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Review RPG Codex Review: Darth Roxor on Disappointment, thy name is Pillars of Eternity
- Thread starter DarkUnderlord
- Start date
You'd have to pay me to have X-Com, much less play it.
All of these games were max 5$ one time or another.
Sensuki
Arcane
This tells me that lots of Codexers have bought games on Steam sales or from Humble Bundles.
Lios
Cipher
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2014
- Messages
- 436
Finished it some weeks ago.
You guys have debated the shit out of this game, I don't thnik I have anything worthwile to contribute. But here go my 5 euros.
COMBAT: There's like 200.000 pages with the hows and the nos and the yeses.
Sensuki in particular has written a Marster's Degree paper in this particular theme.
A plebean like me has nothing more to add, except that I agree: some sidequests later I was sending Eder in the front to get beaten and I was shooting the shit out of the enemy with the rest of my mererry crew from the back. Some battles were harder, yes, but this was the exception and not the rule.
Most battles were a safari simulation.
All in all though, I am an art faggot at heart: which means I can forgive or conviniently forget much if the art direction is great; ergo, the battles weren't my main problem with this game.
ENCOUNTERS: Fuck this is painful.
I agree with all of you who push burnt pins into sawyer's voodoo doll for this. Encounters mostly suck.
Not only for variety of creeters, but also because you can't escape a bloody situation most times.
This is more transparent in the dungeons: I don't need to explore a whole dungeon only to kill everything. Spring some flavor.
Construct some scenarios where you can talk an adversary into suiciding like an Allah bomber motherfucker, taking a whole lot of enemies/encounters with him.
Make some speech checks where I can persuade a troll with elephantiasis to rape some xaurips to the death. Or an alcoholic wizard that will blast the shit out of a whole room when I present him with 10 beers or chill the fuck out when I give him 10 of those equivalents of hashish of the game, thus enabling me to not slaughter him.
I realize that there are some scenarios like this in the game, but they're not enough.
USe your imagination more. Let it wild. You're making pc games, not filling tax returns.
LOOT AND ENCHANTMENTS: Yes BG2 has spoiled even the most Spartan of us, but some more unique loot would be great.
Enhancing weapons is cool, I kinda like how you can turn a usual "fine" sabre into a weapon of destruction far better than what you can find in chests supposed to contain magical treasure, but I would like to have a better incentive to loot or steal. A middle ground between POE's loot which leaves much to be desired and BG2's sea of magical thingamies would be ideal. But anyway.
THE KEEP: could just not exist and spend the money in other aspects of the game.
Seriously, fuck it and keep playing. You'll have enough money to biy your grandsons a villa in the sea. As it is, the Od Nua is just a money gulper that doesn't live up to its name.
I mean, I pay 8 hard-boiled motherfuckers to look after it, and I still have to babysit the whole thing, cause if I choose the random battles to auto resolve themselves, shit will get demolished. Fuck you guys.
No interactivity with the random dukes that come for a visit or whatnot. Nothing worthwile to do there, except the warden's keep which is an excuse for some harder battles and some extra xp which will break the game if you take it before you're "supposed to".
Cook up some scenarios in which pimps from the lands beyond come to my keep and I have to be perfect host If i want them to push money down my back or whatever- or I can murder them and have armies of mercenaries come at me - then I'll be happy to come and fight for the sake of my walls, cause i chose so- now, I can't give half a shit for those random or semi-random encounters that swarm like locusts and destroy at least 2 building or fortifications I've built.
The dungeon was good. Artistically it was great, but I would like more non-violent encounters except from those spidermen at the lower levels or the ghost of that king or the last boss.
COMPANIONS: From good to great (by great I mean Durance).
