Well, I'm done. I liked the ending well enough, but it's funny how the story suffers from the exact same issue as the original's in the sense of having a twist the nature of which means nothing can be revealed gradually, which in turn means the entire plot actually unfolds during the last two story missions - anything related to the main story before then is literally just "big statue, go stop, but why? if you don't you die" (as opposed to "man in robe, go stop, but why? if you don't you die").
Ironically, however, it is infinintely more sufferable in Deadfire simply because the main quest is such a tiny part of the game. That's a really odd way to make an RPG, but I liked it.
You still got all the zany fantasitis rambling that almost becomes a parody of itself, but the concepts of many factions are actually great behind the tiresome facade of affected pretention: pirates that are actually former nobles but now reduced to a mix between Battlestar Galactica and Carribean gangsters, the british empire with lotssa cool twists, a mishmash of eurocentric trading organization and ancient nobility (mercantilistic guilds meet free market-rationale), a suprisingly mature depiction of an indigenous culture that doesn't reduce them to stereotypes but doesn't make them Western-but-with-a-different-coat-paint either, and so on and so forth. The world was much more interesting this time around and even though my eyes rolled every time Tekehu said "Ekera" I found myself being curious about a lot of the places I went to and the people I talked to.
It also helped that people talked in sentences this time around - not in encyclopedic walls of boring text.
Overall I really, really liked the gameplay as well. I always wanted to love Storm of Zehir since it caters so much to my tastes (open world with overland map, vast amount of character building options, focus on exploration and visiting tons of locations for set piece encounters), but that game was so problem-ridden I've only completed it once. Deadfire really feels like what Storm of Zehir wanted to be. Yeah, there's a problem with depth of the locations, but that's a clear trade-off to have a huge map. The quests are interesting and can often be solved in a ton of ways, a lot of fights have interesting mechanics, monsters offer vastly different challenges and feel unique, locations are absolutely stunning visually, etc. etc. I could talk alot about my criticism of the combat, but no more so than with any other RPG I've played.
While quests are typically very varied and have tons of depths in terms of solutions, there's a problem with the faction mechanics in that they want you to believe they're New Vegas mechanics, but in actuality, under the hood, they're just one choice at one single point in the game. New Vegas' factions aren't as deep as some would have you believe either, but they do do one thing that Deadfire doesn't do at all: you can change how one faction's event line plays out based on interaction with other factions. In Deadfire, you're just doing quest lines and filling a reputation meter until the game is about to end, at which point the games asks you which faction, if any, you want to side with, and that's that. You could say that you need a certain amount of rep, but that's only if you, for some reason, want all factions available when the choice comes, and incidentally, I had just that in my playthrough, and all I did was complete the factions' quests and not behave like a total retard.
I still think I prefer PoE1 overall and certainly White March, and difficulty has a lot to do with it. There's more varied content in Deadfire and not a single slog a la Twin Elms or Od Nua, but the vast majority of it is much easier than WM. A notable exception is megabosses, some of which gave me a really hard time, and some of which I won't be beating until my second playthrough if at all.
I find it odd, though, that PotD overall was so easy. I mean shouldn't the logic of PotD be "better overtune than undertune"? My party was very poorly optimised, and I'm sure I made very poor build decisions with Maia, yet even bigger fights didn't challenge me after level 10. Forgotten Sanctum boss was even easier than White March kraken, which says a lot. Trash fights became downright trivial (as in, I auto-attacked my way through every non-Forgotten Sanctum trash fight from level 12 and beyond) which is probably the reason for my overall difficulty complaints, seeing as megabosses felt like they were tuned exactly right. I'm a huge proponent for "trash" fights because I play these games chiefly for encounters, but the reason trash gets so much hate is because it often a grind (if the combat is too slow) or it doesn't pose an interesting challenge ever. The latter is the case here from ~10th level and beyond.
Another quick quibble is accessibility of enchanting material like Adra Ban. I think if I were to rework the system I'd just remove the materials and have it be a gold cost and that's it. Deadfire itemization is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO fucking good (seriously, shitting on PoE1&2 itemization is just downright laughable, there is just descriptively no RPGs packed with this amount of loot diversity,
period - there's like 7 different sabres alone, all with intensely unique effects - and I say this as someone whose favourite game of all time is BG2), but the crafting resource system means that if you commit to some weapon and then later find another interesting one of the same type, it is completely suboptimal to also enchant that one. Basically, once you legendary a weapon, that's it: you're now committed to using this for the rest of the game.
There is literally no reason for this at all. Sure, you'd gain some amount of power if you could switch Legendary weapons suited to the situation, but then that's what the itemization is there for, right? Diversity of options and choice. As it stands, the systems locks you out of all its crazy amounts of options. They spent all that time and effort making all this coolness, then designed a crafting system that tells you to ignore all of it.
As well, I was disappointed with the lack of Soulbound items and their design. I think I used 2 or 3 Soulbound items - the rest was yellow items all the way through the game. Those yellows were fucking fantastic for the most part don't get me wrong, I just wish Soulbound items were better.
Anyway, the game was great in any case. It's sad that Sawyer won't be putting out more of these, and sad that it didn't turn a bigger profit. I think both Pillars games are by far the most worthy things to come out of Kickstarter, not that there's much competition. The sheer amount of content and polish these games have makes most other Kickstarters seem like complete amateur hour.
Man, Magran's Fires don't really offer what I hoped for. I was hoping for more general increases in difficulty - chiefly, I would like something that cut XP gain by 25% or something. Is there a mod to that effect?
Deadly Deadfire in the Steam workshop reduces XP gain by 20%, along with some other changes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/8j8ox3/game_edit_to_reduce_xp_gains/
What I really want is for XP gain to slow down gradually as you reach higher levels. I think the normal curve (hitting level 4 before leaving Maje) is fine.
Thanks - couldn't you just edit in this tweak after hitting level 4 though? Wouldn't that do what you're wanting, which I agree would be preferable? (Especially since the first few levels can’t even be compared to the rest of the game in terms of difficulty - first drake fight is easily in the top 5 of hardest encounters)
