My collected criticism on Pillars of Eternity (very minor spoilers)

[potatojohn]

I'm beginning to wonder if the no city-magic laws of Amn were actually intended to keep narrative structure, maintaining one's suspension of disbelief. I say that because in PoE I'm throwing fucking fireballs, indoors, in a bar-fight, and nobody says a fucking word about it when it's all said and done and it's really noticeable and kinda pulls you out of the experience. This goes along with the general lack of reactivity mentioned by others.

Did you even play BG2? Because those laws only applied outdoors. And it took 10 minutes to earn the money to pay for a licence anyway.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I Charmed a motherfucking ghost boss. What the hell is up with that? And I frequently "frighten" creatures that are undead?

NO HARD COUNTERS. DON'T THINK A GHOST CAN BE AFRAID? SOUNDS LIKE SOMEONE IS SPIRITIST. ALL IS EQUAL IN THE EYES OF SAWYER. KOBOLD = OGRE = PIG = DRAGON.

Also agree with 90% of what Felipepepe said.

Reading through the thread, the only ones who say its equal or better than BG2 are those who either hate BG and/or hate pausing/non TB games. Pillars is the angry kid who grew up to hate his parents who only wanted the best for him

Also agree with this seems to be how it's shaping up to be. Also panning out that way among my non-Codex videogame pals. BG-crazed maniac who has made multiple full series runs and beaten BG2 in particular an ungodly number of times has yet to even beat act 2 of PoE despite Kickstarting it and starting to play at launch, while guy who thinks BG looks gross and old beat PoE a few days before me and loves it.

 

[sser]

I'm beginning to wonder if the no city-magic laws of Amn were actually intended to keep narrative structure, maintaining one's suspension of disbelief. I say that because in PoE I'm throwing fucking fireballs, indoors, in a bar-fight, and nobody says a fucking word about it when it's all said and done and it's really noticeable and kinda pulls you out of the experience. This goes along with the general lack of reactivity mentioned by others.

Did you even play BG2? Because those laws only applied outdoors. And it took 10 minutes to earn the money to pay for a licence anyway.

Utterly missed the point.

 

[Apexeon]

My two cents: I am more interested in reading this review and the subsequent discussion than I am in finishing PoE. The broken leveling and boring combat has totally drained me.

Same. I prefer Ice wind dale 1.

I got to level 3 in POE then I lost momentum after I kicked the two bears ***. I went and bought Lords of Xulima and fired up Might and Magic 4 to make me feel better (my medication game, doctor says I need to play it to relieve stress).

The fighter regeneration in combat just feels strange.
Game feels MMOrpg like and I hate MMOrpgs.

 

[The Great Deceiver]

You had dragons fooling you into killing

knights,

djinn doing magic tricks,

you had some uber-enemies sprinkled around the world sitting in doomsday coffins

and great monsters being worshipped by cultists.

(...)the main plot of chasing the Big Bad Wizard.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Twin Elms is boring, third act has been very boring. Also reached level cap at end of second act, and now im left with no character progression at all for the last third of the game.

 

[The Great Deceiver]

By the way, what are the effects of positive/negative reputation? A sufficiently good reputation unlocks certain companion's quest and I've seen it referenced a couple of times - what else does it do?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Twin Elms is boring, third act has been very boring. Also reached level cap at end of second act, and now im left with no character progression at all for the last third of the game.

Just kill everyone in Twin Elms. As soon as I showed up and they said "You're limited to this one zone, unless you do some quests maaaaaaaaaybe?" I let loose. No one gives a shit. This isn't like Baldur's Gate where your companions will attack you based on your actions. So you just killed a child who was punching you after you killed her mother, walk it off Eder.

 

[Haba]

I Charmed a motherfucking ghost boss. What the hell is up with that? And I frequently "frighten" creatures that are undead?

NO HARD COUNTERS. DON'T THINK A GHOST CAN BE AFRAID? SOUNDS LIKE SOMEONE IS SPIRITIST. ALL IS EQUAL IN THE EYES OF SAWYER. KOBOLD = OGRE = PIG = DRAGON.

I knock fucking Dragons out from the sky, leaving them hobbled and knocked out. Because I'm the boss.

And big bad end evil? No hard counters? Death is a pretty fucking hard counter indeed.