I would like some more interactivity and some more "epic" (sic) quests. For example, Eder is a nicely written, cool bro, like a Bioware character that doesn't have a chromosome more and that doesn't want to fuck your ass or pussy- Eder's quest is first of all to go to the main town's archives to check some shit about his bro- to do that, you have to have a reputation with the town, be a cool guy around. Then, after you search the this and that on papaer, you go to an old battlefiedl (which is conviently in the same area as a major dungeon of the game), kill some assholes, grab an old relic, scan it if you're a cipher or give it to another cipher to do so, and that's it till the endgame rap battle with Thaos. Whoa. What passion.
And bear in mind that Eder's quest looks like a whole saga when compared to guys like Durance (a.k.a perfection in POE characters) who just require you to have them in your party when you travel and some times when you sleep, you'll see him wanking blurry nexct to his fiery staff. That's Durance's quest: carry him with you. Which is OK by me because Durance is fuckin interesting , specially compared to other companions.
Give me some more bread and circuses. I want it.
But I want to be fair, no companion made me want to puke, character-wise. Mechanics-wise, I think Obsidian could at least give you the option to make them be level 1 when you meet them and let you level them up as you choose, instead of finding them all leveled up in assholish-ways (f.e Durance- greatness itself- with bear endurance as he is?)
ROLE PLAYING OPTIONS: Here, I can sincerely say that I enjoyed thorougly what I had in my hands.
The [something] options were cool, specially if you turn them off ingame.
Choices were adequate and in some places more than most rpgs (the Skaen temple mystery and options with the rich guy's daughter or not and some other examples).
Yes I would like more. In fact, I would demand more in a futurre POE2 release. But playing the game, I always enjoyes how I could approach different situations with a different angle. Bear in mind that most of you inside here are either rpg geezers who demand salt and bread the way it was in different other legendary rpgs of the past (acceptable), or rpg junkies that have strong opinions and require them opinions to be resolved in a single game (acceptable too). I, as a fresh young lad, found POE with far more role playing chances than BG2. And I love BG2. It doesn't matter if many of them are just same answers to different approaches- I appreciate that I can play my asshole aumauauauaua barbarian who smacks kids around and my benevolent useful idiot cipher in respectable ways.
Would I ask for more in this department? Sure as fuck. But I liked and enjoyed this aspect of the game the most.
STORY: It's OK.
In act 2 I forgot for a while why I should hunt down Thaos. Then i remembered but I was like, "Wha? He made me something from a nobody, Thaos, high five man!".
Of course Thaos has nothing when compared with the awesomeness that is Irenicus for example, but I liked his beard. His beard screams "I've seen stuff Jimmy, it was horrible".
My main gripe with the story is that it chickens out. But more of it later.
XP: It's kinda silly.
With the way the combat is, I want to stealth the shit out of encounters, not indugle in them in an unhealthy fixation.
Fuck bestiary. Either change/fix combat, or give xp for every battle, in order to have something.
Also, rearrange the xp max levels too. Why level 12? Give it some fuel more. Make my day.
ART: Is greater than the majority of the rpgs you see around you.
Fucking A.
ALL IN ALL: If it wasn't Obsidian, most of us wouldn't bitch this much, I bet. And I realize that there are not only Obsidian fanboys that do the bitching.
The whole feeling that POE left me is that Obsidian was too afraid to let the creators' imagination run wild. Or that they didn't fill Avellone's organism with ayahuasca and then let him construct companions, dungeons, quests, whatever. POE is an excellent product and I would reccomend to people if they asked me for a new RPG that is worthwile (well, OK, among others of course). But POE is like a dancer that knows his moves perfectly and is able to improvize/freestyle really good, but has stage anxiety and nausea- most thing in the game leave promises for something bigger but in the majority of these situations you get your hands tied.
Which leaves me with this thought: with the Kickstarter, as a company, you go away with the evil corporate assholes, OK. And this is of course the way to go, because fuck corporate assholes when it comes to creativity.
