The RPG Codex has ruled on Pillars of Eternity II and decided 'It's Pretty Alright'.
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Thanks Couchpotato!Things start to get a bit less nice when you drift away from exploration and start questing. The size of the world and its settlements, particularly Neketaka, which is an Athkatla-sized main city that takes a ton of time to check out in full, means there are many side quests to tick off. The vast majority of them are unfortunately of the FedEx variety where you go from place A to place B and win, but a few are more expansive and involved. The premises of these quest chains can be interesting, and some are even interconnected, but their execution leaves a lot to be desired, for multiple reasons.
For starters, they look like they give you a bunch of important choices, but from my observations these choices never amount to anything. Fair enough, having done only one playthrough I can’t speak of it with certainty, but over the years I’ve become good at identifying fake choices, and Deadfire checks out on all the criteria. Typically, having done a quest chain you never have to interact with the quest giver or other people related to it again in any way, there’s nobody coming after your ass seeking revenge, nobody gives you any major problems related to your decisions, etc. The only tangible negative consequences I can think of are companions leaving you based on certain decisions.
Much worse though, all the quests more complex than FedEx are terribly, terribly broken. I don’t think I’ve seen a single one that wouldn’t get bugged by going off the rails pre-planned by a designer and doing things in a different order. This includes broken triggers, missing dialogue options, buggy outcomes, anything that you can probably think of except total inability to finish them – at least that didn’t happen to me at any time.
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