Pillars of Eternity: your opinion so far?

[Mister K]

Hey there, you handsome/beautiful devil.

You know about this PoE game-thingy? Oh, you do? Great! Then how about you tell me, a guy who is still undecided, how do you feel about it?

What class/race/trait(?) combo are you playing? What about them companions? How about quests, story, RPG-elements and such?

Escapists, tell me all of it.

 

[mavkiel]

I sort of like it. The story and various quests seem well done. Where it loses me is the classes. None of them strike me as fun.

Wizards - No buffing outside of combat, no summons. None of the sort of strange attack spells you would have in d&d to spice things up. Oh and finally most of the spells are really *short* range.

Paladins - played one for a few hours. All the abilities I had was, turn on an aura and use flaming sword attack (one swing) twice per battle. Other then that just watch auto attack. Oh and you don't get to select a god as a paladin. Instead you join a frat.

Oh and last gripe is the party ai is terrible. Utterly terrible. The only thing it can do is auto attack (which it will occasionally fail to do). So no having a priest auto heal your tank if he drops below x% health. So that gets a tad tiring. But the worst bit is the path finding. Watch your group cluster around each other and be unable to reach their target, rather then walk a little further and attack... is annoying.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Micromanaging your team can be really annoying. And the more abilities I get the worse that's going to get.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

It's good. It's not flawless, but it's good. If you pay attention to PSA's about horrible, game breaking bugs, you can have a good time with it. It's extraordinarily reminiscent of Baldur's Gate era RPGs (deliberately so). The writing is solid, the combat is scrambly but has some tactical depth, the hand crafted backdrops are handsome. The UI could definitely use some spit and polish, but by and large it came as advertised...a huge throwback RPG meant to evoke the "Golden Age" of the late 90's and early 00's. Succeeds far more capably in this task than either Wasteland 2 or Shadowrun Returns. I'd say it's on par with Divinity: Original Sin. Where D:OS triumphs with better tactical combat, PoE runs circles around it in terms of writing and world building.

 

[DoPo]

You know about this PoE game-thingy?

Sure, I know Path of Exile. Did the new leagues start yet? I think they are about to.

...

As for Pillars of Eternity - been waiting before I start it.

If you pay attention to PSA's about horrible, game breaking bugs, you can have a good time with it.

How many are they? In terms of "few" to "a lot", rather than numbers. I've not seen the PSAs and that's because I've been expecting these, hence why I held off playing it.

Where D:OS triumphs with better tactical combat, PoE runs circles around it in terms of writing and world building.

I wouldn't be surprised. I liked D:OS but I'd admit the story was there to keep things going. At least it wasn't annoying, and it was just shy of forgettable. Overall, I was pleased but it wasn't because of quality, more like it was "pleasantly unobstructive".

 

[raeior]

I like it quite a lot so far, although I haven't played that much yet.

Combat is pretty hard but thats mostly due to the fact that my wizard mainchar is utterly useless because I encountered one of the few bugs the game seems to have. A summoned weapon is glued to his hands and I can't get rid of it, making it impossible for him to cast. Also he is attacking with his bare fists even though his inventory still shows the summoned weapon as equipped. Funny enough BG1 had exactly this bug were druids sometimes kept their paws after transforming into animals thus rendering them incapable of equipping any weapons and also preventing them from casting I think.

Writing is really good, the music is great, background art is amazing although I found it a bit hard to get accustomed to the character models. Story..well so far it's a lot of world/background exposition and I'm not really sure where the story will lead me but I'm only now on my way to Defiance Bay so....

Besides that, the combat AI (or lack thereof) was already mentioned and it happens far too often that a character just stands around staring at the beautiful art instead of attacking anything. A lof of the wizard spells are melee or close to melee in range which leads to your wizards dying a lot. Chanters and Monks I found quite fun concept-wise. Chanters because they are pretty much a useful version of D&D bards that can sing and fight at the same time. Monks get boni from getting hit which is an interesting idea, although it often leads to either the monk never getting hit thus being unable to utilize his abilities or getting beaten to a pulp immediately.

