Pillars of Eternity - Review @ Angry Duck Gamer

[HiddenX]

Angry Duck Gamer (aka GabrielMP_19) has reviewed Pillars of Eternity:

Review: Pillars of Eternity

Every oldschool RPG fan was crazy about Pillars of Eternity before its release. The so called RPG Revival was at its most awaited moment: the release of Baldur’s Gate’s spiritual sequel. The BG series was considered by many the pinnacle of the CRPGs and an artifact of a long lost age. But all that was about to change… or not.

I’ll be blunt, Pillars of Eternity is not a good spiritual sequel for Baldur’s Gate 2. While it’s not a terrible game, it’s far away from being great and the Kickstarter promises and the marketing made the disappointment even worse. Obsidian developed awesome games like Fallout: New Vegas, so it was somewhat disappointing to play this lackluster game.

While PoE is still loved by many gamers, its story is not really that good (although it clearly shows glimpses of true greatness) and the game design is pretty terrible in some aspects. The major one being…

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[rjshae]

Err... his memory of Baldur's Gate 2 must be heavily filtered by time. There were a lot of trash mobs, and only a few of the fights required a significant level of forethought.

Meh, tastes vary.

 

[Arkadia7]

It's good to see a fellow rpg watcher do a review. But, I must say, there are a lot of typos and misspellings in the review, it needed a spell check, for sure. That said, I suspect my tastes are similar to the reviewers when it comes to how he felt about POE. Definitely too many things, such as the mechanics, that turned me off from buying that game. POE 2 is looking much more promising to me, so far.

 

[BoboTheMighty]

Err… his memory of Baldur's Gate 2 must be heavily filtered by time. There were a lot of trash mobs, and only a few of the fights required a significant level of forethought.

Meh, tastes vary.

True, but they were over pretty damn quickly... PoE was just dragging itself to no end. And some of the encounters had their own "quirks", that made them more memorable( Firkraag dungeon).
He's right about loot though... BG II Item/Spell revision mod is a great example of quality/quantity ratio, done right.
When game bombards you with a ton of consumables with as much trivial variation...player goes: ah, fuck it, It's not worth the effort.

 

[purpleblob]

I also agree with most of his points in the review. While he liked companions (ugh, I HATED Durance) and lore, neither appealed to me which is probably why I gave up on PoE - had nothing good in it for me to finish the game.

 

[GabrielMP_19]

It's good to see a fellow rpg watcher do a review. But, I must say, there are a lot of typos and misspellings in the review, it needed a spell check, for sure.

I did a spell check, but english is not my native language and this review was the biggest text I have ever written in a foreign language, so I guess I have to improve my english a bit. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[rjshae]

True, but they were over pretty damn quickly… PoE was just dragging itself to no end. And some of the encounters had their own "quirks", that made them more memorable( Firkraag dungeon).

We must be remembering it differently. BG2 was boring combat--rest--boring combat--rest--boring combat--rest… it dragged on quite a bit in places, especially during replay. But I guess BG2 is a bit of a sacred cow, so I'll leave off.

 

[purpleblob]

We must be remembering it differently. BG2 was boring combat--rest--boring combat--rest--boring combat--rest… it dragged on quite a bit in places, especially during replay. But I guess BG2 is a bit of a sacred cow, so I'll leave off.

BG2 combats are quite fun, even the "trash mob" combats. But then again, I suppose I am biased and opinions/tastes do differ but honestly, it was muuuuuccchhh better than PoE combat.

 

[ElderGnome]

Wow. Love how people's subjective opinions become their objective reality so easily.

 

[JDR13]

BG2 combats are quite fun, even the "trash mob" combats. But then again, I suppose I am biased and opinions/tastes do differ but honestly, it was muuuuuccchhh better than PoE combat.

I agree. I really enjoyed the combat in BG2 for the most part. I can't really comment on PoE as I've yet to play beyond the first chapter.

 

[Arkadia7]

I did a spell check, but english is not my native language and this review was the biggest text I have ever written in a foreign language, so I guess I have to improve my english a bit. Thanks for the feedback.

No problem, it wasn't that bad, since you are not a native English speaker. I have seen much worse! heh. One word to keep in mind, if you do more reviews in future, that stood out because it kept getting misspelled was "absolutely" - it only has one "l".

Anyway, putting that aside, very good review! I hope to see more reviews from you.

