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

You know I am just glad to play modernish releases of this type of game.

For me at 20 hours now, this is by and far the best video game I have played in several years.

Only video game in years that makes me want to come up with excuses to be antisocial and stay in and game. Alas I've only gotten like 4 hours to play since release.

You guys are just old and jaded.

Buy it. Play it. Mod it. Tweak it. (To the tune of daft punk)

When I met the NPC ranger my first thought was :

Was in tears reading this very short article:

Pillars of Eternity diary: playing as a party of bears - PC Gamer

Wait, people are praising this as beingbetterthan Wasteland 2 and it's only average? Lol. So much hyperbole.

Yeah, my girlfriend is quite annoyed . Chick aggro for sure.

They did a great job on this title.

Adding cipher to my fav class list of all time too.

Done with Act2 so far and down to level 12 in the Od Nua Dungeon, did all sidequests so far (I think) and I have to admit that it slows down on me. I was super hooked the past days basically, I loved the reminiscense of old RPGs, the character development, quests and everything.
Now I start changing my mind. Not saying its not worth the money, so far I am 25 hours in, so I got my money worth of game already and will probably finish it anyways, just in case it picks up the pace again for me. But I really start disliking things.

There is so much combat in this game and it's dull. There is so few variation in the fights. No mage battles like in BG, no dragons or special encounters that force you to change your tactics. No liches or the like. All difficulty comes from throwing shit tons of mobs at you that you can or can not handle agrowise.
The worst of those being the constant iterations of shadows, shades, spectre and banshee mobs that blink around your tanks and instagib your DPS. These are the few fights that are so far challenging, but not in a good way.
I just lack the feeling of accomplishment for any of that, because it feels like I will lose the fight if 2 banshees port to my mage and win if they don't. I did nothing for that other than trying three times.
Maybe I misremember my BG experience here, but I have the feeling fighting was more diverse. Also the dungeons where less linear? I feel it had more secrets and riddles.

The second part is that it somehow feels... lifeless? I have no emotions towards any of my party members or other NPCs. They are bland, all seem ambigious to any decisions I make. Their personal quests are not really drawing me in either, which is no suprise because they are short anyways and then suddlenly end without being resolved or a stupid ending.
I lack big decisions too so far. There is the occasional decision towards a faction or whether to kill someone or not to, but here also it feels like it doesn't really matter. Caed Nua is the same thing, you simply stumble about an emtpy castle but building it up makes it stay that way and only removes the spiderwebs. It just feels like an empty thing, that does really nothing in the end.

I won't remember any of that I think in 3 month, not the characters, not the fights or environments.
I could really could do with the bad fighting (and maybe others don't feel about it like I do anyways) but what I find most lacking is the polish story and characterwise. There is no Edwin, no Viconia and no Sarevok or Irenicus. (maybe Thaos picks up in Act3).

Just to make clear, I don't think its a really bad game, its just not as good as I had hoped.
Just my feeling towards this so far

TJT_sl said:

A game made on a shoestring dev budget.

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They raised $4million in the initial KS and a lot more since. Not quite an MMO budget but it's not a shoestring either for this type of game with no cinematics and limited voice work. The new Richard Garriot MMO got half of that.

Kirun_sl said:

Wait, people are praising this as beingbetterthan Wasteland 2 and it's only average? Lol. So much hyperbole.

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Honestly I try to play wasteland 2 and I just can't get into it. I have no idea if a built my party wrong. But I just get HAMMERED at the AG plant and its not even funny.

I was so hyped for this game and yet I can't bring myself to get past Maerwald yet.

I think this game suffers from Obsidian trying to reinvent the wheel of cRPGs. Don't fix it if its not broken - BG and IWD had the formula down right. Obsidian kind of failed at it, unfortunately.

I usually enjoy playing rogues and wizards in these games. Rogues to unlock stuff, unlock/disarm traps, find secret doors and stab things in the back. Wizards because they make things blow up and they are OP at endgame.

