The GWJ CRPG Club - Game 2: Pillars of Eternity (Over)

I feel like I am being pretty hard on this game and I shouldn't be. It's totally playable moment to moment - it's just that none of it has felt particularly memorable.

With a good chunk of the game left to go, I'm in the 4.0 out of 5.0 range for a rating. It feels to me like their greatest achievement is the combat model and mechanics. I also feel like players who would like this game the most are those who like tactical combat and have had previous experience with D&D and a good number of other similar RPGs. I love the combat, but feel like it's somewhat of an advanced course that I haven't at times been able to fully appreciate.

With difficulty setting adjustments and the forgiving nature of most combat encounters at the normal to easier range of settings, it's easy to plow through much of the combat in a way that reduces it to something blander than it is if you're playing on the higher difficulty settings. But at the easy end of the combat settings, the story, characters, and world construction aren't compelling enough to get me super excited to play.

I've still really enjoyed the combat although I'm still feeling like I'm playing catch up to a lot of what's going on, but I wish I had come to this game with more experience playing D&D or other similar RPGs. I'm pretty excited to try PoE 2 at some point, as I think I'll be more equipped to enjoy the sequel having learned a lot from playing PoE.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

I also feel like players who would like this game the most are those who like tactical combat and have had previous experience with D&D and a good number of other similar RPGs. I love the combat, but feel like it's somewhat of an advanced course that I haven't at times been able to fully appreciate.

I came from pretty much the opposite direction. While I really liked Baldurs Gate 2 (and Planescape, but the combat was outright bad in that), I never got into the combat. It was not hurting the experience in those old game, it was just really secondary to the story, characters etc. PoE to me was probably the first time CRPG combat could really carry a game.

Well, I finished. The ending sequence was pretty interesting. Neat to see how the rest of the party ended up, for quests both complete and incomplete. I did just put it on easy and plow through that end sequence though. That type of gauntlet remains uninteresting to me. I am glad I bothered to ride it out though either way.

I'll try to rekindle my momentum with this one. Combat is good. The open ended nature and lack of interesting people dulled all desire to continue, though.

imbiginjapan wrote:

Well, I finished. The ending sequence was pretty interesting. Neat to see how the rest of the party ended up, for quests both complete and incomplete. I did just put it on easy and plow through that end sequence though. That type of gauntlet remains uninteresting to me. I am glad I bothered to ride it out though either way.

Most excellent stuff, imbiginjapan. Glad to hear that you made it through!

I've given up trying to play for the next few days, and will resume around the 12th.

imbiginjapan wrote:

Well, I finished. The ending sequence was pretty interesting. Neat to see how the rest of the party ended up, for quests both complete and incomplete. I did just put it on easy and plow through that end sequence though. That type of gauntlet remains uninteresting to me. I am glad I bothered to ride it out though either way.

Congrats!

imbiginjapan wrote:

I feel like I am being pretty hard on this game and I shouldn't be. It's totally playable moment to moment - it's just that none of it has felt particularly memorable.

I feel like this sums up my experience too.

Anyone want to comment on how worthwhile/essential the DLC is/was to their PoE experience? I'm torn between seeing the full breadth of the thing and the prospect of potentially finishing the game in the (relatively) near future. The balance has been leaning toward finishing sooner, but sales are threatening to tip those scales.

In my opinion the DLC got the best the game has to offer. Both in the quality of the quests/story, it all seems more coherent than the vanilla game. As well as a bunch of more interesting items through soulbound items.
But if you are getting tired of the main game, the DLC is probably not changing that much.

Shadout wrote:

In my opinion the DLC got the best the game has to offer. Both in the quality of the quests/story, it all seems more coherent than the vanilla game. As well as a bunch of more interesting items through soulbound items.
But if you are getting tired of the main game, the DLC is probably not changing that much.

That coherency definitely sounds appealing and would address one of my few relatively minor complaints so far. I'm not tiring of the game so much as just making slow progress due to time constraints and learning curve, so that makes a pretty good case for picking up the DLC.

I agree with Shadout. The DLC feels sharper to me than the base game. The soulbout items are cool.

The White March - especially part 2 - was the best thing about PoE 1. The story is more compelling and adds a lot of nuance to the over arching thread, and the mechanics it introduces really complement the game well.

