Pillars of Eternity - Retrospective Review
 

Chris Davies reviewed Pillars of Eternity in his series "A History of Isometric CRPGs":

Thanks Redglyph!

More information.

PS: Chris Davies is using the term CRPG for classic roleplaying games.

For me it's a classic. BG2 benefits from a big nostalgia factor, but beyond that, with the White Marches expansion, PoE is just as good… in different ways. It would be even better with PoE2's character build system.

As the game started I immediately fell in love. That was THE game I was waiting for since end of Throne of Bhaal.

To finish it, it took several attempts and last third of game I was bored to death. I literally forced myself to finish it.

That is beginning and end of my story with PoE. Yes, its subjective. And its not classic for me.

What was it that turned you off as the game progressed? I get feeling less engaged as a game goes on. That happens to me in plenty of games as the systems become repetitive and the newness of the setting and characters wears off. But I don't remember feeling like there was any particular drop off in quality in PoE.

Man, I wanted to love this game. I backed it, I played at release and was shocked at out buggy and rough around the edges it was. I decided to wait until it was content complete before I gave it another try, and while I did finish the game and all the DLC, I honestly found it a pretty mediocre experience.

PoE2, which had its own problems, was much more enjoyable to me, especially once they introduced turn-based combat, half-baked that it was.

In either case, I can say that I loved the art, the environments, and the lore. It was mostly the story and combat that left me underwhelmed.

Kingmaker is the game that has finally torn me away from my yearly or so urge to run through the BG saga one more time, although I'm sure that'll happen again someday too :)

I never understood why, but at some point it became cool to bash PoE. The edge-lords of the net like to pretend it was a massive disappointment.

I initially didn't like POE 1 and shelved it … came back to it and then replayed it 5 times I liked it so much, even if the story was more unusual then the standard fantasy fare you get with AD&D like games. POE 2 I also really enjoyed but my OCD wants me to only play POE2 with a proper import. So when POE2 was announced I played POE1 a 5th time to have a proper import. I have since started a new POE1 so I can play POE2 again :)

PoE was neither a masterpiece nor a bad game - just a mediocre/good RPG. (With way too much "character class balancing")

They were marketing the game as a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate - maybe not the best move.

I liked PoE the first, yet fell in love with PoE 2. Everything just seemed elevated with the second game, and while I like them both, I definitely have a favorite.

I liked PoE 1 quite a lot, and wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did, esp. given that I'm not as big on games like BG as much as a lot of other people are.
PoE 2 is still waiting to be played, but I'll def get onto it one day.

Yep, that's it for me. The overall game was ok. But the ruleset was a total turn off. I played both games am quite enjoyed them but never got into the numbers.

I've changed my mind about it over the years. At first I found it an inferior nostalgia cash-grab - but I've come to appreciate not only the mechanics (though I still prefer 3.5 D&D by far) - but, in particular, the story and lore.

Reason? PoE2 - which I consider the very best of this particular subgenre - and I just had to know more about the world after that one.

I think that some aspects of the game I found disappointing, were there all the time, but they grew on me as game progressed. That was the RPG system behind, which I found lacking, especially later in game. Most of the time, the game did not challenge me, with exception of very beginning and one particolar fight. Some wtf moments in story development I was not able to just step over and forget about. With exception of main progress route, the world and characters felt very empty to me, very static. I think one of main reasons I was able to finish it was DLC, which raised the bar on severeal levels and increased my involvment with game. I dont think That was usual long-game-fatigue, happens to me often as well, so I think this was different. Anyway, its long time since, otherwise I would proabably come with more specific examples.

But perhaps its worth mentioning PoE2 improved on several fronts in my eyes and especially TB mode redeemed RPG and combat system for me and I played it for many hours. Still didnt finish it though. Paradoxically, as I find it being much better game then first one. Again the game is quite easy and main story is not really engaging, but world is much more living, not feeling as empty and static. ¨

Nevertheless, in meantime I had no problem to finish Kingmaker after several hundred hours playthrough and go through another BG1+2 playthrough. So again, doesnt seem to be just simple fatigue problem.

I quite like Chris Davies, he doesn't always have the most jovial tone when he's speaking, but overall he has a good balance of time spent on the different aspects of a game. Well done.

I played the first PoE briefly, ran out of spare time to play, and years later I directly played the 2nd then ran out of motivation, other occupations were more appealing to me. I've recently restarted playing it.

