My cisquisition has ended. When some of you said this was even worse than Dragon Age II, I thought that was typical Bioware anti-fan hyperbole; yet in several ways it is, particularly UI, camera, and combat content. In the entire game, there were only three battles I considered demanding (an arcane horror surrounded by a bunch of melee and ranged undead reinforcements followed by more of the same, followed by a revenant who makes a fantastic entrance, and the two fights with corrupted giants aided by red templars) a step back from even DAII, and of course they were all off the critical path. I laughed when I saw Lead Encounter Gameplay Designer in the credits (and the guy worked on Dawn of War 2 too!). Pillars of Eternity only needs four for me to consider it the better game, and since even South Park: Truth Stick beats that, I'm sure it'll clear that easily.
However, despite the drop in difficulty and the removal of missing/glancing, it's definitely not an action game or Witcher 2 with a party. In most battles, I could just auto-attack and use abilities as they went off cooldowns; in slightly-more-demanding ones I had to reposition my character and be mindful of managing threat, not unlike the previous entries. No reflexes required.
Speaking of Witcher 2, I was amused by how their response to that was to include a minor branch in the prologue and a single main quest branch near the beginning. Of course most reactivity is narrative/cosmetic, though there are some welcome opportunities to bypass combat later on in the main quest.
Also amusing: the sanitizing of sex. Like Fallout 4, there are no prostitutes whose services you can purchase, a first for their respective series. Even though all sorts of Fade demons are invading the world, there's not a single Desire Demon model to be found. Sure, there's one, but it's possessing a man, and during the battle, it only takes on the form of Despair, Rage, and Pride Demons instead of its natural form. I guess pervs should consider themselves lucky that Vivienne and Morrigan's cleavage-outfits were approved.
It does do some things better than the previous games. The art style's still tacky, but the colors are much better. The writing only suffers from Bioware's usual flaws, rather than being exacerbated by a rushed schedule. In DA2, all companions except Varric and Bethany were written with the intention of being polarizing, but here there are enough to supply you with three inoffensive bros (Varric again, Blackwall, and Solas). They were self-aware to know that a lot of people were really going to hate Sera, so she's the only one you can directly kick out (that being said, I enjoyed her song as well as her creeped-out-response to it). They're willing to make fun of past mistakes (e.g. telling Varric that the ending of DA2 was stupid, Iron Bull's healer telling him that you're not supposed to drink a poultice).
It's nice to finally have rooms over rooms (RIP Bioware's use of Infinity Engine code). Exploration's okay, though hampered by the cargo cult use of level requirements on equipment; there's no point in trying to take on slightly-higher-level content when you won't be able to equip the rewards for doing so. This series-of-open-levels structure was a great benefit for the main quest endgame. Too many Biwoare games (and RPGs in general) end with overly-long combat crawls, but that isn't the case here. The last crawly level is one where you can just run past enemies while your army takes care of them, solve a few "puzzles," then ally yourself with a group who will take you straight to the boss fight without fighting anything else. The last main quest itself is just a boss fight. Of course all this main quest polish came at the expense of the last two open areas. Emprise du Lion was the overly-long linear combat crawl I was expecting to find at the end (corrupted giant fights excepted), and the vast emptiness of the Hissing Wastes was only a relieving change until all that traveling wore out its welcome. Still worth it; I'd rather have two annoying optional areas near the end over an annoying endgame.
For the next one I really hope they don't scrap all their systems and start over a third time. Work with this foundation to make the best single player MMO with AI companions they can.
