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Now is the best time to play Pillars of Eternity 2, easily one of the greatest games of 2018
- Thread starter Durante
- Start date
So I only have enough cash for one game - either pillars of eternity or divinity original sin 2. Which is the better game?
Entirely depends on your tastes and what you're looking for. Despite being in the same general genre they play completely differently and offer very different experiences overall.
Absolutely. I noted that I didn't finish the previous one though. In that case, direct continuity made me worry I'd be getting a diminished experience.
I think I played it at launch or close to it. You're not the first to say that I'd like the sequel even without it though, so I may try it out.
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Bought it for like $16 on CDKeys, but after 4 hours or so, I'm not sure this is for me. I think the biggest issue is that the lore does not resonate with me at all. I understand they needed to come up with a lore of their own since they couldn't use any of the D&D properties, but it just feels so try-hard and almost as if they were going through a list of "fantasy RPG" boxes they needed to check and coming up with very uninspired solutions to fill them in. I felt the same way about the first game, but with the added annoyance of those meaningless and inane backer-made profiles that populated most of the nameless NPCs. Instead, in this game, they just chose to not give them any dialogue at all, which is probably better overall. In the end, this whole Watcher and souls stuff is all just a bit too grandiose and self-serious for me to enjoy.
The combat, too, is not much fun at least at first. I find myself just letting the AI do its thing and it's more than competent. I'm sure that changes later on, but again, the abilities here feel a lot like like they were just checking boxes out of some sense of needing to replicate Baldur's Gate and D&D. There are way too many spells that do similar things and none of them feel very meaningful.
This is such a huge turn off to me... This cheap attempt and mimicking Latin and providing a "translator's note" feature so you can find out what people are actually saying while trying to make it look like they created an entire language or something. Just feels so try-hard and pointless and does not add any flavor to the world if you ask me.
The combat, too, is not much fun at least at first. I find myself just letting the AI do its thing and it's more than competent. I'm sure that changes later on, but again, the abilities here feel a lot like like they were just checking boxes out of some sense of needing to replicate Baldur's Gate and D&D. There are way too many spells that do similar things and none of them feel very meaningful.
This is such a huge turn off to me... This cheap attempt and mimicking Latin and providing a "translator's note" feature so you can find out what people are actually saying while trying to make it look like they created an entire language or something. Just feels so try-hard and pointless and does not add any flavor to the world if you ask me.
Finally got out of Neketaka. This game is just so great. I was sailing around collecting bounties, exploring the map, and a sea shanty starting playing while sailing. It was one of the best gaming moments I've had this year. I just stopped in the middle of the sea to let the song play out.
It really is a FANTASTIC game and one of the best RPGs in years
It is SO satisfying to multiclass and find something that turns out to be powerful as fuck
It is SO satisfying to multiclass and find something that turns out to be powerful as fuck
Had a false start when the game first came out, things didn't click for me and I put it down for some time. But now I restarted my playthrough and created Vex'ahlia using the Vox Machina DLC as my Watcher and suddenly I'm having a blast. Currently just reached Neketaka with a party of Eder, Aloth, and Xoti. Not sure I'm feeling Serafan as a character, so I might just create Percy Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III as my fifth until I meet someone I like.
And I really enjoy Ashley Johnson's work as the narrator.
And I really enjoy Ashley Johnson's work as the narrator.
Is there a way to auto-level my party members? I don't like very much selecting everything for them. It's fine for people that love to min-max their classes, but for a first play, I'm not very interested into it.
Also, ship combat... what are the must haves to have my ship combat ready? I tried going to the island to meet the Principi right at the beginning of the game and got destroyed by a ship with like 50 people. Died both in ship combat and normal combat
Also, ship combat... what are the must haves to have my ship combat ready? I tried going to the island to meet the Principi right at the beginning of the game and got destroyed by a ship with like 50 people. Died both in ship combat and normal combat
I think there's a companion auto-level toggle under Difficulty in the options. Don't think it works for your Watcher, though.
For ship combat, first thing to do is to check the enemy's level, which is the number under the enemy captain's portrait. If it's within your level range, I would recommend mashing 1 until you're close enough to board. Otherwise, run away. There are a few rogue high level pirate ships roaming the early areas of the sea, so you might've run into one of those.
