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Review RPG Codex Review: Pillars of Eternity, by Decado

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But I will say that if anyone thinks the $20 dollars or so that I spent on this game is enough of an investment to create cognitive dissonance, that person is a blazing retard. I spend more money on lunch than I spent on this game.
That really is the worst argument I've ever heard used against a video game review. Possibly thirdworldians? I've bought every game I've ever played, and hated more than half of them. A damning or praising pre-release post probably causes more cognitive dissonance depending on the released product than the purchase itself.
 
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Before I spend my precious time on reading (or not) this review I must know if this is THE official RPG™ Codex™ reviews. If it's anything less, why bother?

It is. The third review will be for the expansion, and written by me, god willing.
 

Duraframe300

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Possibility is though, I'm confusing Delgado with somebody else.

In which case this is a weird coincidence.
 
Unwanted

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It is extremely tacky to argue the merits of something you have already written. Jesus guys how do you not know this.

ikr. What kind of person argues points on the internet. It is better to just make statements and then walk. Infinitron can we have this thread locked and all of the other threads on the Codex locked so that people don't argue points anymore ?
 

Decado

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Completely unsurprising that you have no idea what I am talking about.
 
Unwanted

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Yeah. It couldn't be that you actually are arguing the merits of what you wrote without actually engaging many of the points people have made. There is no way that is happening.
 

Kz3r0

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It's all in the name guys:
Decline>Decadence>Decado

An aptly video:
 
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Lurker King

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The whole thing kinda feels like you're jerking yourself off for the (unreceptive) codex audience. There's tons of filler in your review as if you were trying to be "professional". Use all that space to dig into specific things, that's the only thing we're interested in, anyway. Feels and curly overthought ideas are for IGN.

Exactly. That is because he is on the take! After the drama involving Darth Roxor’s review people should realize that by now. At least Roxor have a clean consciousness. Look at the front page of the Codex: news about “Witcher 3 – the hunt of the popamole” and Van Helssing, a retarded action game. The fact that even a newfag like me can notice the decadence of the Codex is embarrassing. It pains me to say this, but this place is becoming a mainstream site, little by little.

s1td3d.jpg
 

NotAGolfer

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The review was a weak-sauce. Decado you like to write lots of words but not say much. As the others have said, you didn't really say anything good about the game that you could back up with some examples of cool moments or something really interesting. In other words, you didn't sell the game to me but at the same time you said it was good..? I can't tell how good it was because all the good bits are just your feelz. You feel the encounter design is good and keeps you on your toes? What? Give me some examples so I can put your good into perspective.

Something like:

the story and quest encounters are good, take for example a random bounty quest, your party must kill a troll druid hidden in a cave. The enemy placement makes you adjust your usual tactics because of the special mushrooms hidden in an untargetable lower area, constantly dominating your enemies while you have to fight through a bunch of hard-hitting goblins while constantly managing your party members not to attack the dominated person and try to advance to the pit area to get rid of the mushrooms

eh that kinda sucks, too and I was trying to think of a good encounter.

Anyway, be more specific, your feels don't tell us much.
You seem to really love mushrooms. :lol:

And Decado mentions that there are scripted encounters. You example is basically just that, a scripted encounter done right, no bullshit patterns like in cheap console boss battles but a site, a unique enemy carefully placed and some sort of "puzzle", meaning an ideal way to solve it.
Also his feels tell me a lot without spoiling the game for me, since he clearly explains where he's coming from, so I call bullshit on that criticism. That's the thing with reviews, they are extremely subjective and the same stuff can get praised in one review and bashed in another depending on the preferences, playstyle (completionists don't enjoy filler, storyfags usually don't like minmaxing etc) and frustration treshhold (do I enjoy reloading 10 times in every critical encounter or not). Just read between the lines, basically what Sensuki does in his analysis of the review ... without climbing on such a high horse of course. :roll:

Regarding unique IE encounters: Most encounters with unique enemies there (like enemy parties) were not really carefully laid out and finetuned. They were often just a bunch of enemies standing around on a not particularly interesting or strategically challenging place of the map, often a chokepoint blocking your passage. The only reason they were interesting are the AD&D classes and IDW or BG monster types being interesting to deal with and deadly in combat, hard counters, frustrating crowd control spells, generally low health making criticals matter etc. And the special effects orgy that fired once you entered combat against them, it just looked powerful and majestic. :kingcomrade:
So I'd argue that handcrafted encounters are a bit overrated in these discussions, they better make sure that their classes and monster tables feel unique enough so even trash combat might offer some fun.
 
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Immortal

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I too agree that this review being linked to the steam curator page is bad form. Roxor's review came first, if its not up to some secret Codex standard, then the staff should come clean with those standards so the rest of us can take part in this magnificent corporate codex experience.