 

[Jandau]

This is the first traditional party-based RPG that I'd call truly good in a looooong while. Best one since the first Dragon Age, in my opinion. In fact, before PoE came out, I was starting to despair for the genre... Divinity:OS was boring as hell, Wasteland 2 was a mechanical mess and ugly as sin, Inquisition was adequate, but the good parts were drowned in too much busywork and tedium. However, I'm in love with PoE.

The game is beautiful and has a good atmosphere. It comes together quite well stylistically and it really imparts the feel of old-school adventuring and dungeon crawling. Yes, it's a throwback to the old days, but in a good way. The writing is solid, the setting rich and interesting. It uses basic high fantasy as a starting point, and then mixes in its own twists and additions, resulting in a world that's both familiar and intriguing. The mechanics have a decent amount of depth in them, the classes are varied, some more traditional, some with nontraditional mechanics to play around with. Hell, you can custom build your whole party if you really want to powergame.

It's not a perfect game, that's true. The initial world building is a bit clumsy. Nothing too bad, but it takes a while for the game to explain the basic concepts of the world to you and I feel that could have been done more efficiently. The overall balance could use another look. Again, nothing too atrocious, but some stats are noticeably more useful than others, and some classes could use a bit of a boost (compare a Wizard to a Cipher, for instance).

Also, the micromanaging can be a bit tedious at times. It really wouldn't hurt to be able to automate a few things. In fact, a Dragon Age-style tactics menu would be lovely. But the combat is fun, so it's usually not an issue.

As for bugs (I mean, it's an Obsidian game after all), I've had zero gamebreaking bugs in my 10-15 hours of playtime thus far and only one small graphical glitch (all inventory items were grayed out) that was fixed by restarting the game. Maybe I was lucky, but in general I haven't heard any major complaints regarding bugs.

Overall, this is a great game. Sure, some rough edges could use a bit of polish, but the same could be said for any similar game, and PoE's edges are arguably smoother than its competition. It's a beautiful experience and I'm loving every minute of it.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well the game is an old school beauty that is for sure, we are talking Planescape Torment and Baldur's Gate class. And this is legit Obsidian writing, it is very odd and very dark, and with every step you feel the need to know more about it.

But obviously there are some annoyances for those of us who are really into this kind of strategic play:
- there is no party AI control, they have one and only one default behaviour and you need to manage it for the entire duration of a fight
- even in combat movement is incredibly fast and without penalty, very frequently an opponent will run around your entire party(which takes them one or two seconds) and go for your weakest members, so it can quickly become a stupid little musical chairs game
- all magical stuff is limited to combat and combat alone, meaning you can't test any spells/potions, you can't buff in advance, you can't summon in advance, you can't protect/boost party members in basic exploration, and the second combat stops everything is instantly dispelled... meaning you need to re-cast everything anew even if you were no more then two feet from the next fight
You can probably tell these are minor things that will probably see mods in the very near future, they just get annoying when stacked together like that.

And overall this is very much an Infinity Engine copy, warts and all, where Divinity made great progress in mechanical improvements these guys made it all as it was done 15 years ago, to some that will be an upside I personally would not give any plus points.

 

[Isalan]

It's a nostalgia trip for sure, I cut my teeth on Black Isle and Obsidian's earlier works. Most of the above complaints are pretty valid though. Spellcasting is kinda full of very similar spells with aggressively short ranges, there's no aggro management (the theory is that once you or an enemy is "engaged" (melee combat essentially) if you try to move away from whoever you're engaged too they get a free attack with +accuracy, +damage and a chance to root you for a sec, in which time you can re-engaged) which means you need to play on half speed to really have much of a chance of keeping anyone on your tank.

On the other hand its a decent looking game, the story (in as much as I've played) is pretty good, you get your own keep, and the voice acting is well done, though not every character (or for that matter, every line in a conversation) is voice acted.

I'm enjoying it, though the rose tinted goggles of yesteryear may be colouring my experience a bit.

Oh, and for the record I'm playing a human Ranger with a wolf pet.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I'm currently leading a party of 6 and have been questing up to and around the first major city, but haven't actually gone in yet. I'm up to level 6 with my druid and he's slowly coming into his own.

