Review RPG Codex Review: Darth Roxor on Disappointment, thy name is Pillars of Eternity

[Brotherman Bill]

60 pages. After 4 days. Jesus titfucking christ. I suppose trying to seriouspost is futile, but here it is in short form. Too bad I had to put some thought into it so all the spam came on beforehand :<

The review must be considered to be coming from the extreme storyfaggotry point of view; refer to OPs taste in games for evidence of this. As such, the section on the game mechanics is fittingly lacking and by far the worst part of the review:

Classes are also a pretty standard roster, including all your typical wizards, monks and paladins (who are not actual paladins but ‘warriors with a conviction’), etc. Just about the only sort of interesting choice here is the cipher, who is basically a glorified psionicist anyway. They do have some interesting gimmicks to them, like barbarians doing area damage with all their attacks, or monk abilities feeding off damage taken (which you might find counter-intuitive due to their high defence), but they are hardly anything that majorly separates them from their most archetypical connotations. Still, classes have arguably the biggest influence on your characters’ future functionality, since they define a large part of the starting values and growth paradigms of your basic statistics – deflection, accuracy, health and endurance.

A very lazy attempt at brushing away the real accomplishments of PoE's class system...

We have several different classes, with different roles and different playstyles. They are reminiscent of the IE archetypes, but also different enough to have their own identity. What more could you ask for really? And don't tell me you're bored with this style, because we haven't had it for a decade or so. They are "hardly anything that majorly separates them from their most archetypical connotations" but then that's not only the stated objective of the system, it was exactly what we asked for, and when it was what we got then you should obviously be happy. In fact - all of IE and the extended family of the others in the DnD family were without anything that "anything that majorly separates them from their most archetypical connotations", much more so than PoE. It's part of the damn genre. The criticism is utterly senseless.


Including the cipher which is "basically a glorified psionicist" is another step forward for the IE-genre. The additional system for ciphers was also pretty cool. The barbarian got the carnage and a couple abilities that forced the "try to be surrounded but not too much" playstyle, the rogue got his sneak attacks encouraging a cautious flanking style of play, etc. Different classes had different playstyles and different identities. They were reminiscent of their archetypes, but still in a different system than the old ones and somewhat developed. This is good by video game standards and good by IE standards. It's a strong system.

Regarding the attributes, I will say that they were OK as in functional. You could say the same thing about the IE system; though unlike the IE system, some stats like wis and int aren't completely useless. There are also some small variations on build, with you going full on tank, or tanky dps. This is... Not enough for me to chant for Sawyer for president, but by videogame standards it's OK (god knows an optimal build is figured out after a few days in 95% of games), by IE standards it's slightly better than the norm. I would rate it better than IE, slightly worse than NWN/NWN2. (This is due to the not-increasing costs of improving attributes, which does dumb down char creation and minimizes the impact of racial bonuses. Curiously no one in the decline crew has even noticed this, not even the "mechanics" lobby (almost as if they are retarded (just like with the nonammo system))).

I will also point out that it was compled enough that the reviewer got things wrong re: - "Casters can forego almost everything except might and int with a sprinkle of res. All assorted dedicated ranged fighters can just pump might and assign everything else completely at random, perhaps also investing in per" - as he forgot dex completely. Perhaps this is what sawyer talks about, when he says you can't make systems too complex

Talents and special abilities, I'd appreciate more of them. But they are pretty darn good for being a first. Some are nobrainers, others gets more useful as you get to know the system, like scion of flame for mages, that move shit for rogues and disengagement for mages, the quickslot swapping "abuse" tactic, bloody slaughter for pallies that thrives on killsteal, etc. Compared to the cancer that was NWN2 it wins easily, compared to other IEs it wins by walkover. Judged on it's own, it was a solid attempt that stands on its own, even more so given the complexity and new-ness of the system. I'd like some more traits but hey, we're gonna get an expansion

Also racial bonuses are quite useful

With casters, you bitch about imbalance, which is of course another staple of the genre. A game of this complexity will never be balanced fully (though it is of course a worthwhile ideal). I am happy to inform you though, that the fears about wizards spells being sanitized were unfounded: You have lots of trash spells, just like in IE, and many that are subtly good when you know what they mean, just like in IE.

Lastly a small comment on itemization. It is... Not good. Though some are cooler than you'd think, like the boots that causes healing circle when you get critted, and the gloves that lets anyone cast firesword, and the entire "anyone can cast scrolls" thing. Some abilities are cool, once you think about it. However they are all written in the standard, almost formal way: [Skillname] [multiplier] which makes your mind automatically put it into a table in number form, instead of seeing it as being a cool trait. Unique abilities are also written on the same format as generic abilities, which makes it worse.

