Pillars of Eternity

Obsidian just has such a darling way of creating worlds. So vibrant and full of history that you never need to know but is a delightful touch.

[H1]Something Great*.[/H1] I love Rogue Trader, both Pathfinders, Original Sin 2, the Baldur's Gate series, Neverwinter, & Planescape, but this plays quite different. The story is interesting, the narration and voice acting are excellent, but the level design decisions, difficulty settings, and class mechanics are not what you expect. [H3]Class Identities Forced, Contradict Class Fantasies Sold.[/H3] A Cipher is a psychic predator; the Chanter, a warrior-poet whose voice reshapes reality; the mechanics for both make you a fighter or ranger who only [i]occasionally[/i] gets class-specific powers. In practice, both demand multiple turns of base weapon combat before their defining abilities become available. Is that a good idea to you? [H3]What Defines You: Attributes, Culture, Morality? Just Resolve![/H3] This extends to character expression more broadly. Most environmental observations are delivered through tooltips rather than checks. When checks do appear in dialogue, they skew heavily toward Resolve, an attribute primarily for will resistance and casting concentration, -- which is NOT as universal an attribute as charisma is in PoE -- alongside background culture, and moral alignment -- meaning your character's insights reflect an uneven intersection of three systems that do not track into any of the others. For a story-driven cRPG, this is an unusual inversion. Usually, backgrounds, race, attribute, class checks are oft all included, balanced, and capable of tracking into one another, e.g. being aggressive through the use of STRENGTH will reflect on your BENEVOLENCE/MALEVOLENCE. That is not the case here. [H3]Path of the Damned Be Damned.[/H3] Path of the Damned has a related inversion, but it's structural rather than tonal. The difficulty doesn't test mastery of the game's systems per se, it tests prior knowledge of the game's geography. Punishing encounters appear in areas the story naturally directs you toward, before you have the party composition or tactical vocabulary to evaluate the threat. 3 level 5 bears in a cave. 6 Will-O-Wisps in a temple you'll likely enter at level 2... These aren't challenges that reward engagement with the game's systems; they're walls that reward a previous playthrough, or 2,500 gold spent on min-maxed Rangers. PotD functions less as a true hard mode than as a New Game+ difficulty wearing hard mode's clothes. And because encounter scaling leans heavily on enemy numbers rather than enemy sophistication, fewer class builds remain viable -- which quietly pushes players who want to experience the game's full breadth, and unique offerings, at its highest difficulty, off a cliff. None of this makes Pillars of Eternity a [i]bad[/i] game. But it is a game that asks more of your patience than it earns. *:If you can overlook the fine print.

这回合制更新了之后真尼玛狗屎吧，平均一小时崩溃一次诗人啊

Played all the Baldurs Gate games and this one is better, they mixed all old school with Arcanum and Planescape Torment! Wonderful!

juegasoooooo papa

> See you fantasy cowboy ## Why - Well written & voice acted - A gigantic, crunchy CRPG to sink your teeth into - Turn based mode! Very cool they went back to add it ## Why Not - You don't have 100+ hours to sink into a single game ## Impressions This is absolutely a game I would've burned 100+ hours on back in my days of gaming freedom, but with a wife and soon kids I do not have 100+ hours to burn. Right from the start, Pillars makes it clear you're in for the long haul. There's more lore in the character creator/opening area than most metroidvanias have in their creator's head, and the section ends with typically 'chosen one' things happening to you. But first there's a town to find where the brilliantly voice-acted Eder joins your party, along with Aloth the split personality wizard. Both seem like interesting characters, though almost 20 hours in the only one of my 5-man party whose story had been explored at all was still Eder. The turn based mode is a welcome addition since I could only play on my Macbook and with minimal clicking to avoid antagonising The Wife, but it might slow things down further compared to real-time. There's clearly plenty of depth to it but at least on regular difficulty I bulldozed my way through with minimal interaction with that depth and without much challenge. My sticking point was the first main city, Defiance Bay. Up until that point the game felt pretty manageable; sure there were some alternate paths to take, a castle full of people to murder as a party of 5 and endless forests to drag my camera around. But it was mostly fighting with a bit of story thrown in. Upon arriving in Defiance Bay I was inundated with world events, politics, guilds, side quests... basically the realisation this was not a game I had time for. If you do, and you like this style of game, probably give it a go. I enjoyed the bits I did get to play; the story was off to a promising start, combat was varied enough to be interesting and your motley crew seem likeable or at least entertaining.

Outstanding game ^^