But at the same time, maybe, I dunno for sure but maybe, you become hostage of the backers: "Hey, how should we gather more money? what shall we promise?" - "Well...how about a mega dungeon?" - "Maybe pockets without end!" - "And god forbid we have something sexist in there, eh?" etc etc.
tl;dr: POE is cool and play it at least once,
if Obsidian grows some more balls imagination-wise, POE2 will be legendary
You guys have debated the shit out of this game, I don't thnik I have anything worthwile to contribute. But here go my 5 euros.
COMBAT: There's like 200.000 pages with the hows and the nos and the yeses.
Sensuki in particular has written a Marster's Degree paper in this particular theme.
A plebean like me has nothing more to add, except that I agree: some sidequests later I was sending Eder in the front to get beaten and I was shooting the shit out of the enemy with the rest of my mererry crew from the back. Some battles were harder, yes, but this was the exception and not the rule.
Most battles were a safari simulation.
All in all though, I am an art faggot at heart: which means I can forgive or conviniently forget much if the art direction is great; ergo, the battles weren't my main problem with this game.
ENCOUNTERS: Fuck this is painful.
I agree with all of you who push burnt pins into sawyer's voodoo doll for this. Encounters mostly suck.
Not only for variety of creeters, but also because you can't escape a bloody situation most times.
This is more transparent in the dungeons: I don't need to explore a whole dungeon only to kill everything. Spring some flavor.
Construct some scenarios where you can talk an adversary into suiciding like an Allah bomber motherfucker, taking a whole lot of enemies/encounters with him.
Make some speech checks where I can persuade a troll with elephantiasis to rape some xaurips to the death. Or an alcoholic wizard that will blast the shit out of a whole room when I present him with 10 beers or chill the fuck out when I give him 10 of those equivalents of hashish of the game, thus enabling me to not slaughter him.
I realize that there are some scenarios like this in the game, but they're not enough.
USe your imagination more. Let it wild. You're making pc games, not filling tax returns.
LOOT AND ENCHANTMENTS: Yes BG2 has spoiled even the most Spartan of us, but some more unique loot would be great.
Enhancing weapons is cool, I kinda like how you can turn a usual "fine" sabre into a weapon of destruction far better than what you can find in chests supposed to contain magical treasure, but I would like to have a better incentive to loot or steal. A middle ground between POE's loot which leaves much to be desired and BG2's sea of magical thingamies would be ideal. But anyway.
THE KEEP: could just not exist and spend the money in other aspects of the game.
Seriously, fuck it and keep playing. You'll have enough money to biy your grandsons a villa in the sea. As it is, the Od Nua is just a money gulper that doesn't live up to its name.
I mean, I pay 8 hard-boiled motherfuckers to look after it, and I still have to babysit the whole thing, cause if I choose the random battles to auto resolve themselves, shit will get demolished. Fuck you guys.
No interactivity with the random dukes that come for a visit or whatnot. Nothing worthwile to do there, except the warden's keep which is an excuse for some harder battles and some extra xp which will break the game if you take it before you're "supposed to".
Cook up some scenarios in which pimps from the lands beyond come to my keep and I have to be perfect host If i want them to push money down my back or whatever- or I can murder them and have armies of mercenaries come at me - then I'll be happy to come and fight for the sake of my walls, cause i chose so- now, I can't give half a shit for those random or semi-random encounters that swarm like locusts and destroy at least 2 building or fortifications I've built.
The dungeon was good. Artistically it was great, but I would like more non-violent encounters except from those spidermen at the lower levels or the ghost of that king or the last boss.
COMPANIONS: From good to great (by great I mean Durance).
I would like some more interactivity and some more "epic" (sic) quests. For example, Eder is a nicely written, cool bro, like a Bioware character that doesn't have a chromosome more and that doesn't want to fuck your ass or pussy- Eder's quest is first of all to go to the main town's archives to check some shit about his bro- to do that, you have to have a reputation with the town, be a cool guy around. Then, after you search the this and that on papaer, you go to an old battlefiedl (which is conviently in the same area as a major dungeon of the game), kill some assholes, grab an old relic, scan it if you're a cipher or give it to another cipher to do so, and that's it till the endgame rap battle with Thaos. Whoa. What passion.
