So, I am doing a replay on mac a good while after finishing it on playstation.
I remember at the end rushing through it on PS as I got bored of repetitive ship battles and a stale storyline. I tried going a different route this time and now after a good talk with Eothas and starting a new chapter in the storyline....I'm inclined to go to the next part in the story and just finish it ASAP instead of the 101 sideplots because....Well, as an RPG gamer both paper and PC for 30 years, this is just dull beyond comprehension.
Often, things don't make sense, like liberating an NPC and telling them to go rest in your boat while you clear the area, and they're in your ship in ship management, but the next encounter the NPC suddenly speaks up, so they're present - But click on your boat and they're there, too? Same for a lot of quests, even the main one: If you don't follow the linear way of doing things (often you're told very heavy handedly), you will get a ton of text about things having happened or you supposedly did, but actually didn't. Sail to Ashen Maw where Eothas is in your first chapter instead of following the inear story for instance, it's hilarious.
Also: If the history of RPGs taught anything, it's that people love high fantasy, green fields, lush exploration in them, etc., from Tolkien, to early D&D, to Baldur's gate, etc.; Ad&D in the 80s and 90s also thought people needed new textures, and tried to push them into Arabic settings, planeswalking, Pirate settings in far off lands like this game, and more. Guess where those settings were 5 to 10 years later due to popularity and sales? So yeah, POE2 didn't sell well even before people knew how it played, while a lot bought and liked POE1, maybe think a bit how the announcement about the whole pirate and sailing thing went down, eh? 100x the same boat fight gets repetitive and dull as hell too.
This has to be the best game of 2018 so far and probably the best pirate game since AC Black Flag, it's probably made my #1 favorite game of all time. It departs from the boring traditional fantasy setting and moves towards something unique and not generally seen in video games.
Well, I'll say nothing new apart from what has already been said by many fans of cRPG genre, and who are familiar with the previous Pillars of Eternity game and other Obsidian projects. Maybe, comparisons with PoE 1 have already become too banal, but, begging your pardon, I can't avoid them.
Graphics: awesome models, funny animations, beautiful textures...and low fps. Sometimes too low. And, man, those lags, freezes, even crashes on some systems. My mark is 3/5, since graphics has always been the least important part in RPG games.
Sound: voice acting is very good, very catchy, people from Critical Role have done excellent job; soundtracks are also wonderful. But full voice acting in dialogues was too expensive decision, which has led to serious cuts in the most crucial parts of the product: a) main story plot; b) companions; c) end-game locations and content; d) testing. So, 4/5.
Story: very disappointing. In the previous game we had some mystery, tension of the main story plot was raising gradually, reaching its culmination at the very end. Here, in Deadfire, you feel like watching a boring film, already knowing all the spoilers, and you have almost zero influence on the most important moments of the story. You're a mere plaything in other's hands (gods' or kith's), "decision-making" is an illusion, and all you wish is to end this circus show as soon as you can. Frankly, there are some good side quests, and factions are developed better than in PoE 1 (though, if you're roleplaying a good guy, you'll find all of them disgusting - every faction has a solid amount of dirt on their hands). But still, half of those "quests" are about earning money, no story. So, 1/5.
Companions: developers confess that they've made a decision towards simpler and "cheaper" companions' personal quests, since those in PoE 1 were "too expensive to implement". Well, in Deadfire personal quests are really "cheap", in the worst sense of this word. Very intriguing beginnings, and very disappointing ends. Relationship system and romances are ok, but somewhat buggy. And, in my opinion, sidekicks ("companions" without personal quests, dialogues, banters...any interesting content) are not worth nether time nor place on the ship. Few of them have unique equipment/races/classes/abilities, why should we bother with dummies, if we can just hire custom adventurers in any tavern and give them good stats? So, 3/5.
Gameplay & balance: just after release, people observed that battles are too easy, even on Path of the Damned difficulty. Desighers tried to fix that in the series of patches, they nerfed some abilities, manually added high-level monsters to some locations...but the worst and the least effective decision was a huge nerf of items and equipment. Balance is not about nerfing items, you know: people LOVE to find powerful items in distant locations, after defeating some dangerous monsters. The problem is that game mechanics in Deadfire is too complex with all those multiclasses, dozens of abilities, party composition options - so a particular item, being pathetic in general, can become decent or even very powerful upon a specific character build. Manually added monsters are really challenging for low-level characters, but only in the first part of the game - as I've already said, the second part of the game, high-level locations, and endgame were made quick and dirty, so they are still easy for a careful and smart player. Regarding ship management and sea battles, I have no other options but to repeat other people's words: sea battles are boring crap as soon as you find out the only "cheese" tactics, and castle management in PoE 1 was much more funny and useful. General mark for this section will be 4/5.
Stability & playability: really, why do bother yourself with hiring more testers when you can just make your end-users testing your game for their own money? Performance issues, quest issues, abilities issues, party relationship system and disposition bugs... Some bugs were fixed in 1.x series of patches, but in 2.0 patch they've managed to break even what was ok back in the release version. Fortunately, patches are coming out rather often, and on GOG you always have access to the fresh beta-version. So, 3/5.
Verdict: 3 out of 5. Worth buying on sale, maybe after the last paid DLC release, when all major bugs will be fixed.
