Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Lacrymas]

So heres the question then, given the awful shit that has released post POE, does this game look more favorably in anyone's retrospective view? Its sort of lol that the "based eastern euros" released an incredibly pozzed game full of smut writing for redditors, while a californian marxist produced what is probably now looking like the least gay and least woke of the new wave crpgs.

A lot of good shit has been released post PoE. AoD and UnderRail both released after PoE1. Atom RPG as well. Although I haven't played Colony Ship yet, I suspect it's eminently playable too. Good RPG-adjacent titles have been coming out of the woodworks lately too, like King Arthur: Knight's Tale, Gloomhaven, Trials of Fire, Dungeon of Naheulbeuk, SpellForce: Conquest of Eo, even Marvel's Midnight Suns. Actually, PoE looks even worse compared to these now. It still has most of the problems it had on release and the writing hasn't become less incoherent, but it's still worth playing for White March content. That's it. I don't expect any 180° critical reevaluation to happen any time soon or ever, it's just not as good as it could've been and it doesn't contain any surprising, hidden wisdom everyone somehow missed the first time around 10 years ago. The slight anti-religion bent it had might come across as even more petty now that the new atheism movement has died out.

But yes, if you want to go all technical about it, it's better than what Larian or Bethesda have shat out since then.

 

[cretin]

Good RPG-adjacent titles have been coming out of the woodworks lately too, like King Arthur: Knight's Tale, Gloomhaven, Trials of Fire, Dungeon of Naheulbeuk, SpellForce: Conquest of Eo, even Marvel's Midnight Suns.

you keep doing this

these are not RPGs. "RPG adjacent" is a nonsense label. They're TBT games. If it doesn't have exploration, its not an RPG.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Good RPG-adjacent titles have been coming out of the woodworks lately too, like King Arthur: Knight's Tale, Gloomhaven, Trials of Fire, Dungeon of Naheulbeuk, SpellForce: Conquest of Eo, even Marvel's Midnight Suns.

you keep doing this

these are not RPGs. "RPG adjacent" is a nonsense label. They're TBT games. If it doesn't have exploration, its not an RPG.

Eh... some of those games have exploration.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

So heres the question then, given the awful shit that has released post POE, does this game look more favorably in anyone's retrospective view? Its sort of lol that the "based eastern euros" released an incredibly pozzed game full of smut writing for redditors, while a californian marxist produced what is probably now looking like the least gay and least woke of the new wave crpgs.

You're rewriting history. Disco is not pozzed. POE is pozzed - women have equal rights in a medievalish setting (and always had before), race doesn't exist only cultures do, backer limerick about trannies was cut out with apologies from the studio, a companion in white march is a lesbo. In disco you call faggots "faggots".

"Disco had words like communism therefore it's communist, hence le bad!" is a 80 iq take, stop playing video games with text, start playing spoody man to not overtax your brain.

 

[cretin]

So heres the question then, given the awful shit that has released post POE, does this game look more favorably in anyone's retrospective view? Its sort of lol that the "based eastern euros" released an incredibly pozzed game full of smut writing for redditors, while a californian marxist produced what is probably now looking like the least gay and least woke of the new wave crpgs.

You're rewriting history. Disco is not pozzed. POE is pozzed - women have equal rights in a medievalish setting (and always had before), race doesn't exist only cultures do, backer limerick about trannies was cut out with apologies from the studio, a companion in white march is a lesbo. In disco you call faggots "faggots".

"Disco had words like communism therefore it's communist, hence le bad!" is a 80 iq take, stop playing video games with text, start playing spoody man to not overtax your brain.

I wasn't talking about disco, I was talking about Pathfinder

 

[cretin]

Bester is one of my favorite poasters but sometimes I wonder if he's schizophrenic

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Apologies, friendly fire. Pathfinder is indeed poz.

 

[Lacrymas]

you keep doing this

these are not RPGs. "RPG adjacent" is a nonsense label. They're TBT games. If it doesn't have exploration, its not an RPG.

They are RPG-adjacent because they have unique characters with unique skillsets, they aren't interchangeable mooks like in X-Com. If you are looking for a "pure" RPG, you are basically out of luck. Maybe give Colony Ship a go if you don't like Larian's offerings.

 

[Just Locus]

So heres the question then, given the awful shit that has released post POE, does this game look more favorably in anyone's retrospective view? Its sort of lol that the "based eastern euros" released an incredibly pozzed game full of smut writing for redditors, while a californian marxist produced what is probably now looking like the least gay and least woke of the new wave crpgs.

I've clocked in 15+ hours on base game PoE so I might eat my words later but I've been enjoying my time with the game, I disagree with Lacrymas that the writing is incoherent, I think the writing is more overwhelming, as said a million times; the game doesn't hesitate to vomit mountains of lore on top of you and it can lead to a sense of exhaustion after hours and hours of just reading exposition instead of engaging with characters in a meaningful way, there is little to no player choice in quests and there are very few quests with an interesting premise intriguing you enough to complete it, another thing is the lack of interesting companions and characters in general, I remember their portraits much more than their personality or voice or way of speaking, the only I can remember is Durance.

