Hardcore Casual

This post will be a non-spoiler (spoiler post coming tomorrow) review of Pillars of Eternity, having now beaten the game, with a playtime of just under 60 hours. I didn’t complete all of the side quests, but I’m guessing I did most, including finishing the Endless Dungeon.

Quite simply, the game is one of the best RPGs to come around in years. The story, the game systems, the graphics/sound; everything works here and it all comes together. I ran into one bug during my playthrough, and even that is now fixed with the recent 1.03 patch. On normal difficulty I had plenty of challenging fights, but never ran into anything that felt impossible and prevented me from moving forward.

The six companions I used (Aloth, Durance, Eder, Sagani, and I replaced Kana with Grieving Mother) all felt like real people with real motives rather than party fillers. Most of their personal quests were great, and I especially liked Eder and Aloth. They also add in dialog many times during the game, and it was always solid and in-character. Looking forward to playing with the ones I did not in a second playthrough.

The ending, which to me is critical to get right, was fantastic. It’s often very difficult to get this right, to make an ending that feels like a proper reward for all of your effort, but PoE nailed it. A nice bonus here was that the ending did sort of a “world update” based on your actions, which I felt was great, especially with an expansion and sequel already in the works.

A few other random bits:

Surprisingly I liked the crafting here, as it was somewhat minimal but useful. Being able to take a decent weapon or piece of armor and ‘update’ it to a higher tier was nice but not mandatory. I didn’t use food much, but for tougher fights it seemed to give that little bonus I needed. Same with potions, though I used those more often than food. Scrolls I only really used on a few boss battles, but I could see them being very powerful/helpful.

I liked the pace of the game. For something that took almost 60 hours to complete, I never felt the game was dragging or losing the pace of the main quest. I also liked the three tier breakdown of quests. You had the main quest line(s) always at the top, the you had the big side quests in the middle section, and finally the third section was tasks, which were always small, short, and less story-important things you could do for bonus XP or items. I liked this because it made it easier to decide what to skip, or what to consume if you needed a longer/shorter break from pushing the main quest forward.

Surprisingly I don’t have a problem with the level cap being 12, mostly because it allows for the final area/dungeon to remain challenging, and especially the final encounter. I think a game like this really leaves a bad final impression if you grossly overpower the final encounter, and so having a level cap helps to control this.

The Endless Dungeon might be my favorite bit of content in an RPG ever. It really was amazing, right down to the finally. More on that tomorrow.

Unless you absolutely hate RPGs, Pillars of Eternity is a must-buy.

Whenever developers ‘remake’ a classic game, or attempt a ‘spiritual successor’, there is always a balance of what to keep and what to change/update, and if you don’t get that balance right, you disappoint. Often-times you not only disappoint, but also end up with a below-average product overall.

Pillars of Eternity (PoE), 4-5 hours in, gets most of the Baldur’s Gate formula right.

The graphics look good/great, but it also looks like Baldur’s Gate would if it was released in 2015. Same with the sound and voice acting, its all very solid, and the quest text is a mix of voice and writing, much like it was in BG (I find games with 100% voice tiring as too often you are waiting over something you aren’t fully invested in, while having lesser-important parts be written means you read through them at a better pace). The UI is parts BG theme, part smart UI design for 2015.

Combat, a very critical aspect, also feels like an evolved version of BG. You still can pause and then let things play out, and you still have spells and special abilities, but the entire game isn’t confined to AD&D rules, but instead uses a ruleset that likely better fits a computer RPG.

I love the stamina and HP systems too. Stamina is like a short-term HP pool that auto-regens during and at the end of combat, while your true HP pool can only be restored by camping or at an inn, and camping is limited by a consumable that you can only carry so much of. If your stamina hits zero in a fight, you are knocked down and out, until either your party wins and you stand up, or everyone is knocked out and you lose. Since HP don’t regenerate and aren’t easily restored, that system acts as a ‘wear you down’ mechanic during a dungeon crawl, and tougher fights that deal a lot of HP damage are more meaningful, while smaller fights with weaker creatures will likely only take some stamina that is fully recovered after the fight. Hopefully the above makes sense, but in short it really is a wonderful system to both capture the struggle of a single fight, while also providing a system to show long-term fatigue/damage.

The one ‘flaw’ for me so far is the need to use stealth to find secret, since this results in your party going around in stealth mode 99% of the time, which just feels off and is a bit annoying (you walk slower in stealth). I’d much prefer the game just do a skill check when needed, to still reward having a character with that ability, without forcing that extra click and slowness. Plus it would leave the stealth mechanic for, you know, actual stealth when you need it. I wonder if that’s something that can be ‘fixed’ with a mod in the future.

More as I get deeper with the game, but even this far in, its very easy to recommend PoE to any RPG fan, it’s a gem.