I’ll just echo what’s been said, I guess. The DLC I think shows an improvement on using the engine to tell a story, etc. I could tell it was developed after the base game.

I posted in the main thread, but if it's not bending the rules too much, I'd like to get in on this. I finished the main game back when it came out, but never touched the expansions, which I just started into over the weekend. If I can get a credit for finishing those and then then a redo on the main game ending, that'd be aces, but no worries if that's against the spirit of the leveling. Can always get it in proper on the next one.

ubrakto wrote:

I posted in the main thread, but if it's not bending the rules too much, I'd like to get in on this. I finished the main game back when it came out, but never touched the expansions, which I just started into over the weekend. If I can get a credit for finishing those and then then a redo on the main game ending, that'd be aces, but no worries if that's against the spirit of the leveling. Can always get it in proper on the next one.

I think it's totally in the spirit, ubrakto, welcome welcome! There's plenty of time left as well. This'll run until the end of September, although we'll be starting our third game in a couple of weeks.

On a related note, my super busy work stretch is peaking now, and things should calm down by the end of the day tomorrow. I hope to start up a final push to finish this game shortly. I'm still aiming to finish before we start the third game.

Sounds perfect. Thank you!

Okay, busy work stretch done, I finally got back into Pillars of Eternity for a bit this evening. I finished clearing the area before Twin Elms, then pushed on to Twin Elms and poked about the town for a bit. Got a quest done, and picked up a handful of new quests too.

Maybe the break away from the game did me well, because tonight was really enjoyable and I felt like I was coming back to a new game. I'm looking forward to continuing on tomorrow.

I still have quite a bit of stuff to do: a few levels in Od Nua, everything in Act III, White March II, bounty quests, defending the keep, and a handful of random leftover quests scattered about the world. I'm not sure how much of all of this that I'll do, but I'd like to at least defend the keep in that battle, do White March II, reach the bottom of Od Nua, and of course finish the main quest line.

I've put in a few brief sessions as of late. Completed a few quests. Learned more from speaking with Durance.

I still feel lost at sea when hostile status effects have crippled the party. Am I simply choosing the wrong spells and abilities to counter? Or is it rather a case of prevention as oppose to remedies?

I remember Baldur's Gate having a back and forth. Pillars seems to favour whoever gets off the mark first.

I'm about 3 hours in, playing as a wood elf rogue, and I definitely agree that moment to moment it's enjoyable. It feels like the rules for combat are a bit difficult to understand compared to the D&D rule set -- but I am more familiar with the D&D rule set -- yet, at the same time, there are some serious updates to the UI from Baldur's Gate, like the lines that show who you're engaged with, the graphical representations of when you're at risk of being seen, etc.

One thing I had forgotten is how much reading this game requires. I'm usually ok with these Infinity Engine-style games and the amount of reading, but some of the Watcher elements seem very cumbersome.

LastSurprise wrote:

One thing I had forgotten is how much reading this game requires. I'm usually ok with these Infinity Engine-style games and the amount of reading, but some of the Watcher elements seem very cumbersome.

Nice start!

In case you aren't aware, the NPCs with gold name plates are Kickstarter backers who wrote up little stories to be included in the game. None of those are connected to quests or the main story. Most of us here have totally ignored them.

LastSurprise wrote:

One thing I had forgotten is how much reading this game requires. I'm usually ok with these Infinity Engine-style games and the amount of reading, but some of the Watcher elements seem very cumbersome.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the whole Watcher mind meld scenes. They always seem to drag me out of the imminent action and I often struggle to figure out what's going on. I suppose that must be how the Watcher would actually feel in the situation, but still.

RnRClown wrote:

I still feel lost at sea when hostile status effects have crippled the party. Am I simply choosing the wrong spells and abilities to counter? Or is it rather a case of prevention as oppose to remedies?

I remember Baldur's Gate having a back and forth. Pillars seems to favour whoever gets off the mark first.

Ah, I think you have tapped into one of the major things bothering me about the combat that I couldn't really put into words.

Priest in particular got a lot of anti hostile effect spells.
Would say quite a bit is about positioning too though, as for trying not to get too many affected at the same time.

RnRClown wrote:

I've put in a few brief sessions as of late. Completed a few quests. Learned more from speaking with Durance.

