PoE2 GameBanshee - Three Page Review

Pillars of Eternity II

Couchpotato

Part-Time News-bot
Joined
October 1, 2010
Messages
36,183
Location
Spudlandia
GameBanshee - PoE III Review

Well just got a notice that GameBanshee posted their three page review for PoE II.

Link - http://www.gamebanshee.com/reviews/120985-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire-review.html

Obviously, I wasn't thrilled with Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, but there's good news for those of you who might be interested in the game. The engine is solid, the voice-acting is excellent, the quests make sense and give you lots of options for solving them -- and all of the things I didn't like about the game are subjective rather than objective. Going by the metacritic score for Deadfire, other reviewers certainly liked it more than I did. Plus, Obsidian has shown a willingness to keep working on their games, and to get them into good shape, so the content will likely improve over time.

But for me, I was on the fence with Deadfire. It's a competent game and provides 70 hours or content, but it didn't draw me in, and I was sort of happy when I finished it so I could move on to something else. Ultimately, Deadfire made me think of Storm of Zehir way more than I would have liked.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,183
Location
Spudlandia
So any thoughts as this game is well received among critics & gamers?
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,183
Location
Spudlandia
My opinion probably does not matter much as I haven't played it.

It is sad to see the low sales numbers someone else posted around here, which does not reflect the positive reception it seems to get. It really surprised me. I hope they get at least break even.

I'm part to blame as I won't play it either I think. Too much of a time sink. I wonder what other people's reason are to leave it on the side. I'm thinking the answer is deceptively simple, it still is too much of a niche despite the recent Kickstarter revival.
 
Joined
Jun 5, 2009
Messages
1,502
My opinion probably does not matter much as I haven't played it.

It is sad to see the low sales numbers someone else posted around here, which does not reflect the positive reception it seems to get. It really surprised me. I hope they get at least break even.

I'm part to blame as I won't play it either I think. Too much of a time sink. I wonder what other people's reason are to leave it on the side. I'm thinking the answer is deceptively simple, it still is too much of a niche despite the recent Kickstarter revival.
Count me as another as I'm waiting for all the DLC to get released. As for sales yeah the game is made for a very small niche of gamers, but two million sales is possible.

Just look at Original sin 1&2 for examples.
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,183
Location
Spudlandia
Most of the user reviews I've seen have been very positive but the number of user reviews is low reflecting poor sales.
Wonder why as I usually don't read Steam Reviews on a daily basis?

I remember their was a segment of players criticizing the difficulty, and nerfing of classes by Josh. Almost forgot the optimization problems that a modder tried to fix.
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,183
Location
Spudlandia
My main reason for not playing PoE2 is that I generally don't enjoy Obsidian games. I was severely disappointed by PoE1. I preferred NWN1 over NWN2. I disliked both KotORs (yes, I know first one was developed by Bioware).

I find their game too depressing in general. The story telling and characters simply don't click with me.

But I will be checking out PoE2 after full patching and DLCs are done - starting to get cautiously optimistic after reading Maylander's review.

Sounds like the game is less depressing and I want to check out how fun multiclassing is.
 
So any thoughts as this game is well received among critics & gamers?

It's unfair that its sales and review score are lower than the first PoE, because it's a much better game. I have a couple ideas on why that is…

1. The novelty of an infinity engine spiritual successor wore off for most people

2. The people that would be most impressed by Deadfire were disappointed by the first game, and are waiting for it to be fully patched and on sale to pick it up.

3. A lot of Obsidian fans are disgruntled over the Chris Avellone drama. Probably not the biggest reason, but it definitely took a hit on their core fanbase.

My hope is that in the future PoE2 will receive greater recognition, because it honestly deserves a lot more success and praise than it has been getting.
 
Joined
Jun 1, 2018
Messages
866
So any thoughts as this game is well received among critics & gamers?

What do you mean? Are you looking for everyone to agree or?

Not all games are for all people. That's always been the case, as far back as I can remember.

Personally, I think PoE 2 is much better than PoE - but I was never a big fan of PoE, so.