The gameplay, on the other hand, is one of the game's strengths for me, the amount of strategies you can employ with each encounter is fun as hell, excluding some locations where the game just sort of... throws trash mobs at you like Anslog's Compass, but dungeons like the Endless Paths are very well designed and make the already well-designed combat extra fun and challenging, one thing I'd criticize is after you get your stronghold and build Eastern Barbican, most dungeon encounters become trivial as you can just escape, fast travel to your stronghold, sleep (and get bonuses depending on whether you've upgraded the other buildings). and go back as if nothing happened at all, the only thing that's stopping you is your patience in this regard - Another thing I'd criticize is the repetitive music, It's mind-numbing just how much the same combat track repeats over and over, and it'll annoy you more than excite.

 

[Roguey]

In disco you call faggots "faggots".

The game itself does not write that word and you know why.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Why not?

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

To avoid getting streamers banned? It's irrelevant, not worth pointing out or discussing, the simple fact is that it's there.

The game itself does not write that word

Yeah, it does. Writing slurs with * in them is a rather common way of writing them. And it doesn't become some "other word", hence it's the same word, hence the game does write it.

 

[AwesomeButton]

To avoid getting streamers banned? It's irrelevant, not worth pointing out or discussing, the simple fact is that it's there.

So much for the contrarian, "fuck the system" attitude. I still like the game, but it's funny.

 

[Roguey]

Why not?

To avoid getting streamers banned?

Nope.

It's obvious they're saying f4660t, when they censor out f****t

We have the tolerati to thank for that. Early builds didn't have it bleeped out but when they showed it in Kwanzania it gave them seizures.

The big Disco shill himself confirming that they self-censored because American journalists threw a fit when they saw that word uncensored.

 

[Lacrymas]

Censoring such words in a piece of media is backwards. We, the LGBTs, aren't children to be coddled and protected from the meanie words. We've been called every possible name under the sun in our lives and, unless we kill ourselves, we develop a very thick skin as time goes on. If you want to fight homophobia, do it out in the open where it matters, no censoring, no coddling, no pussyfooting. Nobody who wants to hurt us is going to self-censor himself or stop himself when he sees censorship, I promise.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Censoring such words in a piece of media is backwards.

It's Americans. We all have to move at the speed of the slowest in the group.

 

[Shaki]

So heres the question then, given the awful shit that has released post POE, does this game look more favorably in anyone's retrospective view? Its sort of lol that the "based eastern euros" released an incredibly pozzed game full of smut writing for redditors, while a californian marxist produced what is probably now looking like the least gay and least woke of the new wave crpgs.

Disco is not pozzed.

 

[Max Damage]

First PoE is still as underwhelming as ever, only things I prefer from it over sequel are the fact that Druids and Priests get full spell list instead of getting less than Wizards, and Durance is better than entirety of Deadfire's cast.

 

[Axel_am]

First PoE is still as underwhelming as ever, only things I prefer from it over sequel are the fact that Druids and Priests get full spell list instead of getting less than Wizards, and Durance is better than entirety of Deadfire's cast.

Somebody tell me this ain't so...

 

[AwesomeButton]

Only The White March is something I'd replay from PoE.

 

[Lacrymas]

White March is unironically pretty good cRPG content, WM1 more than 2 but 2 is good as well. It's so good, in fact, it's worth replaying PoE just for it. The game would've been awesome had Obsidian decided to design the whole thing like WM1.

 

[processdaemon]

First PoE is still as underwhelming as ever, only things I prefer from it over sequel are the fact that Druids and Priests get full spell list instead of getting less than Wizards, and Durance is better than entirety of Deadfire's cast.

Somebody tell me this ain't so...

Deadfire has its upsides but I agree that the companions aren't as good (and that Priests got nerfed a bit, not sure about Druids).

 

[Aarwolf]

I've clocked in 15+ hours on base game PoE so I might eat my words later but I've been enjoying my time with the game

Consensus is that the first 15-20 hours of base game are the best, with culmination in chapter 1, and Raedrick's Hold. Everything after that is going gradually siedeways, and chapter 3 (second town, Twin Elms) is unfinished and very rushed. So yeah, you saw it at its best, now it's time for the worse.

 

[Haplo]

I've clocked in 15+ hours on base game PoE so I might eat my words later but I've been enjoying my time with the game

Consensus is that the first 15-20 hours of base game are the best, with culmination in chapter 1, and Raedrick's Hold. Everything after that is going gradually siedeways, and chapter 3 (second town, Twin Elms) is unfinished and very rushed. So yeah, you saw it at its best, now it's time for the worse.

Yes, the beginning + WM is the highlight.
But IMO the rest is quite solid also. I really liked the dungeon you can't leave - or if you leave, you cannot go back.
Just the pacing is pretty bad...
Twin Elms was rushed, yes... but its still nowhere near as bad as some other rushed endings (like Deadfire ).
Its just that the game fatigue reaches pretty high levels at this point.
Kind of like BG3 Act 3, really...

Plus the game failed to develop an interesting villain / character purpose.
Still better at this then Deadfire, tho

 

[Just Locus]

[...] you saw it at its best, now it's time for the worse.

I sincerely hope it's not tedious by any means, I'll take rushed and incomplete over agonizingly slow and incomplete, here's hoping the game's fun combat mechanics lessen the blow the late game will deal.