Thoughts/discussion/first impressions of Pillars of Eternity!

You guys can't count, too:

To rest you have to go

1) to the stronghold
2) into the house
3) one floor up
4) into bed
5) one floor down
6) out of the house
7) optional: goto the shop and buy new rations
8) back to the dungeon

pure loading screen madness.

One for the area, one for the house and one for the stairs; that makes 3 when I went to school!!

Originally Posted by HiddenX
pure loading screen madness.

That, at least, is true enough and a reason why I cringed a bit whenever I had to go questing downtown. Best example was near the end of chapter 2, IIRC: A loading screen between each step:

- Go to Brackenbury
- enter quest building
- go upstairs and talk with quest NPC
- go downstairs
- get outside
- go to First Fires
- enter quest building and do stuff (some loading screen downtime here, yay)
- leave building
- go back to Brackenbury
- go back to quest building
- go upstairs and talk with quest NPC
- go downstairs
- get outside
- leave!

Of course, in general I tried to minimize loading times by doing quests in one area in parallel, but sometimes it isn't really possible. The least they could have done is to combine floors of small buildings on the same map.

I wouldn't complain as much if the loading times were short, but usually I have time to go and get a libation of some sort while I'm waiting, and waiting, and WAITING!!

haha. For me it's a cigarette. I felt sick after resting in the stronghold too much.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Ah, yeah, I see what you mean.
And while this of course is absolutely correct, I don’t think it is very practical to focus on that regularly.

The regularity is called by the situations. Some situations call for one unified front line, meaning casting AoE spells on behind this front line is straightforward.
Some other situations call for small clusters of enemies, which mean that casting AoE spells engulf a party member most of the time.

This side of the combat system was checked for fortitude, reflex, will AoE spells. Did not try the deflection thing, while it might be of the most accessible.

Originally Posted by HiddenX
You guys can't count, too:

To rest you have to go

1) to the stronghold
2) into the house
3) one floor up
4) into bed
5) one floor down
6) out of the house
7) optional: goto the shop and buy new rations
8) back to the dungeon

pure loading screen madness.

For me it looks like:
1. Exit Endless Paths with Master Staircase which takes you to outside of the keep.
2. Exit to world map and go to Dryford.
3. Enter Inn and rest for best bonuses (and buy supplies)
4. Exit Inn
5. Exit to world map and go back to outside of Keep
6. Use the entrance to master staircase to back back to where you were.

For whatever reason they decided to make it faster to go rest outside the Keep

With more hours in the game now i can say i am less impressed with it.

I play on normal and in the beginning i liked what i experienced with battles. I had to think before i entered a battle or i could go down. Not anymore. I rarely use potions and most of the time the wizard and priest are just waiting for the skirmish to end.
I could switch to hard but the point is i would like to have more tactical enemies(how i miss the wizards from BG)

Other than that, i still enjoy the game and i am happy with the xp system as i try to avoid battles.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9867

A very detailed review from good old Codex

It makes a lot more sense to me than most of the mainstream reviews do - as it deals with the actual game and its mechanics - not the game we wanted it to be.

Originally Posted by akarthis
With more hours in the game now i can say i am less impressed with it.

I play on normal and in the beginning i liked what i experienced with battles. I had to think before i entered a battle or i could go down. Not anymore. I rarely use potions and most of the time the wizard and priest are just waiting for the skirmish to end.
I could switch to hard but the point is i would like to have more tactical enemies(how i miss the wizards from BG)

Other than that, i still enjoy the game and i am happy with the xp system as i try to avoid battles.

You should switch to Hard as in many encounters creatures are replaced by stronger versions that often have different abilities and not just better stats (like Shades can teleport and summon Shadows while Shadows can only teleport)

Well I agree with a lot (but by no means all) of what Darth wrote but, despite that, I still enjoy playing PoE!

Darth's review just obliterates Obsidian, heh. While I find him overly harsh at some points, it's a breath of fresh air to have someone intelligently point out the flaws in PoE that make it so very generic.

