Nice to see it coming here, the first one was pretty good. Not amazing, but solid enough. Will be interested in seeing it, when it comes down to a reasonable price and the dlc debacle is over.

I found the gameplay and combat in PoE far more enjoyable than BG1 (I haven't played BG2 yet) and IWD. Real time with pause is still quite fiddly but there is a lot more visual feedback to indicate why attacks are failing or spells are going awry. I'm not sure I came across any timed quests, which was good.

There are still lots of annoyances. Trying to participate in combat when enemies are obscured by 2.5D foregrounds is as frustrating as it has even been. But I don't regret many of the 80 hours I spent with it.

It does use that system but it also has a slow down function which is what I used for the majority of the time. It was rare (except during massive creature battles) that I used the pause function, as the slower movement toggle basically gave me enough time to make my decisions as the battle unfolded.

Also I'd say much the same as mcphail, I don't remember any timed quests that forced you to do them at that moment.

One question: When you get a game over, it it generally obvious what killed you? If not, can you at least check the combat log after a game over?

(One other issue in BG1 and BG2 is that it's not clear why you died, and you can't check the combat log, so there's no way to learn from your mistakes and come better prepared the next time.)

Is there a speed up function? Sometimes, when playing IE games (and, in particular, when I am *not* in an encounter), I found myself wishing I could speed up the game so I could reach my destination faster or wait for that annoying spell to end before continuing. (Of course, there's also the problem of having such spells lasting past the end of combat, but that's another story.)

Another question: How does the game handle death? Can you continue if the main character dies? Do characters keep their equipment when killed, or do they drop it (forcing you to re-equip characters when you revive them, which gets really annoying and makes me want to reload when characters die even when resurrection is easy and doesn't have permanent consequences)? Is there any other mechanic that encourages reloading over just pressing on?

Yes, you can speed up movement. I would often do this when travelling as you can travel in search / stealh mode and it was invaluable when outdoors and travelling large maps. Most combat based spells end at the finish of combat, it was rare that it didn't and any that I did note had no effect on my movement post battle.

If the main character is utterly killed, then it ends. Forcing you to reload your latest save. Generally in combat, unless you suffer massive damage (sometimes at the hands of a huge creature) you can be killed outright but it was incredibly rare. Instead most characters during combat are incapacited until the end of combat, when they instantly revive. Characters only drop their loot / equipment when they are utterly killed, again, a rare thing except maybe in the hardest difficulties(?)

I would sometimes reload if I had felt I'd not had the options I needed due to miss-preparing my character - you can prebuff certain stats either through rest or some food items which can give you more options during dialogue and event resolution but that was my choice - eg I wanted to see those other options before I made a decision. It was quite rare that I would do that though.

Yes, most of the time I had deaths (rather than knockouts) they were part of complete party wipes necessitating a reload. And it was obvious it was the big dragon which had handed me my arse on a plate. I can't remember if I could access the battle log after such a wipeout, but the mechanism was never in doubt.

I was actually more thinking of having to reload because of random events.

For example:

1. One of my characters just got killed, and resurrection, if successful, causes the character to age and/or lose a point of vitality (classic Wizardry does this, but thankfully Wizardry 8 does not).

2. There's a place I can dig up 1 of 4 treasures. Which one it is is random, and once I've dug there, I can never dig there again. (SaGa 2 DS, though similar issues happen in any game with finite (non-respawning) amounts of random treasure.

3. Level up stats are random, so I need to reload until I get the stat games I want.

Does PoE have any mechanics like these?

(If the game does not let you reload, I don't like that either.)

I am with you 100% on real-time with pause combat systems. There have been a numbers of games that I have passed on because of this. For the few I do play, most of the time I end up rage quitting a few hours into the game. On the rare occasion when I can actually finish the game I always feel a type of relief like an awful chore is finally done, not that feeling of accomplishment like with other games. While Pillars of Eternity looks interesting, I don't see anything there that would keep my interest enough to make me force myself to keep playing. It's up to you but I'd personally just skip this series.

I played with a Steam controller and remapped the underside paddle buttons to speed up or slow down the gameplay. I used them quite a lot.

1. No, if you bring a character back he's exactly as he was before. He might be suffering from an injury but these are easily fixed either by rest or other abilities, they are temporary and a character can have multiple injuries at any one time if they get knocked out multiple times (or due to events).

2. There are one or two quests where depending on your choice of action you end up with a different reward, I suppose in that instance you could say you might want to reload to better decide on which reward you want to go but nothing truly random like digging up a treasure.

3. Level up is all specific, you get points for stats at certain intervals, you can respec as well at inns (it costs more based on level and the number of times you do it.)

4. You can reload pretty much any time, I don't think I've found a time I couldn't reload.

Oooh I'm huge on game mechanics discussions. I'd love to hear you elaborate more on this.

My personal take:

- I hate real-time combat in RPGs. Real-time is supposed to be about learning patterns, reflexes and timing. But then the "RPG"ness of it automatically makes you stronger just for playing (leveling up). So there's an inherent contradiction with itself.

- Moreover, real-time combat in RPGs tend to be of two types:

Action/combo oriented - Something like Namco's Tales series, which bores me to death due to the mashiness and juggling enemies as much as possible

"Guided" - RTS-like, where you don't have precise control over a character, but you command them to do things. These are the Diablos / Torchlights. This is even worse than the action-oriented approach, because you click and the game decides how to do it. (A click on an enemy has your character walk first to the enemy and then strike based on some AI, compared to you manually positioning your character wherever you want, and then hitting whenever you want). The other flaw of this method is that could also be down to how fast you can click on icons / hit shortcuts, making it less about the action and more about UI management.

Both types are odious to me.

- Having a real-time party-based game is awful. Usually you control one person, and the AI controls the other characters. I find the problem with this to be that you have to fight not only against the opponent, but also your allied AI because they don't do what you would have done.

- The Infinity Engine makes the vagueness of real-timeiness tolerable. The fact that you can pause means you can set up precise instructions to each of your party members, taking the Allied AI issue out of equation. It also doesn't make it a click/mashfest that action oriented RPGs tend to be.

Is it perfect? No, I still think turn based is superior. But it's definitely a decent solution to a problem it's created.

PoE's combat system is like the IE games. That was its point. I'd say PoE on PotD is harder in places than the IE games without mods. If you add SCS to the BG series then PoE can't hold a candle to it due to the very simple AI it has.

You can avoid battles with dragons completely. That's a true RPG for you.

I see this sort of thing as a characteristic of adventure games rather than RPGs.

I enjoyed playing POE, but it became tedious and never wanted to end.

After +/- 40 hours, I stopped playing sidequests, and still didn't advance, and at 50 hours I cancelled playing.

I know we all complain about games being too short, but they can be too extensive too...

Especially with the new phenomena of "game hoarding" which is appearing on Steam and GOG this is going to be an issue, who would have thought 10 years ago :D