Edited: And just to show how difficult English can be, even for those of us who have used it all our lives -- I edited out the awkward, "putting aside that" to the much better and standard, "putting that aside", so this ain't easy, lol. (Hell, I edit my posts all the time, just sayin')

 

[purpleblob]

Wow. Love how people's subjective opinions become their objective reality so easily.

That applies to you too

 

[rjshae]

Wow. Love how people's subjective opinions become their objective reality so easily.

Well, part of my opinion became reformulated when I replayed it recently with the new BG2EE release. The game just didn't hold up as well as I remember it. I guess game designs have changed over time and what was once fun has become less so these days. Tastes vary; tastes change.

 

[Farflame]

Err… his memory of Baldur's Gate 2 must be heavily filtered by time. There were a lot of trash mobs, and only a few of the fights required a significant level of forethought.

I would say that you remember it wrong, not him. There are trash mobs in BG2, but I wouldnt say "a lot" because there was also pretty big variety and some interesting encounters. And combat was fun. You have probably mistaken BG2 for BG1. There were more trash mobs in BG1.

 

[rjshae]

I would say that you remember it wrong, not him. There are trash mobs in BG2, but I wouldnt say "a lot" because there was also pretty big variety and some interesting encounters. And combat was fun. You have probably mistaken BG2 for BG1. There were more trash mobs in BG1.

No, remember it fairly well. But yeah, the variety of creatures was the best part of the combat in BG2. At least for the first couple of play throughs. That was a big benefit of using existing lore rather than developing your own.

You raise a good point though -- the more appropriate comparison for PoE is probably BG, not the higher level successor BG2.

 

[BoboTheMighty]

We must be remembering it differently. BG2 was boring combat--rest--boring combat--rest--boring combat--rest… it dragged on quite a bit in places, especially during replay. But I guess BG2 is a bit of a sacred cow, so I'll leave off.

Well, I'm not sure how…you could pretty much annihilate ( most) enemies in seconds, even without exploits.
It's pretty obvious Sawyer designed his system around fixing issues with BG II system, but went in completely wrong direction with it.
Instead of engagement system, give front liners abilities to quickly close in. AI scripting to counter status effects instead of reducing their impact.
Overall it needs a more reactive system based on clear telegraphing ( since buffs/protection spells are of short duration, there has to be enough of a timing window to respond...in Pillars/Tyranny: it is simply a mess), very extensive AI scripting and a lot more effort put into encounter design( party vs party approach, instead of throwing mobs of same type of enemy)

When it comes to Stats and progression system…I personally prefer one from Arcanum: you can make crazy amount of builds, but unlike PoE they define your character and you can make even half broken builds work through clever know how, or simply rely on classic archetypes.

 

[rjshae]

Well, I'm not sure how…you could pretty much annihilate ( most) enemies in seconds, even without exploits.

Mmm, high level D&D characters have a lot of firepower available. By the end of the game, most non-Boss-monster combat in PoE seemed to be over fairly quickly as well.

When it comes to Stats and progression system…I personally prefer one from Arcanum: you can make crazy amount of builds, but unlike PoE they define your character and you can make even half broken builds work through clever know how, or simply rely on classical archetypes.

My biggest issue with PoE is still the skills system. If they fix that and scale up some of the enhancements to D&D levels (+5% rather than +3%, for example), I think it'll be much easier to differentiate characters.

 

[Zloth]

I liked the combat system in both, really. BG2 had a bigger variety of spells so things changed more as you levelled up but PoE seemed to have a lot more tactics involved. Enemies would be smart enough to run up and wail on your squishies if you didn't do something about it! Plus you didn't have freaky party AI sending your characters running off into another pack of monsters if you didn't keep an eye on them.

I didn't have a problem with PoE's story at all. The characters were better in BG (Minsc is the most fun character EVER) but Grieving Woman was pretty good in PoE, too.

 

[Moriendor]

Plus you didn't have freaky party AI sending your characters running off into another pack of monsters if you didn't keep an eye on them.

True. Instead they would first run into and then get stuck on each other! Which was much moar awesome!

No, seriously, the party AI (which includes pathfinding) was so poor that you have to put the "I" in quotes to do it justice. This happened sooo many times that characters would get stuck either on each other or on an enemy or on… I don't even know what… some invisible pixel?

I agree in so far that the combat per se was decent and could be quite fun due to the large variety of options and tactics but in my experience it was especially the poor AI that made it very infuriating at times. I'm hoping for massive improvements in that area in Deadfire.

 

[NewDArt]

Calling PoE combat decent is like saying Trump is servicable as president.