Who's played Pillars of Eternity 2 turnbased mode?

[Lambach]

I wouldn't say it's either significantly better or worse than RTwP. It was interesting enough for me to play through to the end, but if I ever decide to do replay it, I'm not sure I'll do it in TB mode.

It has several advantages over RTwP, e.g. the various buffs/debuffs become a lot more meaningful since there's no risk of you failing to take full advantage of them in large, chaotic fights where even the Pause function is not enough to keep up with every actor at all times. Ergo the action is a lot more deliberate and tactical, which is great.

But as others have said, it has some glaring flaws too. The base system was clearly not designed around TB so there are certain balance (not in the Sawyer sense) issues, such as DEX being a dump stat for pretty much all characters, regardless of build/Class. Then there's also the increased length of fights. For me, it wasn't too much of an issue in general, even on PotD, but there are certain exceptions in fights where enemies either have bloated HP or insane damage resistances.

I remember a fight during one of those Bounty quests where you're hunting down some Animancer and her pet Iron/Steele Golems. Those Golems have both huge HP and extremely high resistance to physical damage, fire, cold etc. Even in RTwP that fight takes a good while unless you're overleveled, but TB turned into an hour-and-a-half slog.

 

[Goldschmidt]

Is it good? Worth my money? I like the character system of the first game just fine and the setting is cool but the combat doesn't really do it for me. Controlling a six man party in RTwP is like herding cats. Is the game better in turn based mode? Also, if I buy the sequel do I need to read a plot summary of the original or is it a separate story?

It is bad,slow and tedious. The game was made to be played in rtwp,that was the core design. Also change of combat mode doesn't change the writing from "one of the worst eva" to passable.

Care to give an example (screenshot) how bad the writing is? Just curious that you are not overplaying your cards. Also as if writing is so important in a game but I very much doubt the writing in POE 2 is so bad.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Seeing the time of day transition about 6 days' worth in a single fight is pretty funny.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I didn't play it a whole lot, but overall it's OK. It's obviously rather low-effort though, for various reasons already mentioned. Two things that bothered me that were not mentioned so far:

1. Whether a skill was free or full action often seems pretty random. You can quickly identify situations where two skills do similar things, but one of them is free while other is full. Which makes little sense, because even if the full action one is better, being a free action will always make the other one superior. Rogue invisibility skills, for example (I played assassin when trying out the tb mode).
2. It's true that it makes you better appreciate all the buffs/debuffs as you can precisely plan and control their usage. On the other hand, I felt like tb exacerbates the problem of spells being per encounter and bought with skill points and the boredom of repeatedly picking exactly the same stuff in exactly the same order.

 

[Grunker]

there are certain balance (not in the Sawyer sense) issues, such as DEX being a dump stat for pretty much all characters, regardless of build/Class.

I love that Sawyer has become such a persona-non-grata due to the balance debate that people will mention something not being unbalanced in a "Sawyer sense" even when following that up with an example of something that is classically unbalanced in the Sawyer sense :D

 

[Grunker]

Those Golems have both huge HP and extremely high resistance to physical damage, fire, cold etc. Even in RTwP that fight takes a good while unless you're overleveled, but TB turned into an hour-and-a-half slog.

You just triggered my ptsd, lol. That fight is atrocious on tb

 

[Lambach]

I love that Sawyer has become such a persona-non-grata due to the balance debate that people will mention something not being unbalanced in a "Sawyer sense" even when following that up with an example of something that is classically unbalanced in the Sawyer sense :D

By "Sawyer sense" I mean autistically obsessing over everything being equally useful/viable, even if it means watering the gameplay down. One of 6 Attributes being completely useless is an actual issue, whether you want to call it a balance issue or an issue of some other type.

 

[Haplo]

Those Golems have both huge HP and extremely high resistance to physical damage, fire, cold etc. Even in RTwP that fight takes a good while unless you're overleveled, but TB turned into an hour-and-a-half slog.

You just triggered my ptsd, lol. That fight is atrocious on tb

Its not so bad with a Blood Mage Assassin spamming raw Death Ray

Spoiler

 

[TheGameSquid]

I played through the entire game in TB mode. I liked it better than the RTwP combat, but I'm also not a huge fan of RTwP, so take that with a grain of salt. I think the biggest issue is that most of the encounters were simply not designed for the turn-based system, and it sometimes shows.

Care to give an example (screenshot) how bad the writing is? Just curious that you are not overplaying your cards. Also as if writing is so important in a game but I very much doubt the writing in POE 2 is so bad.

The quality varies wildly. There are points where it's tolerable, but there really are points where it is almost unbearably bad. There were a few points where I was wondering if some of the lines were contributed by fans or something. The natives using the same couple of words over and over will make you want to blow your brains out sooner or later, and the main plot of the game is just some random handwaving of "Blah blah blah gods blah blah souls yada yada" that makes close to zero sense and is barely worth paying attention to. I've stated quite a few times that I enjoyed POE2 more than POE1, but the writing is definitely one of the areas where the game regressed even more (contrary to most people, I think POE!'s writing was decent, it was just the that the overarching plot was terrible).

