rezaf
Cipher
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2015
- Messages
- 653
First things first, I went into playing Pillard of Eternity pretty blind.
Of course I'd heard about the Kickstarter and gathered what the game was billed as, but I didn't read much in terms of forum threads or previews before playing.
Naturally, what little I had heard caused me to form some sort of expectation, and for the most part, PoE delivered on that front, a nice achievement right there.
The Good:
It's like the old Infinity Engine games.
There were a few things changed (mostly improved) here and there, but for the most part, it feels like the old games did.
By and large, I like the worldbuilding, I enjoyed visiting many locales and chatting with it's inhabitants.
There's enough "vanilla fantasy" to feel right at home, but enough subtle changes for there to be things left to discover.
I quite enjoyed the main storyline for the most part - some parts of it more than others, but this here is the "Good" section...
In typical Bioware fashion, the game contains a great number of well designed setpieces that are engaging by themselves.
Small story setpieces, side missions, nonessential conversation options ... lots of things to like.
There's a decent amount of choice and consequence and I'd occasionally reload a savegame and buff my character to explore a different conversation branch.
Though I'd wished for even more of that, there's a sufficient density of this in the game for it to be rewarding.
A number of combat encounters were great fun.
The voice acting was good. Sometimes, it was quite bumpy in that there was a voice acted part, followed by one you had to read, followed again by another voice acted part ... that could be irritating, but I thought the voice actors did a good to excellent job.
I liked the music, though some choices felt a bit odd to me (a few of the songs had a Hitchcock movie vibe to it). Still, I like the soundtrack.
With a few notable exceptions, the game has very good in-game help that's actually ... well, helpful.
The Bad (as it is with rants, this section is more elaborate than the above):
It's like the old IE games. :p
I'm not a big RTwP fan, so ... yeah. PoE revisits all the failings of that system and more.
The IE games had D&D. Now, I think that's a decent system, if not very exciting. It just works (tm), but is definatly not a great system.
So, what transpired at Obsidian that prompted them to make such a poor-man's-version of D&D that is basically worse than the original in every way, I'll never know.
The loot is meh.
Probably a symptome of the above. At most times, I had a pile of loot in my inventory that I didn't use because it wasn't clear whether or not it'd be better than what I was currently using. Is +2 DR really worth another 15% action recharge? So this Sword has slightly better damage output than the Mace I'm using, but ... didn't I have some ability that improved my Mace proficiency?
Also, there's too much +0.25% whatever crap therein. Finally - fuck "supressed".
Spells and prayers are weaksauce.
Another symptom of the poor-man's-D&D aspect I guess.
Most buffs and summoning spells are unavailable out of combat, which greatly hampers their usefulness. Many buffs last for ridiculously low amounts of time, too.
Damage dealing spells often hit friend and foe alike and require a clear path to the target, which makes them highly situational.
IF you get to use them, they more often than not lack punch.
Every mage level has it's own version of "Magic Missile"?
Maps are often too small and usually contain two to three times as many combat encounters than they should.
Often I'd cringed when I had just finished a combat encounter, moved three inches and saw another of the dreaded red circles appearing in the fog of war.
Yay, another fight against Ghosts/Spiders/Beetles/whatever. So much fun. NOT.
Encounter design is almost nonexistant. On most maps, it feels like somebody just set kind of a spraying tool in the map editor to a particular type of enemy and proceeded to plaster the map with it.
Combat is much too hard! LOL, bear with me for a second. First of all, let me go for erratic instead.
Next, I assume my view of things is related to me picking a cleric as a PC. I'd guess having another tank or offensive spellcaster could have made quite the difference in some encounters.
As it is, I only played on normal, and I'd say 25% of battles are easy. Another 25% moderately challenging. 35% "hard" in that they are annoying - lot's of buffing and spellcasting that only "conflicts" with the limited rests system - in many cases for just another throwaway battle. 10% genuinely hard. 5% brutally difficult or downright impossible - most prominently I'd put the dragons firmly into this category.
What's it with the "mind readings" you get to make on common folk standing around? They tell little stories that are somtimes mildly amusing or interesting, but generally are completely out-of-touch with the rest of the game. Why can't we sometimes get a quest from one of them? Why don't we get to talk about a couple of those people about what we've just seen? Why can't the occasional vision lead us to a hidden treasure or enlighten us about some aspect or another of the current locale we're in?
The pacing leaves a lot to be desired.
In my opinion, a good RPG will gently guide you along a path (where the difficulty is just about right for you) but allow you to make detours at your own peril.
PoE totally and utterly fails at that. Are you really supposed to take on Raedric by the time you're given the quest? When's the right time to explore the Endless Paths? How about the companion quests?
If I was struggling against a particular type of enemy, I was never sure if there was something wrong with my tactics or if the encounter was just way out of my league.
Some may say this is a good thing, but I think it's a game design failure.
Final Verdict:
PoE is definately worth playing and (to me) was also worth paying full price for it, but I'm kinda glad it's over and don't plan on replaying it anytime soon.