The areas are wonderful and the world at large is a joy to explore. New exterior maps, I explore around, removing the fog of war and fighting any hostiles. There may be some interesting features stumbled on, like a cave, a group of bandits waiting for someone or a merchant down on her luck. The interior maps are beautifully designed. There are different architectures and caves give way to man made buildings. I played thru the first 6 levels of the "Endless Paths of Od Nua", the mega-dungeon that got new levels as stretch goals toward the end of the KS campaign...it reached 15 in the end so I still have 9 more ahead....but I'm taking a break from it for now!

The druid is not what I thought it would be. There are some annoying restrictions on ability uses that vary between classes and abilities. They can be "per rest", "per encounter" or very rarely, toggle on/off. Resting heals health damage and restores spells/per rest abilities but costs money or supplies so outside of a couple of "free" options, it cannot be done frequently (especially on hard). The spiritshift/shapeshift is one of my favourite mechanics in games, but is mediocre here. It has benefits (nice DR bonus with no penalty and two powerful claw attacks) and a damage bonus from class ability to all damage done while shifted. However it's on a very stingy timer and can only be used once per encounter, so I frequently spend a lot of a battle in human form. Very frustrating, can't wait for a mod that fixes this. Druids spells are crazy good...they can AoE like a boss, usually putting my wizard to shame.

Other classes have cool features and bad. Chanters are walking buff machines that generate "phrases" over time with which they can cast invocations. However, with the shortest -> longest chants it can take anywhere from 12 -> 40 seconds to get enough phrases for a lvl 1-> 3 invocation. So for at least 12 seconds, he can't do anything great, which in most cases the fight is already over. Fighters are okay, with abilities to spec DPS or tanking. Rangers need buttloads of babysitting to manage two units and status effects, but do good DPS for it. Priests buff and heal well. I haven't picked up the rogue or cipher NPCs yet but am looking forward to trying them out.

There's no buffing before combat, which is good and bad. Bad because it means you can't get an edge before a fight. Good because by restricting it, it means less time spent dicking about. The amount of time and tedium spent in BG2 with casting barkskin, stoneskin, bless, etc. is given back to us to enjoy the game.

It's a fantastic game, a great RPG but does have some minor issues. Hopefully, intrepid players will tweak these over time. I personally installed the "IE Mod" yesterday after trying to stay without it....but the "Engagement" mechanic annoyed me too much and had to go. The writing is superb, story interesting so far and there's a lot of things to love.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

It seems fairly fun. I am enjoying it but at the same time rather frustrated with it. I feel like they carried over too many things from Baldurs Gate just because they wanted it to be a spiritual successor to it. That meant taking the bad, with the good. That is my fear with most kickstarters, rose tinted glasses will prevent people from seeing that not everything about their favorite old games was good and it is okay to overhaul some parts of it.

I did get some good news that they won't be making the same mistake with Torment: Numenera and decided to make its combat turn based.

 

[Demagogue]

Finished off Act 1 this weekend with my Dwarf Dark Pally, and having a blast. Had a couple rough spots here and there at the start, with not having a big enough party, but once I started to flesh out a bit things have been a challenge, but not impossible.

 

[Schadrach]

I sort of like it. The story and various quests seem well done. Where it loses me is the classes. None of them strike me as fun.

Wizards - No buffing outside of combat, no summons. None of the sort of strange attack spells you would have in d&d to spice things up. Oh and finally most of the spells are really *short* range.

Paladins - played one for a few hours. All the abilities I had was, turn on an aura and use flaming sword attack (one swing) twice per battle. Other then that just watch auto attack. Oh and you don't get to select a god as a paladin. Instead you join a frat.

Oh and last gripe is the party ai is terrible. Utterly terrible. The only thing it can do is auto attack (which it will occasionally fail to do). So no having a priest auto heal your tank if he drops below x% health. So that gets a tad tiring. But the worst bit is the path finding. Watch your group cluster around each other and be unable to reach their target, rather then walk a little further and attack... is annoying.

