What starts out as a fun miniature side story looking into the Eastern stolen lands becomes a terrible death march as you are forced into an hours long dungeon you can't retreat from or rest in. This would be almost tolerable if the dungeon itself wasn't a teleporter maze filled with almost exclusively disguised enemies that will attack you whether or not you spring their disguise first. I understand this is the point. Madness. Whimsy. The chaos of the Fey. It's not fun. This is not a fun DLC to play. Other people have mentioned turning on story mode during the final dungeon to mitigate the difficulty and tedium. I would describe this as entirely necessary. The positives don't outweigh the negatives, don't waste your time or money.
Forgotten Sanctum is the final major expansion for PoE2, and perhaps the last major piece of content for a Pillars of Eternity CRPG ever, and you can really tell. Obsidian went all out for Forgotten Sanctum, resulting in it being the highest quality content in the game, eclipsing even the first game's quality. The conceit of the expansion is this: An archmage has gone missing researching something on The Black Isles (a cute callback to Obsidian devs' days at Black Isle studios), and Archmage Llengrath asks you to go investigate. When you do, you find a massive library, arcane laboratory, and cult headquarters of the Hand Occult built into the island, which turns out to be the slumbering, abandoned body of the god Wael. You now have to make your way through the dungeons of the Forgotten Sanctum, defeating monstrous creatures and solving mysterious puzzles, in order try and save Archmage Maura, and put an end to a plot that risks the safety of all Eora. The Forgotten Sanctum is an incredible area, and a love letter to CRPG dungeons, flush with traps, absolutely horrifying monsters, and unique treasures. I know no words adequate to express this sentiment, but I am certain of the fact that if you enjoy CRPGs, you will enjoy exploring the Forgotten Sanctum and its mysteries.
This is easily the least well liked PoE2 dlc and I really can't understand why, as it was my second favourite after FS. It's short, simple, but sweet, and offers replay value after you finish the main area story. The conceit of the DLC is simple; a ghost comes looking for you as the colosseum-island of Kazuwari, an area blessed by Galawain with unnaturally strong monsters and warriors, needs help, you arrive and have to go through some arena fights before you make a choice whether to rebel against Galawain's will or risk the island's safety. The appeal of SSS is not in its story, although it is more than serviceable, it is in the fights. Deliberate combat encounters, rather than coincidental ones scattered throughout dungeon areas, provide a unique tactical challenge not found elsewhere in the game, and I had to repeatedly reevaluate my strategies in order to make headway where elsewhere in the game I could bruteforce my way through by burning more resources. Even after you complete the main campaign of the story, there are artifacts scattered all over Deadfire that you can take back to Kazuwari for more unique combat challenges and unique rewards. I highly recommend anyone who enjoys the tactical combat aspect of PoE2 to give SSS a try, and appreciate it for the breath of fresh air it is.
There's a strange consensus that out of the three PoE 2 dlcs, BoW is good, SSS is bad, and FS is amazing. I genuinely don't understand the first as I was thoroughly unimpressed with Beast of Winter. With the DLC, you get the opportunity to recruit a new companion, Vatnir. Only, he's not a companion. He's a sidekick, which means almost no interactivity or voice lines, and no companion quest for the priest of Rymrgand in the Rymrgand DLC, where you can fight the avatar of Rymrgand at the end. Speaking of the whole "priest of Rymrgand" thing, that's his unique subclass, which gives him almost none of the healing or party buffs you'd want from a priest, instead focusing on self-buffing and frost damage. If you want to bring Vatnir for the quests in the DLC area he appears in, you'll be bringing a whiny nerd with almost no unique dialogue who does frost damage through a bunch of fights with frost resistant enemies. The setting is interesting at times when it isn't tedious, but I don't feel like I learned anything about the Saint's War or ancient Engwith or Ukaizo just because they were shown to me in a different way. The new fights are more difficult than they are tactically challenging, expect a lot of knockouts, especially in Waidwen's area. Ultimately, the star of the DLC is the dragon boss fight, which isn't the final boss fight based on your choices, where you'll have one character hopping between different platforms to trigger buffs and debuffs. That hardly makes up for the earlier tedious grind against enemies which scale very strangely difficult into the late game. If you need more PoE2, by all means, give it a shot, but this was easily my least favourite of the DLCs.
I consider Pillars 1 the gold standard for modern crpgs. It has a unique world, a world that asks you interesting questions and it gives you the freedom to answer them however you choose. Pillars 2 is in some places ahead of the first game and in some places behind. Improvements Customization: new character and class customization options make creating characters a lot more fun and involved than the first game, and most other CRPGs aside from it. Graphics: Looks absolutely gorgeous with new technology and attention to detail while still keeping the art design from the first game, although it does suffer from some strange performance issues occasionally. Combat: Combat is more dynamic and fun than ever before, with a wider variety of options open to you, a new explosive item type, new weapons and proficiency abilities for them, it's almost incomparable to the first game. Overall: Characters will react in conversation based on your dialogue choices. There's now a cooking skill that allows you to craft food for unique stat bonuses when you camp. The game is fully voice acted. The world feels more alive than ever. Unfortunately, it does fail in some areas. There were places in Pillars 1 where it became jarringly obvious it was a kickstarter game, but it was mainly things you could ignore, graves with memes on them, backer npcs, etc. Pillars 2 is more like a kickstarter game where they were struggling to meet stretch goals. There are less companions than the first game, but now there are "sidekicks", companions with little dialogue, no companion quests, and greatly reduced interactivity. One of the "full" companions, Tekehu, is missing a companion quest. The story, too, is less impressive, with bickering gods hassling you to do their bidding and warring factions doing much the same, with the ultimate ending being something you're not empowered to stop. I enjoyed it, but less than the original. Overall, a fantastic CRPG, but with some unfortunate flaws.
A bit more shallow than its contemporaries (especially for the price tag), but the writing carries it so much farther. This is Fallout: New Vegas level Obsidian, where you'll just end up coming back over and over again to replay it. It does have its weaknesses at certain points (mostly with the dlc that includes a not very good optional area and quests), but its strengths outshine it by such a huge margin that they become easy to overlook.
Let me be clear about this; Vampire's Fall: Origins is not a good game. It's not wholly unenjoyable, but this is not because of any actual virtue of the game itself, it's the compounding stupidity of everything about the writing, characters, and setting that make playing this game an excellent experience. You start the game in the village of Vamp'Ire. After the Witch King or whatever blows up your village, you and one other guy survive and become the first vampires, which are named after the village of Vamp'Ire. There's a quest where a villager sends you off to dispel a curse on their village that makes milk go bad or something, but when you get there, the enchanted rock that's keeping the curse alive tells you that the curse is actually making everyone in the village stupid. This game is awesome. ONLY pick it up on sale.