Spoiler

 

[Athelas]

Honestly, BG2 doesn't even try to be reactive. And that's ok, not all RPGs must have that kind of system. But from the moment that you add stuff like [race], [attribute] and [reputation] choices in your system, you better do it right. PoE is very adept at promising at lot and delivering way less. Just look at the hearing at the end of Act 2. All those choices, faction allegiances, all those checks, and it amounts to fucking nothing.

Besides, choosing the Thieves Guild or the Vampires in BG2's Chapter 3 changes the game much more than choosing one of the three factions in PoE's Act 2 (longer quest chains, various unique dialogs & items), and will even alter your allies when you attack Bodhi on Chapter 6.

The other "big" choice in PoE is Roedric's Keep, but BG2 has the Drow City, that's way longer and more complex, full of manipulation and backstabbing.

Sure, I did say BG2's class-unique stronghold quests put it over PoE. But ultimately, the game doesn't really acknowledge your choices all that much. If you meet up with Bodhi early in the game and find out her agenda and refuse to help her, and then later go to help the Shadow Thieves prevent the mysterious assassinations in their ranks, the game doesn't offer a dialogue option of telling them that Bodhi is behind it. Meanwhile in PoE, I can resolve several quests in Gilded Vale by reporting the crime to the magistrate. The game doesn't tell you this is an option or event hints at it - it's simply logical. I've also had assassins sent after me for unwittingly pissing off House Doemenel and had other reactions involving reputation/disposition.

Also suffice it to say that I disagree with the sentiment that BG2 has better writing than PoE. Despite its flaws (namely its writers wanting to write low-fantasy but being forced to write a high-fantasy settimng), PoE's world, its inhabitants and their conflicts feel much more believable and interesting.

Though I'm still early in the game, so my verdict might change.

 

[Morkar Left]

I have to revise my opinion about the game after playing a bit further: it's not better than BG1 or on par with BG1. There are mainly two reasons: combat is so easy there's no challenge whatsoever and the crafting makes even looting redundant. Since the holidays are over I guess I will wait if a patch comes along who might change these things for good.

Wateland 2 has superior combat bacause it can be actually challenging. Even Dragonfalls combat is harder, too.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Dragonfall is a much more polished and fun experience overall i think, but much smaller scale, so easier to maintain consistent quality throughout.

Problem with PoE is that for all of its vaunted design changes from the IE games, for the better Sawyer claimed, all of them became redundant because by mid game all the fights would devolve into simply auto attacking to gib enemies, the itemization and crafting made looting boring, the main story lost any gravitas it might have had at the start of the game, everything became boring.

I still think the game is an excellent basis for a sequel, but they need to improve on so many aspects that im not sure Obsidian is capable or willing to do so.

 

[TheGreatOne]

PoE will be the first elegantly designed, good RPG in the history of the genre

I never said this.

My prediction is that a great game will be delivered in December for Rogueys everywhere.

Oh yeah, I forgot that you were wrong about the release date as well after bitching about D:OS being released date
And you practically did say that, I just cant be bothered to dig up that message. You said that PoE is very likely/could be the first "good" and "well designed" RPG ever made, because it's designed by Sawyer. Now all this backing up. All I can say is

Saywerism is over, Leigh Alexander killed it.

 

[Linden]

Here's a thing so minor that no one has bitched about it yet: the voice acting. It isn't bad per se, but there are some very low lows. I'll never forget that time when I spoke to the hanged dwarven animancer in Gilded Vale. There I was, getting my larp on, thinking how this was mature and a little like PS:T (since I was talking to freshly executed corpses and everything). So I reached out with my mind, PARTED THE VEIL, COMMUNED WITH THE DEAD ---- and the dead answered me with a cartoonish gypsy fortune teller accent. The cadaverous chick sounded like Bela Lugosi hammed up to eleven, and was pulling down those "AAH YES!" like she was Socucius Ergalla from the Census Office. Immersion: gone.

 

[Hatred]

I second the call that the voice acting was a bit average. Since it was supposed to by an IE successor though I did expect some fairly hammy voices though. Although I quite enjoy them some of the original BG voices are a wee bit of a joke.

 

[hiver]

Here's a thing so minor that no one has bitched about it yet: the voice acting. It isn't bad per se, but there are some very low lows. I'll never forget that time when I spoke to the hanged dwarven animancer in Gilded Vale. There I was, getting my larp on, thinking how this was mature and a little like PS:T (since I was talking to freshly executed corpses and everything). So I reached out with my mind, PARTED THE VEIL, COMMUNED WITH THE DEAD ---- and the dead answered me with a cartoonish gypsy fortune teller accent. The cadaverous chick sounded like Bela Lugosi hammed up to eleven, and was pulling down those "AAH YES!" like she was Socucius Ergalla from the Census Office. Immersion: gone.