I feel many of the reviewer's comments apply to the PoE 2 too. Too much lore and vocabulary is thrown at the player by each NPC, the ruleset is convoluted and hard to get into, the areas are beautifully handcrafted but the loading screens way too numerous and very slow (even on high-end systems with NVMe), the quests and story are very good. The one difference is the "seriousness" he mentions, that I don't feel in the 2nd game, or at least it's not oppressing. Companions and other significant NPCs feel real and are interesting as far as I saw.

It's easy to like this game despite its problems.

What he says about the cut scenes replaced by sketches / dialogue-like pages made me think of the problem with Solasta. They should really have taken this approach, it's not distracting from the tabletop feeling, it offers more branches with less work, and the presentation would have been much better. They used that in Pathfinder games too, and it works very well.

The "named NPC" issue is a comment I'd just made about Monomyth, I'm not surprised it turned out badly. They haven't made the same mistakes in PoE 2 AFAIK.

I didn't find the ruleset harder to get into than any other ruleset I wasn't familiar with. I still remember how confusing Baldur's Gate seemed to me at first because I had never played PnP 2nd Edition rules. PoE isn't any more complex than D&D, TDE, etc.

Are you talking about backers getting to name NPCs if they pledge enough? I wasn't aware the Monomyth dev was doing that. That's disappointing…

After the White March DLC patches, I greatly enjoyed POE 1. It was a nightmarish mess of nerfs, tweaks, and game-breaking bugs before then though. PoE 2, however, remains incomplete in my backlog. That was a hellaciously boring series of copy/pasted islands & ship combat I ran out of excuses to trudge through.

Reminds me though: I need to replay Pathfinder: Kingmaker before the sequel gets released next month - because I enjoyed it far more than either of Obsidian's titles.

Somehow it seems less intuitive to me, but that's probably mainly because I've known other rulesets for years. Still, this one has been made for computers, with floating-point values, calculations we're not really supposed to do ourselves. It leaves me with a fuzzier impression. :)

Yes, you can even create one. Hopefully they'll reserve the right to veto the names if they're bad or incompatible with the setting.
https://i.ibb.co/PjKGTzM/image.png

For me it wasn't that it was too complex. It felt just too arbitray. Best example is the Might attribute which was the important attribute for a typical fighter and a glass canon mage. That may make sense from the ruleset but I couldn't undertand what that would actual mean for the character in non-combat. Is he physically strong or not? Also the spells and talents didn't feel like they made an impact. It felt like it didn't matter what I chose. In DnD and Pathfinder getting a certain spell or feat can totally change the way the encounters are going from there on. That's what I like, when a level up is actually meaningful.

Agree 100%. For myself, I always enjoy learning new systems and I thought PoE 1&2's was very interesting, and superior in some ways to D&D.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with it as long as the dev rejects anything silly. I just hope he doesn't feel obligated to accept whatever names are given out of fear of losing pledges.


I agree it's a little odd how some of the attributes work in PoE, and I think Might is probably the best example. I didn't like how it applied to both physical and magical damage. Iirc, it even applies to healing as well. Then you have Intellect only affecting the duration and AoE of spells which is kind of dumb imo. I think they were trying a little too hard to be different there.

With all due respect, that's just down to what paradigm you're used to. PoE isn't any more or less arbitrary. You're trying to equate the PoE "might" with the D&D "strength" and they're simply not the same thing.

A sorceror in D&D uses charisma as their spellcasting attribute because, as per the rulebook, "your magic reliies on your ability to project your will into the world." You could as easily ask the same kind of queston about sorcerors, as in are they physically attractive outside of combat? Are they persuasive speakers? Charisma is a catch-all attribute that can mean several different things depending on what character/class you're talking about.

I don't think charisma and physical attractiveness are the same, but you do have a point otherwise. I never thought charisma being the prime attribute for sorcerers made much sense, and it's obvious they only did it that way to further differentiate them from Wizards which was unnecessary imo.

Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. Some systems (like Call of Cthulhu) have a seperate "appearance" attribute for that, but D&D doesn't. That was my point, but I probably wasn't particularly clear. Charisma can sometimes mean physical beauty, sometimes it can mean persuasiveness, sometimes it can mean "projecting one's will on the world"… it's a very broadly defined attribute.

Well I've been deciding what to play next after my BG run ended last week. This thread and that video has made me install PoE!

kind of funny that his history of isometric CRPG's starts with Fallout. There were several notable ones well before that

cough cough *** Ultima VI and VII *** cough cough

Have you played Kingmaker yet? If not I endorse it over PoE. Not trying to be an edgelord but I definitely prefer the PF rule set as a long term D&D nerd but to me it was just a better game in every way. As much as I root for Obsidian, I am just really impressed with what Owlcat was able to deliver.

