Pillars of Eternity

Pillars of Eternity was quite cheap a year ago in the beat-the-average tier of Humble Paradox Bundle. I paid less than 6€ for it but I could've waited a few months more as the game became even cheaper at the end of the summer when the definitive edition was on the house for Twitch Prime members. But I did get the game's expansions (practically) for free thanks to that.

Funded by nostalgia

Pillars wasn't the first title to be announced for the so-maybe-called renaissance of the isometric roleplaying genre. But it was definitely the biggest name at the time thanks to Obsidian Entertainment being the developer. Like Torment: Tides of Numenera later, Pillars had an immensely successful Kickstarter campaign, managing to gather funding of millions over the initial goal.

A lot of the backer rewards and stretch goals ended up taking from the experience, even ruining one's immersion. Like in Tides, there are graves with backer names but much worse are the many backer-designed NPCs standing around in every town, reminding that you're playing a kickstarted game. You can even talk to them and the game world dims into the special soul-watching mode your character can do. Some people, not realizing what the (subtly) gilded character nameplates meant, talked to every one of the backer NPCs, thinking they're somehow related to a quest.

One might think the Caed Nua stronghold was an integral part of the game but instead even it and the dungeon beneath it were just stretch goals. You can upgrade the keep as a side activity and it'll provide you minor income and extra items. There are little events and quests you can send one of your people to do. It's somewhat similar to the war table in Dragon Age: Inquisition but instead of using real world time, there's a turn system based on quest progression. (That's how you do it correctly, Bioware.)

Unengaging story

I was surprised how mediocre the story of Pillars of Eternity was and how poorly it was paced, particularly in the third act. The backstory and lore have merit but the game's plot lacks personal connection. The antagonist is sort of a happenstance one and is properly introduced way too late. The White March expansions had a more cohesive plot at least. Their setting also reminded me of Icewind Dale. That was probably intentional.

Writing I found mostly pleasing and not overly wordy, unlike I've seen people say. I would've again replaced 'fucks' with something else, though. Also, the made-up words can get overwhelming as Pillars doesn't have the hyperlink system Tyranny does. In act 3 it sometimes feels almost like you're trying to suddenly read Gaelic when an NPC drops six nonsense words in one paragraph.

Character dialogue is partially voiced like in games of old. However, I'm almost certain they never broke voiced lines with descriptive text back in the day. Voiced line should start a paragraph (new dialogue "page") and descriptive text should only be placed after it, not before nor in between. It's like the writer wrote a novel and it was slapped into the game without a consideration that it might get voice acting.

Voice acting itself is fine. I would've never guessed that two of your possible companions, Aloth and Edér, were both voiced by the same person, Matthew Mercer, the poor man's Troy Baker. (Well, maybe not so much these days. He has made more a name for himself.)

Years back, when I first saw the odd storybook, choose-your-adventure, parts of the game, I thought I would dislike them more than I actually did when I got to play the game myself. Still, I feel they often were merely a way to convey a scene cheaply without having to display it with more work requiring visuals. Many of them could've been done with the dialogue box too.

Over-designed Dungeons & Dragons -like system

Pillars of Eternity's game mechanics are largely alike to Tyranny's though they're not identical. Pillars, for example, is more traditional with its magic system -- wizards have spellbooks and spell slots, and priests get their spells from their god.

The all-attributes-matter system I still don't like all that much. It's too abstract and gamey. For instance, how "Might" affects the damage you do with both: weapons and spells. And one attribute point alone matters so little. A lot of the time you're better off min-maxing even if you'd benefit from all stats.

Ability and spell description are messy reads because there are so many variables that change based on character's stats. A buff doesn't last 3 rounds but 13.5 seconds. A debuff causes blindness for 5.4 seconds in radius of 3.2 meters at the range of 6.7 meters etc.

Combat also felt messy after Divinity: Original Sin and Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition. Pathfinding often appears wonky and it's difficult to judge if characters can fit through a gap or not. There are so many different status effects going around and knowing how to prevent them requires reading through many spells. I think the 4th edition rules of Dungeons & Dragons had an influence in the game. The melee engagement system would also suggest that to be the case.

Having an additional health-like bar, endurance, in addition to health merely added unwarranted complications. It's as if a game designer sat at a table with the thought:"Let's take this working system and make it worse."

Some types of enemies love targeting weaker characters. It makes sense but doesn't make the game any more fun. You just have to rest more often. Going into battle with a party member in low health/endurance only risks them getting permanently killed when the enemies prioritize them.

