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

[Sensuki]

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.

That surprised me the most too, but I think it might have something to do with the writing process used.

The collaborative design process for the story doesn't seem to have done them any favors as opposed to the single person approach, and it seems to suffer from perhaps too many cooks, and perhaps trying to incorporate too many themes, too many layers and too many ideas. They also tried to evoke Planescape Torment in a really shallow way. That fucking Iovara 'philosophical' question just takes the cake. If I had got up to that part I would have quit instantly lmao. That's literally the most try hard only to fail shit I've seen on the project.

and for the most part, the quests were done really well. I don't know what people are complaining about in this regard.

No, not really. They are all simple quests with multiple choice and often multiple resolutions but TBH I don't really care too much about that. Those are often just fluff or flavor things and you only get to experience one of those options every playthrough. I'd much prefer deeper quests with more steps. Give me some quests like Unseeing Eye, Mae'Var's Guildhall or some Witcher style investigation stuff. Most of the quests are glorified fetch quests anyway.

This wouldn't be as annoying if the content associated with such quests was good but it's not, usually as combat fucking sucks and so does itemization/loot.

I'm a power gamer, not a role player. Good gameplay > Fluff C&C

 

[Dreaad]

I'm a power gamer, not a role player. Good gameplay > Fluff C&C

I think there in lies all our problems. These games just aren't being made anymore and the ones that do get made come with retarded random loot, level scaling and are set in a glorified corridor.

Well... outside of unique little gems developed by one person in his/her garage.

It's strange how everyone always complained about Irenicus being bad motivation for the PC in BG2, but compared to PoE (you might one day, 20 years from now go insane) it's genius. There is maybe 4-5 quests in PoE I enjoyed, most of them were in the first act. The game does kind of pick up momentum near the end but much like NWN2 after 40+ hours of shit, it's far too late for me to care about the outcome of this crappy frontier or anyone in it.

 

[Sensuki]

Then again, would it get 10/10!!! without all these 'mistakes'?

Not from the mass media, no.

 

[The Bishop]

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.

Paladins defenses parallel (or surpass with proper disposition) fighter's defenses with defender+wary defender on, except without any modal being used. Permanet buff to armor is also very good, you'll run out of priest spells if you cast armor buff every encounter, and even when that spell becomes per encounter waiting for it to go down will seriously limit your initial positioning, which is of utmost importance. Flames of devotion is a simple way of nearly doubling damage on your firtst two shots with a ranged weapon, which can be quite alot if you're using arquebus or arbalest.

As for chanters, not only can they put near permanent fear on enemies (which is equivalent to +10 deflection, which is a lot), they can also permanently enable animal companion's predator senses (+50% damage). That sounds like a class synergy to me.

All the classes have a lot going for them if you dig deep enough.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

And Darth Roxor exposes the fraud and incompetence that is Obsidian.

I have been saying that PE is destined to be shit over and over again from the start! But I get branded as a shitposter by the jew and the faggot for that.

Loved reading the part how most of it is bland balanced crap.

 

[DeepOcean]

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.

What is your definition of well done? If it is simple fetch quests with serviceable plots that could be on any high fantasy MMO rpg out there, full of biowarean fluff choices and trash fights that are a waste of time. Well...if it is, I reduced my expectations very low already and don't plan to get them even lower to enjoy this game.

I don't know what people are complaining about in this regard.

You don't know or don't care to know and are going to ignore the criticisms anyway? If you truly don't know, I can explain why I think so but if you don't care to know... well... I can't do much about it and won't waste your time or mine.

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.

I already told you, I expected the combat of this game to be this shit, I can't lower my expectation bellow that, good combat isn't the strong point of Obsidian, never was. I only sperg about the combat because it is what you do 99% of the time and the story is such a try hard fail in the face, want to be Torment/MotB and don't know how crap anyway. Sorry man but getting my expectations bellow shitty combat and shitty story is way too much for me.