 

[DeepOcean]

which makes me wonder who was the asshole that thought that outright increasing stats on enemies is a good way to increase difficulty.

You mean every game developer ever? PoE actually changes enemy composition on non-PoTD difficulties, which is more than can be said for most every game ever made.

Yeah man, with Obsidian is baby steps, they change the enemy composition with the difficulty levels... this is already revolutionary. What? expecting them for more than adding some extra stone bettle here and there... too much.. too much.

 

[Athelas]

which makes me wonder who was the asshole that thought that outright increasing stats on enemies is a good way to increase difficulty.

You mean every game developer ever? PoE actually changes enemy composition on non-PoTD difficulties, which is more than can be said for most every game ever made.

Yeah man, with Obsidian is baby steps, they change the enemy composition with the difficulty levels... this is already revolutionary. What? expecting them for more than adding some extra stone bettle here and there... too much.. too much.

learnhow2read. I didn't praise the encounter design itself, I praised the method of handling difficulty (and it's more than just adding a stone beetle). It's a better method than how it's done in 95% of other games where there's just stat bloat. If you don't have anything of substance to say, you don't have to reply to my post.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Yeah man, with Obsidian is baby steps, they change the enemy composition with the difficulty levels... this is already revolutionary. What? expecting them for more than adding some extra stone bettle here and there... too much.. too much.

Athelas is right, the standard for difficulty levels in games is bloating HP and damage which I always thought was stupid and lazy. Changing enemy composition requires far more work but it results in type of challenge increase that doesn't mess up internal consistency of the setting. PotD aside, it's one thing PoE does better than IE games.

 

[Awakened_Yeti]

 

[Lhynn]

We have several different classes, with different roles and different playstyles. They are reminiscent of the IE archetypes, but also different enough to have their own identity. What more could you ask for really? And don't tell me you're bored with this style, because we haven't had it for a decade or so. They are "hardly anything that majorly separates them from their most archetypical connotations" but then that's not only the stated objective of the system, it was exactly what we asked for, and when it was what we got then you should obviously be happy. In fact - all of IE and the extended family of the others in the DnD family were without anything that "anything that majorly separates them from their most archetypical connotations", much more so than PoE. It's part of the damn genre. The criticism is utterly senseless.

Monks hit harder when they get hit, much gameplay, great innovation. Chanters get strunger the more time it passes, much gameplay, great innovation. Ciphers are fine. wizards are crap, priests are crap, i would take 3 druids over having 1 of each. rogues are dps, rangers are ranged dps with an extra immortal shit member.
Warriors are the tanks, paladins are the offtanks, barbarians are the ones that wreck crowds, much gameplay, great innovation. I cant even define the roles of classes in BGI because they could do a little bit of everythang, because they werent pidgeonholed into a combat role you fucking imbecile, thats where IE is better than poe.

Including the cipher which is "basically a glorified psionicist" is another step forward for the IE-genre. The additional system for ciphers was also pretty cool. The barbarian got the carnage and a couple abilities that forced the "try to be surrounded but not too much" playstyle, the rogue got his sneak attacks encouraging a cautious flanking style of play, etc. Different classes had different playstyles and different identities. They were reminiscent of their archetypes, but still in a different system than the old ones and somewhat developed. This is good by video game standards and good by IE standards. It's a strong system.

Who gives a shit about different gameplay per class anyway, its a party based game, not a single player moba.

Regarding the attributes, I will say that they were OK as in functional. You could say the same thing about the IE system; though unlike the IE system, some stats like wis and int aren't completely useless. There are also some small variations on build, with you going full on tank, or tanky dps. This is... Not enough for me to chant for Sawyer for president, but by videogame standards it's OK (god knows an optimal build is figured out after a few days in 95% of games), by IE standards it's slightly better than the norm. I would rate it better than IE, slightly worse than NWN/NWN2. (This is due to the not-increasing costs of improving attributes, which does dumb down char creation and minimizes the impact of racial bonuses. Curiously no one in the decline crew has even noticed this, not even the "mechanics" lobby (almost as if they are retarded (just like with the nonammo system))).

Yeah, more functional, less interesting. I love how you can be clever with int 3 res 3 lore 0 btw, much impact, much roleplay.