RPGCodex Standard For Decisions:

If it pisses people off or is hilarious.. it's probably the right choice.


(I agree with you.. people say that roxxor's review was a bit redundant / try hard.. but at least it was funny.. this review was an essay of feels)

Much like PoE itself, this review was a series of half thought out ideas.

Guess it pretty obvious to everyone the review wasn't that good. But instead of bashing you like everyone, here is a short summary of why it wasn't a good review:

It is not a review.

It is just a summary of what happens in a customers head to avoid buyers remorse.
You notice that the product you bought has major flaws. But you also spent money on it. So if you would now correctly conclude that the product is not good, you would have spent your money badly. So instead of accepting that, you make up excuses as to why your purchase was actually good. Making up those excuses might make you feel better, but it certainly doesn't make a good review.
Would you buy a product customers rate as: "It's shit, but I spent time and money on it, so it's still good, no way I wasted all that."? Probably not.

I got the exact same vibe from this review :lol:
 
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Drowed

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Well, I like the game - no remorse for me.

As I said in another topic, I tried to play Baldur's Gate 1, but ended up leaving it (not because it's a terrible game, but simply because it was really boring and I didn't remember it as such). Recently, I tried to also start playing BG2 (since many have said that the game is actually better than the first one), but the result was the same. But Pillars, I finished in less than a week, playing almost uninterruptedly. It was fun, simply as that.

In a way, it's a shame, because now I think I won't get back to playing the BG series anytime soon - I don't think I will be able to tolerate the several annoying things in it.


BUT! The review could have been much better; with that I agree.
 

Immortal

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But I will say that if anyone thinks the $20 dollars or so that I spent on this game is enough of an investment to create cognitive dissonance, that person is a blazing retard. I spend more money on lunch than I spent on this game.
That really is the worst argument I've ever heard used against a video game review. Possibly thirdworldians? I've bought every game I've ever played, and hated more than half of them. A damning or praising pre-release post probably causes more cognitive dissonance depending on the released product than the purchase itself.

Not all people are equal.
I think it has less to do with financial investment and more to do with time investment / commitment / Obsidian expectations.
Most people over the age of 18 can overcome a 20 dollar loss without too much emotional distress.

That wasn't what people invested. Who here wasn't slamming their F5 key when we heard the Black Isle Bro's were back with a Spiritual Successor. I would argue that Baldur's Gate 3 is one of the most requested games ever. We all bought into the hype, we all wanted this game and if anyone was gonna do it.. it was Obsidian. I didn't think for a second that Obsidian wouldn't deliver. I didn't hesitate to kickstart this game and I never kickstart anything.

People invested themselves into this game. Then it released and was pretty much a blank. Lackluster in every way. People will rationalize that it was just hype expectations and that the game was always gonna come out like this.. deep down though. They know. We all know this game has huge issues and is pretty crappy in comparison to what the original vision could have been.

Is it better then Dragon Age? Who fucking cares.

Anyone who followed this from the start and funded the kickstarter / watched those tiers get lit up, definitely has some kind of disappointment today.
The difference is fanboys will just explain it away.

Every positive review I see reads like a laundry list of apologies.
 
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Mortmal

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Because my style of review writing is not in line with the Codex's general feeling on how it should be done.

The grimrock 2 review style was perfectly fine, this one is not and aimed at advertising the game not reviewing

"I am not exaggerating when I say Fallout 3 and Skyrim were more buggy in their initial releases than this game." Some people were stuck at rodrick keep unable to play, never had any game stopping bug in skyrim.

"the group of players who played BGII years ago and never picked it up again, or the FPS player who is trying something new -- many of the criticisms of I can offer of the game will simply make no sense. To these people, PoE will likely be a revelation. I'll try to address both groups." A revelation, nothing less, like moses receiving the ten commandments at Sinai mount, advertisement buzzword really.
 

Immortal

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Because my style of review writing is not in line with the Codex's general feeling on how it should be done.

I just double checked to make sure.. Your Grimrock 2 review was a perfect line between edgy and supported evidence. It was almost like.. you didn't have a invested pre-conception what the game was gonna be like and reviewed it honestly on it's strengths and weaknesses..

PoE is basically a list of apologizing / nitpicking with an added conclusion that the game is amazing because *~feels~*

EDIT:

Because my style of review writing is not in line with the Codex's general feeling on how it should be done.

The grimrock 2 review style was perfectly fine, this one is not and aimed at advertising the game not reviewing

"I am not exaggerating when I say Fallout 3 and Skyrim were more buggy in their initial releases than this game." Some people were stuck at rodrick keep unable to play, never had any game stopping bug in skyrim.