Already bitched about.

And yes, it was a bad choice to go about it in that horrible cliche way.

 

[Prime Junta]

It's funny, this.

Thanks to Sensuki and some other grogs, I finally learned both how to play and how to enjoy the IE games over the past couple of years. I've been playing and replaying BG2 to the point that I find myself un-ironically going "Pfft, Firkraag is easy, I just beat him in five rounds with two toons." (Which I did, and it was.) I've graduated to stuff like setting my own objectives -- "get Crom Faeyr as quickly as possible," "get Mazzy before she spends more than one pip on shortswords," that sort of thing. I had a fucking blast going through Firkraag's dungeon the first time I got to it this time around, and I kinda used to hate it.

Which also means that I now at least understand even if I don't 100% agree with the grog critiques of P:E's combat.

And I agree with most things felipepepe wrote. Like the encounter design -- repetitive and clearly not on par with BG2. And that P:E needs immunities and counters for more depth. And that it'll have way less replayability than BG2 because there just aren't things like Crom Faeyr or the imminently-nerfed Mazzy to chase after.

But. I'm really, really digging the combat anyway. I think the classes have incredibly cool synergies and the blow-by-blow gameplay is arguably more tactical than in BG2. By this I mean that tactics have a bigger impact: in BG2, if you've got a somewhat competently-built and equipped party, you can easily steamroll the "speed bump" encounters with select-all, select-target, auto-attack, moreso if you apply a buff or two, whereas in P:E even the easy encounters will wreck you bad if you're completely asleep at the wheel, whereas actually playing them by using your per-encounters, timing, and choosing your targets they won't even scuff your armor. I.e., I'm finding the difference between good tactics and bad tactics bigger in the easy encounters, while the hard ones actually need effort to play, not just discovering the right solution and applying it.

I'm also digging engagement, but not for the reason I liked it earlier. I like it because it adds a dimension to the tactics. I can easily see which toons can move freely and which can't, and use this to my advantage to have my stabber move around stabbing things. Or if a squishy gets engaged, it gives me a challenge to deal with: find some way to break engagement without getting the squishy murdered.

So Sensuki's claim that this is "RTwP for players who hate RTwP" just isn't true for me, because damnit I've just discovered the fun of RTwP, and I'm having a lot of fun with P:E.

(All this of course evaporates if you do the side content because you'll be wildly overleveled in no time, and crit path level scaling got shouted down at the outset. Kind of amusing that considering Josh's "balance" fetish. I hope they'll fix that; all you'd need to do is adjust the XP tables for leveling up so it's not like it would be hard.)

felipepepe's final question is very valid too: Obsidian can take this in two directions. They can build up on P:E's strengths and add more depth to the mechanics (immunities or at least much higher resistances for more diverse enemies, better encounter design, better itemization so we have 'Crom Faeyrs' to chase after), or they can rest on their laurels and make it (even) more accessible at the expense of depth and challenge.

As to the most obvious flaws -- overleveling removing challenge, fairly wild imbalances here and there etc. -- I'd be surprised and disappointed if those at least aren't fixed fairly quickly, in a FO:NV style Josh rebalance if nothing else.

 

[hiver]

I think the classes have incredibly cool synergies and the blow-by-blow gameplay is arguably more tactical than in BG2. By this I mean that tactics have a bigger impact: in BG2, if you've got a somewhat competently-built and equipped party, you can easily steamroll the "speed bump" encounters with select-all, select-target, auto-attack, moreso if you apply a buff or two, whereas in P:E even the easy encounters will wreck you bad if you're completely asleep at the wheel, whereas actually playing them by using your per-encounters, timing, and choosing your targets they won't even scuff your armor. I.e., I'm finding the difference between good tactics and bad tactics bigger in the easy encounters, while the hard ones actually need effort to play, not just discovering the right solution and applying it.

Im afraid this is nothing but the effect of the unknown, of playing a new ruleset fresh.

IN BG2 you also could get wrecked bad in "easy encounters" early in the game, or anytime after, before you knew how to min-max and play everything in the best ways. And you can just autoattack in PoE without thinking about what you are doing in numerous encounters and just steamroll over them.
After you got a few talents and better gear.

