Review RPG Codex Review: Pillars of Eternity, by Decado

[Turok]

This happen when you already live more than 20 years and play almost all rpg in market, everything got repetitive and nothing is new.

Oblivion is an amazing RPG if it's the first game you play. It has like skills and weapons and you fight monsters. How awesome is that?

Exactly, see how many copy they sell and you have your answer.

 

[Lord Andre]

Hey bros, can someone please post a link to Decado's review ? All I can find on the front page is some sort of apology letter.

 

[Lurker King]

This happen when you already live more than 20 years and play almost all rpg in market, everything got repetitive and nothing is new.

Is time to leave the games for the kids my friend.

I had a blast playing “Age of Decadence” and “Underrail”, and these games aren’t even finished yet. I also enjoyed some bits of “Dead State”. I’m looking forward to play “Torment: Tides of Numenera”, “Serpent in the Staglands”, “Insomnia”, among others. Also, I’m fortunate enough that I can still play for the first time classics such as “Realms of Arkania 2”, “Darklands”, “Wizardry”, “Betrayal at Krondor”, etc. So, no. I’m not burnout, far from it. PoE is not a good cRPG, period. Stop changing the subject.

 

[Turok]

This happen when you already live more than 20 years and play almost all rpg in market, everything got repetitive and nothing is new.

Is time to leave the games for the kids my friend.

I had a blast playing “Age of Decadence” and “Underrail”, and these games aren’t even finished yet. I also enjoyed some bits of “Dead State”. I’m looking forward to play “Torment: Tides of Numenera”, “Serpent in the Staglands”, “Insomnia”, among others. Also, I’m fortunate enough that I can still play for the first time classics such as “Realms of Arkania 2”, “Darklands”, “Wizardry”, “Betrayal at Krondor”, etc. So, no. I’m not burnout, far from it. PoE is not a good cRPG, period. Stop changing the subject.

That's my point, you play too much.

 

[tuluse]

He listed 3 games that he played...

 

[Turok]

He listed 3 games that he played...

And you believe him?

See how many he listed, he know too much for a newbie.

And see the 3 game he listed, you think a newbie will begin with THOSE???

That guy is burned, why i know?

He is HERE in the codex.

 

[Ellef]

Were you that desperate to have a shill review you took the first piece of shit that floated and linked it to your steam page to not jeopardise your PR with obsidian? Hard to get review pieces and free tickets when developers don't receive their complimentary fellatio.

Even the Pillows fanboys will admit that review was rubbish from a literary and explanatory viewpoint. Fucking Tigranes knew this review was shit and he reads obsidian forum posts everyday for fucks' sake.

If it were up to the staff that approved this piece, this place would be IGN with more one liners.

 

[tuluse]

And you believe him?

See how many he listed, he know too much for a newbie.

And see the 3 game he listed, you think a newbie will begin with THOSE???

That guy is burned, why i know?

He is HERE in the codex.

So why are you here?

 

[crawlkill]

Well it's my opinion, based on my subjective feeling that I liked the character. Boldness would be in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.

to go wayyy back, this is like calling Dragon Age 2's decision to kill off one of your siblings at the end of the tutorial bold. I mean...maybe you felt something, but don't be surprised if everyone else calls it a big nothing. the only relative blessing is that in PoE they didn't try to then spend the rest of the game on and off mourning that tutorial character, where in DA2 their name kept coming up even though the player knew and cared absolutely nothing for them.

Oblivion is an amazing RPG if it's the first game you play. It has like skills and weapons and you fight monsters. How awesome is that?

if it were the first game you'd ever played, Super Mario Brothers would be a better RPG than Oblivion. if you'd only ever played Oblivion and Super Mario Brothers and someone explained the basic outline of what an RPG is, any critical observer would still consider Super Mario Brothers the better RPG. an upgradable character! gameplay consequences for fucking up encounters! a story you can understand! if Oblivion had reduced all of its dialogue trees to "your daedra is in another castle," it would've made INFINITELY more sense.

I’m not going to even discuss the amount of experimental shit that Sawyer did in the game, his dismissive remarks about grognards, etc.

That really wasn't the problem with the game. IE games had obscure shit combat; PoE has transparent shit combat. I can break IE combat with one hand while gesturing for wine with the other. It's trivial. Anyone reading this thread can almost certainly do the same. The problem is the game world doesn't feel alive, that you don't care about anyone who speaks ever, that seemingly large-scale meaningful things you do don't have apparently large-scale consequences. It's a victim of its own scope.

