In short: The game itself is good, while the technical side of it is quite mediocre. The game contains a lot of bugs and glitches, which may cause it to be unplayable to some.
+ Good story
+ Interesting quests
+ Quality voice-acting
+ Fun combat system
- Game-breaking memory leak causing insufferable lag on some computers (graphics quality does not affect this)
- Glitching User Interface, unable to leave some areas due to icons dissappearing (graphics quality does not affect this)
- Lag spikes during animation-intensive scenes
- Complicated references and lore that requires knowledge from the first game
- Slow development concerning game-breaking bug fixes
The isometric cRPG is my favorite genre and I have played thousands of hours of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape, Arcanum and the likes. My love for the genre started with the original Pillars of Eternity and I'm happy to say that the sequel is also fantastic: it's well-written, the combat is phenomenal, the music is incredible and the art direction is unparalleled. It's definitely the most gorgeous game in the genre. The DLCs are also really good and I highly recommend them. If you like RPGs at all yu owe it to yourself to play this one.
I loved the first one, and the sequel is amazing too :)
The story, graphics, companions, etc... everything is amazing! There are some bugs tho... But it didn't stop me :p I'll gladly make another character once everything is ok.
Honestly, I dont know what to think. It's a game done really well when it comes to mechanics, very polished in terms of art, dialogues etc...
.. yet at the same time, the story completely did NOT captivate me. At all. It felt... forced. It felt rushed. And while the dialogues with various GODS were fantastic, it felt.. just MEH. Nyeh. It's trying real hard, but maybe its just trying TOO hard, hm ?
Also, the main plot is SUPERBLY short and 90% of the side quests seem almost meaningless, and seem to have zero impact on anything other than a short ambient message at the end of the game (which is cool, but again, it leaves a feeling of .. nyeh. Meh. Meaningless)
inventory management is a pain in the ass - and at the same time, you sell 99% of stuff you find, since you can upgrade your artfifacts.
PoE 2 is definitely a huge improvement over its bland predecessor, with interesting mechanics, role play improvements, and good dialogue. It is being let down by a badly mastered Unity engine, though.
The Good:
+ Improvements to the often nonsensical PoE1 system with better designed abilities and multi-classing.
+ Pretty tightly designed world - you are free to explore, but it's not an open world where you could get lost.
+ The game is has proper pacing and length (no 250+ hour time sink but not short either).
+ Dialogues are voiced now, and writing is organic, and not simply a huge lore dump. Also, kickstarter NPCs are gone for good.
+ Achievements mean something (you get points through them which can be spent to improve your main character when playing again).
The Bad:
- Lots of story NPCs are quite unlikeable, and accepting their "personalities" require very specific tastes. Thankfully, you can use sidekicks (companions without quests but with banter).
- You cannot re-roll your class, which is a huge oversight (you *can* re-roll your current class at any time but you cannot change it).
- Poor optimization (nights and storms will often tank fps).
- Loading screen simulator to an insane degree (you go to a tiny location - loading screen - you go upstairs to another tiny location - loading screen - now you must go back - loading screen...). I can say without an exxageration that 30% of my playtime are loading screens, and I am sitting on a Samsung Pro SSD with i7-12700. It is disruptive and absolutely unacceptable in 2018, let alone 2022 - developers, please learn how to use overlays in Unity to avoid incessant loading screens. Nobody has less than 16 GB RAM in this day and age, so you don't have to be afraid to use it. Even Pathfinder devs use it.
