Deadfire is a great game and well worth playing. It has been a while since I have played an RPG that engaged me so fully. The combat system is great, and about half of the replayability of Deadfire comes from trying out various party combinations to try and master the combat system. I compare this with PoE1, which had tons of combat problems and poorly designed encounters, and the combat did not become bearable to me until the release of the expansions. Deadfire still has the classic PoE pathfinding issues, but that is the only complaint I have about the combat. The story and quests are good, but I would say a slight decline from PoE1. Eothas just is not compelling as a villain, especially compared to Thaos. The whole story sets up the idea that Eothas did not mean to harm the main character, the main character was just a speed bump on the way to what Eothas wanted to accomplish. I found myself chasing Eothas because the story forced me to do so, not because I particularly cared about what he was doing. The other gods try and push you on to find out what Eothas is doing, but they are written like bickering children and not like very powerful beings that have centuries of wisdom and experience, so it is hard to take them seriously. I found the side quests much more interesting and pertinent to my character's development. The factions are great, and I liked how none of them were just blatantly evil. It is not trivial to choose which faction to support, and it's worth playing through the game multiple times to pursue other factions. However, I did not like the common modern RPG trope where you have to commit cold-blooded murder or otherwise condemn innocent people just to continue along a faction's plot line. With a main character as important as the Watcher is to the Deadfire universe, it should be a straightforward option to say "sorry, not murdering for you" and the faction would still want to work with you for the advantages that brings regardless.
This is an enjoyable game that captures the spirit of the original two games, but also changing things up enough that it stands alone on its own merits. Given that it is not at a AAA price point, it is a definite buy for those that like the 4X genre. It has its flaws, hopefully things that will be addressed by the developer in time, but it does not prevent the game from being fun. The addition of star lanes makes ship movement on the galaxy map a strategic decision, and adds a lot to the game. While people do not generally play 4X games for the cinematic sequences and voice overs, they are very well done and make the game feel great to play. They help bring each of the races alive, both when you play as them and play against them. The UI works very smoothly, and managing even a very large empire does not feel like a chore as it does in some 4X games. The AI is competent; if you do not defend your territory well, the AI will take advantage of it. I have mixed feelings on the real-time combat. While I agree that late game it can be highly annoying to wait for a fleet of 50 ships to individually move and fire,, the real-time combat does not feel nearly as tactical. Ship positioning does not feel as important. It also causes multiplayer combat to be auto-resolve only, which takes a lot of the fun out of the multiplayer mode. The biggest negative I have had with the game is that it seems like a lot of the highly powerful game mechanics were removed. Race traits seem very tame compared with MOO2, almost like the developer was trying to keep things conservatively balanced. Powerhouse race traits are either gone (like Democracy, Telepathic, Unification) or poor shadows of their former selves (Tolerant, Subterranean, Lithovore). Leaders, and by extension the super powerful ones, are gone as well. Part of the fun of MOO2 was pitting one set of overpowered mechanics against another.