In the end, if you can't decide what kind of game it is by now, with all the feedback floating around - then you should probably just play it and see for yourself :)
 
3. A lot of Obsidian fans are disgruntled over the Chris Avellone drama. Probably not the biggest reason, but it definitely took a hit on their core fanbase.

My hope is that in the future PoE2 will receive greater recognition, because it honestly deserves a lot more success and praise than it has been getting.

4. People who lobbied to make it PwRT instead of RTwP have reached their goal and lost interest.
 
Joined
Mar 29, 2011
Messages
6,265
My main reason for not playing PoE2 is that I generally don't enjoy Obsidian games. I was severely disappointed by PoE1. I preferred NWN1 over NWN2. I disliked both KotORs (yes, I know first one was developed by Bioware).

I find their game too depressing in general. The story telling and characters simply don't click with me.

But I will be checking out PoE2 after full patching and DLCs are done - starting to get cautiously optimistic after reading Maylander's review.

Sounds like the game is less depressing and I want to check out how fun multiclassing is.
Never been a fan of Obisidian, previously had only two RPG to quote, Mask of the Betrayer, and Tyranny, only a half mention for NW2 and FNV.

For PoE2, I have the feeling they did their second best work for companions, NWN2 (not MotB) is probably still their best achievement on that aspect. It's still very far from Bioware quality. But with a blind test, I think I would have believe some companions was done by Bioware.

The game is definitely a lot less dark than PoE1 (Tyranny is much less dark than PoE1 but rather cruel and hyper violent sometimes). The excessive serious tone of PoE1 writing was quite awful, almost amateurish stuff because a lot too visible and systematic.

The writing in PoE2 is a lot better, but a weak point is they probably put too much effort on not stressing the player on dark aspects. Then for many players the writing feels too light. In fact it can be light if you read fast enough and don't stop too much on details. Also when you do some evil action because you won't have much other choice, the game tries list "good" reasons to justify it, and this can make the tone a lot lighter, you can quickly ignore and forget how bad you just behave.

Overall I consider PoE2 writing pretty good but it requires attention, or it will feel too light. For the main story, if you don't consider gods as gods, it won't work much. Otherwise it's a bizarre approach but quite effective, few progression steps, no bifurcation to some secondary goals, but a series of blows.

The weak points for me:
- The global exploration, at least it's not boring, and there's plenty little stuff to discover if you bother. But it's not working that well. I know they already attempted the multi scales approach with Storm of Zephir (or another NWN2 extension, never played SoZ). But for me PoE2 is like they targeted this design without much experience of it and they should have play more RPG using well the multi scale approach, to avoid do this not bad but not working that well.
- The combats, not that it's the PoE1 garbage, nor that they are bad. I even noticed a bit more effort on tactical design. Also the system is now very coherent with a RTwAP gameplay, AP means Auto Pause. But it's just fairly good stuff. Very far from Bioware quality, even DAI does better.

Otherwise a questionable point, the ships combats. You can rush board enemy ship then you just get a boredom basic classic combat. And you don't care much on crew/ship/equipment. Then you destroy almost all the ships management gameplay, with crew, ships, equipments, morale, some more.

Or you can really explore the ships combats and go past the design weirdness. And do all ships combats by sinking enemy ship. Then myself I had a good fun, and it gave sense to all the ship management gameplay. but it seems not many player achieve dig this aspect of the game. It probably looks too basic and too weird, but the boarding combats are a lot more basic and a lot more repetitive.
 
Joined
Oct 14, 2007
Messages
3,258
4. People who lobbied to make it PwRT instead of RTwP have reached their goal and lost interest.
Well if google fails guess your PwRT how you can expect a humble mortal as myself can guess it? Party with Real Time?

There's two Real Time with Pause gameplay, to keep it simple:
- Infinity Engine, a gameplay adapted to party real time and auto pauses.
- Dragon Age series, a gameplay adapted to party real time with some pauses.

PoE1 didn't see much the problem and tried an incoherent approach. Many classes are about spaming special abilities so auto pauses never worked well. And AI was too bad so DA approach never worked well.