With the actual combat itself on the ship, enemies generally come across the mid-section and hop the rail towards the mast at the front of the ship. I usually park my tank in the middle and focus the damage dealers on the guys that hopped the rail towards the front end first. AOE is a huge help over the middle, even if it you're throwing out primarily status effect stuff. One Chill Fog cast can blind everyone hitting your tank in melee and most of the characters hitting it from ranged. Fireballs are great too once you have access.
I believe that's only for leveling them up to your party level once you recruit them. After that, you have to do it. There may be a mod to do it automatically.
I sincerely wanted to like PoE2, but Obsidian's rulesystem just ruins it for me along with their setting, this was a few months after release, I think I played like 15h.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker felt likea breath of fresh air, taking a pre-existing campaign together with a tried, tested and revised rulesystem and bringing it to life. There's still polishing to do, but this is pretty much what I wish Obsidian had been doing the past 10 years.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker felt likea breath of fresh air, taking a pre-existing campaign together with a tried, tested and revised rulesystem and bringing it to life. There's still polishing to do, but this is pretty much what I wish Obsidian had been doing the past 10 years.
It's funny how this is basically the polar opposite experience for a lot of folks. Deadfires departure from standard D&D style high fantasy is one of its best features.
Loved the first one. Bought PoE2, didn't grab me.
Loved the combat, graphics but I'm not a fan of pirate theme/settings in general. Dragged it down for me and didn't make it past the first section.
I haven't played this title since launch. Think, with all these updates I've heard about, I'll try and give it another shot.
Loved the combat, graphics but I'm not a fan of pirate theme/settings in general. Dragged it down for me and didn't make it past the first section.
I haven't played this title since launch. Think, with all these updates I've heard about, I'll try and give it another shot.
There are many ways to do both styles. I was especially put off by how active the gods were in the story. That along with the unshakable feeling that the setting was created to tell that specific story rather than just being one of many lost me.
Kingmaker is one of Pathfinder's 23 full-length campaigns, they all feature different themes, locales, levels of magic and types of gameplay. From a full on lvl1-17 dungeon crawl to complex kingdom management like Kingmaker to a pirate adventure.
Yes, there a Story mode which has pathetically easy fights in that mode
Yes, exactly. I really hate how they had to make this epic tale where you're some super Chosen One that can interact with souls and the gods and yet you just run with a crew of country bumpkins and normies and they expect you as the player to feel like any of the side stuff matters. Something wrong with me, surely, because most other people find a way to enjoy this stuff. It's also super contradictory because I enjoyed the Baldur's Gate games. Maybe I just like the Forgotten Realms setting and don't like this strange thing Obisidian came up with for PoE.
I'll have to check out Pathfinder at some point.
I feel that Baldur's Gate did the gods and chosen one thing as well as it could be done. You had to actually put a lot of effort into it to matter for the story, it was only about you because you struggled and came out on top. The only part Bhaal ever had was to cast his "seeds" as a backup gambit, you have to suffer for it.
Mask of the Betrayer managed to have the gods stay in their designated roles in the strict system they're supposed to operate in the Forgotten Realms, despite the whole game being crazy epic level stuff.
I initially didn't like PoE's setting at all when I played the first game. However by the end of PoE1 I started to come around on it and with PoE2 I think it offers something genuinely pretty unique and interesting in a fantasy setting. It's pretty conventional Kitchen Sink fantasy in the same way Forgotten Realms and Golarion are but I think its unique trick with the nature of the gods
is pretty damn interesting.
being not actually 'real' but constructions made from an older civilization that couldn't deal with an existential crisis of finding that the world had no greater creator or meaning
Look at all the people in this thread who play RPGs but dislike RTwP combat. Then figure that turn-based combat could make the game more accessible on consoles. It seems like a reasonable experiment (depending on the resources they're putting into it), especially if they're still thinking about future POE games or even a turn-based spinoff.
Would love to see PoE with a turn based mode.
I put my current run through the game on hold when I heard about the possibility in the hopes that the patch will be out soon.
I put my current run through the game on hold when I heard about the possibility in the hopes that the patch will be out soon.
In my mind, I prefer turn based, but Durante's post earlier reminded me that I dropped D:OS2 after 20ish hrs because of the fights taking forever. I do wish the pathfinding + movement in Pillars was a little better. It's annoying to tell someone to move to a certain spot only for them to take a round-about way (or disengage and take damage!) because they couldn't quite fit through the crowd.
I'm currently playing through Divinity Original Sin 2. I didn't play the first one because I was told it's not necessary at all. Do I need to play PoE1 to get 2?
PoE1's stuff comes up a lot in PoE2 but PoE2 is such an enormous improvement along every conceivable vector that I'm pretty hard-pressed to recommend playing PoE1 first. I sleptwalk through the last 1/4 of PoE1, if I'd been trying to follow it right up with PoE2 I think I would've been real burned out.
Its the reason I dropped DOS2 after 100h in Act III
I was burned from the fights which were getting longer
It's far more beneficial than not, but it's certainly not required. The game brings you up to speed on nearly everything you need to know and the vast majority of content is not reliant or affected by PoE1 and in those cases it is you likely won't realize it or at least feel like you're missing out a great deal.
Same, I put in like 80 hours between the beta and release and I just couldn't take it and the story, setting and characters are so mundane and generic that I just couldn't find a reason to plow through to the end.
PoE and PoE2's specific implementation of RTwP makes it very hard for me, at least, to understand what the hell is transpiring during battle. My party members sometimes just seem to fail at executing their orders. It's hard to tell if they are doing anything at all sometimes. Maybe the problem is with me, but a turn-based system might at least remove this ambiguity, but I'm sure it would introduce a host of other issues, too.
Anyway, I decided to give it another go and spent a few more hours playing last night. Made it through Fort Deadlight, which everyone had raved about as being possibly the best piece of content in the game (I think PCGamer did a feature on it in their magazine). I went the mostly non-combat route, but left rather unimpressed, honestly. It's cool that there are multiple approaches to completing the area, but each one seemed pretty limited and rigid in the execution. It also really bothers me how few NPCs there are to talk to and how almost all of them end up being a quest giver or part of a quest. It boils down to the "hold tab and click on everything that lights up" game.
Anyway, I'll stop harping on the game as it's obviously not for me. I do love the visuals in the individual maps, though.
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You can remedy most of this in a two ways. You can set the game to auto-pause on basically everything, most notably whenever your character finishes an action (this is disabled by default). You can also edit the AI or turn it off completely so they only do what you tell them. The AI scripts for the companions have behavior that will trigger on certain events (like taking a crit hit or going below a certain health threshold). This will cause them to override an action you told them. I turned off the AI behavior (outside auto-attack) for the main Watcher character because I wanted to control everything I was doing myself.
Have you tried turning off all AI, even auto-attack, and just manually control every action they take? To me this is a very educational way to play the game at first, you don't have to play like this forever just the start, as it forces you to really pay attention and understand the systems are play and what actions your party is taking every step of the way. At the same time read through the combat log and review each individual party member to see why an attack or action succeeded or failed.
Also setup your auto-pause so that after every attack it auto pauses and whatever other conditions seem important.
Combat being hectic is one of the great things about RTwP, but you have all the tools at your disposal to reign that in and control the flow. Once you learn it things really fall into place and start to become a ton of fun and even in the biggest fights that last a long time it's hard to get overwhelmed and confused as to what's going on.
This game was a huge letdown to me after i loved POE 1. I played it on uhhh... hard but not very hard iirc and found it trivially easy, all of the quests felt very color by numbers "help the bad guy or help the good guy", and there was sooo much backtracking and doing chores.
I bought the season pass when it came out, how are the DLCs?
I bought the season pass when it came out, how are the DLCs?
They could also just be getting interrupted. Thankfully Deadfire makes it pretty easy to tell if that's happening when you know how interrupts work and what abilities have them rather than being weird random rolls like the first game. It doesn't require a significant amount of game knowledge, though.
I've been playing Obsidian-y games for 20 years now, and maybe this speaks to some kind of essential laziness on my part, but basically every game has had some mechanical components that I have not bothered to learn the specifics of. Like most saving throws stuff in BG2 I just never bothered to learn, I just slammed the spells out and killed the monsters and it was fine.