I have to agree with Pineapple here. I got incredibly bored with PoE for reasons that are so complex they'd take many walls of text to elaborate on and have all been said by other people in many posts over the years. I also found the OP's video on PoE very boring, and as such haven't have completed either the game or the video about the game, haha.

I too would recommend many, many other games before PoE.

Even in the short clips of combat you can see in video, there always seems to be a lot 'happening', but there never seems to be anything noticeable 'happening' in terms of effect or consequence. In PoE when you crunch a sword into something you don't get a sensation you've crunched a sword into something, you just get a sensation that combat is progressing, a bit like how it is in MMOs when whittling down a boss's HP. Whereas in D&D games, when your sword hits it's always a good crunching thwack that feels like a battle-changer, not necessarily progress, but rather "Oh Yes! Take that!".

This kind of stuff is very difficult to put into words, but typifies the overall gameplay difference with all facets of the gameplay between the PoE 'style' and a D&D style of game. Just the tip of the iceberg in describing one of the things @Morrandir is highlighting.

I'm not too bothered with the meaning of the attributes, as long as they make sense. For example, Might is "a character's physical and spiritual strength, brute force as well as their ability to channel powerful magic", they simply unified the damage. There are a few attributes and it's just the matter of wiring them to the system, and getting used to the little quirks.

But look any simple attack and how many parameters are involved, with percentage tiers that are not even consistent between attack, damage and attributes:

https://i.ibb.co/HrBQVKY/image.png

D&D is made for dice so it's possible to easily calculate the impact of stats, and there aren't too many of them. With PoE I'm not even bothering anymore, I have general ideas such as speed is important (mainly recovery), and because of that armour may be more detrimental and Dexterity may help more, and so on. But it's a seat-of-the-pants feeling, an analogue version of the game, vs the digital version in D&D if you will.

Perhaps the fact there are many D&D games and only two PoE has something to do with it (and they changed the rules between PoE and PoE 2).

I finished PoE once and, as a whole, enjoyed it well enough. It's nice that they found a way to make a balanced attribute system. "Might" always gets to me though. As a combination of both physical and spiritual strength I'm of the firm opinion that it's not a character attribute at all, just a derived value. Like apples + oranges = fruit. At the very least it's a level of abstraction that doesn't work for me at all.

I can't make a physically weak but mentally strong Wizard. That sucks.

It seems to me the RPG system created for PoE was supposed to tie as many loose ends as possible so it would be able to automatically take care of anything developers throw into it. It is paradoxical, that in this overly complicated system (not really suitable for RtWP IMHO) most encounters play out in very similar way, where enemies are grazed to death, with help of few samey abilities that are used repeatedly.

Your thought is well justified! Actually I've asked myself if I just didn't like the PoE ruleset because I was used to D20 systems and have problems to adjust.
But that's not the case. As I've tried to point out my biggest problem was that I didn't feel that the choices I made in character progression actually had an impact.
For another comparison in D:OS 1/2 I felt the decisions had more of an impact. And that's also not D20.

Not really. I tried to understand what the the attribute Might actually means. An example with 2 character archetypes:

1. human warrior, big and muscular, fights offensively with brute force with a battle axe; a bit dumb, no sense for science or magic
2. human wizard, thin/frail/squichy, highly intelligent, specialized in destructive fire magic to cause maximum damage

In PoE both character would have an extraordinary high Might value.
But what do these characters actually have in common as human beings that justifies having the same value in an attribute?

My answer to this question is: nothing
The attribute Might is just an abstract construct that defines how much damage is dealt.

That again leads to other problems. Might also gives a bonus to Fortitude which "represents a character's endurance to body system attacks such as poison or disease". Why should my frail wizard get a bonus here?

So my problem is not that Might is different from Strength, but that I fail to understand what Might actually is (apart from the effects on game mechanics).

edit: Ah, yes, basically what @Arhu said. (I should really read the whole thread before answering.)

Yep, as JDR already said you have a point here.
And I also think that Charisma is not physical attractiveness.

The difference is, that I can imagine what a human with high Charisma is.
If it makes sense that this high Charisma improves his spell-casting is another question.

Not really, that's what the Persuasion skill is for. Charisma only gives a bonus (in DnD 3/4).
So it is possible to have a persuasive character with low charisma and vice versa.

Yep, well said.

I'm not sure I personally agree that it's the mechanics of PoE that's the problem. While the "Might" attribute was certainly questionable in name - it was sort of ok for what it wanted to do.

It was a little bland compared to D&D 3+ and Pathfinder - but there are certainly more options than in 2nd Edition AD&D - which I appreciated.

