Pillars of Eternity - To be released March 26th. Who's excited?

[xantub]

You know, I've never known whether to admire those that play the "iron" playthroughs in these types of games, or think they are masochists 😛

If they're doing it after their first playthrough, it's ok, if not they're masochists.

 

[bguile]

Finally was able to clear out Lord Raedrics castle after the patch! Two questions though,

I see lots of empty chests in brighthollow manor, can you store stuff in there?

Second, whats up with all the pets? I am starting to get quite a few, is there any purpose for them? I just keep them in my chars inventory, thinking they might come up in conversations but they never do. (Sorta like the dead cat from Icewind Dale 2 that I carried around forever).

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Twice, Eder mentioned the dog from the first village while I had it equipped. Both were random banter, not conversation. Didn't see anything else pet related.

 

[norseamd]

Twice, Eder mentioned the dog from the first village while I had it equipped. Both were random banter, not conversation. Didn't see anything else pet related.

So is there anything quest related involving the Black Hound from the inn?

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Just completed this about an hour ago. Overall I thought the game was really good, I think the 90% metacritic score it got was about right, there was a few things that irked me though.

The good.
- Really nice blend of 2d/3d graphics, overall the look of the game is very nice, varied scenery and locations, kept the look of the infinity engine games but managed to keep the quality high enough to look good by todays standards.
- Music and sounds, really good, great fight music, great ambient music.
- Voice acting was pretty good for the most part
- Lore is in depth and varied, you can really enjoy reading what feels like an endless amount of text or skip a lot of it, which is nice.
- Choices and branches feel varied, there's a wide array of responses to a lot of dialogue and situations but sadly it doesn't often make much difference.
- The ending is done fallout style where you get a look into the future of how your actions affected the world based on your actions and what quests you did and didn't do, how well you did them, that's really satisfying.
- No major game breaking bugs for me, in fact no noticeable bugs at all.
- Story plot was good, some good moments as it zig zags about and keeps you interested.
- Good party mechanics, good backstory on characters.
- The keep was really cool

The Bad
- The departure from D&D rules wasn't a positive thing. Too many damage types and defense types left me largely ignoring this, I mainly focused on positional tactics, CC to win most fights and didn't feel the whole stats system mattered that much, you generally take a quite balanced party who all have different dmg attacks anyway so when you average it out, it really doesn't matter that much. I played one easy though, it might be required on >normal but I could see that being a chore.
- Combat on easy was pretty easy for the entire game but the last boss was unreasonably difficult which left me just angry and frustrated re-doing it over and over utterly eradicating any sense of immersion, I thought that lent itself heavily to ruin the feeling of victory when you win the game - don't know why devs do this, it's just a pointless waste of time for everyone.
- Not getting XP from creature kills is annoying especially if you want to do a lot of Caed Nua at once, despite slaying 100's of baddies you have to go and do some fetch quests in order to get your level up before you can go back and finish it. Also randomly giving things like lockpicking give you XP was random and silly.
- Few annoying little things like combat doesn't end until ability cool down finishes, so you have this 2-3 second wait at the end of every fight which is more irritating than anything else. Also the fact that the cursor wont change to loot a corpse until you move it off the corpse and back over again after combat, these little things were just really annoying after some time.
- Loading times. ER HELLO? I have 16Gb of RAM and 4GB of vRAM FFS, stuff the damn game files into RAM where possible and load from there, loads of quests have you move back and forth through the same areas and loading is just irritating despite having good specs.
- I found it hard to really get good endings for a lot of my party quests, I followed them to the end and tried my hardest to explore them but they just kinda flatlined for a lot of them.

Ultimately the negatives only deduct very slightly from an otherwise really good game, good story

Second, whats up with all the pets? I am starting to get quite a few, is there any purpose for them? I just keep them in my chars inventory, thinking they might come up in conversations but they never do.

No purpose that I'm aware of, just a companion, I found quite a few throughout the game, ended up keeping a piglet, awesome. They come up in idle conversation normally after the loading screens, your party members will sometimes make quick observations.

So is there anything quest related involving the Black Hound from the inn?

Not that I found sadly, I had him equipped for about the first 1/3 of the game too.

 

[norseamd]

The departure from D&D rules wasn't a positive thing. Too many damage types and defense types left me largely ignoring this,

Those attacking and defense types were in the old D&D games actually. These mechanics are actually quite good and worth keeping in any more rpgs from Obsidian Entertainment.

and didn't feel the whole stats system mattered that much,

Agree with this. The character mechanics were just downright terrible.

Also randomly giving things like lockpicking give you XP was random and silly.

Not actually. Was also done in the old D&D games from Bioware, Black Isle Studios, and Interplay.

Few annoying little things like combat doesn't end until ability cool down finishes, so you have this 2-3 second wait at the end of every fight which is more irritating than anything else. Also the fact that the cursor wont change to loot a corpse until you move it off the corpse and back over again after combat, these little things were just really annoying after some time.

This also was somewhat annoying for me every time I had to fight and then waiting just to loot anything.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

So is there anything quest related involving the Black Hound from the inn?

Not that I saw.

 

[turn_pike]

Backed the kickstarter and am very pleased with the result.
One does need to take into consideration that this is a mid budget game developed in the US [1]. Hopefully the expansion will not take that long to develop. Had to wait like 3 years for this one to be done.

It had been a quite some time (probably not since DA:O) since I've enjoyed an RPG tactical combat. PoE quenched that thirst and then some.

