Pillars of Eternity II - Review

[HiddenX]

Ye Old Entertainment checked out Pillars of Eternity II:

Pillars of Eternity 2 Review: Modern day Baldur's Gate 2? Best isometric RPG of the last decade?

More information.

 

[benedictg]

I was really surprised that POE2 didn't do that well, I thought it was a massive improvement on the first one and one of the all time classics of the genre. Hopefully there'll be some kind of shift that makes a POE3 game viable, it would be a shame if the series just stopped once it had really got going.

 

[Redglyph]

I also found it was much more appealing and more mature than the first, even though I'm indifferent to the pirate theme. The only reproach is the quantity of lore in dialogues, but I'm not sure it was much different in the first game.

I didn't watch the whole video, only the beginning, it seems he somehow managed to find the sequel less interesting? I'll have to check if there's a good reason or if that's a new pattern of his; I'm starting to wonder if he does that to get more audience with semi-shocking verdicts like he did for Pathfinder and other games these last months.

To be honest, I haven't finished either of the PoE games (personal distaste of the combat system), so I may get the wrong idea about them.

 

[DArtagnan]

When it comes to traditional party-based CRPGs - then PoE2 is my overall favorite.

It's just such a damned pity that Obsidian never managed to fix the Unity GC-related stuttering issue.

It's such a major annoyance for me that I can't truly enjoy the game once I reach the parts of the game where it's particularly prevalent

 

[Stingray]

I played PoE2 all the way through last October and never had any stuttering. Don't know if that means it got fixed, or that it only affects certain hardware/configurations.

 

[Carnifex]

I enjoyed my play with Pillars of Eternity two, somewhat slightly more than I did the first game. Both are games that I know I'll be replaying for decades to come.

 

[DArtagnan]

I played PoE2 all the way through last October and never had any stuttering. Don't know if that means it got fixed, or that it only affects certain hardware/configurations.

It means you didn't notice or weren't bothered by it

 

[MAHak]

I’ve probably said it before, but my boy Ye’s channel is a hidden gem.
I think that he is insightful and honest in his reviewing. And while he, like most of us here who weren’t teenagers yesterday, is a sucker for those good old isometric partybased RPGs, he is still critical of its flaws and highlights both the good and the bad in these games.

 

[JDR13]

I didn't watch the whole video, only the beginning, it seems he somehow managed to find the sequel less interesting? I'll have to check if there's a good reason or if that's a new pattern of his; I'm starting to wonder if he does that to get more audience with semi-shocking verdicts like he did for Pathfinder and other games these last months.

I didn't see the Pathfinder video, but I'm curious.. what did he say that was controversial? Was it about Kingmaker or WotR?

 

[connus]

I played hundreds of hours of this in TB mode, enjoyed the combat, but I've got to say the NPC dialogue and voice acting in this game is hideous, appallingly bad.
Not talking about party members like Eder, they are ok, much like the first game.

VIP quest-giver types: (King, Queens, etc.) many are voiced by bland, uninvolved actors voicing fake philosophical word-salad BS intended to make them sound important and wise but they sound like stoned morons without personality.

 

[Stingray]

It means you didn't notice or weren't bothered by it

I watched videos of it on YouTube to see what it was, when I read your first post about it. If this is what you mean:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOxkgS_VAVk


Then I most definitely didn't have that. There is zero chance I wouldn't have noticed that, or not been bothered by it.

 

[Redglyph]

I didn't see the Pathfinder video, but I'm curious.. what did he say that was controversial? Was it about Kingmaker or WotR?

He seemed quite frustrated because he couldn't predict with certainty all the stats of his character from the get go in WotR. According to him, not only he wasn't able to fully optimize the build, but the result was usually very bad because the explanations were not clear enough.

There was a discussion about it here (link). His video is at the start of the thread but it's a long one.

To be fair, other games got a good review so it's not systematic.

 

[DArtagnan]

I watched videos of it on YouTube to see what it was, when I read your first post about it. If this is what you mean:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOxkgS_VAVk


Then I most definitely didn't have that. There is zero chance I wouldn't have noticed that, or not been bothered by it.

That's a severe version of it - but it's usually significantly less severe than that.

That particular location IS very prone to the stuttering, however - and there's no way you completed Fort Deadlight without at least some stuttering. I don't think I've personally experienced it being as severe as in that video - but there are times when it can be pretty bad.

Unfortunately, the issue is hard to replicate with ease, as it happens somewhat sporadically and seems to be very location dependent.

It first starts happening in Port Maje - but you can be in that location without issue for 10-20 minutes. However, eventually, it WILL start happening - especially after playing for a few hours, at which point the frequency will increase.

Once it starts - it's a ~1 second stutter that will occur every 1-2 minutes on average. Sometimes more frequently, sometimes less frequently.