I will also point out that it was compled enough that the reviewer got things wrong re: - "Casters can forego almost everything except might and int with a sprinkle of res. All assorted dedicated ranged fighters can just pump might and assign everything else completely at random, perhaps also investing in per" - as he forgot dex completely. Perhaps this is what sawyer talks about, when he says you can't make systems too complex

Yup, true, you have to give them might and dex if they want to do damage, same stat array defined by combat role instead of class, so you end up with identical rangers and rogues, identical casters, identical tanks, etc. brilliant!

Talents and special abilities, I'd appreciate more of them. But they are pretty darn good for being a first. Some are nobrainers, others gets more useful as you get to know the system, like scion of flame for mages, that move shit for rogues and disengagement for mages, the quickslot swapping "abuse" tactic, bloody slaughter for pallies that thrives on killsteal, etc. Compared to the cancer that was NWN2 it wins easily, compared to other IEs it wins by walkover. Judged on it's own, it was a solid attempt that stands on its own, even more so given the complexity and new-ness of the system. I'd like some more traits but hey, we're gonna get an expansion

Yeah feats are alright, even having trap feats is alright in a cRPG. sawyer said there wouldnt be trap feats tho, but there are, not that i give a fuck.

Also racial bonuses are quite useful

Sure, unless you happen to want play as a human, they got fucked hard. luckily you can pick all the new original races like elves, fugly aasimars, Na Vi´s, dwarves, and furries (furries are alright i guess). much innovashun there. i would argue that a +1 to a stat is not very interesting or useful, but their special passive abilities are decent.

With casters, you bitch about imbalance, which is of course another staple of the genre. A game of this complexity will never be balanced fully (though it is of course a worthwhile ideal). I am happy to inform you though, that the fears about wizards spells being sanitized were unfounded: You have lots of trash spells, just like in IE, and many that are subtly good when you know what they mean, just like in IE.

Wizard spells were pussified, just the sheer power of magic in this universe makes it less interesting than gunpowder. you can make a dude not see for 10 seconds, MY GOD, much interesting, i feel like a badass now. they dont belong in this world, mages should be purged from it because they dont enrichen the setting in any way and are only there because how could they not be there.

Lastly a small comment on itemization. It is... Not good. Though some are cooler than you'd think, like the boots that causes healing circle when you get critted, and the gloves that lets anyone cast firesword, and the entire "anyone can cast scrolls" thing. Some abilities are cool, once you think about it. However they are all written in the standard, almost formal way: [Skillname] [multiplier] which makes your mind automatically put it into a table in number form, instead of seeing it as being a cool trait. Unique abilities are also written on the same format as generic abilities, which makes it worse.

Gonna almost agree with you, healing is rather shit in this game because it can get you perma killed, the vast mayority of items are kind of forgettable and the fact that crafting is a thing automatically makes most of the otherwise interesting items not matter.
As for your attributes determining how strong abilities from items are, its a bit strange, because the most inactive members of your team, the ones who would benefit the most with items abilities usually have shit int, guess its a nice way to balance it so that you dont dump int.

 

[Dreaad]

Yeah man, with Obsidian is baby steps, they change the enemy composition with the difficulty levels... this is already revolutionary. What? expecting them for more than adding some extra stone bettle here and there... too much.. too much.

Athelas is right, the standard for difficulty levels in games is bloating HP and damage which I always thought was stupid and lazy. Changing enemy composition requires far more work but it results in type of challenge increase that doesn't mess up internal consistency of the setting. PotD aside, it's one thing PoE does better than IE games.

Didn't IE games do this, not for difficulty levels but for level scaling? Replacing greater mummies with liches in certain locations and so on.

To be honest I'm not sure that the way PoE handles it is very good at all. I will grant that probably takes more effort, that doesn't make it better. If I for some reason want to play a game on easy, I'm not going to be thrilled by attacking a cave with a 'wolf pack' for a quest, only to find it 2 young wolf substitutes due to easy difficulty or 30 wolves due to hard difficulty. It kinda breaks the atmosphere completely in certain locations. IE games, with increasing your teams friendly fire damage, increasing enemy damage, removing the effect of critical hits to your party members, reducing the effects of negative enemy debufs seems superior to me. HP and defenses increase is a crime to be avoided, but increasing trash mobs isn't the solution either.

How about interesting scripting, or increasing the number of times enemy can use per encounter spells/abilities (oh wait it's infinite to begin with huehue).

 

[DeepOcean]

learnhow2read. I didn't praise the encounter design itself, I praised the method of handling difficulty (and it's more than just adding a stone beetle). It's a better method than how it's done in 95% of other games where there's just stat bloat. If you don't have anything of substance to say, you don't have to reply to my post.

