Just finished it..

****Posted first in "What game did you just finish"
4:13pm est April 10th/15

I just finished PoE:

Not sure what to write here, it was a good game, great game in the begin but seemed to lose something towards the end. Still enjoyable but I think it left me a bit empty at the end.

Maybe I should come back and edit this after some to digest my thoughts on the game.

I guess what I am thinking right now is it just ends, to be honest I thought there was going to be more.

Beginning of the game 9/10 middle 7.5/10 end 5/10 I guess that makes it good game.

Sounds about right. I also felt the game grow thin the more I played. I feel they somewhat front loaded content.

A few days have passed now since I finished Pillars, so I have had some time to think about the game a bit more.

The game starts off better than most getting you use to the game. The tutorial doesn't feel like one like in other games. It sets up to get ready for what is to come including for you and your character.

As you progress to the first town there are some interesting little areas to test how well you are going to fair at battles. Also setting up a few little quest to get you into the game.

Once you have reached the first town it is up to you how you want to progress in the game. Which quest or task you want to take on well giving you a good insight to what is happening in the land.

The game really grabbed me and gave me a lot of things to think about. The story, how I wanted to build my character and my party around him. As I progressed through the game I started to realize there was a lot of unneeded information. Reading of the souls to me after the first few just seemed like a waste of time. Not only for myself but for all that information could have made the game bigger.

Crafting seemed like it was just put in there because RPG's are to have crafting. I never really used it. Not only because of the above but also because after you are into the main city center you have so much cash it wasn't really needed.

The same holds true to weapons in the game, you could always find something better so there was never a reason to buy one in the game. I did find the enchanting was well done, though I would have liked more resources for this part of the game over finding items that were already done.

Back to the story and the game, I can't say I wasn't very addicted as I put a lot of hours into in a couple weeks. I bet there were a about seven days were I got to play for 10 hours plus. Though after you were down in the major town it just seem to slip away. It seem to repeat itself almost in the story, trying to hammer home about the Gods and your past.

Then it is done!! Sure there were some very, very hard battles, some great twist where in some cases you didn't even need to fight. I wanted more I guess or thought I missed something.

Anyways I think I stand by my scoring 9/10 for the first half, 7.5/10 for the second quarter and 5/10 for the ending.


Now I really hope if they do release an expansion game it is only to keep people happy until the second game comes out. The engine works great, they should have all the balancing done by now. So on that part I don't think they have anything to change.

Just fill the cities and towns with some other people that have something to say, doesn't even have to be a quest. Just some information or anything instead of those vision. A little less front loading, balance it out…

Could it be that Obsidian have run out of money and was unable to put as much content into the second part of the game?

Originally Posted by zahratustra
Could it be that Obsidian have run out of money and was unable to put as much content into the second part of the game?

To a point I made, maybe they shouldn't have spent so much resources on the souls vision and graves. If your statement is a reason why…

Originally Posted by zahratustra
Could it be that Obsidian have run out of money and was unable to put as much content into the second part of the game?

Not only money, but was probably running out of time as well… wasn't there issue with combat balance? I think since the beta was out, main focus was fixing up combat, not really about other things like story…. They really couldn't delay it any longer.

I think it has to do with their design philosophy as well. Craig put it quite well below…

I'm holding off on trying it but that's pretty typical of Bioware/Black Isle/Obsidian design, in my opinion. They front load content on the assumption that either most people don't finish games or that most people like to tear through them at record pace and lose interest in game complexities after a while. Not really sure I have that right but Chris explained their stupid on usenet, 15 years ago. They have a formula and they stick to it like religion.

Originally Posted by CelticFrost
To a point I made, maybe they shouldn't have spent so much resources on the souls vision and graves. If your statement is a reason why…

All of the Souls visions, as well as all the grave text, were all submitted by higher-end Kickstarter Backers, who were awarded the opportunity to add "content" to the game. These took very little dev resources, and can all be safely ignored (which I do).