And bear in mind that Eder's quest looks like a whole saga when compared to guys like Durance (a.k.a perfection in POE characters) who just require you to have them in your party when you travel and some times when you sleep, you'll see him wanking blurry nexct to his fiery staff. That's Durance's quest: carry him with you. Which is OK by me because Durance is fuckin interesting , specially compared to other companions.
Give me some more bread and circuses. I want it.
But I want to be fair, no companion made me want to puke, character-wise. Mechanics-wise, I think Obsidian could at least give you the option to make them be level 1 when you meet them and let you level them up as you choose, instead of finding them all leveled up in assholish-ways (f.e Durance- greatness itself- with bear endurance as he is?)
ROLE PLAYING OPTIONS: Here, I can sincerely say that I enjoyed thorougly what I had in my hands.
The [something] options were cool, specially if you turn them off ingame.
Choices were adequate and in some places more than most rpgs (the Skaen temple mystery and options with the rich guy's daughter or not and some other examples).
Yes I would like more. In fact, I would demand more in a futurre POE2 release. But playing the game, I always enjoyes how I could approach different situations with a different angle. Bear in mind that most of you inside here are either rpg geezers who demand salt and bread the way it was in different other legendary rpgs of the past (acceptable), or rpg junkies that have strong opinions and require them opinions to be resolved in a single game (acceptable too). I, as a fresh young lad, found POE with far more role playing chances than BG2. And I love BG2. It doesn't matter if many of them are just same answers to different approaches- I appreciate that I can play my asshole aumauauauaua barbarian who smacks kids around and my benevolent useful idiot cipher in respectable ways.
Would I ask for more in this department? Sure as fuck. But I liked and enjoyed this aspect of the game the most.
STORY: It's OK.
In act 2 I forgot for a while why I should hunt down Thaos. Then i remembered but I was like, "Wha? He made me something from a nobody, Thaos, high five man!".
Of course Thaos has nothing when compared with the awesomeness that is Irenicus for example, but I liked his beard. His beard screams "I've seen stuff Jimmy, it was horrible".
My main gripe with the story is that it chickens out. But more of it later.
XP: It's kinda silly.
With the way the combat is, I want to stealth the shit out of encounters, not indugle in them in an unhealthy fixation.
Fuck bestiary. Either change/fix combat, or give xp for every battle, in order to have something.
Also, rearrange the xp max levels too. Why level 12? Give it some fuel more. Make my day.
ART: Is greater than the majority of the rpgs you see around you.
Fucking A.
ALL IN ALL: If it wasn't Obsidian, most of us wouldn't bitch this much, I bet. And I realize that there are not only Obsidian fanboys that do the bitching.
The whole feeling that POE left me is that Obsidian was too afraid to let the creators' imagination run wild. Or that they didn't fill Avellone's organism with ayahuasca and then let him construct companions, dungeons, quests, whatever. POE is an excellent product and I would reccomend to people if they asked me for a new RPG that is worthwile (well, OK, among others of course). But POE is like a dancer that knows his moves perfectly and is able to improvize/freestyle really good, but has stage anxiety and nausea- most thing in the game leave promises for something bigger but in the majority of these situations you get your hands tied.
Which leaves me with this thought: with the Kickstarter, as a company, you go away with the evil corporate assholes, OK. And this is of course the way to go, because fuck corporate assholes when it comes to creativity.
But at the same time, maybe, I dunno for sure but maybe, you become hostage of the backers: "Hey, how should we gather more money? what shall we promise?" - "Well...how about a mega dungeon?" - "Maybe pockets without end!" - "And god forbid we have something sexist in there, eh?" etc etc.
tl;dr: POE is cool and play it at least once,
if Obsidian grows some more balls imagination-wise, POE2 will be legendary
racofer
Thread Incliner
I can't believe Obsidian could make such a bad game! 
