Just finished for the first time on PotD. This game had a weird difficulty curve where Act 1 was fiendishly difficult (though I managed to do the Eb fight on my first try), and then the difficulty started decreasing. Then I got Kills-in-Shadow, and (independently from KiS) the sigils for chaining spells + AoE and it fell off a cliff.
I went Chorus, but sided with Kyros in the end. I understand that this option was added later, but it didn't seem out-of-place to me, whereas its lack would certainly have been noticeable (and led to the game feeling like it ended on a cliffhanger). I liked that Obsidian went for something different with this game, the setting was ultimately interesting though the execution usually measure up to the ideas. But the ideas were there, certainly.
The combat was as terrible as people were saying, though. Literally every encounter (maybe except the Havoc fight which demanded a modicum of monster management) played out the same way, which to me appears to be the consequence of an open-ended system where spells and abilities are only limited by cooldowns and everybody can be a spellcaster. That can be fine for an MMO where combat is a vehicle for grinding but here it just reminded me of the terrible state of affairs Darth Roxor mentioned in his original Pillars of Eternity review.
I might replay this on the anarchist path later, but if I do I might as well go for Story Mode, to be honest. The combat was so bad I'm going to be reading a visual novel to cleanse my palate before the next RPG.