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Ekera.

 

[Prime Junta]

Care to give an example (screenshot) how bad the writing is? Just curious that you are not overplaying your cards. Also as if writing is so important in a game but I very much doubt the writing in POE 2 is so bad.

I'm sure I could find a couple of screenshots of atrociously bad writing, but that's not really the main issue with it. It has two main issues, and they're much worse than occasional purple prose or cringey romance.

One, it's overall just dull and uninspired. Many of the main characters don't inhabit their world, instead they come across as larping American millennials. There's a general lack of imagination and superficiality to it.

Two, none of it hangs together. Supposedly the story hook is a giant green statue stomping about the archipelago, about to destroy the world. Yet most of the game -- and definitely almost all of the good fun to be had in the game -- isn't about the story hook at all: it's about exploring the archipelago to kill monsters and loot dungeons, or get involved in the actually quite passable faction shenanigans.

Also the continuity from Pillars 1 is incredibly bad: it puts the dissonance in ludo-narrative dissonance. Like, you're supposedly this returning character who's killed a bunch of archmages and dragons and shit, and it gets referenced during the game quite a lot. Yet you start at level 1, as a completely different character unless you go out of your way to try to recreate the one you played in P1 -- with no explanation. It's just stupid, not to mention unnecessary -- the returning companions would have been more than enough to provide continuity.

Ultimately, I quite enjoyed my latest playthrough, much more than I expected, and the secret was that I just went off at right angles to the main quest and forgot all about it. I did bang through it an hour or so at the very end, just to be able to say that I finished it.

 

[Grunker]

Those Golems have both huge HP and extremely high resistance to physical damage, fire, cold etc. Even in RTwP that fight takes a good while unless you're overleveled, but TB turned into an hour-and-a-half slog.

You just triggered my ptsd, lol. That fight is atrocious on tb

Its not so bad with a Blood Mage Assassin spamming raw Death Ray

Spoiler

I always play these off-kilter, weirdo builds and then play on PotD so I guess I'm kind of asking for it. PoE2 is generally so piss easy, unfortunately, that the difficulty becomes great (as in: actually challenging) when you play with wonky builds and don't use abilities that too powerful/popular. But then there are these 1 or 2 fights (and the megabosses) where you start to feel the pain. That golem fight took me aaaaaaaaaaaaaages

 

[Grunker]

Worst offender was the beach ooze megaboss though. That was an excercise in utter patience. I think the fight took so long it kindda bugged out as well

 

[Grunker]

I love that Sawyer has become such a persona-non-grata due to the balance debate that people will mention something not being unbalanced in a "Sawyer sense" even when following that up with an example of something that is classically unbalanced in the Sawyer sense :D

By "Sawyer sense" I mean autistically obsessing over everything being equally useful/viable

Sawyerism condensed is making everything "useful/viable" - though explicitly not "equally". So that was my point exactly. I think his struggles in manifesting this in practice proves that his vision wasn't complete, but I've never understood why so many failed to understand this point and hold that he intended for everything to be equal. Maybe it's just this grognard/sawyerist semantic division, but I mean, it's not that grognards don't appreciate balance as well. Gygax wrote in the aims statement of AD&D that one of the main points of the new edition was to ensure balance (fucking lol, I say, but that's besides the point). Sawyer stated literally in his first balance manifesto or whatever and then said again and again that balance in his mind was not about making things equally powerful, since this was not possible, but ensuring that individual system assets weren't superflous/a waste of time/a literal trap.

Much like the case is with DEX on TB.

 

[fantadomat]

Is it good? Worth my money? I like the character system of the first game just fine and the setting is cool but the combat doesn't really do it for me. Controlling a six man party in RTwP is like herding cats. Is the game better in turn based mode? Also, if I buy the sequel do I need to read a plot summary of the original or is it a separate story?

It is bad,slow and tedious. The game was made to be played in rtwp,that was the core design. Also change of combat mode doesn't change the writing from "one of the worst eva" to passable.

Care to give an example (screenshot) how bad the writing is? Just curious that you are not overplaying your cards. Also as if writing is so important in a game but I very much doubt the writing in POE 2 is so bad.

There is a few hundred pages thread about the game,even people that liked the game agree that it have bad writing. Go read that lol.

 

[Haplo]

Worst offender was the beach ooze megaboss though. That was an excercise in utter patience. I think the fight took so long it kindda bugged out as well

Uhh, I skipped the megabosses entirely. "Normal" bosses like Nemnok, Kraken or the Guardian were more then enough in TB. Can only imagine how long it would take to beat one of those even larger ones.
Well, maybe now I will finally check them out in Real Time with a Shadowdancer butcher.

