Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

With Obsidian Entertainment now under Microsoft, the Pillars of Eternity games being on the Game Pass is hardly surprising. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is even available as the full, Ultimate Edition. I wasn't expecting it to be a huge improvement from the mediocre first game due to this one's reception having been pretty lukewarm as well, but I was still looking forward to continuing my character's journey.

Mediocre story continuation

Deadfire at least begins in a more interesting way than the first Pillars. The huge, dormant statue of the late god of light, Eothas, under your Caed Nua stronghold suddenly wakes up and takes off, killing many in the process, including you. Berath, the god of death, however sends you back to the realm of the living: She and the rest of the gods want to know what Eothas is planning.

After that, the plot doesn't go anywhere. You chase after Eothas around the Deadfire Archipelago, never having real agency in the story, and eventually arrive to the game's unsatisfying conclusion. It's like a world builder responsible for lore wrote the story, failing to add proper drama and player involvement to it. At least that was my experience with it -- I wonder if your decisions can affect it somehow. Like, if you manage to really appease one of the gods to protect you to maybe allow an actual fight at the end or something.

Your character being reborn allows you to make a completely different one -- in fact you have to recreate your character from scratch even if you import a save from Pillars 1. I wish the game would show at least some details, like your character's name and background in the imported save.

I had real trouble recalling where Némeine was from and didn't feel like reinstalling the first game just to check that. I ended up with Deadfire Archipelago, probably because I recalled godlikes being revered there. (I think Dyrwood is what I had had in the first game.) I started to regret my decision later on a bit: I felt speaking the local language didn't fit Némeine and she didn't even look like a native, being a fire godlike.

I had forgotten pretty much everything that happened in the first game. When a dialogue option or response indicated being a result of a decision made previously, I rarely recalled the event or characters in question. I also found it funny that the finale Pillars 1 save is made before you choose what you do with the souls and you have to pick a dialogue option at the start of this game again to confirm your choice. I had no recollection of what I had picked initially but I was able to deduct that my character wouldn't have cared about the souls and would've freed them back to the reincarnation cycle. The decision can affect things: Mine happened to please Berath and I got a usable figurine for it.

Improved gameplay

Game mechanics were streamlined and refined a bit for Deadfire. One thing I noticed immediately was the gratuitous extra health bar (endurance) being gone. That's a good change. Wounds were less of a problem too. As long as I didn't trigger traps, that is. Party max size was lowered to 5 which means less hassle with the many active abilities your party members can have in every fight.

A new feature is multiclassing which allows you to pick a second class at character creation at the cost of losing access to the last two tiers of your class ability tree(s). The game warns you about the feature not being for beginners but I think the only real difficulty is picking two classes that support each other. Once you have a sensible combination (like paladin and fighter), picking synergizing abilities is not that hard. The loss of the last two ability tiers also didn't seem like a huge deal as most of the abilities are focused on the empowering mechanic which I rarely used. That may just be me though. I, in fact, pretty much let the game do fights on its own.

I suppose I really wasn't feeling micromanaging the combat because after a few hours into Deadfire, I started putting serious effort into customizing party member AI. I've seen such a system done better (Dragon Age: Origins being a good example) but I was able to set up party behavior in such a way that the game did fights by itself on the Classic difficulty without trouble. Only in the Beast of Winter DLC I had to do actual micromanaging due to fights being more challenging.

I skipped the few optional mega bosses Obsidian added in an update. You can't even dream of beating them without micromanaging as the bosses require very specific tactics and I felt I wasn't well-enough versed in the game's mechanics regardless. I do appreciate at least the idea of such challenges in this genre, although they should probably be mandatory for me to care enough to see the effort to beat them. There didn't seem to be a real need to defeat the bosses outside bragging rights.

In addition to realtime with pause combat, Deadfire has turn-based mode as well -- another post-launch update. The popularity of the turn-based Divinity: Original Sin 2 may have had something to do with the mode being added. You have to make the choice for combat mode at the start of the game and can't switch it later unlike in the recent Pathfinder games by Owlcat Games. I'd imagine that the game takes considerably longer to beat on turn-based.

As per its name, the Deadfire Archipelago is a cluster of islands. To get around, you have a ship, the Defiant. Traveling on the overworld map reminded me of Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir expansion (also by Obsidian). While exploring you get to experience different events, manage your ship crew, and experience combat on it. I feel the last one is not a great feature however; completely wasted development time, in fact. The battles are done basically using the storybook event system and it's just tedious. It takes ages to sink the opposing ship. The best approach is to choose to board in the initial dialogue. There didn't seem to be downsides to it (no ship damage etc.). After boarding, the fight plays out like any normal encounter in the game. All the ship combat upgrades are a waste of money if you always board.

I built my crusader (paladin + fighter) much like in the first game for damage dealing using dual sabers. Némeine didn't become as strong as before I feel, at least not when compared to the rest of the party. My biggest damage dealer (like 1/3 of total damage) turned out to be Xoti whom I chose to level as monk, using purely unarmed attacks. I think Xoti is intended to use her special off-hand lantern due to story reasons and also because it is convenient to have a light source out at all times. Some dungeons in the game are so dark that you actually don't see anything otherwise.

Matt Mercer's two characters Aloth (battlemage) and Edér (swashbuckler) from the previous game returned to my party and the last spot was taken by Maia (scout). I considered Pallegina (another returning character) but the faction she represented didn't fit Némeine as well as Maia's: The Royal Deadfire Company was tailor-made for my aggressive/cruel/mercenary main character.

I wish the game's music had been impressive and memorable; it's seriously mediocre. Visually Deadfire is great at least and there's well done big special animations. Performance issues unfortunately return from the first Pillars: big areas run at low framerate and loading times are long. The initial boot up in particular is mysteriously lengthy; what the hell is it loading? You'd think you were launching some graphically super intensive game. Obsidian really needs a better engine if they are to continue making these isometric RPGs. Avowed, the next game set in the Pillars world is using Unreal Engine but it also appears to be a first person action RPG.