Pillars of Eternity: Hero Edition

This is the first game I abandoned solely for the long load times between maps. Literally a third of the total time played is spent waiting for maps to load.

It's a great game that gets way too much praise from rabid fanboys looking through rose tinted glasses. The reviews labelled "tastiest rpg in years", and "looking for dragon age? look elsewhere", make me ashamed of appreciating the same game as them. I know the gaming community has always had it's holier than thou, "the games I enjoy are awesome, and everything else sucks", mentality people, but they bring it to a whole new level. I enjoy games for what they are, not what I think they should be. I enjoy the witcher, and mass effect for their experiences, and I enjoy this for what it offers, which is good old tactical, old-school rpg action, that refuses to hold you hand. That said, they might as well have called this game "Baldur's gate tribute", instead of anything else, because that's what this is. It touches on all the great aspects of those games, while doing absolutely nothing to innovate, or add to the genre. If you like Baldur's Gate II/Planescape: Torment, or any tactical top down rpg, buy this, it's fantastic, if not, that's cool as well, but this is probably not the game for you. You see? it's really not that hard to praise a game and genre, without being a condescending prick, and I managed to be objective the entire time. I guess I'm just crazy that way.

Pillars is a homeage to the oldschool pary based rpgs of the late 90's and early 2000's.If you have played those, this game will be familiar for you. For me this was the first game of the crpg genre. I played on normal and I found it very accessible also for newbies. The game is intuitive, and not so difficult most of the time, hovewer the boss fights are hell of a challenge, be prepared. It is a combat heavy game: 80% combat, 20% roleplaying. I personally expected and wanted more roleplay and less combat, but still enjoyed Pillars a lot. There is a good balance between dungeons, hubs and open areas which make the game varied. The atmosphere is immersive, the music is beautiful, you feel fine playing this game. Story, choices and characters are good but not great. The writing is good but way too verbose and I think huge walls of texts are not the best way to tell a story in a videogame especially when the new engines actually are able to make us see the things. So this oldschool approach of storytelling can't be the future of rpgs. The side quests are too simplistic but people say that this is because of the limited resources, budget and of the old engine. The graphics nicely shows the background but the figures look horrible, and they are very static (never go to sleep, don't sit down to tables in the inn etc). Sorry to say so many negative things because the game is actually really good. The atmosphere is top notch, and also the story is interesting to make you finish the game. The side quests are simple yes, but they make us experience some interesting personal stories and adventures. The characters are not really memorable but have some good conversations, and sometimes make hilarious comments. The game is dark in general, yet there is humour in it which is appreciated. Also the lenght is good, it is 60 and some hours to finish. So this is not the best rpg of all time as the hype sais, but a good start and hopefully the sequel will be a truly memorable game.

The character and story feel lifeless. Combat are annoying. We are very far away from baldur's gate

When this was released all those years ago, I remember that my disappointment was immesurable. A game that hyped itself to be the BG2 successor, only to fall flat on its face in nearly every metric imaginable. Now, years later, I am replaying this with White March I and II, and while I'm not exactly having a blast, after some updates, it's serviceable. Everything in this game is predictable, as if done according to some template to check all the boxes. You have a predictable, boring villain, pretty meh but acceptable story, cliche characters out of which the only one who really stands out is Durance, and honestly quite baffling design choices. Gameplay system that tries too hard not to be D&D only to look like an exact copy regardless. Kill XP that is tied to the bestiary, and once you have bestiary full for that particular enemy, you stop getting XP for it, which is honestly a "galaxy brain" design choice - if you have to gimp player's XP progress in order to not overlevel him, then it's obvious that you have too many trash fights in your game and you should cut some of them out! If you can get past some of that, then the game isn't really bad, it's an isometric party RPG, with good build variety, adequate length (maybe too long...), and some good parts here and there. It isn't the top of the pack, and it has its problems - problems which PoE2 solved almost entirely - but if you have an itch to play a cRPG you haven't tried before, or just want a character to export to PoE2, you can play this, and it will serve a decent enough job. But don't expect another Baldur's Gate, and of course brace yourself for the constant loading screens, which are just bearable on a modern CPU and SSD (they certainly were the immersion killer back in the day when this got out). If you want it, then get it on a sale with both White March expansions.