Pillars' max party size is the traditional 6. I think it's one of two modern titles to have such. Even the game's sequel reduced it to 5. With fights being designed for characters having so many options in these new games, in order to succeed you can't merely drag-select half of your party and left click on an enemy. Instead of you have to constantly go through your guys individually to use their abilities.

I don't understand why Obsidian unnecessarily segregated combat into its own mode. It feels artificial. You can't use the majority of abilities and spells outside combat, meaning you can't surprise a neutral target with a special ability. You have to first initiate a fight with a basic attack. Neither is there pre-buffing or buffs that last through multiple fights. Every encounter starts from an empty slate. It's like Obsidian introduced one of turn-based combat's annoying features in a real-time with pause game.

Not being able to preemptively protect your party from, say, a dragon's fear aura, makes the game's more challenging fights tricky to initiate, even on the Normal difficulty I played. I remember one dragon who apparently has that rogue class talent which makes it deal extra damage if there's more than one sneak attack enabling debuff on its target. Edér, my main tank, was getting torn to pieces. Once you finally get the fight going without anyone dying in the first 10 seconds, things get slightly more manageable. But even then, if the dragon decides to suddenly turn to target one of your non-tanky party members and then does a devastating area of effect attack, it's reload time once more.

Maybe my party composition wasn't the optimal -- Durance alone isn't quick enough to shield the whole party when a fight begins. Many of the protective and buffing spells have such painfully short ranges and small radii that if you want to get the most out of them, you need to keep your party lumped together, which in turn is dangerous when battling enemies like the dragons.

Adequate character customization

Pillars of Eternity kind of wants you to make a rogue character. Rogues have the highest bonus to mechanics skill which is significant at higher skill ranks because skill point cost goes up by 1 every skill rank. The first and only rogue companion, the Devil of Caroc, is only available as far as in White March part 1. I suppose you could survive with some other character focusing on the skill. You'd just need to use more lockpicks and more likely miss out on many secret stashes. There are few traps that require pretty much a maxed mechanics skill to disarm too.

Since I didn't want to make a rogue, I instead hired a custom rogue from an inn. The hireling dragged one level behind my party but did do the job till I met the Devil.

My own character was again of my favorite class, paladin, who ended up being quite similar to my character in Tyranny. As my race I picked fire godlike due to the slight fire theme of the class -- I'm not sure if the godlike's racial passive makes up for the inability to equip helmets.

In Pillars, your character has dispositions based on the dialogue choices you make. For paladins dispositions are of particular interest as their defensive bonuses granting passive talent, Faith and Conviction, becomes better the bigger the difference between their favored and disfavored dispositions levels are.

As a paladin of the Bleak Walkers order, my disfavored dispositions were diplomatic and benevolent while aggressive and cruel were favored. Bleak Walkers are not necessarily evil or sadistic, they just get the job done the most direct way possible.

I greatly enjoyed roleplaying the character. I also ended up maxing the honest disposition as it seemed to fit. People would know that I really meant to kill all who would stand in my way. I don't know how much your dispositions truly affect the game but NPCs will definitely react to your reputation in dialogue. And that feels satisfying. I do wonder though if my aggressive dialogue choices made me miss the game's title drop. I don't think it ever told me what exactly are the pillars of eternity.

Itemization in Pillars is good. There are a lot of unique items and even some level of randomization in what you will find, in style of Icewind Dale. You can enchant every weapon and body armor (outside soulbound ones). I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing. On the one hand, you can make an item with a nice unique bonus to last for the whole game. On the other, you don't know if you should save the enchanting materials for something else that you might find later. The latter becomes less of a problem if you play the game multiple times through and start to have in idea what options you have available.

Fairly standard Obsidian quality, to think of it

I expected Pillars to have the same small technical issues as Tyranny. Unfortunately that turned out to be the case. Loading times feel unnecessarily long for what you get and some areas run at poor framerates no matter where the detail graphics setting slider is. At least the game didn't otherwise appear buggy.

Pillars of Eternity wasn't worth the long wait for me. It's generally enjoyable but in many ways it's so surprisingly mediocre. (Which actually is how most of Obsidian's games are.) I'm starting to think the D&D ruleset is why I found Baldur's Gates and Icewind Dales so great. Maybe that's why I'm looking forward more to playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker than Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire.