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Pillars Of Eternity:Complete Edition|OT| The perfect chance to revisit Raedric's Hold
- Thread starter Cornbread78
- Start date
Gunslinger
Member
Man there's barely any review for this game (console version) and promotion. People are missing out on one of the best games since the late 90s. It has great story, great gameplay and an amazing soundtrack. I feel like this and divinity both getting buried under all AAA hype titles in the console world.
It has the original menu with the crystal, not the tundra stuff.
It really deserves more attention. It is right now tied for GOTY with Horizon for me. Though i'm only lvl 8 and just started white march so things can change!
For real, I love this one! Really gets the blood pumping. Also this one field theme is amazing.
How does the combat in this game compare to Divinity? Is there any coverage that goes over this game's systems in detail? I've seen a lot of Baldur's Gate 2 mentions in here; can I expect the same level of complexity and depth from this game? Sorry for so many questions...
I think it's hard to directly compare the combat because they're so different. System complexity isn't to BG2s level but its probably quite a bit more than most games. There's a lot of build variety for all but maybe one or two classes.
White March Part 1 is cool but a bit shallow/short imho. Part 2 is really fucking good (finished it yesterday on PC, now only the main storyline remains and I'm right at the point before the endgame proper begins.)
Bah, 2nd ed D&D complexity comes in the form of trap builds and incomprehensible nomenclature. When one of your most important combat variables is called THAC0 then something has gone terribly wrong. BG2 succeeds on encounter and loot design rather than on its underlying systems. I prefer PoE's systems, but unfortunately Obsidian didn't really figure out encounter design until the DLC.
Narratively WM1 feels like a whole lot o' nuthin, but the dungeons are great -- head and tails above anything in the base game other than Raedric's Hold. I also finished WM2 before finishing the main story, and unfortunately (but predictably) the endgame felt like a substantial step down in quality.
To answer this more directly I'd say that the focus is a bit different than BG2, in that the main focus is on making a wide variety of builds -- or as the hardcore role players like to call it, "character concepts" -- viable, whereas in BG2 you can easily end up with just a shitty character if you, say, choose the wrong stats for your class. Even if you choose a "straightforward" class like a fighter, PoE gives you a lot of different ways to play that fighter versus BG where you just give them the best equipment and have them autoattack all day. However, if your favorite of BG2 was running up against a seemingly impossible fight and experimenting with equipment and strategies until you finally get it right, that's going to happen a lot less in PoE.
That said, if you do want to push the systems to their limits and test your mastery, you can do a solo run on a higher difficulty level. You see lots of discussion about builds for that on the Obsidian forums and such.
Oh I agree with that, though I think those that have the requisite system mastery still find a lot in it. I meant more mechanical systems like high level wizarding that people tend to like a lot.
Oh for sure. I think the line between "system mastery" and "memorizing opaque nomenclature" is kind of intrinsically blurry -- though THAC0 clearly crosses that line!
I get why people like high level wizards in BG2 but I hesitate to call that "depth" as at the end of the day a whole lot of it turns into memorizing hard counters, and hard counters to hard counters, and just making sure you have them prepared.
I agree with the first part. Felt like a dungeon crawling-focused expansion, because in terms of narrative it basically boils down to
White Forge appears -> find way to open it -> explore it
Galvino and the Devil of Caroc, and the guy who gave his medallion to the priests
Shame about the endgame though - I had heard it wasn't very strong. Wonder what I'll think of it myself. If you wanna know, I'm just about to (ENDGAME SPOILERS)
go to Teir Evron and go down that hole
There isn't that much hidden beyond the load-screen control diagram in-game really. But a couple tips:
-Clicking R3 will lock/unlock the camera on the party. (Sometimes may require a double-click to relock as it can be a bit wonky) Usually panning around with the right stick will automatically unlock the camera, so click R3 to get things back to normal.
-Edit your party order formation. Want your tank in front(Eder)? Then push square on the formation section of the radial menu and rearrange your team manually(put the tank in the top middle as the leader). Then toggle the formation to the hexagon shape with the '1' and now you have a proper setup. Strangely you can't just grab and adjust portraits to arrange party order like on PC.
