Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire - Obsidian Edition

I'm struggling with this one. Perhaps my tastes have changed thru the decades, perhaps its a covid mood, I dont know what but I just cant get into this game. 40hrs in but I just cant keep playing it as the realization hits that its not that fun, which is a shame as it ticked all my fav game boxes. The good, music is atmospheric and orchestrated. Voice acting is superb and immersive. Graphics are beautiful at times, decent the rest. The areas to explore are many, well detailed and interesting. The not so bad, story is convoluted and puts me off. There are too many factions, if that can be a case, I have no idea who is who and its all being thrown at me at once. The inner dialogue between my party can be amusing at times but usually seems just thrown in. I really dont care for anyone on my team, which is gutting as I was very loyal to my team from the last game. Combat is meh, its micro managing, its either too easy or impossible. I find it tedious, there is capability to customize combat to auto use certain spells any way you wish, but for the life of me I cant figure out the interface to do it. Classes are many with in depth variation and multiclass opportunities that I can see would be fun for those who want to tweak and min/max. I cant be bothered. The bad, very long loading times between booting up the game, transitioning to new environments. you just sit there alot looking at splash screens waiting. The tacked on pirate ship is very boring and not fun. I really enjoyed building up my castle, opening up rooms, gaining peons, it was fulfilling. The ship is dull. You can add cannons, (which cost a fortune) and other stuff but its very underwhelming. Ship combat is more work than fun. I wish they had stuck with the castle idea. The game for me has been waiting for load screens, running around towns getting overwhelmed with faction politics. A few mini dungeons. Tedious combat. Ill give it a rest and try again in the future.

I loved and finished the first game 3 times. It is one of the best RPGs I have ever played. I didn't like the pirate theme for an rpg, it's not my cup of tea as far as themes goes. Despite that, I still finished the game. The main vilain is not one that gives you a desire to fight him, actually, I couldn't care less about some God's feud with other God's. The quests were sub par when compared to the first one,many of those quests sent you to distant place in the map to search for someone or something and when you get there it's just a 2 level dungeon or not even that, just a small encounter. The items you acquire while adventuring are not good, you can buy better items from the stores. The end result is that you end up taking a lot of time going from one place to the other, never feeling powerful or never feeling that you have evolved, chasing a God that you don't care about in a pirate theme. I recommend the first game instead

If you loved the first PoE, you'll certainly appreciate this game. It improves on every aspect of the game that I can think of. The amount of dedication and effort that went into the lore is staggering. This is a game to be played slowly, to become immersed in, and enjoy. I was skeptical about the pirate theme early on, but the backgrounds and cultures are set up so well that it's seamless. The only main complaint from big site reviews is that the main quest is fairly short and secondary to the whole experience. I think this is true too, but the world is so well realized that it didn't matter at all to me. It was just a pleasure to explore and enjoy various subquests, while occasionally bouncing back to the main quest. My biggest disappointment is that there will likely be no PoE 3 that picks up at the end of this game.

I really wanted to like this game, but I just can't. The main quest is interesting but way too short and the side quests are mostly uninteresting. The companion side quests are also very boring and brief, and the companions themselves are super shallow. The game is funnier than POE1, which is an improvement. They measure everything in this game. Characters are an assemblage of likes and dislikes and not even trying to approximate real people. Your relationship with every character and group is quantified and displayed to you, it is very boring. Dialogue options are flagged as "pro faction 1," "pro faction 2," "compassionate" although you can't see these flags. The whole game just feels very generic and souless. As for technical issues, I can run Skyrim at 60fps but this game is very laggy.

I really wanted to like this game. I loved the first Pillars of Eternity (aside from the atrocious load times). Played on veteran difficulty with upscaled turned on. The game seems to be unnecessarily long. Some may argue it isn't since the main questline is rather short, but the game timer from GOG said I've logged more than 220+ hours in this game. An unfulfilling 220+ hours. I'd rather have a fulfilling 50+ hour game than a 200+ hours game. Things I didn't like: -I didn't like the open world travel -I hated ship to ship combat. Boarding ships for battle is okay. -There were alot of game crashes. Very buggy game. -Game doesn't seem to be very optimized. I still get lag and stutter. -I hate games that have limited use items and resources. I just never end up using them. As for crafting resources, I didn't know adra ban were limited. I actually wasted a bunch and now I can't upgrade some of the weapons to legendary. -Because of the semi-open world aspect, I accidentally went into an area that was meant for later and sort of messed up some quest lines. I feel like the developer should have blocked off the areas that should not be accessible yet -The endgame was very anti-climatic. The whole game appears to be a huge build up to the endgame area but once you reach it, that was it. It felt like the whole game was rushed or there wasn't much thought put in the progression of the story. -I hated the mega bosses. I didn't end up fighting them. I felt like they made the bosses stupidly long and difficult just for the sake of making it stupidly long and hard. -Some battles were just pure frustration Things I liked: -Load times have dramatically reduced. POE1 had terrible load times. -Looks better than POE1. -multiclassing is pretty good. -i like the weapon/armor upgrade system alot better than the first game. This is only marred by the stupid decision to make adra ban a set limit in the game. I didn't upgrade anything in the first game; I didn't find any motivation to.