Man, hold the butthurt, what I meant is that while "balancing" trash mobs is easy I don't know if Obsidian will find this balancing encounters per difficulty easy when you have true challenging combat encounters on the game and deciding a easy, medium, hard and ultrahard states for most of them so I'm not so sure it is a successiful thing and adding two more phantoms, will O whips, trolls and other trash mobs per encounter hardly inspire me confidence they can pull that off. I have serious suspicion that the stat boost for PotD was they not willing to seriously change combat encounters and that was the only way they could make the game "harder" without a ton of work.

 

[Seari]

Yeah man, with Obsidian is baby steps, they change the enemy composition with the difficulty levels... this is already revolutionary. What? expecting them for more than adding some extra stone bettle here and there... too much.. too much.

Athelas is right, the standard for difficulty levels in games is bloating HP and damage which I always thought was stupid and lazy. Changing enemy composition requires far more work but it results in type of challenge increase that doesn't mess up internal consistency of the setting. PotD aside, it's one thing PoE does better than IE games.

Didn't IE games do this, not for difficulty levels but for level scaling? Replacing greater mummies with liches in certain locations and so on.

To be honest I'm not sure that the way PoE handles it is very good at all. I will grant that probably takes more effort, that doesn't make it better. If I for some reason want to play a game on easy, I'm not going to be thrilled by attacking a cave with a 'wolf pack' for a quest, only to find it 2 young wolf substitutes due to easy difficulty or 30 wolves due to hard difficulty. It kinda breaks the atmosphere completely in certain locations. IE games, with increasing your teams friendly fire damage, increasing enemy damage, removing the effect of critical hits to your party members, reducing the effects of negative enemy debufs seems superior to me. HP and defenses increase is a crime to be avoided, but increasing trash mobs isn't the solution either.

How about interesting scripting, or increasing the number of times enemy can use per encounter spells/abilities (oh wait it's infinite to begin with huehue).

That's SCS.

 

[Modron]

Athelas is right, the standard for difficulty levels in games is bloating HP and damage which I always thought was stupid and lazy. Changing enemy composition requires far more work but it results in type of challenge increase that doesn't mess up internal consistency of the setting. PotD aside, it's one thing PoE does better than IE games.

Didn't IE games do this, not for difficulty levels but for level scaling? Replacing greater mummies with liches in certain locations and so on.

Don't know about the first game but Baldur's Gate 2 did this very well usually and it was pretty necessary because chapter 2 was quite open in regards to what you could do and at what level you did it at, in my recent playthrough I was basically near the xp cap before moving onto the long sequence away from Athkala.

That's SCS.

I didn't use SCS when I played it a month ago and several guides to the game written before SCS mention encounter scaling at least in regards to the undead/shade encounters.

 

[Seari]

Are you sure? Thought that was SCS, but I haven't played vanilla BG2 in a very long time.

edit: Oh, that's very cool.

 

[Dreaad]

That's SCS.

Only the scripting part is SCS, everything else came in IE difficulty settings.

 

[The Bishop]

As far as reactive gameplay goes, the main thing that prevents that in PoE is very weak AI on enemy spellcasters. If all your tanks were to get blinded + miasma-ed no way in hell you just sitting that out for 30 seconds. On PotD your tanks would explode in a thin red mist in a couple of seconds after. But casters, even when given a chance, do nothing but spam useless missiles or some generic AoE, hitting more of their own guys than the enemy. No way however any of that is a fault of systemic design.

 

[Irenaeus]

As far as reactive gameplay goes, the main thing that prevents that in PoE is very weak AI on enemy spellcasters. If all your tanks were to get blinded + miasma-ed no way in hell you just sitting that out for 30 seconds. On PotD your tanks would explode in a thin red mist in a couple of seconds after. But casters, even when given a chance, do nothing but spam useless missiles or some generic AoE, hitting more of their own guys than the enemy. No way however any of that is a fault of systemic design.

I agree, enemy casters could be a little smarter. Hopefully Obsy is reading this instead of the moronic "review".

 

[MrMarbles]

We are friends.

 

[Alex]

(...snip)

A very lazy attempt at brushing away the real accomplishments of PoE's class system...
(snip...)

Being worse than D&D?

 

[Menckenstein]

Hey guys is this bad game good yet?

No?

Ok I'll check back in ten years.

 

[Irenaeus]

Yes.