Originally Posted by Fantasm
All of the Souls visions, as well as all the grave text, were all submitted by higher-end Kickstarter Backers, who were awarded the opportunity to add "content" to the game. These took very little dev resources, and can all be safely ignored (which I do).

Has anyone modded this smegging "backer content" out yet?

You know you can just ignore it by not clicking on it. Why use a mod?

It gets annoying after a while. I'm on my second playthrough now and seeing those golden NPC names everywhere I go is tiresome because I know they don't really do anything and are irrelevant game-wise.

Wow, I would have thought more people would have used this topic?

Anyway, I finally finished the game last night. (Well, OK, just after midnight this morning.)

I don't agree with the above posts about the content in the latter half of the game. I think the content in the last half was just as good as the first half. The problem was that I already knew what I was doing in the game on the last half so there was nothing new to learn. There would be a brief spike of fun when the spell casters learned some new spells but then I was just slogging through combat.

I played on Hard difficulty. Through Chapter 1 the battles were varied and difficult. But starting around chapter 2, I had learned the systems well enough that I could get through the battles pretty easily. Knock-outs became rare. I never learned how to do scrolls, potions, or food because I never needed them. I played with enchantments a little because they were easy to learn but only a little. I even started slacking off on my characters' gear by the third chapter. ("Is this saber better than my mace? Oh who cares - I'm winning easily with the mace. Stick it in the stash just in case I need it later.") I think the fact that I didn't run into trouble for MANY hours was part of why it got dull.

Then I went into the end game. Pretty neat stuff and fairly well done. Then came the final battle. OUCH!! I lost! Twice! Well, my characters were pretty roughed up just getting down to the battle in the first place. Maybe I should rest up first. Not only did that help my stats, it allowed Durance to finish his quest which gave my monk just enough XP to hit level 12 and catch up to everyone else. And I still got creamed in the final battle!

There was nothing for it - I clearly needed to actually pay attention to my party now. I spent over an hour (yes really) re-equipping everyone. My fighter wasn't even proficient with the mace he had been using. Lots of characters had suppressed stat boosts, too. I made some scrolls and potions. (I found a couple of scrolls in my stash that boosted lore or I wouldn't have had enough lore to make crafted scrolls worthwhile.) Grieving Mother, who was borderline useless in that last battle because she could barely hit anything, got a bunch of defense scrolls she could use to keep people buffed. And still I lost… a couple of times… but eventually won out. I finished the game on a high note.

If the game had kept the difficulty up then I think I would have had more fun. If it could have come up with more varied enemies, that would have helped as well. As it was, the game slowly got more dull until a sudden burst of fun at the end.

Elapsed Time: 5 months, 9 days
Enemies Defeated: 1865
Most Kills: My main character, 336
Most total damage: Grieving Mother, 62034 (the rebalance patch hit me in Act 3)
Highest Single Target Damage: Hiravias, 102
Most Damage Taken: Eder, 17324
Most KO's: Grieving Mother, 10

There was an interesting little twist in the very last sentence of the game, too. My "resolution" of one of the third chapter's quests seems to have been noticed! Screenshot Spoiler

Originally Posted by Zloth
Wow, I would have thought more people would have used this topic?

Anyway, I finally finished the game last night. (Well, OK, just after midnight this morning.)

I don't agree with the above posts about the content in the latter half of the game. I think the content in the last half was just as good as the first half. The problem was that I already knew what I was doing in the game on the last half so there was nothing new to learn. There would be a brief spike of fun when the spell casters learned some new spells but then I was just slogging through combat.

I played on Hard difficulty. Through Chapter 1 the battles were varied and difficult. But starting around chapter 2, I had learned the systems well enough that I could get through the battles pretty easily. Knock-outs became rare. I never learned how to do scrolls, potions, or food because I never needed them. I played with enchantments a little because they were easy to learn but only a little. I even started slacking off on my characters' gear by the third chapter. ("Is this saber better than my mace? Oh who cares - I'm winning easily with the mace. Stick it in the stash just in case I need it later.") I think the fact that I didn't run into trouble for MANY hours was part of why it got dull.

