By the game itself its so much like a classic Baldurs Gate and it has very nice characters involved with pretty great stories behind them. The most brutal and annoying part is the difficulty curve EARLY on. At low level its just frustrating to get 1 shot in the tutorial missions, thats crazy and even if its true to the Penn&Paper (as first level is supposed to die to absolutely everything) , the game would work a lot better if it simply started at like level 3 and avoided this problem (as for a video game, this is just annoying, its not fun, its 100% annoying). Then you get again very early a Quest with an enemy that is just flat out immune to your damage and you just die. Again, its true to the Penn&Paper , but in these points it absolutely should avoid putting players into these situations so early in the game, when people badly need to just get into the game. The non-existence of a way to respec and reskill your characters is also an annoying problem that is just again because in Penn&Paper you dont allow it , but the game should absolutely allow it (and make it simply an option or a game mode that does not allow respec/reskills , but any more casual level should not stand in the way of the player). Then we have some very crazy difficulty spikes in the game early on, which should be easy to avoid for the devs. Simply put, these things should not exist, the very first playtester will point these things out and they have to be fixed immediatly. City Building and all the later parts are fine, i dig them and they are fun, at the later stages when you understand the games rules and all its trying to do, the game works way more smoothly (it even becomes too easy, which is ironic, as the early game is literally the most deadly point in the game). A better representation of time and active quests like a timeline would be great. In the end, its a really great RPG game, its pretty much on the level of Pillars of Eternity and does some things even better.
Games like this show that RPGs will never die. While going full on 3D has its own merrits, staying top-down isometric is just a style that works on its own. Pillars 1 provided a fresh world and a nice new "Baldurs Gate" like feeling. This extends all of it , pretty much like Baldurs Gate 2 did in the past. Good game, just gets better and probably gets a bunch of extra DLC content to extend the game further.
Lots of RPGs are just a story and you play the story. Freedom is strictly limited. What this game does absolutely right is how it opens its world and quest system to do almost anything you want to do and uses the ingame magic system to interact with the world. Fireball in most games will just deal damage, here it burns stuff down, it will melt ice, it will actually do what a fireball should do. Moving objects feels smooth, little riddles are satisfying to solve and the world opens itself to many great quest lines. Objects have weight, objects behave to the elements and you can use them to trigger switches, traps, thats how it should always work. The main story isnt bad, but its quests are just losely connected, as you collect blood stones all over the place. Some smaller quest lines have quite some charm, if the player chooses to read the text and not just spam to the reward. The game delivers a lot that you will miss badly in other RPGs after. The ability to disconnect your group and move them independly, even in different areas, one is in combat, the other runs around doing quests, while one is in a dialoge to steal with the other is marvelous, it feels right to do it that way and its a great implementation on the UI, very nicely done. Turn-based combat is nice, but it can drag on for a long long time in some fights, maybe enemies should move all at once to speed up the process if they are so many of them acting (with like 10+ enemies involved it takes a lot of time for them to just attack you all over). The "repair" system is more annoying than good, should be removed as it doesnt really have a purpose other than annoy you when stuff breaks in combat (you just have to repair stuff all the time, which is tedious clicking and nothing else). If you want to actually "role play" a bit and do so with a friend, this game opens up a lot of possibilities, really awesome experience. Fantastic game for all RPG lovers.
It does a a very well job to introduce a special world with its own rules. Having a ominous overlord rule the world is something that allows a lot of epicness to follow it up. The games soundtrack is not bad, but it becomes shallow from time to time, would have liked a more immersive sound/music system here, to get some chatter and background noise in towns with people and a some more crypt like sounds in underground dungeons. 3/5 here, its ok, but could be done much better to increase the atmosphere. Graphics are totally fine. Could be better ofcourse, but they totally do their job and the world is interesting enough in how it looks and it overall fits the theme. The actual combat is pretty buff heavy. That means, if you play on any harder difficulty, you will use a lot of buff spells to get you in a fighting mode that stuff does not 1 shot you. Having a very high grace / parry / dodge chance is extremly important early on, as it literally reduces damage by 50% or even completly by avoiding it entirely. Healing wise, you can totally miss on the healing magic, which puts you in a tremendously abysmal situation. So the game does a terrible job in introducing its extremly important magic. And every character can and should use some magic, at least some buff spells, even if they are melee fighters, everyone can pack a healing touch, a buff spell or something to work with. Attacking gets such a big recovery penalty in big armor, that you want to be almost nacked to get a good damage dealer (recovery time at like 1sec is so much better compared to 3+ while you can totally tank damage with enough buffs by spells and simplyd isabling them with stuns/prone/freeze and all that stuff). Pure casters as damage dealers are bad early and turn into unstoppable magic machine guns in the late game, which makes any combat trivial, as you can totally controll and obliterate any opponent and any number of opponents easily. A great game, and some great ideas that should be honored.