PoE2 still has its parts like that, but I don't think I've ever been closer to understanding the game's entire ruleset—or, more accurately, more confident that putting in the effort to learn its ruleset would result in lucid, actionable information. I still have a couple quibbles, but they're mostly about UI implementation—I wish it were possible to see detailed defense profiles of a monster before you get into combat (I get that you're probably supposed to open the Cyclopedia to check this stuff out, but I'd much rather just start the fight and waste some of my first turn blasting a Skeleton with Piercing damage or whatever). I also wish it were a little easier to parse the Penetration information, especially when I'm hitting for 25% and I can't tell how much Penetration I'd need to change that number to discern if I should pop a potion or whatever. I know I can open the five windows o' attack feedback in the combat log, and maybe something above the enemy's health bar is telling me the information I want, but again, I usually just keep attacking and it works out fine. So I guess my real problem is "I wish I was not lazy."
Despite that stuff, though, I actually understand Deflection, the saving throw stuff actually makes sense to me, being able to quickly see my chance of an attack hitting/spell taking effect is really great, and frankly I love it
In conclusion, Deadfire is a land of contrasts
PoE2 still has its parts like that, but I don't think I've ever been closer to understanding the game's entire ruleset—or, more accurately, more confident that putting in the effort to learn its ruleset would result in lucid, actionable information. I still have a couple quibbles, but they're mostly about UI implementation—I wish it were possible to see detailed defense profiles of a monster before you get into combat (I get that you're probably supposed to open the Cyclopedia to check this stuff out, but I'd much rather just start the fight and waste some of my first turn blasting a Skeleton with Piercing damage or whatever). I also wish it were a little easier to parse the Penetration information, especially when I'm hitting for 25% and I can't tell how much Penetration I'd need to change that number to discern if I should pop a potion or whatever. I know I can open the five windows o' attack feedback in the combat log, and maybe something above the enemy's health bar is telling me the information I want, but again, I usually just keep attacking and it works out fine. So I guess my real problem is "I wish I was not lazy."
Despite that stuff, though, I actually understand Deflection, the saving throw stuff actually makes sense to me, being able to quickly see my chance of an attack hitting/spell taking effect is really great, and frankly I love it
In conclusion, Deadfire is a land of contrasts
DLCs are good, and probably the hardest combat of the game. Also the base games was rebalanced several times over the patches and is quite a bit more of a test than at launch, even on Veteran.
I almost wonder if they regret making PoE2 a direct sequel to PoE1 instead of giving it a new IP. Like, name recognition is worth a lot, but it seems like a lotta people had my same experience of...really sliding into home on PoE1, and it took me/us a lot of cajoling to pick up the inestimably better sequel just because PoE1 felt like more than enough PoE.
Can't have sold that bad, it's on Steam's Bronze category for "Most Sold" in 2018.
I'm playing it.
And... it's great, indeed. I did not expect to like it as much, I just d'ont care about the setting, but it's a really nice change of pace from the usual Medieval Europe.
It's a joy to see the various powers and companies backstab one another and to be able to really influence things in very shady ways (though Aloth is a pain in the butt to manage because the game push you to be so roguish); and it's definitely way more interesting with real, tangible and acting gods that you can bicker with rather than Eothas in the first which was... mysterious at best, until the end that is.
I do like the world exploration, I do love maps and it sures feels great to just sail around and discover new stuff.
But I would have liked a bit more dialogue here, the crew events repeat a lot, there's a lot less in the way of word and more in the sword.. not a big deal, but that could be better in a new game.
The sailing mechanics are not very interesting but fiiine... ship combat though? I still don't understand how it works. How this was green lit is beyond me. What an awful, awful system in place.
But my biggest complaint definitely lies in the combat.
Yes, you have tons and tons of skills, and the itemization is just amazing: lovely to find so many items that are genuinely different, and not a palette swap +1 geomancy like in Original Sin 2.
D:OS2 was my biggest disappointment of last year, the entire RPG systems were pure trash. Nothing but +1 items, randomized rewards making quests nothing more than an XP grind, merchants as only source of good stuff that is blander than its myriad of kill fetch quests. It just murdered the game, especially as combat drags on and on with more and more shield points to pad an extremely limited gameplay (it's day and night between D:OS2 and PoE2:D, the later has way better progression and interesting things, setting oil on fire is fun for two hours and then it's just busywork).
Buuut.... Deadfire also has an overabundance of quests, not all of them as interesting, and when you enter combat... ouch.