-Triangle toggles between cursor movement and direct control. It's best use is to setup a combat chokepoint, like in a doorway(staple strategy). You will need to first manually move your party into position. Make sure to 'turn off' tank AI briefly(just until the enemy is lured so the tank doesn't counter your inputs during setup). Hit triangle to activate the cursor(if unseen by enemies still) and then either shoot an enemy from range or run in solo and attack/quickly retreat to doorway. Reactivate AI if you like once your team is lodged behind the door and the enemy is funneled one at a time for easy kills. [Otherwise triangle is also useful for long map traversal when you don't wish to manually drive your team to a house or something across the area.]
-Holding X. Highlights interactables surrounding you. Helpful to find a named or important NPC among a bunch of nonsense ones in certain town areas, or to ensure you didn't bypass a desk drawer if you care.
Ah yeah you're right at the end then. I thought the ending worked well on a narrative level, and, at least for me on hard with level-scaling enabled, the final boss was actually pretty tough even for my max-level party. It's just the *very vague minor spoilers about endgame structure*
last dungeon itself that felt anticlimactic. If you beat WM2 then even with level scaling you'll probably steamroll every encounter with zero effort, and there's not much to the dungeon other than combat.
Thanks for the reply, mate!
Any advice for the endgame dungeon in terms of party composition? My current one is MC (Paladin) - Edér - Aloth - Durance - Hiravias - Maneha, but only the last 2 are changeable. I'm not swapping out my main tank/mage/healer 😅
DamagedInc
Member
Quick question, how do I tell what level an enemy is, unless I'm being really blind I can't see it when I hover over them?
I don't think it's possible. Tip, if it kills you it's too high level lol.
If you've killed them before it should be available in the beastiary.
Any party composition that fills the major roles will work, and if you made it through WM2 with that party you'll certainly be fine. My only advice would be to make sure you can debuff enemies, and ideally dispell debuffs from yourself.
Durance and Aloth are good to bring from a narrative perspective, but it doesn't matter that much.
DamagedInc
Member
Thanks for the replies guys, I've had a good session on it today and the only thing that's slightly annoying me is the load screens in houses and cities, I'm not sure why they couldn't have a whole house load to avoid loading screens going upstairs.
Other than that I think I'm starting to figure things out...slowly!
Other than that I think I'm starting to figure things out...slowly!
AKA the best gameplay feature in PoE.
I agree. The load times are bad.
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
I escaped
and now I'm having character anxiety and want to reroll.
I went for a Pirate-themed Rogue, but Cipher
. I think I like the highly mobile Rogue playstyle though... but the Cipher powers look awesome too...
...I've been eyeing up a cheeky Gun-based Ranger build...
...and that Monk's looking at me all sweet too with all that WAHTA POWA...
Gah! I'm paralysed by so much choice!
the first set of ruins
I went for a Pirate-themed Rogue, but Cipher
seems more tied to the story in terms of RP
...I've been eyeing up a cheeky Gun-based Ranger build...
...and that Monk's looking at me all sweet too with all that WAHTA POWA...
Gah! I'm paralysed by so much choice!
Thanks for the responses, guys. It wasn't really about mastery or anything like that. Mainly I just wanted to know if I would have access to a wide variety of skills for the characters (ranging from straight forward stuff like attacks to more esoteric buffs/debuff/wards etc) and combat encounters that will force me to use the whole palette of skills. That's kind of how I would measure depth.
Also this. I generally play mage character as the main and love some high level wizard shenanigans.
I finished Divinity last night so thinking about diving straight into this. The biggest question though for those playing on PS4: is the game buggy? I read some stuff earlier in the thread which freaked me out a bit...
I have about 30-40 hours of playtime and i haven't detected a bug so far.
PeskyToaster
Member
Just picked this up on a whim. Got this, Rainbow Six DLC, and Battlefield DLC. The fall season has truly begun.
There's a lot of build variety and I think every class can be played in multiple ways. From buffed up melee wizards with summoned weapons to monks that learn how to become a ranged class but still punch. Priests can either be party focused buffing/healing/debuffing gods or one of the most powerful melee classes. Druids can be either the best damage caster in the game or rival rogues for single target melee damage. I think build variety is thing that keeps a lot of people still playing the game 2.5 years later.
The last third or so of the game can get a little trash heavy encounter wise. It's been cleared up quite a bit from launch but it's still something of a criticism. The expansion, which comes with the console version, is significantly better, though, and there are a good number of optional set piece fights that will put up an interesting challenge. Overall it's not a strength of the game but I don't think it's a major weakness anymore either.
Wizards are arguably the best class in the game and have a lot of options but don't really have the contingencies and stuff that were in BG2. Some hard counters were introduced into the base game and the expansion has more but I wouldn't say it's a focus of the game. You'll be very powerful as a wizard just not utterly godly.