Sadly this game's take on the rogues.. Can't find things without being in scouting mode, can't only have the rogue in scouting mode, it has to be the whole party. I totally dig running the entire game walking slow as fuck to find all the hidden stashes and traps. Yay! That and backstab is completely useless unless you have the invisibility talent and that is only twice per rest..

Wizards.. spells per rest. Limited resting. Enough said. That and spells seem generally lackluster.

Like Faris mentionned here earlier, fight diversity(or the lack thereof) is a big downer for playing a spellcaster. The way I(and I think most people) play their spellcasters in a dungeon with limited resting and limited spells per rest is to let them sit in the back autoattacking until you get to a boss fight(or something really challenging). Problem is, that shit never happens. My wizard never gets to rape a Lich, Beholder or Dragon. Just more of the same. Might as well trade the wizard for an extra melee/ranged dps.

Soygen_sl said:

Is this game better than Wasteland 2?

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Wasteland 2 was great, but this is better.

Trollocaust_sl said:

I was so hyped for this game and yet I can't bring myself to get past Maerwald yet.

...

My wizard never gets to rape a Lich, Beholder or Dragon. Just more of the same. Might as well trade the wizard for an extra melee/ranged dps.

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You are playing a low-mid level rpg, are admittedly at very low level and want to fight a beholder or dragon?

I've killed twodragondrakes so far.

radditsu_sl said:

Honestly I try to play wasteland 2 and I just can't get into it. I have no idea if a built my party wrong. But I just get HAMMERED at the AG plant and its not even funny.

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Get some tips and try again. Fully patched Wasteland II was GOTY material for me last year.

Vorph_sl said:

Oh, and one other thing. There was a new version (4.51) of IEMod released this morning that fixes the bugs with it's character respec commands. Now you can relevel all the story companions from level 0 and not make horrible choices like the developer did.

To do it:
Save your game in a new slot.
Open console (` by default) and press Enter.
Type "FindCharacter Eder" -- output in chatlog should be something like "Companion_Eder(Clone)_2" (replace Eder with Aloth, etc. and also note that you don't type the accent in Ed?r's name)
Type "ChangeClass Companion_Eder(Clone)_2 Fighter" (can change to another class if you want a companion for one of the classes not available except as hirelings)

Now you can relevel them from 0 to whatever level they are now, choosing the abilities, spells, talents, etc. that you want them to have.

Stats will still suck though, but we can fix that too:
Go back into the console, and type "AttributeScore Companion_Eder(Clone)_2 might 5" if you want to make him into a proper tank. Note that this requires knowledge of his base stats and what bonuses he has from race, origin, etc. In Ed?r's case it's +1 might from human and +2 resolve from human + Dyrwood origin. So even though I typed might 5 he will end up with 6.

Basically just remember that every character has 75 stat points, then their race either gives them +1/+1 or +2/+1/-1, and their origin gives them another +1; for 78 total points in the end. Base stats need to be in the range of 3-18.

There's also a command called "Skill" which works exactly the same as AttributeScore if you feel like bothering with that as well. Skills are pretty superfluous in this game, and doubly so on companions so there's really not much point. Just make sure everyone has at least 3 in Athletics, and that one character has a lot of points in Mechanics (no idea what the max needed there is, but I'd probably take it to 7 or 8 by the end of the game just to be safe).

When you're done, save the game in a new slot and then reload that game immediately so that item effects and other stuff like that gets reapplied correctly.

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Day late on this but if you want to edit story companion stats here are their baseline values:
Companions Builds, ouch. - Page 3 - Pillars of Eternity: Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning!) - Obsidian Forum Community

Trollocaust_sl said:

Sadly this game's take on the rogues.. Can't find things without being in scouting mode, can't only have the rogue in scouting mode

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Scouting to find things really annoy me.

And the fact finding hidden things is entirely based on the Mechanic ability is just dumb. That's right - Perception etc play zero part in finding hidden stashes etc Only Mechanics. If you move around you have to make sure your guy at the front is the one with maxed out mechanic skill asfolks in the middle or back won't get close enough to items to find them if moving as a party.