pillars off as a rip-off. The folks at Obsidian have obviously poured their heart and soul into creating a original fantasy world, and it pays off in spades. Rich dialogue options, cut-scenes with choose-your-own adventure type choices affected by your character stats. And a story and set of characters worthy of all the fuss. This is a world that could be around for years to come. But ultimately, a game in this genre comes down to character creation, abilities and combat. All hit the mark. The character selection screen alone may take up your first hour of play time. The spells/ abilities are a fantastic medium between the Infinity Engine and the recent triumph of Divinity: Original Sin. And (most importantly) the real-time, pause heavy combat is fluid and graceful, and is instantly familiar. We are lucky to be experiencing a golden renaissance for the CRPG genre. The Legend of Grimrock games lived up to the legacy of the great tile-based dungeon crawls. Divinity: Original Sin masterfully merged turn-based combat with anUltima VII level of immersion. And Shadowrun has given us a tactical steampunk sugar jolt. But even taking all those great games into account, Pillars of Eternity stands above them all. The best thing you can say about it is that it attempts to live up to some of the best games the genre has ever produced, and is able to proudly stand among them.

Would give it 3,5 stars if I could. Decent effort and I'm glad to see the genre have a bit of a revival, but the story was flat and the "deep" themes on offer I've chewed through a long time ago in my own life so it didn't really resonate. For context: I loved BG II, NWN II: MoTB and KOTOR II (with fan-restored content). They had characters and plots that got me involved on some emotional level. I actually don't care that much about the combat system, which is just as well as none of these had a spectacular one and PoE holds that line competently. It didn't get in the way of my enjoyment. I was slightly disappointed with how generically D&D it felt despite supposedly having a clean slate, but I guess that's them respecting the infinity engine roots. PoE had a generic so-so story and while there were faction relations and "consequences" for my actions, it just never immersed me or made me care what I did to whom, except in the sense of "how will this limit my choices for the rest of the game"? It's ironic that many characters asked me why exactly I was hunting the main antagonist - was it for answers, for retaliation, for help with my own predicament or to bring him to justice - and every time my honest answer would have been "To see if something interesting actually happens when I finally confront him." And sadly, nothing much really did. The thing I liked most about the story was that there were several choices where the morality was ambivalent, with two sides making ostensibly ethical arguments for killing the other. Sadly they still failed to evoke much emotion. No game-breaking bugs for me, though. So that's a plus.

PoE is an RPG that basically fulfils all of the unfulfilled promises and failures of Wasteland 2 and adds tons of amazing things on top of that. It feels like a true successor to Planescape Torment and all of the other old-school RPGs. Things I like most: 1. Storyline - Involving from the very beginning got a few plots you are suppose to discover (yes, few, I see reviewers saying there's just one mystery at the beginning, which is false, watch and listen carefully) with introduction giving you an amazing glimpse into a very deep and huge world. It's basically a complete opposite of Wasteland 2 where through first 14 hours of gameplay I couldn't get hooked up to the main storyline at any point. Here I was already interested in the first screen that loaded. And something I always have an appetite for - decisions that matter. And PoE really does deliver in that department. 2. Combat - I adore it. Deep, interesting, makes you forced to think about strategic level (what weapons will be best for this battle, how to open the encounter, where to move your characters, what opening spells or attacks to use, etc.) and tactical level (positioning, what abilities to use for which opponent, when to use defensive spells and which, etc.). Tons of varied opponents many of which require individual approach. Again - complete opposite of Wasteland 2 where you had barely few types of enemies with most basic AI repeating the same things over and over again. Here every encounter is different and makes you analyse the situation. Why other reviewers find this game difficult or random is precisely because they do not think just randomly throw into battle failing over and over again. 4. Twin health system - Endurance and "regular" Health. Thanks to this you avoid usual pitfall of cRPGs - save&load cycle. Loosing character is penalizing, but not instantly crippling you and forcing to reload. In a way reminds me of P:T where decisions matter but aren't a difference between game over and not.