Translation: No Timestop+Improved Alacrity+Dragon Breath boogiewoogie
I escapedand now I'm having character anxiety and want to reroll.the first set of ruins
I went for a Pirate-themed Rogue, but Cipher. I think I like the highly mobile Rogue playstyle though... but the Cipher powers look awesome too...seems more tied to the story in terms of RP
...I've been eyeing up a cheeky Gun-based Ranger build...
...and that Monk's looking at me all sweet too with all that WAHTA POWA...
Gah! I'm paralysed by so much choice!
Remember, you control a 6 person party, not a single character. You can have all of those and more.
Deep into act 2 on PS4(20+ hrs) and no bugs. Game plays exceptionally well really. Only real issue is that loadtimes seemingly get longer the further in you progress as I am guessing it relates to storing all the decisions loot, and progress of every area visited which is ballooning memory requirements or somesuch. Hopefully something can be done to address as I really started feeling it recently.
As for your first concern. You have a lot of customization for each class with relatively cheap respec, so no fear trying out whatever. I find I am constantly stretching my abilities and utilizing buff/cripple magic as often or more than direct dmg. Also equipment set swapping mid-combat as enemies will often have affinities against certain dmg types(i.e. slash vs crush). I am also utilizing stealth all the time with my rogue, something I found nigh impossible to micro for bonus dmg in the IE games. Bottom-line, you will be forced to be mindful of your entire repertoire due to the defense mechanics as everyone has multiple combat affinities to prey on and exploit properly for efficient victory. There isn't really a simple bypass strategy as each encounter will kind of demand slight alterations to breach your targets. This should be enough to calm your fear that there is more to this than hitting A for awesome.
Can you elaborate a little more on that?
Screaming Meat
Unconfirmed Member
Yeah. Very mild spoilers that I don't think relate to the current plot at all.
The art was originally practiced by the Glanfathan natives. It's only very recently, maybe 50-75 years, that relations between the people of the Dyrwood and the Glanfathans normalized to the point where Dyrwooden animancers were able to learn the secrets of the soul arts practiced by ciphers. So it's very recent and still very rare as well as highly regionalized whereas you are by definition an immigrant to the nation. It's certainly not impossible that you would know how to be a cipher I just think it's the least likely class especially if you're from some of the farthest origins like Old Vailia.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
Technically it's fine for the most part. The frame rate really only fell apart for me once during a massive battle, but it wasn't a big deal. I've been playing the game quite a bit over the last week and it's only crashed on me once which is really good. The only real big I've encountered is that sometimes after all enemies have been defeated the battle won't end and so you have to reload (I vaguely remember this being in the PC version also). Load times can be a bit long, especially in the expansion areas.
Overall it's a pretty good port. The controls took some getting used to but once I did they got the job done.
I thought they were both fine. 1 is focused on dungeon crawling though, and if you don't like dungeons (why are you playing RPG's again?) then you might not like it.
I agree that WM2 is better than WM1 but both are pretty high above the base game content I think. WM1 is just more combat focused while setting up some stuff that pays off in part 2.
MisterShine
Member
The actual dungeon crawling though doesn't happen until the last part of the expansion. I mean technically the
ogre cave
galvino's workshop
They're actually very useful in that they let you kite around enemies more effectively while the rest of your team cowers in a corner getting up all their buffs.
Not specifically Pillars related but a bit of a media blitz is starting to come out about Obsidian in general by a number of journalists apparently flown out to California on Paradox's dime. What does it mean? Who knows. Acquisition seems unlikely but not impossible. An announcement that Paradox will publish PoE2 as well along with a new media dump? Maybe. I can't imagine it's just to coincide with this and Tyranny DLC releasing but maybe!
Anyway they are both good reads if you like knowing about people who've been in the business a long time and have probably helped create some of your favorite games.
Interview with Feargus Urquhart (Obsidian CEO) about the company's history with publishers and how he feels the times are now and in the future.
Long interview with Josh Sawyer (creative director for PoE 1/2 and other stuff) on his history in the industry and how he grew up to want to design RPGs. Josh is a pretty fascinating guy and the interview is definitely worth a read.
Thanks for the info, guys! I went ahead and gave Amazon the green light. Should be here by the weekend.
I went with an Orlan Rogue as my character and really enjoyed my time with it. Ate up mobs like butter in melee and had additional convo sections as an Orlan which was nice.