Prime Junta
Guest
I still call him an expanded Bevil Starling.
If by "expanded" you mean "with a personality and a sense of humor" and "doesn't sound like he's been constipated for three weeks" then yeah I guess.
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Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread
- Thread starter Perkel
- Start date
If by "expanded" you mean "with a personality and a sense of humor" and "doesn't sound like he's been constipated for three weeks" then yeah I guess.
Sannom
Augur
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Yeah, no shit, that stuff is so prevalent that I actually thought that Eder, with his bright blonde hair and his smiling expression, was a nice change of pace.
As a short-/brown-haired 30-something white male, I must admit that I often feel fed up with myself.
Bonerbill
Augur
Yep. Whoever designed the encounters in that dungeon deserves a raise and he should do the all the encounters for PoE2.
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Does the level scaling actually do anything? I enabled it both times it came up, but the encounters were still absolute pushovers.
Additional random notes I jotted down while playing:
- larger fights are still a visual clusterfuck to the point where one can no longer distinguish individual characters when multiple spells are going off
- performance is also pretty bad in big fights
- gold economy is borked (there's way too much of it, on the order of several magnitudes)
- the white march stuff has some cool fights
- the barbarian lady has the most annoying voice ever, which is a shame because barbarians are awesome, especially on hard/potd with the added enemies
- the other two new companions are great, the Devil fits well into the addon endgame, made me actually chuckle a bit
- some minor bugs (dialogue sound cuts out frequently, confused enemies pull enemies from all over the map, characters sometimes skip drinking a potion)
- soulbound weapons provide much needed item variety, they are probably too strong though
Additional random notes I jotted down while playing:
- larger fights are still a visual clusterfuck to the point where one can no longer distinguish individual characters when multiple spells are going off
- performance is also pretty bad in big fights
- gold economy is borked (there's way too much of it, on the order of several magnitudes)
- the white march stuff has some cool fights
- the barbarian lady has the most annoying voice ever, which is a shame because barbarians are awesome, especially on hard/potd with the added enemies
- the other two new companions are great, the Devil fits well into the addon endgame, made me actually chuckle a bit
- some minor bugs (dialogue sound cuts out frequently, confused enemies pull enemies from all over the map, characters sometimes skip drinking a potion)
- soulbound weapons provide much needed item variety, they are probably too strong though
So, my hopes of shedding light on the recovery time formulas near the end of PoE support have been dashed. I guess we'll never know. Let's not even touch on questions like how do you know if something is balanced when you can't really explain how it works. I guess you just scan the forums for rage and turn to damage control. That's an option too.
I'll repeat my opinion - trying to reinvent the IE games' combat system and replace it with seconds-based formulas was a mistake.
I'll repeat my opinion - trying to reinvent the IE games' combat system and replace it with seconds-based formulas was a mistake.
Sizzle
Arcane
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IGN! http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/02/24/pillars-of-eternity-the-white-march-part-2-review
PILLARS OF ETERNITY: THE WHITE MARCH PART 2 REVIEW
The White March Part 2 brings Pillars of Eternity to a fitting end.
As happy as I was to meet a new party member, I admit I frowned a bit when I met Maneha. She's a barbarian, and thus a member of the only playable combat class that wasn't already represented by a named NPC companion. Her appearance thus marks a filling of the blanks; a sign that Obsidian's long saga is rushing toward its end with The White March: Part II. The snowy wastes of the White March, too, once felt like a blank slate, but now they've proven host to a memorable struggle that leaves few questions unanswered. With this seemingly final expansion, such elements come together to cement Pillars' status as one of the most memorable RPGs in recent memory.
High praise, you might say, from someone who wasn't exactly fawning over the expansion's first half (and my opinion on that hasn't changed). It's just that the second half does everything so much better. Set seemingly months in the future, it kicks off by chronicling the consequences of improved fortunes at the hamlet of Stalwart in the wake of the White Forge's relighting, and ends with actions and sacrifices that feel almost as momentous as those capping the events of Pillars of Eternity proper. Though a touch formulaic, this is the stuff of great fantasy: the awakening of a forgotten evil rumbling in the bowels of the earth and the emergence of an army that threatens to kick aside civilization like a beachside sandcastle.
The New Faces of Evil
It doesn't hurt that the main antagonists are fun to look at, sort of like half-metallic, half-fleshy Groots with hammers and spears standing in for hands. As imposing and heavy-hitting as these giants are, though, they're not the main challenge in combat here (nor, somewhat hilariously, is the towering final boss). That honor mainly goes to the monkish followers of the goddess Ondra, who rove about their cloisters in balanced flocks with powerful casters and dodgy acolytes who demand careful planning with every pull. And all that says nothing of the varied battles with foes like tentacles and angry flowers that fill in the spaces between.
