The story captivated from the very start and even without prior Pathfinder setting knowledge I was able to get my bearings. Still, the game is very unforgiving with it's timer design and enemies which use spells or abilities that drain your companions attributes forcing you to either rest or painfully try to survive with a companion that is one attribute damage away from death. The good thing is that eventually you too get those spells, however in my case I had already cleared most of the map at that point and weren't able to much use those. Characters and their personal stories were interesting on top of that with enhanced edition the reported bugs seem to be gone. However, there are some problems with it too: Some quest tips are very vague, and certain quests are also heavily railroaded. Kingdom management seems half-baked and the construction of buildings, etc. (in kingdom management) does not affect the 3D environments of your villages which you will be seeing. On top of that you don’t actually see your kingdom. Technical problems with the mouse getting blocked by 3D assets (environment or even certain dead mobs) when trying to order a companion to use throwable flasks or spells in caves or similar tight corridors. This I was able to circumvent with a camera rotation mod. Very little voice acting after the third chapter or so, however it picks up near the endgame. AI for warrior characters doesn’t seem to use unlocked abilities. During the playthrough the game crashed 6 times with 5 of those in a certain part of the endgame, but luckily, I was able to fix the constant crashes in the endgame by switching to windowed mode. In summary, flawed game with interesting premise and good story, however I wouldn’t recommend this to people new to cRPG or without patience. To those I’d recommend the Pillars of Eternity.
Main story isn’t as long and well-structured as in PoE1 since during the sailing and side missions the main story seems to be on hold. Although the main story did pick up near the end. The good: Side missions on the other hand are many and branching. On my first main city visit I spent about 30 hours doing side missions all over the city. I liked the city map visualizations which showed where you are, the places you could visit and when you travelled in the city it also showed the trail of your journey through the streets and alleys. The bad: Ship combat really wasn’t my thing, therefor I used to just board everyone before the actual naval combat started. And I missed the old Castle management aspect. There just isn’t much to manage on your ship. My biggest gripe with PoE2 was the party size. In PoE2 you can have only a party of 5 whilst in the first one you could have a party of 6. Because of this I didn’t like to experiment with different party configurations as much. DLC: For me the DLC the “Seeker, slayer and survivor” was the most ‘meh’ due to its combat focus. Beast of Winter and The Forgotten Sanctum were good because of their lore heavy nature.
