Pillars of Eternity: Hero Edition

I always find it interesting to follow how may people have completed varous achievements. As things stand, only 13% of people have completed this game on any level (I'm assuming that doesn't include the expansions). In other words, if you buy this game, your chances of actually completing it are poor to say the least. I have been playing this style of game since the original Baldur's Gate, but there is something missing from this. Everything seems to be there, but the formula just isn't right. Maybe it spent too long in the oven? Maybe I did? The game didn't do anything to grab me and draw me in. Maybe I'm just feeling jaded, but over the last two years, I've attempted to get back into the story on muliple occassions and each time, I've played for 5-10 minutes and quit. On the surface, everything seems to be there. Interesting character design. Potentially interesting stories and NPCs. Even a sequel. But I keep wondering, "where is the magic"? And then I look at the number of people who've completed the game and the answer seems to be: "Elsewhere..."

I wanted to love this game and invested 60 hours in it, but had to stop because of a well known problem with saves load times increasing beyond reason once you get quite advanced. Once I got away from the game, I started thinking about it and realized that I didn't miss it, neither its characters, nor its story. It is mechanically very competent but I feel an attachment to none of the characters, and can't actually remember much of the story anymore. Fallout, Arcanum, Bloodlines were so wonderful that you could easily overlook the insane amounts of bugs they contained. I can't do that for Pillars.

I'm just going to compare this to Baldur's Gate. I still think BG 1+2+ToB trilogy is the better "game." Of course it's a bit unfair as that's two games plus an expansion. I really HOPE Pillars of Eternity is a new SERIES with more games in the future. Pros: -Abilities, spells, etc look cool and are balanced and provide really fun combat for fans of Baldur's Gate. -Graphics are beautiful and stylized nicely. -Music is top notch -Character development has a lot of depth. Balance of classes is smartly done. Have whatever party you want...just strategize accordingly. -The game rules compete with AD&D 2ed. well. Actually in some areas I thought it was a major improvement. -I actually like the per encounter aspect to some abilities (and spells in later levels) and even the endurance/health difference although some may disagree. -Sidequests were cool and give options on how to resolve stuff. Cons: -Even though the writing itself is wonderfully descriptive...the story was underwhelming and even preachy at the end to me. -Although the characters were pretty cool, I enjoyed BG's quirky characters more. -BG had a cooler villain. -I agree with some of the popular reviews out there that the lore was a bit much. I appreciate how they tried to flesh out this world, but many times I was confused as to what people were talking about. Basically...in my opinion I thought pillars of eternity had better gameplay than Baldur's Gate. But I think BG has better story and cooler characters in general. Not to put PoE's characters down. They were cool too. Maybe it's nostalgia goggles. You can't go wrong with either. In my opinion this game was worth the 45 bucks I paid. I got 70 hours out of it and see myself doing another run down the road. 5 stars means definitely check it out for all fans of the genre.

Liked it a lot. If you have played Baldur's Gate before then this'll feel just the same, just with a more modern vibe. If you haven't played Baldur's Gate then here's your chance to get in on some great, tactical, story-driven action, with the caveat that you are able to stand reading massive amounts of text. The story itself is fine, although it might resonate more with people from less secular countries and the quality of the writing does fluctuate somewhat. If you have ever read any serialised fantasy novels, you will know what you're getting into. It's quite good at times and so much drivel at others. All in all a fine game and now that the basics are in place, it can only get better. Lastly, at the time (version 1.02), people have been complaining about game breaking bugs. I didn't run into any but your experience may vary.

Pillars is absolutely brilliant and features great worldbuilding, beautiful art and pretty damn fun combat. I'll focus on the issues I've run into because lots of people are raving about it and there are still some problems. The biggest problems: - The Stronghold feels tacked on. Upgrades are mostly useless and you probably won't travel there unless it's to do the megadungeon underneath. - Lack of AI for player NPCs; not asking for much, but automating things like knockdown would go a long way. - Ciphers are really strong and there aren't enough enemies to counter them. Meanwhile, wizards are very strong but have weird restrictions on what they can cast (their magic isn't more powerful and in fact, is harder to position). Rangers are also in need of serious tweaking, even if they're still not horrible. - Easy to abuse terrain to defeat enemies. All of these problems can and hopefully will be fixed when expansion(s) for this game enter development. None of them are as bad as they sound. This is the first game I've bought at full price in years and I don't regret it one bit.