 

[Lady_Error]

I don't know what people are complaining about in this regard.

You don't know or don't care to know and are going to ignore the criticisms anyway? If you truly don't know, I can explain why I think so but if you don't care to know... well... I can't do much about it and won't waste your time or mine.

All I can say is that I played most of the classic RPG's and I like the quests in POE a lot. I don't know anything about "modern" Bioware games or MMO's, so I cannot really compare to those. You can tell me why you thought the quests were bad, but that does not change the fact that I enjoyed them.

I already told you, I expected the combat of this game to be this shit, I can't lower my expectation bellow that.

So you expected combat to be shit and it is even worse than that? Sorry, I can't take edgy talk like that seriously.

 

[DeepOcean]

You can tell me why you thought the quests were bad, but that does not change the fact that I enjoyed them.

So you expected combat to be shit and it is even worse than that? Sorry, I can't take edgy talk like that seriously.

Well... that is all I needed to know. Won't waste your time or mine then.

 

[DeepOcean]

I can't take negative reviews seriously because it doesn't mimic my positive impression of the game.
I have the same complaints as the reviewers did but your review is still bad because you allow the criticism to overwhelm all positive aspect of the game that I like.
Where is the official review that concurs with my view of the game?
Why is this review on front page? Don't we have standards to keep in regards to games made by certain developers?
I prefer a non-confrontational tone of review posted elsewhere than this, but I hang around here not because I like it, but it's my duty to bitch and whine about their confrontational nature in hopes that one day they may change. I may get abused, but sticks and stones may break my bones but words only hurt my butt.
Some things are meant to be interpreted subjectively rather than objectively. Especially when it comes to appreciating some things I really like. That said, I am objectively liking this game despite its flaws because reasons.
I feel that I understand your way of thinking, and I really think your way of thinking is flawed, hence you are therefore wrong and I am right.
If only the popular posters at RPGCodex can see how edgy and dangerous you've become.

Are people to go through all the five stages of loss and grief? They are still in denial...can't wait when they get to the anger stage.

 

[Kz3r0]

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.

This is revolutionary only for people who doesn't play Japanese games.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

For those that didn't know, when you move your recovery is slowed by 50%

It's not stated anywhere in the game, but we found it in the game code.

If you previously just used a ranged attack it's slowed further again.

ALL Movement is punished during combat, whether by recovery slow or disengagement attack.

That is really unbelievable. I can't even imagine how such a design decision lasted through a single group meeting. How could they think this is a good way to design a tactical combat game?

 

[Sensuki]

According to Adam Brennecke, the Executive Producer

"to prevent kiting"

(It doesn't even remotely prevent kiting)

 

[Volrath]

I'm a power gamer, not a role player. Good gameplay > Fluff C&C

Just out of interest, what are you favourite RPGs besides the IE-games?

 

[Ellef]

It's why some of the biggest fans of the game have stated in the past they prefer to play these games passively

 

[sser]

For those that didn't know, when you move your recovery is slowed by 50%

It's not stated anywhere in the game, but we found it in the game code.

If you previously just used a ranged attack it's slowed further again.

ALL Movement is punished during combat, whether by recovery slow or disengagement attack.

Are you saying that after you move you gotta wait your turn to attack?

 

[Sensuki]

No, you used to have to wait though but I got that shit removed. Fucking idiot RTwP design left right and centre.

IE mod fixes these problems but it doesn't improve the gameplay anywhere near enough though.

 

[Athelas]

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.

Who gives a shit about different gameplay per class

First you complain about PoE classes being too rigid/narrow, and then you complain about classes having a variety of gameplay approaches in the very next sentence?

 

[DeepOcean]

As I said before, I would really like to see in a video how these RPG geniuses play the game, and steamrolling through PotD. I have a feeling some of them have to reload half a dozen a times in the more difficult battles, then they come here and boast about how easy the game is. Or the best argument: the game is difficult, but it is not the good type of challange, it is just difficult for the sake of diffuculty.