I still feel lost at sea when hostile status effects have crippled the party. Am I simply choosing the wrong spells and abilities to counter? Or is it rather a case of prevention as oppose to remedies?

I remember Baldur's Gate having a back and forth. Pillars seems to favour whoever gets off the mark first.

There are times in PoE where the game expects you to know the enemies you are facing, and what particular status effects they can apply if they get a successful hit in. Early game you often lack access to spells and scrolls that counter-act those status effects, so if you stray too far off the beaten path (despite the fact the game is more than happy enough to let you go wherever) you come up against something that can charm/paralyze/terrify your party without resistance and that'll be the end real quick.

As you fight against different creatures your bestiary (which you can reach through your journal) will be populated with increasing information on what each creature is resistant to and what abilities they have. It's worth checking in with that on occasion to get a feel for what's going on - and you can pause the game at any time to check your journal.

Priests and priest scrolls are your go to to counter status effects. There are various priest spells (usually called "Prayer against......") that counter status effects. They unlock as your priest levels up and so, very broadly speaking, give some indication as to what level you should be when you are going up against certain enemy types.

Very early game the 2nd level priest spell "Prayer against Fear" is very useful when going up against spectres or shadows. It stops your party being afraid and taking some very significant debuffs. Sporlings can be a right pain until you get access to the 4th level "prayer against bewilderment" which prevents from becoming dazed or confused. There is a 5th level spell that prevents Petrification or paralysis, and finally the 6th level "prayer against Treachery" prevents people from being charmed or dominated, at which point you can counter pretty much anything that can get thrown at you. There are also two White March spells - Litany against minor afflictions and Litany against major afflictions that, while only single target spells, give a broad spectrum immunity to a wider range of effects.

The prayers are AoE effect spells so are very often best to cast right at the start of combat before your party gets too spread out. They are all fast casting too, so you don't have to hang around (usually) for the protective effects to take hold.

Finally all of those spells/prayers are available as scrolls you can buy and/or craft. Stick those on a couple of high Lore characters and you'll have enough people to spam out counters before you start, giving you more then enough time to take out whatever it is that is causing you problems.

Remember there are plenty of cipher abilities that allow you to charm or dominate enemy creatures. Very often the best idea is to take control of them before they can take control of you!

Thanks for this! I’ve been playing a low resolve monk who gets dominated a lot and then goes on to wreck the rest of my team.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
LastSurprise wrote:

One thing I had forgotten is how much reading this game requires. I'm usually ok with these Infinity Engine-style games and the amount of reading, but some of the Watcher elements seem very cumbersome.

Nice start!

In case you aren't aware, the NPCs with gold name plates are Kickstarter backers who wrote up little stories to be included in the game. None of those are connected to quests or the main story. Most of us here have totally ignored them.

Thanks for telling me! If those NPCs don't really add anything to the story, I'll probably ignore them too. I started reading them and wondering if they would be significant, but figured they probably weren't as the information I read about their souls was not logged in my journal.

Thanks, Sorbicol! I think I may have wandered off in the wrong direction, and completely missed the aforementioned prayers also.

The more you know!

I explored more of Twin Elms tonight, mainly moving along the story to the point where I've got another set of quests. I think I'm going to sidestep away from these now, however, and head on over to White March II for a bit. I feel like I want to start that before I get too far into Act III.

So tomorrow it's off to White March for the second act there.

I would complete White March before going back to Twin Elms personally.

Sorbicol wrote:

I would complete White March before going back to Twin Elms personally.

Great, thanks. I'll make that a plan. Twin Elms was starting to feel like "the end" and I want to clean up all the other loose ends as well. I'm still only Level 12, so I assume I have a good chunk of stuff left to do.

I shifted up to White March II this evening, and made a bit of progress in the area. Once again I've noticed a jump in quality with the DLC. Everything just seems a bit sharper: story, quests, tasks, characters. I just really like it up here.

As for my party, I accidentally sent Hiravais, the second druid in our party, away on a keep mission, so I've added Maneha the Barbarian to the party. I'm liking her so far. It's nice to have a bit more front line power. I've never really been all that impressed with Kana (chanter) as a secondary front liner. I might keep Maneha, add Hiravais, and drop Kana once Hiravais gets back from his side mission. Either that, or maybe I'll check out the paladin. I'm thinking a bit more melee heavy might make the whole party stronger.