Not that BG2 was a perfect system, but instead of actually improving on it PoE just replaces it with its own set of problems that dont move the whole genre of RTwP anywhere.

 

[Roguey]

My prediction is that a great game will be delivered in December for Rogueys everywhere.

Looks like I did, but that was exaggerated for comedic effect. I wasn't being completely sincere.

 

[Hatred]

Besides the obvious downside of no immunities I feel like its hard to judge the combat right now since there is the xp issue and the AI is also leaning more towards the A than the I.

Edit for illiteracy.

 

[Trodat]

I second the call that the voice acting was a bit average. Since it was supposed to by an IE successor though I did expect some fairly hammy voices though. Although I quite enjoy them some of the original BG voices are a wee bit of a joke.

Some of the side characters got pretty sweet voice acting going on them, like that grazy animancer in the sanitarium, Caedman Azo, or that other guy who was working with the evil machine in heritage hill.

 

[Hatred]

I second the call that the voice acting was a bit average. Since it was supposed to by an IE successor though I did expect some fairly hammy voices though. Although I quite enjoy them some of the original BG voices are a wee bit of a joke.

Some of the side characters got pretty sweet voice acting going on them, like that grazy animancer in the sanitarium, Caedman Azo, or that other guy who was working with the evil machine in heritage hill.

I agree on there being some sweet points. On average it was average though.

 

[Athelas]

But. I'm really, really digging the combat anyway. I think the classes have incredibly cool synergies and the blow-by-blow gameplay is arguably more tactical than in BG2. By this I mean that tactics have a bigger impact: in BG2, if you've got a somewhat competently-built and equipped party, you can easily steamroll the "speed bump" encounters with select-all, select-target, auto-attack, moreso if you apply a buff or two, whereas in P:E even the easy encounters will wreck you bad if you're completely asleep at the wheel, whereas actually playing them by using your per-encounters, timing, and choosing your targets they won't even scuff your armor. I.e., I'm finding the difference between good tactics and bad tactics bigger in the easy encounters, while the hard ones actually need effort to play, not just discovering the right solution and applying it.

The combat isn't hard enough that it demands of you to switch strategies frequently, it doesn't really demand it non-frequently even. And using per-encounters (and other 'free' abilities like the cipher powers) is a no-brainer choice, it's not a particularly good example of tatics.

 

[Malpercio]

I don't think you are wrong felipepepe, but on other hand I feel like a lot of your concerns (especially regarding C&C) can also be applied to IE games.

To a lesser extent

I mean, look at BG2. Does it matter to whom you side during chapter III ultimately?

It does, different magical items and different quests depending on which side you pick, plus different interactions.

What quest ultimately changes much in term of C&C?

All strongholds are optional, so a fucking lot, it may not have deep consequences that change how the world revolves around you, but its not needed, as long as the matter is concluded in a different way.

Does race influence anything other than locking you out some romances and maybe some minor NPC interaction?

Nope, but then again, races dont have so much significance in toril, no one gives a shit if you are an elf or a human, but viconia being a drow gets brought up often enough that you can see it does matter, if you could pick drow race and didnt get any similar interactions it would have been shitty. As it is locking out godlikes would have been a smarter move, would have made for a tighter game than this shit thats closer to DA:O bloodmage levels of shittiness.

I'd argue that PoE is certainly much more reactive than BG2 in these regards.

I wouldnt say poe is that far off, but reactivity was definitely better executed in BG2, much more satisfactory and with more interesting possibilities, and in the end thats all that matters.

Fair enough, but I still think PoE is far more reactive than BG2.

PoE had characters I saved/spared moving to other locations, where you can meet them again and they'll you how they talked about you to the people there. Yeah, race (as well background) is not super-significant, but it does give you some different convo options (bot in dialogue and scripted sequences). Character personality types (weak, aggressive, benevolent, etc) affect dialogue options, giving you more or less depending on the situation.

In Chapter 2 for example pissing off house Doemael means you'll get assassins hired by them looking for you, and doing quests for the dozens means you'll get locked out from the knight well before you can make any choice.

 

[Prime Junta]

Dunno, I'm not finding it easier than BG2 until you overlevel past the challenge. With BG2 the main challenge before you know where everything is, is finding level-appropriate content (or, once you know where it is, setting yourself a challenge of, say, murdering Firkraag or doing the beholder cult quest first thing).