PoE2 targets the problem and continue the initial goal but coherent this time, a gameplay working with auto pauses in a similar spirit than Infinity Engine. This plus some nice change/fix related to movements makes it probably the more coherent combat system RTwAP ever done. Now they just need hire someone really competent for tactical design.

For players that can't bear auto pauses, there's the other option I didn't bother try, the DAO approach, yes they had the guts to hunt two rabbits at the same time.

Good AI, good level of AI programming, and you can try a DA approach and just ignore auto pauses.

I have high doubts that this second approach works that well, because this gameplay is about controlling one character during most time of a combat. And everything targets the auto pauses gameplay:
- You don't have much special abilities to use, so most often a character will use standard attacks on a target.
- Most special abilities will involve a long time, so it's a lot of wait when you control mainly a character.
- There isn't much re positioning to do, still some but it's light and won"t take you busy much.
- There's certainly good opportunities to switch character controlled but if it's constantly it won't work that well, and if it's just some time, it won't take you busy that often.
- There's certainly some weapon switching and consumable use to do, but it will be rare.

But ok I didn't bother try this secondary approach of combats, so there's perhaps good points I don't see.

In all cases, no Party with Real Time in PoE2.
 
Joined
Oct 14, 2007
Messages
3,258
It's unfair that its sales and review score are lower than the first PoE, because it's a much better game. I have a couple ideas on why that is…

1. The novelty of an infinity engine spiritual successor wore off for most people

2. The people that would be most impressed by Deadfire were disappointed by the first game, and are waiting for it to be fully patched and on sale to pick it up.

3. A lot of Obsidian fans are disgruntled over the Chris Avellone drama. Probably not the biggest reason, but it definitely took a hit on their core fanbase.

My hope is that in the future PoE2 will receive greater recognition, because it honestly deserves a lot more success and praise than it has been getting.
That looks like good hypothesis, myself I believe it's the point 2 that produced the effect.

PoE1 has been hugely over hyped, many of significant weaknesses was purely ignored, and it goes on and goes on. But time pass and lies and ignorance are gradually washed, and PoE2 is paying the price of all this absurdity.

Otherwise I would add:
4. Hate of Bioware fans... What? Bioware is Rip and Obsidian losers still alive, disgusting.

5. A vanishing general curiosity on party RPG with iso like approach and some old school spirit. There's been too many disappointments or half disappointment for many players discovering the sub genres. Now there's a growing negativity against those sub genres.

6. Party Real Time with pause fun is a legend just based on few legendary release, at least for their release time, Baldur's Gate 1&2. And the legend is vanishing.
 
Joined
Oct 14, 2007
Messages
3,258
So any thoughts as this game is well received among critics & gamers?
Lol last time I posted some post quite negative about this site, I got threatened to be banished, and it was you if I remember well.

So believe me you don't want I comment this crap review.

GameBanshee was a reference site for me and before I found the watch, but it's never been the same after the main maintainer/writer get ejected or left. It's just collections of bad tastes and incompetent analysis, and this PoE2 review is one more evidence of this.
 
Joined
Oct 14, 2007
Messages
3,258
Given D:OS-2 sales I'm not sure #5 is the issue. I personally didn't love POE and while I purchased POE-2 (waiting for dlc to be complete to play); i hope the story is better than POE. As for real time combat I haven't been a fan of that in most of the games starting with dragon age origins. For some reason it seemed to work well in bg and more so iwd but I found my experience starting with dragon age origin (and I suppose to a lesser extent nwn{1,2} not so great - combat always seemed a mess in newer games with everyone running everywhere. With the turn base games the strategy is much more evident and you can draw lines with crossing the line more difficult but possible (if that makes sense).

5. A vanishing general curiosity on party RPG with iso like approach and some old school spirit. There's been too many disappointments or half disappointment for many players discovering the sub genres. Now there's a growing negativity against those sub genres.
 
Joined
Oct 20, 2006
Messages
7,758
Location
usa - no longer boston
Back
Top Bottom