Two ciphers... get Eder to tank mob, when everyone is concentrated on Eder... cast Ectopsychic Echo from Grieving Mother on your PC cipher and from pc cipher into Grieving Mother, sprinkle some mind bending to soft enemies up... fight over on... 10 seconds. If you have six ciphers is even more ridiculous. Don't want to use ciphers? Not a problem, wizard... make elf with noble talent focus, get marksman, use only light armor, cast haste, eldritch aim and use the third level spell minor blights. You will get a wand of buttraping. Having two mages and enemies melt like they were made of butter on PotD. Fuck, I had a rogue on my party and I casted pain barrier on him just to not allow enemies to kill him like a fly and he did a pretty good job at murdering, genociding everyone the melee fighters left behind. You guys just suck, git gud. After the stronghold, PotD is a cakewalk unless you insist on going with a six man tank party what I would consider the necessity of a sanity check.

 

[J_C]

As I said before, I would really like to see in a video how these RPG geniuses play the game, and steamrolling through PotD. I have a feeling some of them have to reload half a dozen a times in the more difficult battles, then they come here and boast about how easy the game is. Or the best argument: the game is difficult, but it is not the good type of challange, it is just difficult for the sake of diffuculty.

Two ciphers... get Eder to tank mob, when everyone is concentrated on Eder... cast Ectopsychic Echo from Grieving Mother on your PC cipher and from pc cipher into Grieving Mother, sprinkle some mind bending to soft enemies up... fight over on... 10 seconds. If you have six ciphers is even more ridiculous. Don't want to use ciphers? Not a problem, wizard... make elf with noble talent focus, get marksman, use only light armor, cast haste, eldritch aim and use the third level spell minor blights. You will get a wand of buttraping. Having two mages and enemies melt like they were made of butter on PotD. Fuck, I had a rogue on my party and I casted pain barrier on him just to not allow enemies to kill him like a fly and he did a pretty good job at murdering, genociding everyone the melee fighters left behind. You guys just suck, git gud. After the stronghold, PotD is a cakewalk unless you insist on going with a six man tank party what I would consider the necessity of a sanity check.

Allright, now make a video about it so I can see it.

 

[Lady_Error]

This post on the Obsidian forum made my day:

Guten Tag!

Pardon me, but what exactly is the "RPGCodex" and how is their opinion anymore valid than than anyone else's? I'm from Germany and never heartd 'bout this message board before and just judging by some threads I skimmed, this is just another place for elitist basement-wierdos with obvious no life and some distasteful memes. So, why the fuzz?

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/78279-rpgcodex-review-1-hŵrpa-dwrp/page-5#entry1671078

 

[Kiste]

That TW3 created by potatos will have better quest system, better story, better C&C, better writting and better characters.

Nigga, please. TW3 will also have a shit combat system which consists of rolling around like a retard and hitting hotekys for abilities on cooldown timers like a trained monkey. Futhermore, TW3 will have the shit character development to go with the shit combat.

Better Story? Really. That would be a first in the series. Everything that has been remotely interesting the TW games was the stuff that has been lifted from the novels, everthing else was shit. TW1 had probably the worst pacing of any somewhat recent RPG. They start with an intresting intro sequence, then they dump you in an area for a few hours where you have to do random shit to gain access to a city. Now, the city in itself isn't too bad but nothing fucking happens there in regard to the main story for many more hours, which includes sending you into an annoying as fuck swamp area where even more nothing happens. By the time the story gets going again, you've have probably forgotten what it's all about and don't give a fuck anymore. Hell, I've played twice through the game and I can't even remember what it was all about. That's some awesom writing right here. Really memorably. All I can remember is tits.