 

[Hatred]

Maybe there is something wrong in my brain. I know that I don't understand programming. That aside would it really have been so hard for the folks at Obsidian to track down this once in a lifetime genius who made SCS and pay him to write some AI for PoE. Fuck the stretch goal Keep. Give us stretch goal hire the only person in the world who can write AI scripts apparently.

 

[Dreaad]

As if they spent any money on that nonreactive and pointless keep. Aside from the guy who did the art, well done to him.

 

[Lady_Error]

For those who complain that combat is too fast, just use the slow mode.

Also, I'd recommend fast mode outside of combat to walk faster across maps you have already explored. The game remembers that combat has slow mode and that outside of combat it is fast mode.

It seems that some people got so hyped up for POE for a long time (Sensuki) that their expectations were way beyond reasonable. It's similar to Blaine spending a thousand bucks on Wasteland 2 and then hating it. Both games are far from perfect, but still very good and way better than 99.9% of other games that came out in the last 10 years.

 

[Sensuki]

Lady Error

No. I expected reactive tactical RTwP combat and a good Obsidian story of a similar quality to past games of theirs. I got strategical RTwP combat, a boring antagonist, forgettable characters (and locations), questionable motivation and a story with too many ideas/structural issues/pacing issues - lots of other problems.

These are the results of choices made, mostly by two people in particular.

There are lots of other problems but they are all secondary to these two. If combat was tactical and fun and the writing/story/etc didn't make me want to stop playing the game then I wouldn't have these problems.

 

[DeepOcean]

What disappoint me most on PoE is the trash encounters and the story that are really weak and made me stop caring about the game...

The system itself? The system isn't that bad. What the system needs is two things:

1) More options for each class to level up and...

2) Ironically, more balance.

1) The classes evolve on a highly no brainer fashion and that is sad for those that love theorycrafting like myself. Many class talents surely improve what your character do but don't CHANGE what your character do. I mean, why my barbarian can't be a tank? Just add some talent that makes the barbarian constitution bonus to triple or quadruple and give them AoE melee disables in sacrifice for carnage damage or something. Give them talents that make them temporaly not be made unconscious on a fight but all the damage goes to health instead to endurance... I love theorycrafting and the system is mostly lacking on that and one of the big reasons is the underwhelming class and general talents. Having a cipher and choosing between draining whip and biting whip is a choice but it isn't exactly an exciting one. I love doing a crit based barbarian, a constitution barbarian , an X barbarian, an Y barbarian and the talents and class abilities don't really allow much of a choice.

Another thing the system lacks are strong classes synergies, if I have this character on this group with this ability, the other character with this ability will be bad ass. The system don't allow much for experimenting with classes combinations. The spells too are plain buffs and debuffs or damaging AoEs, there is not much of an equivalent to Tanser's transformation for wizards.

2) This is the most ironic. The attributes, spells, weapons, talents and class abilities aren't balanced at all. Paladins and chanters got really the short end of the stick and are terrible. Lay of Hands is a joke, flamming blade hardly noticeable in combat, paladin auras are short range and don't stack with priest spells and more and more... chanters invocations take way too damn long to be casted and the phrases you have on all the time, a big waste of time until high levels.

Ciphers lack good buffs at low levels and the high level buffs offer too little for too much focus. Buffs and debuffs in general need something like a +50% duration to be worthwhile to waste a casting. Attributes... perception and resolve are the worst attributes unless you are making a tank but the difference between a 10 perception, 10 resolve and 18 perception, 18 resolve is 16 deflection. Sure, your tank will suffer a bit more and my fighter tank instead of having godly amounts of deflection, he will have slightly less godly amounts of deflection what is kinda of shitty for the effects of two attributes put together.

 

[DeepOcean]

It seems that some people got so hyped up for POE for a long time (Sensuki) that their expectations were way beyond reasonable.

I was ready to accept the bad combat, I was ready to even survive the trash mobs... I feared and was expecting it. I don't think suspecting the gameplay would be shitty is I having too high expectations, nope, what surprised me was the weak companions and weak story. I don't think that expecting an Obsidian game to have a decent narrative is to have expectations beyond reasonable.

 

[Lady_Error]

Sensuki

The main storyline is just one small part of the overall quests in the game - and for the most part, the quests were done really well. I don't know what people are complaining about in this regard.

Sure, combat can be improved to be more fun, but it is already quite good as it is. It all comes down to the expectations you had for this game.

DeepOcean

You want more balance? Seriously? Why not just let some classes be better than others like in any other game? Some of the Chanter invocations are immediate and buff up the whole party during the battle. The more powerful summoning takes time and for a good reason - it is powerful. So again, I don't know what you are complaining about.