Pillars of Eternity: Hero Edition

just curious as this looks very similar to the free to play path of exile

I forgot that games could be so hard with the default settings. I've never been so happy to get killed by a bear in a game before. On a more serious matter the game is fantastic. It exceeded my expectations in every possible way. <3

Who this game is for: The Literary Thinkers People with a love of developed worlds full of interesting ideas and unique characters Strategists Role Players Fantasy fans Adventurers Anyone sick of twitch-based nonsense Who this game is most definitely NOT for: COD fanboys Mom Gamers who only play Mom Games (not gamers who happen to be moms, those are awesome) The Illiterate Dude Bros Anyone who hates the very essence of good and awesome. Instead of a review, I'll give an example: Last night, I started the game just to clear one last level of a dungeon. After that, I figured, "Okay, one more." Then I did a third floor. Then I stopped... and delivered a note to a character back in a city. Where I talked to an NPC who wanted me to deliver a box. Which prompted a confrontation with a shady character. Which sent me to another part of town. Where I did four other quests. That made me level. Which sent me back to that dungeon again, to clear another floor. Then I noticed I had to be up in 3 and a half hours. Uh oh. Guess I'd better... go find the owner of this dagger I found. And I'm no stupid young kid who can do this kind of stuff anymore, I'm the kind of guy who needs at least 6 hours or he starts to get sick. It's THAT GOOD. Now for my most ringing endorsement. I have not wanted to continue onward so much in an RPG since Planescape Torment.

Complex RPGs such as Pillars of Eternity have many technical areas that need to be both functional and unintruseivly transparent so that the stylistic areas of the RPG such as story and atmosphere can be what captures and holds the gamers attention. Luckily the Unity Engine that PoE is created on is so far seemingly powerful and flexible enough to handle those technical features such as audio and video sub-systems and save game management with fast stutter-free framerates and unintrusive level loads. Responding to user feedback from the rather bland Beta, player avatars are now correctly (larger) sized and while PoE has very little character customizations, the equipment is correctly presented on the character and animations are much more fluid and natural. Combat animations seem logical and hits look like hits, misses look like misses. Varying stages of zoom is also available and handy. Consider that the vast majority of your time you are going to be looking at your characters and what they are doing, how they look while doing it is of the highest importance and it's the primary way to convey that 'Baldur's Gate' style. However, the character doll sheet and the inventory pages are still breathtakingly substandard with too small pigeon holes for your gear on a very basic background with hardly any artistic presentation or style. Character specs are presented with modifier after modifier cluttering that area where you expect to find basic useful data. However, there are numerous UI modifiers such as selectable 'bullet-time' for combat and various auto-pause options that are as thoughtful and necessary as player choice UI options such as a selection-circle toggle and movable dialog windows. Even game play difficulties are detailed and unexpectedly useful. Fonts and dialogs are easy to read and player choices in dialogs (and clickable on-screen elements) are clear and obvious. The story behind those dialogs however, that's another review.

I really do want to like this game. I really do want to enjoy what it has to offer. But... When loading times are SO slow, you end up spending almost half the playing time staring at a black loading screen... Well, that just kills the experience.