"the group of players who played BGII years ago and never picked it up again, or the FPS player who is trying something new -- many of the criticisms of I can offer of the game will simply make no sense. To these people, PoE will likely be a revelation. I'll try to address both groups." A revelation, nothing less, like moses receiving the ten commandments at Sinai mount, advertisement buzzword really.

This ^
 

Ninjerk

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Sensuki 's arguments with regard to difficulty and related things (such as camping supplies) always follow this weird pattern that at the one hand he says he is this godlike expert player who has reached an untouchable degree of mastery and therefore has no problems whatsoever - which may well be - but then somehow comes to the conclusion that means that the game is objectively too easy for everybody and who disagrees with him is just terrible at playing. Maybe the others are just various degrees of mediocre/normal? If you are this grandmaster player who is better than everybody else why should you hold all the lowly peasants to your personal standard? Why should you be the one who decides how many camping supplies are sufficient if you are by your own admission that superior to everybody else? Why should the game be balanced to your standard even though you know that your standard is completely different from almost everybody elses?

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, yo.

The games ease and blandness is not an uncommon sentiment.

It is extremely tacky to argue the merits of something you have already written. Jesus guys how do you not know this.

Zombra confirmed tacky :troll:
 

zero29

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LXjBV2y.png


Decado this review gave me diabetes, man. despite the game's flaws i definitely had more fun with poe than darth "xoxo" roxor, but this one reads like a rpgwatch crossover review to troll his "troll review". seriously, it's ok to advertise your positive opinion about the game in a review, but at least keep your argumentation less flawed than the game itself. cause unlike poe your review cannot collect bonus points for certain aspects of setting, art, npcs and quests to partly outweigh its deficits, you know?
 

Tigranes

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I see there are also educated people here.

Last 4 pages summarised by this. It is super ironic that people parachute in Psychology 101 to conclude that the writer must effectively be suffering from strong delusions... isn't that exactly the same kind of nonlogic that the writer uses to argue that people must not remember what the IE games were like? You might as well also argue that everything Sensuki says is bullshit because he's just butthurt he laboured 800 hours on the beta, and that everything Darth Roxor said in his review is bullshit because he just has confirmation bias for his negativity and is trying to get KKK.

There is no need to presume any psychological wonkiness of Decado, because it's easy enough to substantively show the problems with the review. Playing on Normal in itself doesn't guarantee that he doesn't understand character/combat mechanics very well, but his numerous comments, like mages are direct damage cannons (Sensuki shows couple other examples), do so substantively. It is difficult to take anything about mechanics in this review seriously, no matter your opinion about POE, in that case.

There is more emphasis paid to writing and story, but it is not much better there. The first paragraph about the setting is devoted to "funny sounding words", which has always been a ridiculously trivial point of debate (by the way, don't see anyone complaining about TW3). As Sensuki says, killing Calisca off is so fucking mundane it might as well be on TVTropes, the Tutorial Person Who Dies In Prologue, and saying it shows big brass balls makes you seriously doubt the reviewer. The praise of Durance and GM in the first two paragraphs of Story/Writing is almost devoid of any content; when your 'analysis' lacks substance, you invite people to just blanket claim that you must be a fanboy.

POE has numerous real points of controversy and possible weakness. Everyone knows encounter design and itemisation isn't good, but there are different arguments as to why that is so or how that impacts the game. Many readers will want to know substantively whether it evokes the IE feel and how, instead of being told they must have memory problems. There are people who insist that POE is too autopiloty and even easier than IE, whereas others (myself included) dispute this claim. And so on. By providing no real substance on any of this, while not bringing any new point of debate to the fray, the review basically renders itself a Eurogamer "My Weekend With POE".
 

Decado

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The praise of Durance and GM in the first two paragraphs of Story/Writing is almost devoid of any content; when your 'analysis' lacks substance, you invite people to just blanket claim that you must be a fanboy.

I am beginning to suspect that there is simply a difference of expectation, here. I have a feeling that "substance" is becoming a code-word for boring tedium. I mean, how does a person explain why Durance is a good character beyond simply adding more words to what was said in the first place? Do you expect someone to cut and paste dialog? I specifically wrote that Durance was a good character because he was nuanced, mean, an asshole, but a strangely likeable asshole. I am curious as to what you think needs to be added to that description that turns my fanboy-ism into analysis? And further, what could I add to that so it simply wouldn't be just more words, piled on top of other words?
 

Sensuki

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Codex 2014 Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong A Beautifully Desolate Campaign
Personally I thought you talked about Durance enough, but that encompassed about 45% of the valid content of your story/writing section.

For instance, you talked about the main story being a bit flat. I know why I think it was flat, but you never explained why you did.
 

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