Pillars of Eternity II - RPG Codex Review

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The RPG Codex has ruled on Pillars of Eternity II and decided 'It's Pretty Alright'.

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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Thanks Couchpotato!

More information.
 
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decent review, I agree with a lot of it. Way less edgelordy than his PoE1 review.
 
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Surprisingly positive review (by rpgcodex standards). Wasn't expecting that.
 
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Typical Codex snarkiness and hyperbole. I disagree with, oh, about 70% of the reviewer's conclusions. Ah well, tastes vary.
 
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Good review, although I'm not at all as bothered by the writing as he is a lot of the other points are valid. I'll know for sure how much I agree or disagree with when I'm further into the game.
 
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To me the writing is neither outstanding or horrible. The full voiceacting, shorter text, and regular use of humor make it a lot more enjoyable than the first game.
 
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Silver Coin said:
To me the writing is neither outstanding or horrible. The full voiceacting, shorter text, and regular use of humor make it a lot more enjoyable than the first game.
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I wish I could turn off the full VO, they annoy me to no end. One line is great, after that I read and it goes a whole lot faster resulting in the voice overs just giving me headaches by saying the first two or three words out loud when I'm reading the full sentence…

I agree on the humour tough, the tone in PoE was way too dsrk for my liking, PoE2 is a huge improvement. As is the less verbose writing.
 
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Why would you get a headache from skipping it, except if the VO is really bad? The biggest problem of PoE was always the superfluous dialogue for me. I would welcome a decent VO.

PoE too dark. DOS way too light. Difficult crowd :) I finished DOS1 and 2 (the humor does not bother me at all), could not bring myself to finish PoE even if I was like 80% there.
 
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ilm said:
Why would you get a headache from skipping it, except if the VO is really bad? The biggest problem of PoE was alwats the superfluous dialogue for me. I would welcome a decent VO.

PoE too dark. DOS way too light. Difficult crowd :) I finished DOS1 and 2 (the humor does not bother me at all), could not bring myself to finish PoE even if I was like 80% there.
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The headache is from trying to focus on reading the rest of the sentence while hearing the first words. Like when you read this you would hear: "The headache is fr…like whe…

I've finished and enjoyed both DOS games and PoE. I have no problems with the light tone in DOS, it's usually when it gets too dark and gritty that I have a harder time. That's why I agree PoE2 is much better than it's predecessor in that regard, PoE was totally void of humour as far as I remember, apart from Hiravias. I think that's what made him my favourite.
 
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The voiceacting is good. Only problem may be that some of it is too colorful. Xotl's voiceacting for example has been divisive because of her deep southern accent.
 
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Good to see another positive review :) will definitely check it out at some point although I'm disappointed to hear it isn't recommended for those who value the story.
 
Matter of taste, I highly recommend it for the story myself and I know others have enjoyed the story who have played it. Highly subjective.
 
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I appreciate what they were going for with the plot, but I don't think it worked out.

The worldbuilding, sidequests, and factions are the real strength of the writing.
 
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These Codex reviews are exhausting :)

Anyway, I enjoyed the writing more than the first game, at least for the 40-50 hours I've played of it.

Not sure if that means much, though - as I didn't care for the writing in the first game much at all.

I'm a little surprised so many people are hating on the ship combat. I found it sort of cute and a nice little layer of extra progression. Nothing to be taken too seriously - and it's a complete pushover once you've upgraded your ship.

That said, they should probably add an option to skip it entirely - as it's not really an integral part of the experience - and clearly not the most popular aspect of the game.

Maybe they already did and I didn't know :)
 
Darth Tagnan said:
These Codex reviews are exhausting :)

Anyway, I enjoyed the writing more than the first game, at least for the 40-50 hours I've played of it.

Not sure if that means much, though - as I didn't care for the writing in the first game much at all.

I'm a little surprised so many people are hating on the ship combat. I found it sort of cute and a nice little layer of extra progression. Nothing to be taken too seriously - and it's a complete pushover once you've upgraded your ship.

That said, they should probably add an option to skip it entirely - as it's not really an integral part of the experience - and clearly not the most popular aspect of the game.

Maybe they already did and I didn't know :)
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Maybe they should let at higher levels turn ship combat into spellcasting battles as they are in DnD.
 
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There's a mod that removes any penalty for just ramming the enemy ship immediately. Effectively, that let's you turn every ship battle into normal combat on the deck.
 
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There are storyrelated ship battles where you're supposed to get hit hard - based on your ship, it's upgrades and crew you'll survive or not.
That mod is making the ship, upgrades and crew irrelevant and such is practically a cheat or in other words, what's it's purpose when there is a tool called cheat engine?
 
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"To summarise, I honestly think there isn’t a single competent writer left at Obsidian anymore, which, considering the company’s history, is about as funny as it is tragic. Meanwhile those that remain are not just bad, which wouldn’t even be that aggravating, but also very obviously unaware of their incompetence, which results in them overreaching and producing tripe that they should have never attempted doing in the first place. How sad."

What a wonderful crowd! I stopped reading after this line. It's one thing to say stuff like that on a forum, if you believe it and accept your loss of credibility, but to put that in an official review is unnecessary.
 
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Yeah, there's a reason I don't take (most) Codex reviews seriously. It's like they're trying to compensate their obvious bias through verbosity :)

As if padding your review somehow made you less blatantly subject to your preconditioned dislike.
 
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