I was gonna wait until Torment Tides of Numenera releases but I decided its gonna take awhile so let's do it now.

The 4 most anticpated Kickstarter CRPGs have finally been out for awhile, Shadowrun Returns (and its Dragonfall expac), Divinity Original Sin, Wasteland 2, and Pillers of Eternity. So I like to ask out of the 4 which one you thought was the best or even exceeded your expectations and which did you find it ok butlacking or is a comlete dissipointment.

And sadly I have not played these games yet. I got 2 of the former, I have yet to get the latter 2.

I have all four, but have only played the latter 3 as of yet. I guess overall, I'd have to say I enjoyed Wasteland 2 the most, since I put the most time into that one. D:OS was great fun as well. While none of them are bad games, I'm probably most disappointed with Pillars of Eternity. They made a number of design decisions that I don't care for. Having said that, I do think it has great potential to get a lot better through patching and expansion(s). As well, I feel a sequel may really step it up.

I have been playing Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity, which were the ones I eagerly waited for. I like them both very much. Pillars is so far living up to my expectations and even exceeding them. Wasteland is a lot of fun. I got pretty much what I expected, due to the constant updates and gameplay footage even in development. Pillars I find full of wonderful surprises. Mostly, I like the story and the writing very much, perhaps more than I anticipated.

Original Sin I will get sometime. Dragonfall I have just no time to play yet.

Really, really good thread! I look forward to all the impressions / opinions!

Wasteland 2 - Have it but didn't played it.
Divinity OS - Played only for one hour (was having problems with my laptop back then).
Pillars of Eternity . Don't have it.

So my default answer is Shadowrun, i loved both of them and one of my more expected games for this year is Shadowrun HK but i'll wait for some patches before i buy it/play it.

Edit: Why did i enjoyed Shadowrun? Well, i love the slow paced gameplay (turn based) and what really makes the game superb is the story, i love that type of narrative where there's a description for what's happening and how the characters are doing, i'm sure there's a name for that but i'm too stupid to know it.

None of them have been disappointing. People maybe forgot that just a few years ago there weren't really many PC RPGs to look forward to. Mass Effect had gone cover-shooter; Dragon Age had failed to really grab RPG veterans (and of course by the second one it, too, had become a console game that was ported to PC); everybody was hating on Skyrim; and while we did have Witcher 2, the first Witcher hadn't really turned anything around for anyone.

So then we got some top-quality RPGs to look forward to - not just to play, mind you, but to actually follow development and see how the design progressed. Much more transparent than a typical big game studio. So the games, which funded neatly and all went well beyond the minimum goal, served sort of a dual role like that.

Was Shadowrun Returns too short and linear? Yep. Was Divinity Original Sin too buggy? Yep. Did Wasteland 2 rely too heavily on nostalgia? Sure did. Did Pillars of Eternity drag once you got to mid-game? Alas, yes.

Was any of that enough to make the games disappointments? No.

What were the design decisions that you didn't care for?

Can't say yet as I've only played Shadowrun. As for that one I enjoyed it but wasn't great. I still need to play Dragonfall though which I hear is a lot better.

Only played Original Sin so far, and it's been excellent . Still, I think I would've liked it more if it was pausable(spelling?) real-time .

I didn't play Divinity yet since I'm still waiting for the Linux version.

I loved the other 3, it's very hard to tell which one was better, they all were very good in many ways, with a few minor things I didn't like in each.

Have only Shadowrun and Wasteland... Both are great but I really loved deranged postapocalyptia of Wasteland 2.

I have all four. Only had time to play POE currently. I would recommend getting it, however I felt a bit deflated on it. Will run down why.
Character creation. Wasn't as expansive as I would like. A few races, no dual/multi-classing, and things like stealth any can take. Didn't seem to be much difference between them other than asthetics.
Story. Really didn't see a story until later on, won't spoil it, but shadowy guy kills your companion...
The areas didn't really feel alive, the main city (6 parts, surrounded by water, with two bridges - sounding familiar?) has a few doors on each map which are marked on map and couple unmarked. So nothing really of exploration. Not much in the way of secrets I found either.
I am in two minds on the XP. Its nice that you don't have to slaughter everything in the world, however I found it also meant that there was no need to goto to certain areas (cliff for instance where there is just monsters). Also level cap of 12, I hit that ActII solo run.

So whilst I hate to compare it to Baldurs Gate, it really is that game with some improved graphics, and a different rule system. Perhaps my opinion is a bit tainted by the years of BG, but I would still prefer loading up BigWorld Setup with tactics, adds 30gb to BG1+2. Do a solo-poverty run in that!

Anyways, still buy it as its a very good rpg.

I have all four.

Shadowrun Returns - Have it, played it through, liked it a lot, bought the sequel (which is even better).
Wasteland 2 - Have it, played it, got bored by the second area and quit.
D:OS - Have it, played it, liked it kind of, got bored by the second area and quit.
Pillars of Eternity - Have it, played it through, liked it a lot (with some reservations).

Wasteland 2 and D:OS are probably the first two RPGs I have ever not finished.

I enjoyed Shadowrun a lot and have played through many hours of mods as well.

I also really like Wasteland, but have not finished it yet...just can't get into it as much as I did the first back in the day, but still a great game!

Engagement system - seems like a cool idea on paper, but the implementation didn't cut it, IMO. The default best strategy is to tank into a doorway to grab engagement with your high Deflection tank and then ranged pew pew with your other party members. Yawn fest. If you try to use any other strategy and your squishies get engaged, it's like glue. Try to take a tank or DPS character to help them out and every single time you pass an enemy, engagement kicks in, which stops the character from moving. Rinse, repeat. By the time you get to your squishy, you have a dead squishy.

Related to Engagement is the free Disengagement attack. This kicks in when you try to move away from engagement. There's no animation and it's instant, has no recover time, and an enormous Accuracy (to hit) bonus. It's similar to the D&D Attack of Opportunity but since there are no drawbacks for the attacker it's way too potent. There are some spells and abilities (with specific classes) that allow you to break engagement, but I find it just doesn't feel fun. Not for me, anyway.

Stealth - no individual stealth, which means that high stealth rogue you want to build so you can stealth into combat and backstab the bad guys while they're distracted? Nope, not going to happen. And in order to detect hidden objects, you must be in Stealth Mode. Which brings me to...

Mechanics - not only governing your ability to disarm and set traps, which is fine, this skill determines your ability to find hidden objects (which you can't do unless you're in Stealth Mode, as noted above). The latter makes no sense to me.

Skills are not modified in any way by your ability scores.

No pre-buffing - now, I understand the reasoning behind this, but since there are a number of buffing spells in the game, you end up either not using them at all or you waste all your combat time casting them. I also understand this can be viewed as a tactical choice, but to me there's something a bit too contrived in having the ability to wield magic... but not unless you're in combat. *shrug* To be fair, at least there's not the 4 minute pre-buff tedium of the IE games.

Endurance/health - this doesn't bother me to a huge degree, but the mechanic where if you lose all Endurance your character passes out really only makes it advantageous to just leave them out and not try to revive them in combat to fight some more. Why? Because you lose health as well as Endurance when you're hit. So if you get that character back up, all it means is you're going to lose more health and have to rest sooner. It's more advantageous to just leave him out cold until after the battle. Resting being restricted, this just forces more tedium of heading back to an in or shop to get camping supplies. Which leads to rest-spam, which is what the devs implemented restricted camping to avoid...

That's what I can think of offhand. Now, none of this is egregious on its own, but it's quite disappointing to me when taken in bulk.