Pillars of eternity is a new take on classical crpg, baldur's gate 2 being the obvious reference. It is a very carefully crafted piece, to the point that you can smell a bit too much the sweat. The love of the authors for writings and lore is extremely strong, quite unfortunately gameplay wise it is more often a loss than a gain. Overly long descriptions, circonvoluted dialogues, and most characteristically, dozens of books about the lore of this world are scattered everywhere. "Fine", you think, "I may as well slash my way through the game and avoid theses hundred of pages". Well not really, as the game is fundamentally conceived to reward the careful reader : it does not reward you mechanically, however it gives you a fundamental advantage : You do get to understand what the heck is going on. Indeed merely following the main quest line makes you the blind toy of superior forces and you will reach the end with a feel of failure and frustration. To some extent, I actually like this. Rather than putting you in charge, everything in this game is shades of grey. Should I help the resistance against a bloothirsty lord ? Should I kill and loot the crazy scientists/torturers ? The answer is rarely what you thought it would be. A subtle story then ? Well yes and no, because this type of narration is erected here as a system : whatever completely demented people you meet, guilty of innumerable murders, they always have a very reasonable argument to their behaviour. At some point this became a joke with my girlfriend "oh wait, I am eager to know why the monstruous beast dwelling under my keep and making people crazy has a point" (spoiler alert : it does). Overall, PoE remains a very enjoyable game. The combat system is deep and rewarding, the story is rich and clever, you have a fair amount of choices with lasting impact on the world. It does feel sometime like the schoolwork of very applied and gifted kids, but nobody's perfect.
I'm not much of a metagame analyst, so I won't bother trying to describe the pros and cons of the gameplay or scenario choices. However, I do remember that this game contains some of the most (if not the most) charismatic bad guys I have ever seen, all media included. The story is fascinating and provides a true sense of evil that no other product of the star wars universe managed to reach. I also remember that the discussion with other members of your group were very useful and rewarding, up to the point where [spoiler] You were able to train your own padawans, which was really something. [/spoiler] And this was a non patched non modded version that I played, so arguably the game should be even better...
King's bounty is awfully cute, cartoony and shiny. If you only trust this aspect you may be heavily deceived for at heart it is a quite hardcore turn based strategy game, with huge story and numerous intense battles. It looks like HOMM, but has relatively noticeable differences (imho for the better), most notably no town gestion and possibility to avoid fights by running away from ennemies on the world map. One of the few games in the last years on which I ended late in the night wondering why I could not stop earlier. The game is balanced, challenging,and runs pretty smoothly on quite old PCs, playing it will make you a better person. Or something like that. If you were to like it note that you may also check its stand alone "armored princess" which adds sweet little achievements and various small adjustments to another huge campaign.