In contrast to its forebear, Part II is tightly paced (almost to the point of overlinearity), and it wisely minimizes visits to familiar areas in favor of exploring new ramshackle garrisons, menacing caverns, and gloomy temples built among the bones of a dead god. The enemies are creepier, and the lore more fascinating. I particularly enjoyed Maneha's brief personal quest, which takes the Watcher's motley comitatus into a gloomy abbey where she needs to offer tokens representing memories people would like to forget. Her voice acting tragically leans more toward "academic advisor" than "coastal raider," but I nevertheless found her dark personal quest one of the more engaging ones Pillars has offered so far. A crop of endings tailored to your choices rounds out the expansion's final moments, granting meaning to your actions over the journey’s roughly 10-hour runtime and the increased level cap to 16.
Happily, the journey needn't be as taxing as it was in the past. The release of Part II coincides with Pillars' latest general patch for the game proper, which brings numerous tweaks as well as a fun scenario in which you have to fight for your stronghold in the face of a local lord's violent objections. But more to the point, the update also introduces "Story Time," a new difficulty setting that takes its cues from the Normal setting and, to use Obsidian's language, "biases the math heavily in the player’s favor."
It still presents challenge in spots, but it comes closer to being a true "Easy" mode than what Pillars had before. For players who just want to enjoy Pillars' rich tale and flip through the lore without mastering spellbook juggling, it's a godsend. Pillars until now has relied almost exclusively on vicious combat encounters requiring intense micromanagement to the point of tedium, and as my five deaths to the same merry band of no-name cultists attests, that's still true of the higher settings.
The price of The White March: Part II's pacing is that the whole affair feels a bit short. I spent perhaps more time than I should have plodding through the expansion's first half, but I got through Part II in less than 10 hours. It left me hungry for more. Virtually everything here neatly serves the purposes of the overall narrative, which means there's little cause for exploration or, indeed, even the opportunity. But taken as a whole, it's ultimately worth it, and if this is your first time to Pillars club, you should do the smart thing and buy the two parts together rather than separately. As with so many predicaments in high fantasy, it gets better.
The Verdict
The White March: Part II expansion for Pillars of Eternity boasts better pacing and lore than its humdrum predecessor, but at the cost of a running time that feels somewhat inadequate. A welcome new Story Time mode helps dull the force of the brutal combat though, and memorable settings and enemies make this an expansion to savor.
GREAT
Although short, Pillars of Eternity: The White March: Part 2 is far more entertaining than the expansion's first half.
- Focused, engaging questline
- Memorable new settings
- Varied combat encounters
8.0
- Somewhat linear
- Feels short
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AN4RCHID
Arcane
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Well, I'll apologize if I see any dissenting opinions.
Fry
Arcane
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Sagani's VA isn't annoying, it just doesn't even remotely fit the character of a gritty huntress. She sounds like a Minnesota hausfrau.
Sizzle
Arcane
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Heh, forgot about her being the writer, but it makes sense, especially seeing as Maneha's conflict is
basically the same as Aloth's, another NPC she wrote.
Dude, I don't know, never got the impression she is (or should be) all that gruff. She's from a society that's mostly hunters, irregardless of character or grittiness, there's no reason for her to sound tough.
Sizzle
Arcane
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For me, that would be Kana. Nothing against his character per se, but his voice acting just didn't click with me. Another character whose VA I disliked was Grieving Mother, but this was offset by MCA's writing (I often wondered how she and Durance would have turned out if they didn't rewrite them).
I kept her around for most of the Abbey, I was expecting her to have a bigger role there, but she wasn't all that essential or interesting.
Haven't played much with the Devil, how is she?
That's something of a spoiler.
Part 1 is getting pretty shafted in these reviews. It was really quite good. DB is a great dungeon, Cragholdt Bluffs had the best encounters in game, Alpine dragon and Concelhaut are still 2 of the best boss fights, better and more frequent CYOA bits than base game (part 2's are now the best though) and it had some quality quests with multiple solutions, including a talk/stealth path through a dungeon with reactions based on much murder you committed throughout (which they've done again a few times in part 2, somewhat better this time). Though this talk of brutal fights and an appreciation of story time mode might tell me why some of this didn't really register.
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I know I already said this, but I found the Devil a poor attempt at being witty/edgy companion. That being said, she has one of the best ending slides of any companion.
It is unfortunate that the new companion sounds weak. Even more depressing is that Obsidian lost Avellone to make more companions.
Has anyone had the chance to try out the new Priest seals? Are the seals weak?
She wanders into the wilderness and journeys alone until her artificial body rusts and falls apart. It gets to the point that she can barely move, and her last moment is pushing herself into the ocean. She finds a measure of peace in the sensation of the waves/current as she sinks.
It is unfortunate that the new companion sounds weak. Even more depressing is that Obsidian lost Avellone to make more companions.
Has anyone had the chance to try out the new Priest seals? Are the seals weak?
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Sizzle
Arcane
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Does anyone know if her ending slides change based on the outcome of her quest? That's the one I also got, after
allowing her to kill the woodcutters.
I get the feeling she was only added so they could boast about having all 11 classes represented by an NPC in the game.
But at least Zahua's quest is interesting (though I'm not sure if there are multiple outcomes to it. Judging by the way it played out, I'm guessing not.).
Excidium II
Self-Ejected
At least sharkwoman barbarian is good fetish material.
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