Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

If you enjoyed PoE1, you might enjoy PoE2, but even then you should be prepared for a drop in quality as far as the writing is concerned. Graphically, the game is beautiful, just like PoE1 was. The music is still atmospheric and fitting. The voice acting is done by high profile names you might be familiar with. For the most part, that is a good thing but it can be a little jarring once you start noticing how many people have multiple roles. The open world aspect of the game is fun. Driving your little ship and uncovering the map is the strongest aspect of the game and you can feel that most of the development effort went into that. Levelling up your heroes has been improved as we've finally discovered that skill trees are a thing. Unfortunately, that is pretty much it for positives and the skill tree I just mentioned is something you are only allowed to look at during level ups. In regular play, all your stats are vomitted on a single page you are free to spend half an hour scrolling up and down. The interface is a hot mess in places. Ship combat is an insult to pirates everywhere. For some reason, this is a text based affair, along the lines of the chose your own adventure segments. While those are okay, this does not work *at all* for naval combat. All you do is shoot, hold (for an aim bonus) and jive (turn your ship by 180° to use the other cannons), rinse and repeat until one ship sinks. The main story is laughably bad, runs for about 4 hours and leaves you thinking "This really did not need my involvment". In cRPGs I often cannot decide which people to bring because they are all interesting. Here: Which of these people, I feel unprecedented amounts of apathy for, should I bring? Companion quests are a similar deal. Remember that time you and Edèr went on an epic quest to learn nothing about his brother? Get ready for more sidequests petering out unsatisfyingly. Chose from one of four factions that are all pretty much equally grey. How exciting.

As an early backer who counts the original infinity engine games among my all time favorites this really should have been right up my alley, but after 8+ hours i am just plain bored. This could be the first Obsidian game i never actually finish. Compared to Pillars Of Eternity 1 they seem to have gone for more style and (even) less substance. The graphics and animations are vastly improved over the first game, but everything else appears to have gotten a notable downgrade. The major additions to this sequel come in the form of a ship which replaces the old stronghold, and an overland map. Neither of which really improves the game. If anything the overland map makes the already lackluster exploration aspect of the first game even worse. You now spend much of the game traveling as an icon across a large map of interchangable islands and "loot" other icons. Occationally you get one of the text based interactions from the first game which often ends in your party being transported to a tiny square of a map for a single combat encounter. Yay exploration? One of the most consistant critisism of the first game was how combat did not allow for any indepth tactics aside from spamming whatever crowd control was available. Obsidians response appears to have been to make combat even more shallow. It now plays much like an action game with little to no thought required. While i have yet to encounter anything that could be considered a "boss fight", all regular combat encounters so far have been over in about 20 seconds. Therefore there is no time, nor need, to do anything but spam your most damaging abilities. They have also increased the recovery time aswell as the casting times, so you barely have time to get more than a couple of spells off before all the mobs are dead. All your spells and abilities now use a set number of resources, which are automatically refreshed after every fight, so there is not even a reason to conserve spells. To make up for this they have added an "empower" mechanic, which works as the name implies in that it empowers a spell/ability of choice, and it only has a set number of uses per day. The writing so far appears to be on par with the original game, so if you enjoyed that there could be enough here to warrant a purchase. I would recommend waiting for a few full reviews to come out, or even hold out for a sale.

I am a big fan of Baldur's Gate 2 and sponsored the first Pillars of Eternity. I was let down by the game system of the first opus so I wanted to wait before trying the second. I think PoE2 definitely improved on pretty much all account in comparison with the first one. The game mechanics are much more polished, the skills more interesting, and finally the wizard is not useless! On top of that, the open-world map is fun and managing your ship and battling at sea is a nice mini-game, on top of being a good way to lead you to special encounters in the archipelago. A thing I agree with most people however, is that the game is too easy from mid to end-game. Obsidian managed to design more challenging fights in the extensions, but that's too bad that we needed to wait for it instead of having this kind of content in the game proper. I really hope we will see mods doing the equivalent of SCS in BG for PoE2. PoE1 could be compared to BG1, with some bizarre gameplay and design choices, while PoE2 is closer to BG2, where writing and scenarii are well-balanced by strategy and intermitent fights. I would love however being able to play the scenario of the first one in an enhanced edition, reimplemented in PoE2 engine. I would buy it again, and I will definitely play it a few times. My only standing issues is that a few quests are still bugged, which in my case for example blocked me from allying with a faction I wanted to pursue. That's too bad, and I'd like this kind of game-breaking bug to be a priority.

PoE1 was a great game that had a big bugbear attached to it: it was rather dull. Not much engagement to be found in a game that spends most of it running time establishing itself. The story had a great conclusion but up until that moment it was a decidedly average CRPG. PoE2 however flips that around, the setting is now in its stride so you get away from generic fantasy and into a reality where you inhabit fantasy-Caribbean choosing to side with one of the many trading companies, which are fantasy-Italy, fantasy-Fish, and fantasy-Fish-but-not-western, or just straight up pirates. You sail around in your ship, fighting ogres on the high seas, exploring ancient temples, and find everything from new gods, drunk elves, Lovecraftian horrors, and sudden murder mysteries. The story is engaging up until the conclusion, where I personally feel it could get a lot heavier on the philosophical and metaphysical elements like the first game did but it sort of just ends with no significant twist or turn. The gameplay is adequate, I found that the difficulty wavered between "Quite challenging" and "Enemies melt" but the locales, interactions, and items you find along the way made me want to keep playing. At no point did I want to stop. The game is per Obsidian standard very customisable in difficulty and UI which squashed most complaints I would have about it. The most notable thing to complain about would be that some undead enemies have mind-control abilities that make them exceptionally strong compared to other encounters, and finding scrolls or potions to counter-act their power is at best a chore and at worst impossible as the tooltips to not tell you what type of protection would help; looking at you, lich. Also your companions want to have sex with you almost the instant they see which I find very off-putting. Relationship drama is not my idea of fun. It can be ignored. Overall an excellent CRPG with only the smallest of issues, absolutely satisfying from start to finish.