The great success of BG2 and Torment was that their primarily cityscape environments meant that it seemed NORMAL that anything you might accomplish would only affect a small corner of the bustle of the city. PoE's more rural or sparsely-populated cityscapes make the insignificance of what you do more glaring. The relatively small number of problems on any given map make the player wonder why the relatively small number of people on that map give no shits when those problems have been resolved. Even if player agency was always fundamentally limited in IE games, locally, it seemed not to be--individuals involved in plots did seem to care. The definition of "local" is broad in PoE, and the individuals affected by plots too often don't seem to care.

That's the fundamental flaw with the game as compared to IE games. Nothing more. If you think IE games have deep tactical combat, you're...you're just dumb. They don't. They had easily breakable combat based on shit 2E D&D rules. And if you find PoE combat boring in comparison and consider that the flaw in the game...I don't know how to help you.

 

[Decado]

That's the fundamental flaw with the game as compared to IE games. Nothing more. If you think IE games have deep tactical combat, you're...you're just dumb. They don't. They had easily breakable combat based on shit 2E D&D rules. And if you find PoE combat boring in comparison and consider that the flaw in the game...I don't know how to help you.

This is the thing about combat difficulty, especially in the IE games (or even the games related to IE games, like Dragon Age). All combat systems are just that: systems. They require you to learn how they work in order to be proficient in them. In fact, when we talk about "learning" how to play a new IE game, we are really talking about how combat works, since combat is arguably the most complex system you have to learn for any IE game, certainly more complex than conversation or crafting or navigating the main screen. This means that for most people, most of the time -- and yes, I include most Codexers in this generalization -- combat is going to get easier the more you do it. I guarantee you that the first time you play through DA:O, most people will do worse in combat overall than they will on their second playthrough, or their third, or so one. I found DA:O's combat a bit difficult on the normal setting, but then of course I learned the system. On my third playthrough I completed the game on Nightmare, and did better than I had done on normal, by every measure: I died less often, reloaded less often, etc.

So when Sensuki wrote his long effort-post wherein he claimed I must not be very good at the game -- the game that has been officially out for 2 months, the game that I have played through one time -- my first thought was, okay, maybe I'm not very good at the game yet . . . so what? My second thought was that he was being sort of a dummy since he had been playing the beta for, what, six months at that point? Of course he is going to be better at it, and understand the complexities better, because he has played it for longer. And now that I'm on my second playthrough with the Monk, on a harder difficulty level, I'm already doing better than I did the first time through.

All this griping about difficulty seems like a giant dick-waving contest. I'm sure some dudes who have the time to do nothing but play vidya can burn through POTD because they have all day keep at it; on the other hand, I'm almost sure that some people are lying (it is the internet, after all) about how easy they found it, or that they even played it on a harder difficulty at all. But the main point here is that difficulty in these games is entirely dependent on your familiarity with the system, and your ability to learn. It is not like there is an algorithm running in the background to keep the difficulty dynamic. It's all simply a matter of time. How much time are you willing to invest to get good?

 

[Cadmus]

that's a cop out
we are expecting the people here to have some sort of a standard background in RPGs and they mostly agree that Hard is not hard because you just right-click through the game, same as I did on my first play-through, not bothering to learn anything about the system except for putting the numbers higher.

This should be the baseline of a new player, not the fact that some people are so shit at the game that they find it fun AND challenging on Normal .
if you want to say that the difficulty settings are a personal snowflake opinion because my mum would lose the first fight on Easy, you should be writing this for my mum's favourite woman's magazine. Sounds similar to putting a tutorial for using WASD in Call of Duty 15 because it might be too hard for the newcomers and if you disagree you're just waving your dick.

It's not a contest (although I'm not so sure about Sensuki) for me it's just eagerly wanting the game to challenge me and force me to use more of its options (for example as TW1 did with the alchemy) thus alleviating the monotony of the combat which isn't helped by the non-existing encounter design, shit items and no xp rewards.

 

[Decado]

if you want to say that the difficulty settings are a personal snowflake opinion because my mum would lose the first fight on Easy, you should be writing this for my mum's favourite woman's magazine. Sounds similar to putting a tutorial for using WASD in Call of Duty 15 because it might be too hard for the newcomers and if you disagree you're just waving your dick.

