Pillars of Eternity has been touted as a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. I think it's more fair to say it's a successor to Icewind Dale or perhaps Neverwinter Nights, which fans of the old school Infinity Engine games will know is not the same thing. I'll glean over the pitfalls of the game's fervent desire to be original in terms of gameplay mechanics as it's a well-covered topic on many forums. The short of it is the combat system is too elaborate for casual gamers while at the same time is not very intuitive even for veterans. Getting familiar with the new combat system and all its moving parts is a laborious undertaking. It's great for tacticians who love those old dungeon crawls and min-maxing gear/stats, but not so fun if you're in the game for the story. That brings me to what I found most disappointing about Pillars: the game's writing is not great. Your motivation here is you're dying and in a race against time to cure yourself. Not exactly original, and yet the writers are doing way too much world building about places and themes not even relevant to this game's content. All that extraneous info-dumping can't conceal how bland the central quest is and how poorly the narrative is constructed. Even the big end-game reveal about the divine pantheon is anticlimactic when you consider the gods go virtually unmentioned prior to that point save for one scene. I'm not saying Pillars of Eternity is bad. It's okay. You've got some great companions like Eder, Sagani, and Kana who you can get really attached to (and then there are others like Grieving Mother who talking to is an actual, literal chore). But beyond a few glowing moments of great character writing I found little to bring me back to this game after I'd finished it the first time. That's not to imply fans of Baldur's Gate won't like this title, but if you liked Baldur's Gate for the storytelling you may find Pillars to be overhyped and underwhelming.