As for how each stat had a very predictable and static effect on performance - which was kinda boring - it certainly made it easier for a new player to design their build, because there weren't any arbitrary ability requirements in that way - like there is in most D&D iterations.

My own personal problem was primarily the lack of proper feedback during combat - and the utter lack of custom combat scripting - meaning you actively had to rely on the terrible combat AI and atrocious pathfinding unless you played it as an awkward TB game (pausing every second or so) - which made combat highly frustrating and/or meaninglessly time-consuming.

However, I've found that - as you get more comfortable and experienced with the mechanics - it works pretty well overall, though the omission of custom scripts will always be a huge detriment to the combat experience, for me, as I hate manually pausing constantly.

I don't agree at all that "things didn't happen" - as they definitely did happen, and the game is full of powerful spells and effects. Again, I think the problem was how the game did a bad job communicating why something didn't happen - or happen as you expected it to happen.

It's just very chaotic - because you're focused on basic things like trying to actually move your character into position, which is often impossible because of the crap pathfinding and "area blocking" system they had in place.

Another big issue I have with the character system is the lack of proper multiclassing - meaning you sort of have to stick with your archetype - and while there are nuances to weapon choice and the order of ability selection - I never felt like I could make the kind of character I really wanted to.

It must be noted that PoE 2 solved every single one of these problems to a relatively great extent - and then some. It's just such a vastly superior game (especially after some balance patches and a handful of mods) in every conceivable way.

I really think it stands head and shoulders above all the infinity games - as well as Kingmaker.

Of course, that comes down to personal preference - as with most of these things.

PoE2 definitely stands head and shoulders above PoE1. But above Infinity games and Kingmaker? Maybe by production values. But shiny graphics and full VO doesnt make great isometric, party based cRPG - at least in my book.

Again, it's personal preference.

It's a combination of more fun character progression (I prefer actual powers to passive stat boosts), vastly superior RT combat (PoE2 combat is fantastic), VASTLY superior presentation, superior mini-game (I actually like the ship stuff, and quite dislike the kingdom management of Kingmaker), the plot itself being much more interesting, the lore of Eora being more compelling, much better location design, more fun exploration, VASTLY superior loot (especially the interaction with talking weapons), and so forth.

I can see why people prefer Kingmaker - but I do struggle to see good reasons for anyone claiming IWD and BG are better games - unless we're talking nostalgia, which is fine.

But, again, it's just personal preference.

With the Sorcerer having high charisma, it was, I think, though may not be written anywhere concrete, that it was an attempt to create a wizard who is predominantly specialised in the Illusion school of magic. I definitely remember most representations of Sorcerer I saw years ago were usually Illusionists.

Sort of like your Penn and Teller and other showmen-like magicians. As such they have more in common with Bards and Paladins and the like, in that they deal primarily in the Je ne sais quoi aspect of fame and personal magnetism. Magnetism being a better word than attractiveness, Influencers as we now call them.

Physical attractiveness is certainly very prone to making someone charismatic, but classical physical beauty would be primarily a Strength attribute, or, rather, general 'fitness'.

Very popular showmen magicians are rarely physically attractive though. I think what confuses the issue with regards to Sorcerers is that the ruleset doesn't pin them down to always being Illusion specialists & so people might only ever want to play normal wizards but with a Sorcerer's spellbook. A diluted over the years kind of situation.

I disagree. BG1+2+ToB (especially played with one party) are VASTLY better games then PoE and VASTLY better games then PoE2. And no, its not nostalgia, which is fine.
And yes, its about personal preference.

And Kingmaker is also VASTLY better game then PoE1+2.
Ah, of course … again, its personal preference.

Sure, that's cool. We all like different things for different reasons.

Do note, however, that I'm specifically talking about PoE 2. I don't think PoE is better than either BG/IWD or Kingmaker.

Yep, that may well be. Iirc I played it on medium difficulty where I didn't have any problems to overcome the encounters without having to study the mechanics in detail.
So it might well be the choices I made in character progression had a significant impact but I just failed to see it.

Btw this is my ranking for the aforementioned games:

1. Baldur's Gate II (incl. ToB)
2. Pathfinder: Kingmaker
3. Divinity: Original Sin II
4. Baldur's Gate I
5. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire
6. Pillars of Eternity
7. Divinity: Original Sin

BG I and PoE II have the same score actually.

I certainly agree that the first Pillars has a "blandness" that the second game somehow entirely avoided. It won't stop me from ever replaying it, yet it's something that popped into my mind the second I finished playing the sequel.