Pillars of Eterntity released

[Bhazor]

Opinions, nerds?

[mook]

never ending columns

[Zetetic]

I'm enjoying it lots, although I'm pants at the combat. Mostly that hasn't been a problem, although one bit I feel I've abused a bit (I've put a bit of quest on hold at a slightly odd place because I keep getting stomped beyond that) and I had to suffer through one conversation about 5 times (because the game wouldn't let me save between the end of that conversation and getting stomped).

[brat-sampson]

I'm actually playing it on easy, as my main memory of these games is healthy progress before hitting a solid wall of fresh. I'm mostly in it for the writing anyway and can change it up at any time if it just gets dull or anything.

So far, if you like these, this is another good one, if you've never tried one this might well be the best place to start as the older ones are pretty dated in terms of looks and systems.

[Bhazor]

5 hours in and I'm already torn. I still have a lot of faith. This is how I feel.

The writing is well above the standard RPG fare so far, maybe the best written one I've played since Kotor 2. But from Obsidian that's to be expected. I was disappointed that after backing the game Avellone was not lead writer, he was the reason I backed it, but the rest of his team are doing an admirable job. Naturally, given the sheer volume of writing theres alot of bland patches but when it hits it crits

Spoiler alert

The sadistic bureaucrat being a particular high point so far "I'm sure you'll find what you're after on her corpse, after all a little corpse stink is nothing when you're digging for shit."

[close]

.

On the other hand the combat is perfectly tolerable but just... lacking something. Too mob based and scrappy to feel tactical but too reliant on dice rolls to feel like a true action RPG. It feels like a first edition RPG system. Like the designers were picking numbers at random and just piling things on without thinking about overlap and hoping it all holds together. The half dozen armour systems feels especially cobbled up. The encounter system also seems pretty exploitable, I was able to divide a single screen into three seperate encounters by just inching up and backing up so I didn't alert the guy ten feet away. The combat certainly didn't blow my cock off like Divinity: Original Sin did.

The main graphics are really quite lovely with a ton of little background details and swaying leaves and shit. But the interface and the 3D animations look almost amateurish. The sleeping in an inn animation manages to look worse than in Baldur's Gate 2. The interface feels awkwardly caught between Baldur's Gate style real materials and a modern minimalist style that really just doesn't gel for me.

I've also had a couple of bugs. Nothing serious but I had the tutorial scroll stuck on loop for about 15 minutes after clicking "Minimize tutorial". I also triggered the conversation in the temple basement twice. Still it's actually playable unlike Dragon Age: Origins which I couldn't play because a patch deleted the game shortcut.

So far the good outweighs the bad by a decent margin and I'm just hoping the combat starts to click with me more.

Cold and ashamed. Lying naked on the floor.