I don't dislike RTwP, I don't like it better than turn based either.
But holy crap the AI is borderline broken. And It is in some places! I got stuck until reload after a fight against trolls.
The pathfinding makes me facepalm constantly, sometimes characters just don't want to attack (especially summons), and letting the characters on auto can be... dangerous. But by taking full control, you still get the other problems, and it makes fights even longer than they would be in a turn based game.
So yeah it has good variety, and restocking spells/group wide stat checks should be baseline in the genre; but sometimes it's more frustrating than it needs to be.
Oh and the dice roll mechanics? In this game and all the others, it needs to die in a fire. Literally meaningless, you may as well have a chance to just restart the combat instantly with each character action, that's pretty much what it does already in harder fights.
Scrap that system, it's fun with a real DM, not in videogames. I want to be able to predict ennemies and make tactical choices, not randomly win because I got 2 crits in a row.
All around, I do love the game, it's a great RPG and a great game about exploration, with really nice writing in a barely used setting.
But it has some serious gameplay issues... it's too bad since they have such a nice, clean UI with excellent tutorials, a rarity in such games.
None the less ne of my favorite games of 2018. And one of the best RPGs around. At least it's not a fake MMO with moar stats on everything so you can get stats while you get stats with zero true progression (*cough* anything from Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Monolith et CD Projekt *cough*).
And... it's great, indeed. I did not expect to like it as much, I just d'ont care about the setting, but it's a really nice change of pace from the usual Medieval Europe.
It's a joy to see the various powers and companies backstab one another and to be able to really influence things in very shady ways (though Aloth is a pain in the butt to manage because the game push you to be so roguish); and it's definitely way more interesting with real, tangible and acting gods that you can bicker with rather than Eothas in the first which was... mysterious at best, until the end that is.
I do like the world exploration, I do love maps and it sures feels great to just sail around and discover new stuff.
But I would have liked a bit more dialogue here, the crew events repeat a lot, there's a lot less in the way of word and more in the sword.. not a big deal, but that could be better in a new game.
The sailing mechanics are not very interesting but fiiine... ship combat though? I still don't understand how it works. How this was green lit is beyond me. What an awful, awful system in place.
But my biggest complaint definitely lies in the combat.
Yes, you have tons and tons of skills, and the itemization is just amazing: lovely to find so many items that are genuinely different, and not a palette swap +1 geomancy like in Original Sin 2.
D:OS2 was my biggest disappointment of last year, the entire RPG systems were pure trash. Nothing but +1 items, randomized rewards making quests nothing more than an XP grind, merchants as only source of good stuff that is blander than its myriad of kill fetch quests. It just murdered the game, especially as combat drags on and on with more and more shield points to pad an extremely limited gameplay (it's day and night between D:OS2 and PoE2:D, the later has way better progression and interesting things, setting oil on fire is fun for two hours and then it's just busywork).
Buuut.... Deadfire also has an overabundance of quests, not all of them as interesting, and when you enter combat... ouch.
I don't dislike RTwP, I don't like it better than turn based either.
But holy crap the AI is borderline broken. And It is in some places! I got stuck until reload after a fight against trolls.
The pathfinding makes me facepalm constantly, sometimes characters just don't want to attack (especially summons), and letting the characters on auto can be... dangerous. But by taking full control, you still get the other problems, and it makes fights even longer than they would be in a turn based game.
So yeah it has good variety, and restocking spells/group wide stat checks should be baseline in the genre; but sometimes it's more frustrating than it needs to be.
Oh and the dice roll mechanics? In this game and all the others, it needs to die in a fire. Literally meaningless, you may as well have a chance to just restart the combat instantly with each character action, that's pretty much what it does already in harder fights.
Scrap that system, it's fun with a real DM, not in videogames. I want to be able to predict ennemies and make tactical choices, not randomly win because I got 2 crits in a row.
All around, I do love the game, it's a great RPG and a great game about exploration, with really nice writing in a barely used setting.
But it has some serious gameplay issues... it's too bad since they have such a nice, clean UI with excellent tutorials, a rarity in such games.
None the less ne of my favorite games of 2018. And one of the best RPGs around. At least it's not a fake MMO with moar stats on everything so you can get stats while you get stats with zero true progression (*cough* anything from Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Monolith et CD Projekt *cough*).