I could agree with most of this. Though to be fair, there's not a lot of out of combat ability use, except for healing (and the only healing abilities that make sense to use OOC are the talents). Heck, chanters don't even chant OOC (which would be handy as one chant is a movement speed increase).

If you wanted summons, Wizard is the wrong class, instead you want Chanter. The downside is you have to wait for them to go through enough phrases in that combat to be able to cast the summons, but later on that's not a real problem. When I fought the drake in the Endless Paths I sent wave after wave of skeletons at the damn thing, given that both my main char and one companion were chanters with that spell.

You do have to micro a lot, though. Also, traps are kind of useful, especially if you have the party fall back and have on character pull to force enemies through the trap and give time for a few chanter phrases.

 

[Raddra]

The spiritshift/shapeshift is one of my favourite mechanics in games, but is mediocre here. It has benefits (nice DR bonus with no penalty and two powerful claw attacks) and a damage bonus from class ability to all damage done while shifted. However it's on a very stingy timer and can only be used once per encounter, so I frequently spend a lot of a battle in human form. Very frustrating, can't wait for a mod that fixes this.

You too huh? This is my main gripe with my druid. There is no need for the stingy timer on this ability, especially since it takes away your weapon/shield abilities. I much prefer an unlimited at-will toggle, especially since it evidently takes no effort for the druid. Its annoying to turn back, walk 5ft forward, then re-shift when the next bad guy pops round the corner.. or even worse when you're in the middle of a battle, why is my character turning back only to have to shift back AGAIN after revealing the next enemy? Makes no sense.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

How many are they? In terms of "few" to "a lot", rather than numbers. I've not seen the PSAs and that's because I've been expecting these, hence why I held off playing it.

Game-breakers? A few, but they are ugly. There's a particular side-mission that has a lot of people getting stuck/hard crashing and unable to proceed. The most insidious by far is the "double click" bug. If you double click an item to equip it, and you're already wearing an item in that slot, the game will delete all your passive skills and racial traits. Forever. This isn't always immediately apparent, so there are people who have continued playing/saving the game for hours after this, only noticing a sharp increase in difficulty. Obsidian is aware of the bug and has a fix, but don't know if they can make it retroactive yet.

http://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/30lmx2/psa_doubleclicking_equipment_bug/

 

[Amaror]

It's pretty damn good so far for me.
As some people mentioned there are a few gamebreaking bugs in there. But, well it's an Obsidian game, that's pretty much expected.
The game can be pretty tough even on normal difficulty but this also makes it more fun, at least for me.
The combat requires some micro, the AI of your guys is pretty small. It seems too easy for enemies to just run to your weaker party members and kill them. All of these are flaws the game has but it's still great.
The world and story is really interesting. The environment is just gorgeous, even if the graphics are dated, it just looks fantastic. There's tons of things to find and explore. It's a lot of fun, believe me.
Was definetly worth the 25 bucks.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I've been loving every second of it. (46hours in at the moment)..it's the best CRPG since the Infinity Engine era in my opinion.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

I'm...I'm incredibly tempted to pick this up...but 45 bucks seems kinda steep. I think I'm going to wait for a sale (and patches) for a better overall experience.

The odds of caving are going up every minute I think/post/talk about it though.

I absolutely adored Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate as a kid/young teen. Still have the former's manual hanging around that I'll occasionally thumb through out of nostalgia- waaaait a damned second. I should just play that again.

 

[Adamantium93]

Having a blast so far. I agree with an above poster who said its the best RPG since Dragon Age Origins (and I'm sure many would say since Baldur's Gate). It isn't perfect but I'm having a ton of fun.

I went for the boring human fighter (well, Islander Human) but I'm running a kooky Intellect fighter build that focuses on controlling the battlefield with insanely high durations on his disabling abilities. There were a couple moments that were tough but mostly intelligent party control will see you through.

I had an odd experience: I was forced to think in a game for a puzzle room. I had to scour the dungeon, finding bits of journals and notes, and piece together the appropriate sequence from those without a journal telling me specifically how to solve it. It was so much fun to actually use my brain to solve something.

Just got my fourth party member and still having fun. Can't wait to replay it as a different race/class with a different personality and see how it changes.