Maybe with god-mode to see some alternate story setpieces, but other than that...
Of course I'd heard about the Kickstarter and gathered what the game was billed as, but I didn't read much in terms of forum threads or previews before playing.
Naturally, what little I had heard caused me to form some sort of expectation, and for the most part, PoE delivered on that front, a nice achievement right there.
The Good:
It's like the old Infinity Engine games.
There were a few things changed (mostly improved) here and there, but for the most part, it feels like the old games did.
By and large, I like the worldbuilding, I enjoyed visiting many locales and chatting with it's inhabitants.
There's enough "vanilla fantasy" to feel right at home, but enough subtle changes for there to be things left to discover.
I quite enjoyed the main storyline for the most part - some parts of it more than others, but this here is the "Good" section...
In typical Bioware fashion, the game contains a great number of well designed setpieces that are engaging by themselves.
Small story setpieces, side missions, nonessential conversation options ... lots of things to like.
There's a decent amount of choice and consequence and I'd occasionally reload a savegame and buff my character to explore a different conversation branch.
Though I'd wished for even more of that, there's a sufficient density of this in the game for it to be rewarding.
A number of combat encounters were great fun.
The voice acting was good. Sometimes, it was quite bumpy in that there was a voice acted part, followed by one you had to read, followed again by another voice acted part ... that could be irritating, but I thought the voice actors did a good to excellent job.
I liked the music, though some choices felt a bit odd to me (a few of the songs had a Hitchcock movie vibe to it). Still, I like the soundtrack.
With a few notable exceptions, the game has very good in-game help that's actually ... well, helpful.
The Bad (as it is with rants, this section is more elaborate than the above):
It's like the old IE games. :p
I'm not a big RTwP fan, so ... yeah. PoE revisits all the failings of that system and more.
The IE games had D&D. Now, I think that's a decent system, if not very exciting. It just works (tm), but is definatly not a great system.
So, what transpired at Obsidian that prompted them to make such a poor-man's-version of D&D that is basically worse than the original in every way, I'll never know.
The loot is meh.
Probably a symptome of the above. At most times, I had a pile of loot in my inventory that I didn't use because it wasn't clear whether or not it'd be better than what I was currently using. Is +2 DR really worth another 15% action recharge? So this Sword has slightly better damage output than the Mace I'm using, but ... didn't I have some ability that improved my Mace proficiency?
Also, there's too much +0.25% whatever crap therein. Finally - fuck "supressed".
Spells and prayers are weaksauce.
Another symptom of the poor-man's-D&D aspect I guess.
Most buffs and summoning spells are unavailable out of combat, which greatly hampers their usefulness. Many buffs last for ridiculously low amounts of time, too.
Damage dealing spells often hit friend and foe alike and require a clear path to the target, which makes them highly situational.
IF you get to use them, they more often than not lack punch.
Every mage level has it's own version of "Magic Missile"?
Maps are often too small and usually contain two to three times as many combat encounters than they should.
Often I'd cringed when I had just finished a combat encounter, moved three inches and saw another of the dreaded red circles appearing in the fog of war.
Yay, another fight against Ghosts/Spiders/Beetles/whatever. So much fun. NOT.
Encounter design is almost nonexistant. On most maps, it feels like somebody just set kind of a spraying tool in the map editor to a particular type of enemy and proceeded to plaster the map with it.
Combat is much too hard! LOL, bear with me for a second. First of all, let me go for erratic instead.
Next, I assume my view of things is related to me picking a cleric as a PC. I'd guess having another tank or offensive spellcaster could have made quite the difference in some encounters.
As it is, I only played on normal, and I'd say 25% of battles are easy. Another 25% moderately challenging. 35% "hard" in that they are annoying - lot's of buffing and spellcasting that only "conflicts" with the limited rests system - in many cases for just another throwaway battle. 10% genuinely hard. 5% brutally difficult or downright impossible - most prominently I'd put the dragons firmly into this category.
What's it with the "mind readings" you get to make on common folk standing around? They tell little stories that are somtimes mildly amusing or interesting, but generally are completely out-of-touch with the rest of the game. Why can't we sometimes get a quest from one of them? Why don't we get to talk about a couple of those people about what we've just seen? Why can't the occasional vision lead us to a hidden treasure or enlighten us about some aspect or another of the current locale we're in?
The pacing leaves a lot to be desired.
In my opinion, a good RPG will gently guide you along a path (where the difficulty is just about right for you) but allow you to make detours at your own peril.
PoE totally and utterly fails at that. Are you really supposed to take on Raedric by the time you're given the quest? When's the right time to explore the Endless Paths? How about the companion quests?
If I was struggling against a particular type of enemy, I was never sure if there was something wrong with my tactics or if the encounter was just way out of my league.
Some may say this is a good thing, but I think it's a game design failure.
Final Verdict:
PoE is definately worth playing and (to me) was also worth paying full price for it, but I'm kinda glad it's over and don't plan on replaying it anytime soon.
Maybe with god-mode to see some alternate story setpieces, but other than that...