Then I went into the end game. Pretty neat stuff and fairly well done. Then came the final battle. OUCH!! I lost! Twice! Well, my characters were pretty roughed up just getting down to the battle in the first place. Maybe I should rest up first. Not only did that help my stats, it allowed Durance to finish his quest which gave my monk just enough XP to hit level 12 and catch up to everyone else. And I still got creamed in the final battle!

There was nothing for it - I clearly needed to actually pay attention to my party now. I spent over an hour (yes really) re-equipping everyone. My fighter wasn't even proficient with the mace he had been using. Lots of characters had suppressed stat boosts, too. I made some scrolls and potions. (I found a couple of scrolls in my stash that boosted lore or I wouldn't have had enough lore to make crafted scrolls worthwhile.) Grieving Mother, who was borderline useless in that last battle because she could barely hit anything, got a bunch of defense scrolls she could use to keep people buffed. And still I lost… a couple of times… but eventually won out. I finished the game on a high note.

If the game had kept the difficulty up then I think I would have had more fun. If it could have come up with more varied enemies, that would have helped as well. As it was, the game slowly got more dull until a sudden burst of fun at the end.

Elapsed Time: 5 months, 9 days
Enemies Defeated: 1865
Most Kills: My main character, 336
Most total damage: Grieving Mother, 62034 (the rebalance patch hit me in Act 3)
Highest Single Target Damage: Hiravias, 102
Most Damage Taken: Eder, 17324
Most KO's: Grieving Mother, 10

There was an interesting little twist in the very last sentence of the game, too. My "resolution" of one of the third chapter's quests seems to have been noticed! Screenshot Spoiler

What was your playtime?

Well, it says 122 hours but that's inflated. The turn-based system makes it easy to watch baseball while I play. I'm guessing it was closer to 105. Definitely worth the bang for the buck!

Originally Posted by Zloth
Well, it says 122 hours but that's inflated. The turn-based system makes it easy to watch baseball while I play. I'm guessing it was closer to 105. Definitely worth the bang for the buck!

I have to get back to it eventually

I'm looking forward to PoE later this summer, and I'm glad I waited to play it. There were just too many significant changes in the post-release patches.

Like D:OS and Wasteland 2, it was clearly pulled from the oven too soon.

I finished it 2 days ago. I actually stopped playing it right before the last "dungeon" because I tend to hate ending games. Seems like the pause was a good idea outside of "dang I don't remember what the hell these things do anymore".

The final battle has a difficulty increase from what comes before it but I didn't have to change anything on my party, although I did die twice as well. First time I almost had it. Second time I picked a very, very wrong tactics that cause a very, very fast wipe. The third time, it was a walk in the park once you realize the trick to the fight.

Playtime around 40 hours going by the save timer (playing on normal), but I skipped a couple of thing (didn't finish the endless dungeon, didn't milk all of the companions dialogues, didn't do all the side quests).

One thing that I found a bit annoying, is that something was spoiled to me in the ending slide because I didn't talk to a specific companion all the way (wasn't in my party much). The reveal in-game would have been amazing.

I'll return to the game eventually, to try another character else. My dwarven rogue was cool, but I think a Priest would be much cooler going by the story…

All RPGs of note lately seem to be released too early or before significant improvements are made. It's better than fewer or no RPGs at all. Despite this, they are all pretty much fantastic even half-cooked (at least for the ones I've played so far).

The trick to the last battle? Hmmm..

Originally Posted by JDR13
I'm looking forward to PoE later this summer, and I'm glad I waited to play it. There were just too many significant changes in the post-release patches.

Like D:OS and Wasteland 2, it was clearly pulled from the oven too soon.

I don't know about games being released to early. Sure POE had some bugs the manor quest was one of them, D:OS zero bugs for me.

I think a lot of people complain about games and developers cave. It could just be I don't mind the small things that could be better in them.

Not saying some games are completely unplayable but a lot of things really don't distract from the game for me. If POE really wanted to improve on the game they wouldn't have front loaded the story so much and load times are so so so bad in the game.