Pillars of Eternity 2 review

[Grudge]

I just finished this game yesterday. Again, I didn't buy this when it launched in 2018 for full-price, buying it instead at a discount last month ($23). I've played the first POE game as well so I have the benefit of additional perspective. I played this on the Turn Based system on the hardest Paths of the Damned difficulty.

The bad

The game performs poorly no matter how strong your system is or how you tweak the graphics. You leave it running for an hour and it starts going through a "memory leak" where the framerate drops significantly, it's a massive slowdown. It's solved by quitting and restarting the game. In two years nothing in the way of patches has come out to fix this problem. This happens to a lot of people, or probably everyone.

The side quests are too simple and too short. There weren't any Baldur's Gate 2 style massive side-quests. In BG 2 you have massive sidequests that when you complete you feel like you've completed a major milestone, like the Unseeing Eye Beholder quest or the Firkraag Dragon quest for example. What might have been such major side-quests in POE 2 are instead additional purchaseable DLC expansions like Beast of Winter (which is more interesting than the main plot) and Forgotten Sanctum. Those DLCs are good content but they are not in the base game. The issue with side-quests being very small and straight-forward is important because the main plot is extremely short; there are just 3 short main quests in the game. So you're really playing this game for the side-quests to experience all the content, and it's not all that great.

The companion reputation system seemed superficial and unnecessary, there wasn't any meaningful impact evident from having a great relationship with companions, other than getting an additional piece of equipment for the trouble. They should have just cut that altogether and kept it simple. Additionally I didn't like the forced attempts at romance. I never liked that in any of the games preceding this. The game foists both gay and straight companion romance dialogue options; this was very creepy. I had to actively make choices to steer clear from that path and I didn't like that added pressure. Instead of tacking on this complexity, this should have just been stripped down to something more basic. Would have been perfectly fine to just have companion personality quirks and quests, none of that additional reactivity and romance was necessary.

I had a serious problem with the voice-over for the narrator text. I would have much preferred to be able to read the text without that annoying narrator's voice. It was so bad I would take my headphones off and turn the audio down to zero to be able to read at my own pace without that voice in my head. I don't feel they should have voiced over every single line in the game.

I also didn't like the silly lingo they've invented. They have this expression in the game where people say, "Ekera, (this or that)". They went too far into inventing this pseudo language and expressions based around a barely interesting mythical background.

The ending sequence seemed very anti-climatic and irrelevant. There's this God in the game that wants to do something and he does it. Your input in the end hardly matters, you are unable to influence the final outcome.

The good

The best thing about this game is the attribute system and how everything flows from it. I thought that was very well done; everything had a good reason for being there and a meaningful impact, all of which are well-explained in the game. There are criticisms against jorsh Sawyer's system for being too balanced; I disagree with them. In this game's system you are forced to make definite tradeoffs because each attribute has an important impact on something. If you increase one thing, you're losing out on something else that could be important as well. What this allows for is real differentiation, without feeling you gimped your character, you're able to know exactly what direction you're taking your character in. There are no superfluous dump stats that were evident to me.

The ability use and spell casting systems are an improvement over the old Infinity game systems. You get to re-use a finite number of abilities and spells for each encounter. This led to an enjoyable experience. The weapon and armor enchantment systems and crafting were well-done. The skill system was well done. I also enjoyed the picture-text encounters that rely on these skills.

The turn-based system had some definite exploitable features, as well some problems like pathing issues where you run into problems as you're moving on your turn, but on the whole I enjoyed it.

Contrary to what jorsh Sawyer himself said in his post-mortem about how cutting the ship system would have been the right thing, I actually think that there was something that could have been great here. It seemed half done here sure, but it could have been great. I would have preferred if they cut that bullshit around companion reactivity and romances instead and put more time and energy on the ship customization and combat.

Overall

Get it on a discount, for maybe $20 (including the DLCs).

[shadowalk]

I remember liking this game. Played a pure monk, had Eder as a tank and him, Rekke and my Monk were decimating mobs like no tomorrow. That was fun to watch. But the story is quite short and the DLCs don't really add anything substantial to the story.

I think I enjoyed the pirate ship battles the most though - I remember spending countless hours on that just to get one of the good hulls.

I think this is a great game if you're looking for a quick Baldur's Gate fix in the modern era but don't expect anything much from the story.

[User]

yeah i also enjoyed this, didn't have the memory leak problem. it was a pretty short and contained game. yep the story was shit. i wish it went a bit MORE pirate to be honest, less run of the mill fantasy and more PIRATE.

[Grudge]

Now I'm going to play Divinity original sin 2. I'll post my thoughts in a couple of weeks or so.

[Grudge]

Forgot to mention I played POE 2 on the hardest difficulty so added that at the top.

[User]

hey i am playing through divinity original sin 2, first time, multiplayer with two of my old teenage buddies. we are having a real laugh doing it. 60hrs so far, we manage about six hours a week

[shadowalk]

Spec fane to battlemage, let beast tank, red lizard and lohse for support

[User]

hmm well we are three dudes who like a laugh so we have rey mysterio the scoundral dwarf, bertus the necromancer and i, PHOBOSYB THE BALD KNIGHT WHO SUMMONS THINGS AND GETS ALL THE LOOT BWAHAHAHAHA