Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire - Obsidian Edition

I love this game. I love the world lore and the story it's built around. Even with the bugs. Even with the price. It's a great game. They changed alot of things for the better since the first Pillars as well, like the gameplay, the combat mechanics, the multiclassing system, the looks. Boy, it looks good. However, something got worse. The optimization in Pillars of Eternity Deadfire is abysmal. If you have anything less than a GTX 1070, expect frame rates droping as low as 20, or below. It doesn't get much better if you have a GTX 1070 or better graphics card either, because certain areas and encounters won't give you more than 30 fps even on a 1080 Ti. Don't believe me? I couldn't believe it either when my GTX 1060 couldn't run this game smoothly. Do a quick search on Google, type ¨POE 2 fps¨ for a myriad of complaints and solutions varying from gpu panel tweeks, to modding, to actually scripting certain functions into the game. So, if like me, you're not a technician, and just want to play a game, confidant that your hardware meets the specified system requirements... be warned.

This review is about the EXTRAS for the Obsidian edition, mainly the Pen and Paper RPG Starter Guide, and Map, and Guidebook Volume II. When compared to the EXTRAS for the Pillars one, these are terrible. We mostly bought the game expecting a basic starter set - and you can google for other starter sets from other companies, Green Ronin, Modiphius, even Shadowrun RPG has a kick-arse starter set! - and you will see the reason for my disappointment. The starter set for the new "Pen & Paper" Pillars RPG is nothing but a PDF made on Word Office?!?! Guys, I expected more, seriously. Any kid could have done that thing. 40 miserable pages of "why don't you try this and tell us if it's good?" stuff? C'mon! The other pet peeve is the Guidebook PDF. Ok, it's lovely, as beautiful as the first one. But good luck trying to find anything in it - specially if you're going for the starter set previously mentioned - because it's not indexed AT ALL. Finally, the map they gave us. HD map. That's it. No comments, no info for the "P&P future GM" no nothing. I really expected more for the price they ask us. The EXTRAS for Pillars 1 were superb.

I enjoyed Pillars 1, but this sequel is worse pretty much across the board-- only the graphic quality improves on the original. The game ultimately became a chore for me to play rather than something to look forward to. Among my biggest complaints: -Pacing is all over the place. The basic conceit of the main plot is VERY time dependent (you're literally racing something to different locations). Time dependent RPGs can be great, but this game is completely divorced from time, even as the plot theoretically hinges on it. So, although your quarry is heading to a place with MAJOR CONSEQUENCES, you can sail around for literal game years, and when you finally show up at the place, well, it's exactly the same as if you had made a beeline directly there from the start. From a role-playing perspective, it's hard to justify going on 60 side-quests unrelated to main plot when that plot, narratively, is so tied to time. You can have a tense, time-dependent RPG, or a sprawling RPG with tons of side-quests, but trying to combine them is a recipe for disaster unless you really know what you're doing. -It's combat-centric, and the combat is boring. The real-time pause system straight up fails here. Fights drag on and get very muddled, with lots of characters bundling together in a melee. Playing on easier difficulty levels makes the fights super easy and boring, playing on harder difficulty makes them drawn out and boring. -Story is a yawn. The first Pillars had a cool story with some excellent world building and surprises. Pillars 2's plot tries to further develop the world, but it actually manages to confuse and weaken the world building from Pillars 1, which I guess is an accomplishment of sorts. The side plots are standard bounty-hunts, glorified fetch quests, faction turmoil, the usual for a mediocre RPG. This game feels like the designers had grandiose ambitions and were forced to drastically scale them back as development progressed. It's just roundly underwhelming.

The good: -from a technical perspective it's pretty good and many times better than its predecessor -side quests are mostly well done and very entertaining -fun combat for cRPG-fans The Bad: -shallow, one-dimensional characters -party size reduced to 5 -somehow worse character customization than in PoE1 -a pathetic amount of portraits, many of which are recycled from PoE1 -less flexibility for wizards due to grimoire changes -less flexibility in general due to meager skill trees -pathetically short main story quest If you're a cRPG fan (especially a fan of Baldur's Gate), I can absolutely recommend the game. Although it could be a slightly underwhelming experience. For everyone else, just wait till it's on sale.