 

[Prime Junta]

Worst offender was the beach ooze megaboss though. That was an excercise in utter patience. I think the fight took so long it kindda bugged out as well

Uhh, I skipped the megabosses entirely. "Normal" bosses like Nemnok, Kraken or the Guardian were more then enough in TB. Can only imagine how long it would take to beat one of those even larger ones.
Well, maybe now I will finally check them out in Real Time with a Shadowdancer butcher.

I gave up on the mega-ooze. It was taking forEVER, and also the game was slowing down all the time. Quit at the point that two of the quarter-sized oozes merged into a half-size one again when I wasn't able to keep them apart. Not my idea of fun.

 

[Sharpedge]

The megaboss ooze in turn based mode is my most hated fight in any rpg. It isn't a challenging fight, its just an endurance test that stretches on and on for what seems like forever.

 

[fantadomat]

Muh all the megabosses were boring shit that felt out of place.

 

[Sharpedge]

Muh all the megabosses were boring shit that felt out of place.

They were, but the ooze was the worst of the lot.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Also the continuity from Pillars 1 is incredibly bad: it puts the dissonance in ludo-narrative dissonance. Like, you're supposedly this returning character who's killed a bunch of archmages and dragons and shit, and it gets referenced during the game quite a lot. Yet you start at level 1, as a completely different character unless you go out of your way to try to recreate the one you played in P1 -- with no explanation. It's just stupid, not to mention unnecessary -- the returning companions would have been more than enough to provide continuity.

I don't remember well but at the beginning od PoE2 isn't your character dead and resurrected and/or his soul stolen, or something?

 

[Prime Junta]

I don't remember well but at the beginning od PoE2 isn't your character dead and resurrected and/or his soul stolen, or something?

"Or something." You're not dead, just taking a little trip in the Beyond, then Berath sends you back into your body. (Or not, if you choose to, in case it's game over before even character generation.)

So you emphatically are the same physical individual who triumphantly completed Pillars 1. People reference that shit all the time. And it makes no sense. Import a save with a world state where you were a male Plains Folk Rogue from Vailia, suddenly you're a female Coastal Aumaua paladin of Woedica from Rauatai, and nobody bats an eye, but everybody remembers how you whooped Llengrath's arse and got Pallegina to fuck up her mission and got Aloth to reconcile with what's-her-face and saved the little furry baby and got the fake potion to the nice preggers lady in Gilded Vale and so on and so forth.

Since one of the major attractions of the game is exploring all those race/class/subclass/multi-class combos, locking you into that history is just a really dumb idea that somebody should have shot down from the get-go.

 

[Grunker]

I actually think they did continuity fairly well in terms of people remembering your shit. I just think the main plot sucks so much it overshadows it.

I generally don't like the companions in Pillars of Eternity - and that goes double for the second game - but I really like what they did with Aloth in the second game, especially because his development is so heavily intertwined with the thematic components of the first game. He's a much better companion in #2. Maia Rua gets browny points simply for being the only adult in this anime harem of zany tween companions, while Serafen can be genuinely funny. But beyond that it's hard to find redeemable qualities. Xoti and Tekehu make me want to claw out my eyes and rip off my ears

 

[Grunker]

And there are bits and pieces of the game that are genuinely well-written and interesting. Everything involving Rymrgand comes to mind. My favourite playthrough of the game is a pale elf larping as his herald. I love the fact that

Spoiler

you don't even have to larp that much - the game often recognizes this archetype and there's actually an entire ending dedicated to offering yourself to Rymrgand's service where your character's ultimate fate is entirely different from the standard endings

Whereas that isn't the case in the first game at all. Being a pale elf Rymrgand cultist is basically just an excercise in pure larp there.

 

[Prime Junta]

I generally don't like the companions in Pillars of Eternity - and that goes double for the second game - but I really like what they did with Aloth in the second game, especially because his development is so heavily intertwined with the thematic components of the first game. He's a much better companion in #2. Maia Rua gets browny points simply for being the only adult in this anime harem of zany tween companions, while Serafen can be genuinely funny. But beyond that it's hard to find redeemable qualities. Xoti and Tekehu make me want to claw out my eyes and rip off my ears

The sidekicks are IMO better than the full companions. Vatnir is genuinely funny at times, Ydwin is much better edgy (non)waifu than anyone else in the series, Mirke is quite good as comic sidekicks go, Fassina has an actual personality and fits in the world well (even if she's unpleasant AF), and even Konstanten has his moments.

I wasn't all that impressed by nu-Aloth though, and the rest of the returning companions are just meh. Pallegina is the least bad of them IMO and even she's a long way from actually good. Best part about her was the stiff and formal resignation letter she writes to you if you fuck the Vailians over, which is even sort of poignant if you actually helped her out, did her vision quest, and got her to like you in other ways.

(I wasn't aware of the Rymrgrand thing, props to them for going to the trouble of doing something only very few players will likely experience.)