And TW2? If anything, it was worse. The whole damn storyline was essentially a chase scene, during which the game throws random obstacles in your way. Oh, you want to go to X? First you have to kill that big ass monster with a bunch of Quick Time Events. But before you can kill this arbitrarily placed monster obstacle, you have to first do other random shit. Rinse, repeat for a few more areas. And let's not forget the shameful last act, which basically consists of the main villain explaining all the machinations to you in a gigantic dialog infodump. The sad thing is that this sort of exposition was direly needed because the game's atrocious writing did such a shit job of conveying information to you. Hell, in the first part of the game it's a veritable orgy of jargon from the books - places, kings, names of battles and what have you. It's name-dropping galore and utterly baffling to anyone who hasn't read the books. Even the developers later admitted in an interview that they may have gone to far in a few places and that their world building in TW2 was lacking and they should have introduced players who are not familiar with the source material better.

So TW3? Other than the fact that it will a graphics porn for my GTX980, I don't expect it to amount to much at all. It will be an ARPG with tits and even the vestiges of what used to be interesting about TW will probably replaced by "oh, look, Skyrim sold 8 million copies on PC - let's do a potato version of that and further soliditfy the ethnic stereotype by presenting all our women als sluts and whores". Hey, I'm still hoping for the best but the more I read about it, the more I'm getting the impression that this thing will be to TW what DA:I is to DA:O. Only that even a mediocre RPG like DA:O is still a much better game than any TW title.

 

[Sensuki]

What are you talking about? The Swamp Forest was a good area.

I enjoyed the Witcher games, story, characters and questing was p. good - better than Pillars of Eternity. Combat was p. shit however v. easy in TW1. TW2 combat is fucking garbage, but it's a lot better with Rise of the Sword mod.

TW3 will prob be fucking shit, yes.

 

[Severian Silk]

I wonder how many of the people who dislike this game read the collector's edition lorebooks before playing the game? That really helped set the tone and made the game feel more expansive for me.

 

[Sensuki]

I didn't, I wanted to read the physical copy rather than the digital one although by the time I got my physical copy I didn't even care to open it. As soon as I get my DRM free disc - ebay.

I don't mind the lore/etc for this game but unfortunately the game story itself is not great.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

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.

I know BG2 did and I liked it, it's so non-intrusive you likely won't even notice but does a good job of keeping the challenge up.

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).

Thing is, I just don't like different difficulty levels in general and that is especially the case when it comes to RPG genre. I'd prefer if there's one difficulty and game is balanced around it. I mean there are exceptions where it's done well like say Thief TDP (and Metal Age) but then again I view it as sacrilege playing that game on anything but Expert so even there my attitude doesn't really change much.

Immersion is a bad word on the Dex (mostly because it became a buzz word for QTEs, first person cutscenes, an argument against turn-based etc.) but one of the things I definitely look for in a RPG is a well crafted word with its own established rules and consistency in following them, wildly varying HP and damage values based on difficulty level just fuck that up for me.

Why is that dirty goblin armed with a rusty short sword doing as much damage as my beefed up fighter with a kickass magical sword? Because game and challenge is not an acceptable answer for me and never will be, don't care if that crosses into larper territory (not sure I'd even disagree if somebody think it does, wouldn't matter either way for me).

I feel similar about your suggestion about limiting spells/abilites, scripting etc. Let's say there's an old, powerful mage living in a tower and when I reach him on Easy difficulty he'll suddenly become a retard and start flinging some shit tier spells at me, on Medium he'll start using some spells that can actually hurt me and only on Hard will he unleash his full power against me like it would fucking make sense for someone in a life or death situation. I'd prefer if wizard was always as powerful as much as it makes sense within the gameworld (his level, stats, reputation etc.) and acts in accordance with the situation (armed people are trying to kill him and take his shit).

Now, is changing enemy composition perfect (especially as it is done in PoE)? No, but it still results in an increased challenge (how much is up for a debate) without intruding upon my gameplay experience which makes it a far preferable alternative for me than stat bloating (which I just hate).

This is revolutionary only for people who doesn't play Japanese games.

Guilty as charged, well except Devil May Cry 3, played the shit out of that game back in the day.