Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian's new CRPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate

Some people really dislike D:OS2 combat and how it works though, it plays very much like a strategy RPG more than a traditional CRPG. I think it's better too, but this one is enjoyable, better than the first one, stuff feels more responsive and you can interupt on purpose and stuff like that.

I've played a bunch but haven't progressed much, I rushed to the capital to get all the companions going as usual so now I'm working through the capital and I hate those super super large cities in RPGs, takes fucking forever to do everything. I think I spent 4hours in Queen's Berth only. Hopefully the other areas are shorter or have more combat as I've had to fight like once in that time. At least I kinda like the setting and the different factions seem like they actually matter this time, we'll see if they will later on.

Chimney said:

How feasible to play this as a solo party or max duo on a difficulty that won't put me to sleep? Never played part 1, but I have beaten pretty much all the other popular RPGs in this genre in this manner with the difficulty ramped up.

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You'll definitely be able to, but for a first playthrough it'd be really rough. A lot of what makes these runs doable later down the road is when people figure out where the strong items are, beeline to them, do non combat quests to grind some levels, and then just fuck shit up. But for a first blind run, it doesn't seem super realistic. I mean it could be doable, would need to work some strong builds, with multiclassing I assume it's definitely something that can be done, I just don't know what kind of setup or how difficult it'd be really.

Vorph said:

So are the companions once again designed by someone (Sawyer IIRC) who went in and looked at what the bare minimum for each class' primary stats were, then subtracted 1-2 from that just to make them as shitty as possible at their role?

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They have fairly average stats in everything like the first game yeah. If you want to min max you can play with mercs but it's not like you can't play the game with companions fine, it's not THAT hard. Just your damage output tends to be lower but everyone is kinda tankier than a min max group. Doesn't make such a big difference tbh, especially since now stats can scale a lot higher(like 30-35 maybe with all buffs), so the difference between 13might and 18might is not that big relatively.

Ship combat looks kinda whatever, I haven't done much of it though, I'm still trying to clear the capital city, shit's so fucking big. At least it got less boring in the district I'm in, lots of combat.

I feel I'm gonna have to respec my Cipher soon though, a lot of these spells I picked are a pain in the dick to use and I mostly rely on charm(rank1 spell) and some single target nuke. Those beam spells look good on paper but they're a fucking pain to use properly with engagement breaking issues and while I could use my rogue skill to teleport in the right spot, it feels like a waste of some precious rogue ressource I could use to smash some fuckers head in with the rogue OP full attacks. My "tank" Eder does so much damage with these.

But charm is borderline broken though, it's a rank1 spell so it only costs 10focus(start with 20 at my level, get like 20+ when I shoot something with my fast hunting bow) and basically charms something for ~30seconds which both disables it entirely and add some mediocre damage for me as well as additional targets to soak damage. Larger fights I just grab 3-4 fuckers and single target down the rest then kill the charmed fuckers one by one. I'm glad it's the spell I got at lvl 1, I thought maybe I'd end up regretting it cause I'd replace it with one of the stronger ones(dominate and then dominate+aoe charm) but the low cost makes it a keeper.


Anyway on ship combat stuff, I think once you have a bigger sip it won't be as much trouble, can probably one round smaller fuckers with good cannons and a ship with 4cannons per side. The good thing about the system is it seems there's no limit to the amount of ships you can encounter, so you can use it to farm money, which so far has been pretty sparse especially compared to the broken economy of the first one. And there's a fuckton of cool shit to buy in shops, some really strong ass items. I only grabbed some mechanics gloves and some stealth shoes so far but there's shit with like aura and special procs and what not, the legendary items are so much better in this game than in the first. Plus they all have unique upgrades too instead of the generic shit in the first game(get +20% damage as x type on everything, increase quality, maybe put some dwarf iron shit on it).