This is why I don't talk to fanatics. It is impossible for you to approach the topic without hyperbole and/or losing your shit. Comparing the complexity of a combat system to movement keys is the over-simplified argument of a retarded six year old.

 

[Cadmus]

if you want to say that the difficulty settings are a personal snowflake opinion because my mum would lose the first fight on Easy, you should be writing this for my mum's favourite woman's magazine. Sounds similar to putting a tutorial for using WASD in Call of Duty 15 because it might be too hard for the newcomers and if you disagree you're just waving your dick.

This is why I don't talk to fanatics. It is impossible for you to approach the topic without hyperbole and/or losing your shit. Comparing the complexity of a combat system to movement keys is the over-simplified argument of a retarded six year old.

I'm not losing my shit (at least this time). I'm simply bewildered you think that the difficulty of the combat is unimportant and even stranger that you were totally satisfied with the Normal difficulty even during the trash fights. Then you go and proclaim it's a dick waving contest. I used a hyperbole in this example because your own stance on this is out of the general curve of experience with the game, approaching more the hyperbole than what a normal player might experience. i.e. you played the game (I don't mean this in a derogatory sense) so bad that your experience is totally out of the norm (which nicely ties back to the style in which you described the game, you talk about feelz but yours are different than ours and we have nothing else to go on from the review)

 

[Decado]

if you want to say that the difficulty settings are a personal snowflake opinion because my mum would lose the first fight on Easy, you should be writing this for my mum's favourite woman's magazine. Sounds similar to putting a tutorial for using WASD in Call of Duty 15 because it might be too hard for the newcomers and if you disagree you're just waving your dick.

This is why I don't talk to fanatics. It is impossible for you to approach the topic without hyperbole and/or losing your shit. Comparing the complexity of a combat system to movement keys is the over-simplified argument of a retarded six year old.

I'm not losing my shit (at least this time). I'm simply bewildered you think that the difficulty of the combat is unimportant

I never said this. Stopped reading right here.

 

[Bubbles]

And now that I'm on my second playthrough with the Monk, on a harder difficulty level, I'm already doing better than I did the first time through.

Probably because the monk is one of the strongest classes in the game and you're still only playing on Hard.

 

[Decado]

Yeah, he does seem a bit OP'd. But the point is I'm more familiar with the system. I am already planning on a POTD run-through with a rogue.

 

[Gord]

My biggest issue with the monk so far is that he's a bit fragile for me.
What armor are you guys using? Also, maybe I should have upped some stats that give defense, but I figured that getting hit=more wounds=more damage dealt.

 

[Bubbles]

I only took a monk through Act 1 on PotD, but she did fine without armor or any defensive talents. Racked up triple the damage of the next closest party member (Aloth), which was better than with my wizard and cipher. Just don't engage too many enemies at once.

Of course, Moon Godlike monks are a bit OP early on.

 

[Wizfall]

I was quite positive about PoE at the beginning but two big flaws kill it for me.

The first one is the combat system (not the disengagement system who was fine IMO) : the multiple per encounter/abilities are awful and it just don't work in a party based game.
It makes combat feels very repetitive and a true chore past the novelty, it's a only a well suited mechanic for single player MMO where you can concentrate all your intention on your only persona.

Unlike some i like trash combat quite a lot when you don't have to micromanage too much too often, i feel it's a very good way of "pacing" the game and make your character feel powerful (it's "relaxing" in the same time too).
That's why i like much more the IE combats that feel much more natural and "light".
In PoE it can be a chore because you almost have to use your per encounter ability all the time (unless you are ready to spend more time/lose more health) and i could barely stand it later on.
To the point i drop the game quite early despite otherwise good qualities.

The second flaw is the loot that i don't find interesting, BG2 loot was amazing with all the more or less hard to find goodies.
It was extremely addictive to wonder what you could find next and finding so many exiting things.
It was even maybe the main drive of the game for me.
It's truly with game like PoE that you realize the importance of good loots.

