I really like isometric RPG´s as they often combine engaging storytelling with good gameplay. They often intervine story with gameplay.I was really into pillars of eternity at the start and i still like it. But in retrospect it has some issues that really kill it for me being as one of my favorite games. My favorite part is the whole RPG system template that the game brought you. Unlike baldurs gate and co. you dont have dump stats that you never need. Intelligence can be really useful for a berserker as it increases his aoe spells and so on. There are enough classes and lots of ways to experiment with. While the equipment system is basically the same as in baldurs gate except you can upgrade your weapons yourself with ingredients. I often found myself not finding any tough and having so much money not knowing what to do with it. Also there is so much junk equipment you will basically drown in ingredients and equipment you have no use for. The game offers lots of useless spells aswell. You dont have to play the game twice to see many spells that just completely exceed in contrast to other. The story itself tries to be really edgy and grim dark. And i like it. It does work and offers some great world and character building. You compagnions are all interestening with lots of story arcs. But there are sadly only 1 compagnion for each class in the game and some are even locked behind DLC. Dialogue itself is important and written really well here.Sometimes you dont know if people tell you fairy tales or if they describe true historic events. Its great. If the game just doesnt overwhelm you with it. Really i personally hated how one person can suddenly talk a pages long of story. Despite being someone who reads all the books in baldurs gate. Overall i can recommend the game but there are clearly tons of issues with the game as much as i liked the great skilling system and the writing, there is just so much wasted potential in this game. 3.5/5 Decent game
I personally had some smaller childhood experiences with the game. I am kinda nostalgic to it but merely because i know the game, its setting and most of the gameplay yet re-experienceing it now makes me always wonder how persistent a child could be to find out things on their own if they want to. Now it doesnt say im a really bad gamer but i somehow lack patience. Its my issue i know but not every problem about the game itself is my fault. The worldbuilding is great as it doesnt take you hundreds of expositions and every person telling you whats going on by talking to the ingame character like he is dumb. I love the rather grim dark post future alien colony setting and the main characters look is so unique and recognizeable that he is almost adoring despite clealry being designed rather grotesque The game starts of well and fantastic. It doesnt really hold your hand but still introduces you into various aspects of the gameplay. Its not as punishing as some older games tend to be yet the difficulty can have certain spikes. Some find the controles clunky. I think they do work well most of the time. There are issues when you are trying to climb something as your character sometimes moves too far or you arent able to really see if the ledge is there. Also having a map would really help as the maps can get confusingly big. But still it requires lots of skill and wits to pull of some stuns. I personally found some riddles very challenging and kinda too much for me. Some of the action passages are plain annoying as i dont like doing obstacle work while having such kind of controle system. Story wise its interestening but after leaving the factory you are working in it gets downhill. You are suddenly the chosen one and must beat a huge alien conglomerate alone? Overall i can recommend the game but only barely as the difficulty can be very hard and the controles can be annoying sometimes. Yet it got a charme and i personally fancied the setting a lot. 3/5 Decent game.
I really loved the variety of weapons, enemies and lines of dialogue the main character spouts. Its really unqiue while not being always funny more like cringey on porpuse. The secrets are very unique in this game and there are lots of them to find. The story itself is very simple but the levels later on drag on a bit too much in my opinion. Some of them are just too huge to justify looking in each corner for a keycard. While in other games (from the same developer) like duke nukem 3d do the key card collecting to open doors and get into new areas MOST of the time well, here it can be a complete mess. Some of the keycards are so well hidden i didnt find them after dozens of minutes until i gave up and looked up a guide and then said to myself how the fck was i supposed to find this. Some keycards are even better hidden than some secrets. But yea i would definetly recommend it to play if you like oldschool shooters and already finished duke nukem 3d.
The story itself is a confusing mess at first, the problem is that everyone talks to you like you know everything, despite being an outsider.Because most of it is religious telltale it really makes the player interpretate parts of the story, if its true or not, on their own. Cant complain about the story really. Quests are often repetetive. But there arent many. While there are many classes, there are some races which give you traits, while some races are in my opinion statistically wise complete crap. The equipments are rather strange. Basically there are no real better crafted items than others, there are just enchanted once and some which arent. Only annoying is that you need ingredients to enchant items, but its hard to find some of them even for some basic enchantments. Later on i had so much money but couldnt buy anything with it because i already had better gear than the store would sell, but still couldnt buy any ingredients. But the variety of equipment is huge, there are even flintlock pistols. But the freedom to create a character in this game is really unique. Other game have dump stats that definetly need to be maxed. As an example if you take a berserker, you usually would dump all points on strength,health and rest on agillity or something? In this game even intelligence is really important for a berserker because it helps with his warcries. Really good idea, the skilling system is one of the best ive ever seen in videogames. One one hand you got a huge amount of skills and abillities to pick from, on the other hand some are so terribly useless. I had a couple of bugs in the game, none gamebreaking i couldnt finish one side quests tough that was a real buzzkill but overall its almost bug free, my second playtrough had none. Overall i definetly had my fun with this game some minor flaws i mentioned with bugs, character creation,quests and enchanment and abillities really kills that 5/5 i would have given it.
I came here expected a game that is like the first one except you have more guns and its in multiplayer. Thats totally wrong. The game starts with unique handcrafted maps tricking the player that its like i mentioned above. After 2 levels you immediatly get an annoying fetch quest (collect 3 things, kill enemy collect his thropy etc) in a map that is boring as hell, completely barren and i didnt even bother looking for secrets if there are any. The map has 0 structure its just "open" where some areas are completely useless to go. You usually have enough money and xp is only thing you do side missions. The side and main missions have some sort of story to them and cheesy lines. But they mostly end up being fetch quests in the same 2-3 maps until you get a story mission that is somewhat unique. The hardest difficulty is way much more boring than its hard. All it ends up making enemies having more life so you have to keep running and collect ammo from the boxes all over the map. I stopped playing on hard because i had zero fun shooting the same enemy over and over again. While that might be fine with bosses that have attack patterns, which is in this game, rarely, its not okay with random soldiers who are just tougher than the others. Combat is great tough, many weapons which feel totally distinct from each other. When i started playing on normal difficulty it was way much more fun because enemies didnt need minutes to die. Also dont even get me started on the loot system, it spams you full of upgrade gems that rarely do anything besides + crit chance. But a few gems were just simple upgrades you could buy in the first game, like dual wielding etc. Overall i didnt really like the changes they made, but i love the gunplay and the variety of guns but everything else falls flat. I still do had my fun rushing trough main story and some side quests but thats it.
