Baldur's Gate players opinion of spiritual successor Pillars of Eternity?

Played through PoE two times now and enjoyed it greatly. Played through BG2 over 20 times at least, so I'm of course interested if it will hold up to that standard over time. Just curious how my fellow BG lovers feel?

I feel it will hold up, but only if either the developers (not high on their radar*), or the community come up with great modding tools. Without substantial mods (not just UI mods) to supply a continuous breath of fresh air, I don't see it lasting as long. So here's hoping...

* Josh Sawyer:
"As much as we can support mods, we want to, but it is Unity so some aspects of it are black-boxed"

Pillars of Eternity, over time, is potentially a great beginning to more adventure modules that I am willing to play.

I haven't finished the game yet (I'm about 50 hrs in) but I'm loving it so far. The game is beautiful, the writing and world-building are nothing short of amazing and I'm enjoying the combat and exploration at least as much as I did in the IE games -- so yes, I definitely feel it will hold up over time.

I also feel that it's a very, very strong first step for a franchise that I am sure will only get better with time. We're still a few patches away from the game and ruleset really having "settled" into their final form, and then there will be the already planned (thanks to Kickstarter) expansion, which will really show us what Obsidian can do when they have this solid, established base that they can expand upon and add to.

Modding and unity don't go really well with each other.

Just look at M&MX:L, it had so much promise for modding and the developer even released the files needed to mod it, but in the end not a single real mod was made because you'd need to buy Unity Pro to mod it which costs several hundred dollars.

It's a great game, it has the "modern infinity engine" feel that I was hoping to get. World-buiding is nice, backgrounds are beautiful, storyline is a bit typical but fine enough (it's not like BG storyline was very atypical either, and I'm fine with classical ideas when they are well done).

There are a few things that could have been better (combat is sometimes a bit fuzzy, the level cap is reached too early in the game, spells are lacking a bit of variety), but overall it's a great game, matching my expectations.

Excellent game, really enjoying it. Will it replace BG? No, but I see that as a good thing. Playing PoE makes me want to play BG, and playing BG makes me want to play PoE.

Having played a good 25-30 hours of Pillars, I must say that it's a pretty damn good game. If I were to compare it to how much I enjoyed BG and BG2, I'd say it lies somewhere between the two titles with BG2 being on the upper end of the spectrum. Pillars is good, but it has something holding it back from being as great as BG2. I'm not sure what it was about BG2, but it had something special that makes it stand out against most other games I've played throughout my life.

If I had to guess as to what holds Pillars back, it's probably because it's sort of an experiment. It's Obsidian's attempt at making an IE-style game from scratch, including new world and mechanics. I think it's a good start, and I can't wait to see the next title in the series. By building upon the new world they have created, perhaps they can replicate that spark that made BG2 so special.

This. Oh, this so much. I really liked BG1, but 2 blowed it up and I loved it. I really like PoE, and if I had to say, I would put it above BG1 level of enjoyment, but to be fair, PoE had more modern graphics, it relies on stablished gameplay and and and ruleset, even if it uses it's own there's a reason it's considered a modern Infinity Engine game.
I can't wait for the sequel, it will be just like with BG1>2: it will keep everything good, and improve on what it can, to make a real jewel.

PoE is extremely bland and boring for me. Nothing comes close to the heavily modded BG2 from 2001.

BG2 on the other hand is a very old game. And all the old games are really inconvenient to play.

Well...
This comment convinced me!

I shall stop playing Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn & forget about playing Pillars of Eternity now#

:)

Having finished it, my opinion is ambivalent. It's a good game, but lacks something that would make it a classic. It also feels small, compared to classics like BG or Arcanum.

At the beginning I loved it, it certainly looks and feels like an oldschool RPG from the good times, but underneath its polish it is quite shallow. The world interactivity is lacking, the wilderness locations and the dungeons are covered with copy-pasted trash mobs, the supposedly unique items all have the same generic attributes with small random variations, most of the spells are basically the same with small variations in damage and effects, the story and writing is convoluted and too weird for my taste, riddled with weird terms that I forgot the next moment. If you separate the game into components they are good in theory, but as a whole it seems like jack of all trades master of none. It lacks something memorable, like what Arcanum did with character development and world reactivity.

By the end I forced myself to finish it because I was getting bored. Too bad because the art direction was superb, looks like a wasted opportunity to make a classic.

Oh, and lacks the funny one-liners of BG :(

"You mess with me, you mess with you !"
"Whoa ! That was a stinker !"
:))