The combat was quite frustrating in the beginning due to my not understanding the mechanics, choosing to play as a Mage AND on Hard difficulty. Once I know what I did wrong when I lose a fight, the combat becomes a puzzle to solve. That said I really hate the pathfinding and hope that a patch or mod would come out that will enable my party members to ignore unit collision with each other.

The graphic is beautiful but most of the time I put it on max zoom out so it is not apparent at all. I feel like I'm doing the graphic artists a disservice and will try to zoom in and enjoy the environment more.

Just started Act 3 but will wait for the upcoming patches which should be released in the next few days before continuing. Not that I'm being plagued by bugs at the moment but I do want to ward off possible frustration.

-
1 - Makes you wonder if perhaps A or AA game developer should relocate to countries with cheaper living cost. The Witcher 2 was awesome, looks and feels like a AAA title , even though the development cost was only 6 million USD since it was made in Poland.

 

[MeldarthX]

I need to fire this back up; been doing a lot of videos on Neverwinter's new class; but here is one with VSR 3200 by 1800 on a 1080P screen......😉 yea I nearly died messing around lol...there is a lot of beauty in this game and it scales well with VSR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW4lBG_sRPM

 

[Feneant2]

I'm seeing there are some mods being released- is there one to automate your group? I would be happier only having to control my cypher than pausing and controlling all 6 in the party. Is there a way to set some automation like you had in Baldur's Gate? (such as go nuts on casting, or protect healers, etc.)

 

[norseamd]

Can someone tell what the space ad is from the Pillars of Eternity Gamepedia website?

 

[norseamd]

Well worth the read.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...at-contributes-to-banality-of-gameplay.98429/

 

[irishScott]

Well worth the read.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...at-contributes-to-banality-of-gameplay.98429/

I'm not so sure. I finished the section on Armor and then skimmed the rest as it seems to be little more than nitpicking. He made some good points in what I saw, but I just don't see anything he listed as making the game "rote" or "banal" except the broadest sense. Sure the basic strategy of tank-in-front, ranged-behind doesn't really change, but beyond that there's plenty of versatility in terms of strategy and which abilities are activated when, particularly in the full party. There are also are some movement based tactics that he seems to ignore.

For example, I've tried keeping Aloth up front to use his flame blasting spell, then quickly move him back a rank and put a tank in his place before the enemies enter melee range. It's harder than it sounds and requires precise placement and micro.

I guess I fall into those people he mentioned who prefer strategic gameplay to tactical gameplay. Which is true enough. I can enjoy some tactical gameplay, but I see micro as more a measure of reflexes as opposed to skill. In fact I'd argue desiring micro goes against the very nature of Real-Time-With-Pause combat, as there's no reason to react quickly for anything other than pausing the game. Honestly a lot of his complaints struck me as non-issues, but I guess PoE isn't for everyone.

 

[Midwayman]

Yah, can't say I'm a huge fan of the armor system. It makes fighters real slugs in combat. Its also not a particularly realistic system in terms of how armor really works (more deflection than DR) or how it affects your speed. (If anything heavier armor just should be something like an endurance DOT. A lot was sacrificed on the alter of making any build viable. Also the whole DR thing makes weapon interaction with it really awkward.

 

[norseamd]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9867

 

[Artorias]

I'm still not playing this until more bugs are fixed. I put 10hrs(two restarts) at release then realized all the game breaking bugs, **REMOVED** that, get your **REMOVED** together Obsidian.




No Cursing in PC Gaming

Anandtech Administrator
KeithTalent

 

[norseamd]

http://www.gamebanshee.com/reviews/115448-pillars-of-eternity-review.html

 

[norseamd]

For example, I've tried keeping Aloth up front to use his flame blasting spell, then quickly move him back a rank and put a tank in his place before the enemies enter melee range. It's harder than it sounds and requires precise placement and micro.

Actually I tend to let the lines clash and then bring up Aloth to fire his flame spell over as many enemies as I can without hitting my own guys.

 

[Slew Foot]

Finsihed the game today, it was ok I guess. In general I like this style of game but this just seemed to be lacking a bit. The mechanics seemed meh, I get the whole rock, paper, scissors thing but it never really seemed to matter that much. And the characters for the most part were meh. I never really cared for any of them, not even my protagonist. I couldn't follow the story or his motivations or anything, it just seemed so, pointless.

 

[irishScott]

Actually I tend to let the lines clash and then bring up Aloth to fire his flame spell over as many enemies as I can without hitting my own guys.

Yeah, that's my issue as well. Occasionally I can bring Aloth up on the flanks and do some damage that way, but the issue is he dies fast in melee.

 

[Craig234]

Not sure if I already asked this, but any reason to pick Steam or gog for this? Leaning gog just because why add DRM.

 

[pathos]

Not sure if I already asked this, but any reason to pick Steam or gog for this? Leaning gog just because why add DRM.

Steam usually gets faster updates....but, I'm not expecting any more updates for the game, honestly. So, if I was buying it right now, I'd get the gog version (which is actually the version I have anyway)

 

[cbrunny]

So.. is there party AI yet?

 

[Mem]

So.. is there party AI yet?

You can right click on the companion character in question and there are options for AI scripts .


I've started a fresh game since I now have the expansion White March, the higher level mobs are challenging.

 

[cbrunny]

Very tempting. On steam sale right now, $25 CDN ($20 USD?). Is it worth it at that price? Any reason NOT to get this?