Just like the first DLC, this one is more of the "hey, here's another rather lengthy (by PoE II standards) questline". This time, it has a bit more to do with the main story and a few more interesting world building things can be learned, but it's still a rather unremarkable addition to the game.
If you want to have more story content in Deadfire and don't care about the quality of it, you can give it a go.
This expansion is all about choices. Even the order of exploration changes the storyline. The story ties quite nicely to the main game and there are a few difficult encounters. Pretty good addition to the main game.
Encountered a game breaking bug, game stuck in a cut-scene in the sanctum.
Apparently, the bug is known for a long but no fix is available.
You may not encounter it, but if you do, your game is finished unless you have a savegame outside the sanctum
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.
The Forgotten Sanctum received a lot of praise, and some of it is deserved. It has the most elaborate and unexpected plot of the three Deadfire DLCs and a couple of interesting characters. It has some challenging fights but not as many as SSS. It feels like more of the good stuff from Deadfire.
Therein also lies one of its weaknesses. It's just more of Deadfire. The Beast of Winter shows snippets of a few key events from Eora's history, on maps with novel puzzle mechanics. SSS has a variety of combat encounters with all kinds of gimmicks. Nothing in FS stands out. The little bit of puzzle in FS is rudimentary even by Deadfire's standard, and the combat is sometimes challenging but overwhelmingly uninspired. The writers stepped up, but the mechanics devs just gave up.
Nowhere is the shortcoming of the mechanics more eregious than npc encounters, and it is FS's other major weakness. Gone are the secondary npcs that can be dealt with multiple ways. Ok. Technically many still can. But the peaceful resolutions either require prohibitively high skill checks or quest items hidden in other parts of the DLC when I did not know such an item was expected or even existed. Admittedly, it makes sense that meeting even initially non-hostile npcs in a dungeon carries risks. However, the narrow and sometimes impossible peaceful alternatives run so contrary to how Deadfire plays, indeed how almost every Obsidian game plays, that the more I played FS the more grotesque it felt.
Most consider FS to be the strongest of Deadfire's three DLCs. It certainly has the most content. However, I think it is clearly the least unique. Standing alone, it is more of a good thing. Compared with BoW and SSS, ironically, it feels the least consequential. Together with its questionnable npc encounters, I assume to increase its replay value, it showed me once again that there can be too much of a good thing.
I gave it 3 stars at first, but added 1 for Tayn, cameo by a third wizard, and my ending.