Lurker King
Self-Ejected
- Joined
- Jan 21, 2015
- Messages
- 1,865,419
What I see are players that spent ridiculous amount of time providing feedback to Obsidian (which was ignored), a gigantic review (which will be ignored), and mods. All this time and energy could be more effectively used elsewhere either by providing feedback to serious games such as Underrail and Age of Decadence or by making your own games. Do you want a good cRPG without bullshit causal shit? Do it yourselves and stop wasting your lives.
Sensuki
Arcane
I am unskilled
CyberWhale
Arcane
1. make a Skyrim mod
2. wait until they reintroduce monetization
3. ???
4. profit!
2. wait until they reintroduce monetization
3. ???
4. profit!
Dreaad
Arcane
Don't be ridiculous. Step = 1.) Download someone else's Skyrim mod.
Lurker King
Self-Ejected
- Joined
- Jan 21, 2015
- Messages
- 1,865,419
What did you just said? Fuck you! You are obsessive, Sensuki. This is the most important thing. You just need to put it to good use. The rest you learn in the process, just as every other indie developer does. You have all the skilled labor here at the Codex (writers, programmers, artists) and they are all passionate gamers. You don’t need to rent an office, you have the available time, the engines are cheap, etc. There is no excuse. I think what is holding you back is the fear of having a game scrutinized harshly and that’s just bullshit. Stop being such a pussy and do it! You do that and some years from now we can discuss how the combat system of your game is shaping up instead you whining about how retard Sawyer’s decisions are or how Fargo is wasting opportunities and backer’s money.
Sensuki
Arcane
That was actually a joke from PurePwnage
If I come up with anything that passes my own criticism, then sure I'll let you know
Last edited:
Lurker King
Self-Ejected
- Joined
- Jan 21, 2015
- Messages
- 1,865,419
Tadek Boruta
Novice
- Joined
- May 1, 2015
- Messages
- 25
I'm new here so excuse my ignorance. But from what I understand this is not "proper" review and some brave soul will have to do another write up ? That guy is screwed...
Personally I agree with many point's made in this review. But the overall tone of it is too pessimistic. Game is good time killer when you have to much of it. But doesn't come close to classics and sadly will never be one.
Personally I agree with many point's made in this review. But the overall tone of it is too pessimistic. Game is good time killer when you have to much of it. But doesn't come close to classics and sadly will never be one.
Yeah, you are right in that this isn't a proper review. And you are wrong when it doesn't come close to classics and will never be one.
DeepOcean
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2012
- Messages
- 7,404
I agree with it doesn't getting close to the classics but disagree with it being a good time waster. Had fun with Kotor 2, MotB, Alpha Protocol and NV all of them hardly classics, just didn't find it on PoE. I just wanted Obisidian to keep to their standard of storyfagotry and make the gameplay somewhat not so boring but I'm afraid that on the future, codexers on 2030 while reviewing Pillows of Eternity vs Wasteland 2: The New beginning are going to say the game isn't awful because it would never be like the classics that Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland 2 were but that is okay because Pillars and Wasteland 2 were so good that it is impossible to reach that level of quality.
Last edited:
Ninjerk
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 10, 2013
- Messages
- 14,323
Whose alt is this?
Vault Dweller
Commissar, Red Star Studio
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2003
- Messages
- 28,044
That's what the Codex said about BG and BG2 back in 2004, yet look at 'em now.
Exactly.
Zorba the Hutt
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2012
- Messages
- 1,865,743
Sounds like the definition of decline, things just keep getting worse. I guess DA:O was just a happy outlier with its warm reception at the time.
ZagorTeNej
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2012
- Messages
- 1,980
DA:O is a strange case, it went from being the best RPG since Arcanum and Codex GOTY to as bad as Oblivion or something.
DA:O was always shit.
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