Pillars of Eternity II - Preview @ PC Gamer

[Sock]

I have a different opinion than most here. I loved the original. I backed this game all out, I watched it eagerly, and I dived in as soon as the closed beta started. I put in 111 hours in the beta, so I played a lot of different builds and had a lot of experience playing with the game so that when it launched, I was ready to go.
246 hours into the actual game. I liked it, a lot. I found that it scratched that itch that few games really do. It had replayability for me, and I understood engagement due to the beta. It was fun.

But then White March kind of threw a wrench into replayability. Because it's always where you want to go so that you can get the soulbound gear. You severely penalize your ability to trivialize most of the rest of the content by not getting those as soon as you can.

I am looking forward to POE2, but I am not in the beta this time. I am wanting a more full experience.

 

[Ripper]

You severely penalize your ability to trivialize most of the rest of the content by not getting those as soon as you can.

I don't quite understand how you've phrased that. Can you explain some more?

 

[Thrasher]

I too loved the original. Even without the patches. Didn’t find the combat uncontrollable whatsoever. Never understood the whining this game provoked.

 

[mbuddha]

It wasn't the combat (which was okay for me), the stats, systems, etc that bothered me.

What the game needed was more interesting characters, especially in the party, this would've helped a lot. And some sex appeal. It's a dudefest. How about a couple attractive females, why not? And dare I say it - a carefully designed romance or two.

Anyhow the party characters were rather boring. Not poorly written, just not witty either. Maybe some more dark themes but then again so many games overdo that these days.

The world/backdrop was kind of interesting, and nice looking, although some larger towns and secret areas would have been welcome.

 

[rjshae]

The Might thing didn't bother me. Mighty means powerful. Wizards become powerful, warriors become powerful. Just in different ways.

Resolve, on the other hand…

Resolve makes a lot of sense, logically, and it's a decent way to maintain balance among the attributes. I.e. reduce the incentive to min-max character attributes based on class, while allowing more build variants that can still play effectively.

 

[Dasale]

Woo many not really positive comments, I totally share this mixed feeling, for me the disasters are:
- Awful non management of the difficulty, the lack of enemy scaling break half of the game because of too easy combats you chain and chain (after some very tough), this is such a boredom.
- The writing is too often boring, I didn't like the lore nor the main story and the end, found tedious almost all grayed choices because topics covered was uninterested for me or characters involved was feeling anonymous, found almost all companions non interesting with too many talks about some boredom of their past life, only exception is the Priest and the DLC companions.

And main secondary problems are:
- I didn't found the combats great either, too many combats at two side of some door, too many collisions to micro manage, more.
- A disappointment is how the game failed to create the feeling of a world or at least a wide area, the wilderness areas are all poorly and there are too few of them that's why they failed this.
-Yeah the number of damages types is ridiculously high, attributes are confusing, and in fact not really a build target (you need them all anyway, no matter your class).

Still it's not a bad game, many good combats, game is in general good for all dungeons, there's many classes very different, all are interesting to build and use, party building is interesting, many parts of writing is good, there are interesting quests, and some interesting characters, the game looks nice and is diversified, there's many different enemies, more. And the writing of DLC is much much better so I have good hope for PoE2.

 

[TomRon]

Take the opposite of Dasales opinions, that's where I'm at.
*No damn scaling unless you chose it in the expansions, making levels and loot meaningful instead of superfluous.
*Good writing and interesting characters, I liked all of the companions I chose and I wanted them to succeed in their personal quests. I especially liked Hiravias, but the rest were good too.
* Some hard choices because it's seldom as simple as "Good or Evil" .
*Good combat and mechanics, including character building. This ONLY applies to the fully patched game with expansions though, I found it clunky and confusing in the release version. My second run last year was a totally different experience.

Really looking forward to the sequel.

 

[NewDArt]

Interesting that this game has been perceived so wildly differently - like we haven't actually been playing the same game.

Well, that - or we all like different things in different ways

 

[Sock]

I don't quite understand how you've phrased that. Can you explain some more?

I just mean that it's top tier gear with effects no other gear has. Stormcaller in the hand of a ranger specced for it, for example, is decimating in how brutal it is. With all the soulbound gear in hand, by the end of White March you outlevel everything, and have gear superior to anything you'll find from then on.

 

[Ripper]

I just mean that it's top tier gear with effects no other gear has. Stormcaller in the hand of a ranger specced for it, for example, is decimating in how brutal it is. With all the soulbound gear in hand, by the end of White March you outlevel everything, and have gear superior to anything you'll find from then on.

Ah, right - I'm with you.

 

[Drithius]

Interesting that this game has been perceived so wildly differently - like we haven't actually been playing the same game.

Well, that - or we all like different things in different ways

It changed a LOT with patches. From the epic fail launch with bugs that completely ruined character stats, to the near elimination of the Fatigue mechanic, to the complete overhaul of the game's progression so that the third act didn't feel so tacked on.

Frankly, I'm not surprised at the wide variance in opinions - with or without a person's preferences being weighed.

The UI with its miniaturized effect icons and lack of clarity in chaotic battles still sucks ass though.