All in all, however, I can't really be surprised with how PoE turned out; Obsidian set out to make a safe <insert_medievalsettingwithmagic> DnD clone, but didn't have the time/money to flesh out the mechanics. That's why I'm setting my sights on the 1.05 patch… but my hopes are slim and grounded in reality

Originally Posted by Darth Roxor
Let’s get one thing straight. When Obsidian were touting how this was their “ultimate” game, over which they’d finally have “full creative jurisdiction” that wouldn’t be “blocked by publishers”, I had many things in mind. I had a vision of another Mask of the Betrayer, I thought of a throwback to Icewind Dale, I also hoped for something completely new. What I got instead was a very badly done cargo-cult clone of Baldur’s Gate 1 that mindlessly copies all its flaws while actually dropping the things that made it work, and completely disregarding the 17 years of cRPG history that happened in the meantime. “But Darth Roxor, BG1 wasn’t that much of a good game either, it was only BG2 that was really gud!”, I hear you say. And you are right. Then let me ask you back – why did Obsidian decide to clone BG1 instead of the clearly superior BG2? Why settle for blatant mediocrity instead of aiming for supremacy?

Even further, I don’t know if I could call Pillars of Eternity an outright “bad” game. It’s just painfully generic, with nothing that ever stands out, but I would also say that any sufficiently mediocre game is indistinguishable from a bad one. To be honest, I would say it’s rather insulting that Obsidian, with all their creative freedom for PoE, have decided not to experiment even a little bit. Everything in this game is textbook, safe and derivative, there are no risks involved anywhere, the game practically plays itself with barely any input from the player. The only emotion PoE evoked from me during the 41 hours it took me to finish it was a feeling of ennui that kept telling me, ‘maybe I should play IWD again’. I doubt that should be your objective when you make the ‘ultimate’ IE homage. Obsidian promised the story of PS:T, combat of IWD and the exploration of BG, but somewhere along the road they got confused, and what they gave us instead was the story of BG, the combat of PS:T and the exploration of Gothic 4.

Yeah, he's certainly harsh and a bit ranty about it - but I largely agree. I have to give him credit for going into nice detail about the issues with the mechanics, which I've been trying to point out here. I just haven't had the energy to go into such detail.

I still like the game more than he does, though.

I think it helps to not really want a fan-service BG product. I saved myself a lot of grief by not having unrealistic expectations in that way.

1.05 will not do much, they only promised some QoL additions. Balance changes will be minor. At best some bigger changes can be expected in Expansions (fixes to Stronghold mostly) but for any bigger game mechanics changes only PoE 2 can do that.

I know. How much can they really accomplish in a month that half a year of "Early Access" couldn't make clear? I'm looking forward to any improvement, however, no matter how small. The IE Mod will undoubtedly offer even more in a month's time as well.

Yeah, everything sucks, man. The game is garbage. Life sucks. RPGs suck. Everything sucks.

Codex 4 life. I'm outta here.

I think they kinda oversold PoE. Several claims they made pre prelease were not exactly true or do not have any impact.
Like scripted events don't actually have any impact. The Skills are not really useful. The choices you have dependent on your skills and attributes aren't really that different from other games. The attribute system is nice, but hardly has any impact as you don't rise any stats in game.

Nevertheless I think personally I prefer PoE over Wasteland 2 and Divinity: OS. Even though I strongly dislike RTwP.
It's not a holy grail, but it's a darn good game.

Originally Posted by Fluent
Yeah, everything sucks, man. The game is garbage. Life sucks. RPGs suck. Everything sucks.

Codex 4 life. I'm outta here.

Everything has its place: there's room for both your "unicorns and rainbows 10/10 'analysis'" as well as detailed critique of the game, no matter how much you may disagree with it.

Regardless of anything else he stated (or overstated), Darth definitely got one thing right: PoE makes me want to just play IWD instead. That's not really a selling point…

No, man. There's no room for positive """""analysis""""" (hah! That type of "analysis" isn't even real analysis!)

Forget that. Give me harsh, overly critical cynicism any day.

Codex 4 life. Darth Fluent out.

Originally Posted by Drithius
Everything has its place: there's room for both your "unicorns and rainbows 10/10 'analysis'" as well as detailed critique of the game, no matter how much you may disagree with it.

Regardless of anything else he stated (or overstated), Darth definitely got one thing right: PoE makes me want to just play IWD instead. That's not really a selling point…

IWD? Really?

I rather play BG instead or PST (since I didn't play that for a long long time).