 

[ElderGnome]

It is a testament to what Obsidian has made that most of the time, I’m playing a game I really like, sometimes in spite of itself. I spent a good portion of this review complaining, but I still like the game, and am playing it again. Which, if you really think about it, mirrors the experience of playing IE games almost perfectly. All of the IE games had problems, some of them glaring: Torment had lousy combat; BGII had a goofy combination of DnD rules, was often too easy, and the rest mechanic allowed for unlimited cheese; IWD could be underwhelming or even boring at spots, etc. I said before that going nostalgic, as Obsidian has done here, often results in friendly fire, that whatever was good in the old games could be better, but whatever is bad could be worse. With that in mind, one thing you cannot say about PoE is that it fails to accurately mimic playing an IE game back in the late 1990s. If you think PoE isn't a real spiritual successor to the IE games, there is a good chance you are misremembering how the IE games actually played.​

Read the full article: RPG Codex Review: Pillars of Eternity, by Decado

I honestly loved the game. It brought back a lot of the magic of the older RTWP games I played over a decade ago. (Looking at you, Baldur's Gate I.) In a way, it reminded me of Baldur's Gate I - lots of potential, a good setup for a more epic story, but not quite the amazing game Baldur's Gate 2 was. I hope they do a sequel and prove me right.

One interesting thing, my wife loved this game too and she's fairly picky about her games - but obsessive about them when she does "choose" to play them. She has hundreds of hours logged in Cities: Skylines, Dragon Age: Origins, Age of Wonders 3... etc. I didn't know if she would like PoE or not because she's never gotten into a RTWP game like this before, but she loved it. We had a lot of fun trying out different character classes together, seeing what worked, what didn't, picking different story options, etc.

It wasn't a perfect game, but it was a great game. I wish they would have beefed up the stronghold a bit, and I wish the dungeon under the stronghold was larger and made a little more sense. (Dungeon ecology, etc.) Have a few more factions down there spanning various levels for me to get involved with, pick sides, etc. Other than that, I enjoyed the gameplay, the character creation options, and just about everything else in the game including the combat which was quite fun on the normal level of difficulty for us both.

We both finished the game, which was fairly easy, in truth. I was surprised when I heard that only around 7% of the people who purchased it off Steam have the achievement for finishing the campaign; that means a lot of people picked it up and never played it through.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

We both finished the game, which was fairly easy, in truth. I was surprised when I heard that only around 7% of the people who purchased it off Steam have the achievement for finishing the campaign; that means a lot of people picked it up and never played it through.

Somehow I doubt that had anything to do with the difficulty...

 

[Bubbles]

It's 8% now, anyway.

 

[jewboy]

What I said was I grow bored writing reams of details that I think nobody is reading.

Stopped reading right here.

Millennial detected. tl;dr autoresponse mode initiated. Two sentence limit engaged. Verbosity shields up! Limited attention span mode initialization is now complete. I think someone grew up texting on a mobile phone.

 

[Sensuki]

So when Sensuki wrote his long effort-post wherein he claimed I must not be very good at the game -- the game that has been officially out for 2 months, the game that I have played through one time -- my first thought was, okay, maybe I'm not very good at the game yet . . . so what? My second thought was that he was being sort of a dummy since he had been playing the beta for, what, six months at that point? Of course he is going to be better at it, and understand the complexities better, because he has played it for longer. And now that I'm on my second playthrough with the Monk, on a harder difficulty level, I'm already doing better than I did the first time through.

All this griping about difficulty seems like a giant dick-waving contest. I'm sure some dudes who have the time to do nothing but play vidya can burn through POTD because they have all day keep at it; on the other hand, I'm almost sure that some people are lying (it is the internet, after all) about how easy they found it, or that they even played it on a harder difficulty at all. But the main point here is that difficulty in these games is entirely dependent on your familiarity with the system, and your ability to learn. It is not like there is an algorithm running in the background to keep the difficulty dynamic. It's all simply a matter of time. How much time are you willing to invest to get good?

If this was an issue of me vs you, then you might have a point here but it's not - as others have confirmed. But feel free to keep thinking that if it serves your argument. There's plenty of people here that played on Hard or higher and didn't know the systems and found it a breeze. I used Darth Roxor as one example.

This is why I don't talk to fanatics. It is impossible for you to approach the topic without hyperbole and/or losing your shit.

This website is full of fanatics. And also:

 

[Decado]

What I said was I grow bored writing reams of details that I think nobody is reading.

Stopped reading right here.

Millennial detected.

It is impossible for you to be more wrong.