Worst places would be Queen's Berth (especially the initial area) and Deadlight. If you want to test it thoroughly - you can go to the waterfall/mill area in Queen's Berth and focus on the animation of the mill. If the animation is fluid without the 1 second stutter for, say, 20 minutes in a row - then I will accept that you don't have it.

Many players never notice it - and it's the sort of issue that can be overlooked during normal play.

Sadly, it's not hardware related - it's related to GC in Unity.

I've spent literally weeks trying to find a solution for this. This includes things like spending 10 minutes staring at specific animations (like the mill) at least 100 times across multiple tests. This is because it sometimes takes that long before the issue starts happening.

I've tested it across multiple systems, including different CPUs and GPUs - and across different operating systems, including Linux and several Windows versions.

I've tested it across multiple patches - including PoE 2 release version, the latest version and everything in-between.

I've tried every single "solution" on every single forum I could find, including spoofing a lower amount of CPU cores, using Special K injection, fiddling with VSYNC and every other option in the game. Endless trial and error.

It's not unique to PoE 2 - it's just particularly noticeable in that game. The exact same thing happens in PoE 1 in certain locations - it's just less frequent and lasts for less than a second in that game.

I personally played 50 hours of PoE without ever noticing it. I only noticed after going back to PoE to test for it specifically, as I suspected it was a Unity issue.

The only PoE 2 version I haven't been able to test is the console version - but I'm 99.9% certain it will be there as well.

Just count yourself lucky you completed the game without noticing it

 

[Redglyph]

It first starts happening in Port Maje - but you can be in that location without issue for 10-20 minutes. However, eventually, it WILL start happening - especially after playing for a few hours, at which point the frequency will increase.

Yes, I remember you were mentioning that last year in a Unity-related thread. I could see it too, even though I hadn't noticed the problem until you brought that in the discussion.

It would probably be very difficult for them to remove that.

 

[Stingray]

I've spent literally weeks trying to find a solution for this. This includes things like spending 10 minutes staring at specific animations (like the mill) at least 100 times across multiple tests. This is because it sometimes takes that long before the issue starts happening.

You're saying you've spent at least 1000 minutes just staring at the mill (or other similar animations) in PoE2?

Anyway, I fired up the game and loaded a save from just a bit before I won the game. Left the game running for a while before I started testing. Headed over to Fort Deadlight, ran back and forth in the same corridor as in that video for a few minutes, but couldn't ever get a stutter there. Then I went over to the mill in Queen's Berth, though, and I saw a stutter about every 40-50 seconds when just sitting there staring at the mill...

Yes, I remember you were mentioning that last year in a Unity-related thread. I could see it too, even though I hadn't noticed the problem until you brought that in the discussion.

It would probably be very difficult for them to remove that.

If it's really GC causing it, then it should be easy for them to fix. You can disable automatic GC in Unity and set it to only happen manually. You could run it manually at times where the player wouldn't notice, like during a loading screen, or when they pull up a menu/inventory/character/journal screen.

 

[wolfgrimdark]

Never had stuttering in POE2 either. Fun game and really enjoyed it.

 

[JFarrell71]

I don't remember any stuttering, but it's possible that I had some there and just forgot about it.

 

[Carnifex]

I didn't have any technical issues with Pillars of Eternity two, though I didn't play at launch, as I waited till all the content was out before diving in.

 

[Stingray]

Well I thought I didn't have any either, until DArtagnan proved me wrong...

 

[DArtagnan]

You're saying you've spent at least 1000 minutes just staring at the mill (or other similar animations) in PoE2?

No, thankfully, the issue is there immediately for the most part. It just took me a while to find the most suitable places for testing where the issue persists and is always there.

It also has something to do with how much you change location and load save games as well.

Sometimes, you can start a new game and, say, play up until Port Maje - and the issue won't be there for (as I said) 10-20 minutes. Then, it will start.

Yes, I played through the first 1-2 hours at least a dozen times.

So, yes, I've done at least 100 tests - if not more. This includes installing and re-installing the game, starting over with a new character - trying new patches, old and new save games, different OS's and so forth.

When I said weeks, I meant it.

This is something that happens with me when certain technical issues in games I love occur and bother me.

It's rare (thank the heavens), but I completely obsess over them until I either solve them or go partially mad and just give up.

For PoE 2 - it means going back every couple of months and doing a bunch of further testing, and some forum perusing.

I've had a handful of games I've spent a similar effort with. I remember HoMM 3 being one, back in the day - but that turned out to be my computer.

It would crash randomly during the game - and I very nearly went crazy trying to test ways to avoid it.

Never did, which is incidentally the reason I never loved the game as much as others did, because I never got into it during the height of its popularity

The upside of all of that is that if a game-related technical problem CAN be solved, chances are I will find a solution.