All of Pillars of Eternity 2's (paid and free) DLC is now out, as well as patch 4.0.
They've greatly increased the game's polish, improved the UI and AI, balanced the classes and battles, and added a lot of additional content over what was already a very solid launch.
Personally, I paused playing the game a week or two post-release after ~25 hours so that I could complete it with all the DLC content (I generally don't re-play RPGs, and I like to play DLC like this during my playthrough and not afterwards) and I went back to it now with all the DLC being ready. I already loved the game when it was released, but I was surprised again at just how great it is when I returned back to it. I immediately lost several hours to it, and that's just not generally something that happens to me any more with single player games (unless they're made by Zachtronics).
Seriously, everything about this game is fantastic:
As a massive fan of these types of games, there is now absolutely no doubt in my mind that Pillars of Eternity 2 is the best game ever in the legacy of the Inifinity Engine CRPGs. (I still like PS:T more, but it's undeniable that PoE2 is objectively a much better game overall)
If you read everything up to this part, then you really really should play Pillars of Eternity 2.
They've greatly increased the game's polish, improved the UI and AI, balanced the classes and battles, and added a lot of additional content over what was already a very solid launch.
Personally, I paused playing the game a week or two post-release after ~25 hours so that I could complete it with all the DLC content (I generally don't re-play RPGs, and I like to play DLC like this during my playthrough and not afterwards) and I went back to it now with all the DLC being ready. I already loved the game when it was released, but I was surprised again at just how great it is when I returned back to it. I immediately lost several hours to it, and that's just not generally something that happens to me any more with single player games (unless they're made by Zachtronics).
Seriously, everything about this game is fantastic:
- The setting is amazing. All the factions are believable, none of them are either totally Saturday-morning cartoon evil or beacons of morality.
The region's as well as the factions' history is clearly very well developed, and its impact is realistically felt throughout the game. - Quests are incredibly varied, with many options for completing them. They could be focused on everything from a city-only spying mission over primarily exploring on the world map to dungeon crawling and battles. And their outcomes often aren't the usual binary "help this faction, now the other one hates me forever" deal, but a much more realistic approach where people will still act for their own self-interest in how the interact with you, even if you didn't do exactly what they wanted.
- Systemic character growth (as in, leveling) and strategic planning are interesting, rewarding, allow for a great many options and playstyles, and are very balanced. The patches changed quite a lot here for some of the classes, and generally for the better -- and it was already pretty exemplary at launch.
- The UI is the best that I have ever seen in any party-based CRPG. Everything is clearly signaled in and out of battle with smartly designed markers, it's highly customizable, and it has sub-string search in all cases where that makes sense. Seriously, ever since SkyUI demonstrated just how well that works in large-scale RPGs, it has seen far too little use. They go a step further in PoE2 and supply all items with tags that can also be used for search.
- Talking about itemization, it's awesome as well. Lots of unique and Soulbound items, with great lore and even greater effects that play well with that lore background. And the tag system is amazing here again, where items can target specific subsets of tagged skills which allows very specific effects which in turn enable or greatly enhance the viability of some builds.
- Skills are also awesomely varied within and across classes, and yet somehow still mostly balanced. Everyone basically has something tactically interesting to do at all times. And some changed introduced in the patches make this even more true, like the perk allowing you to scale the area of influence of spells per cast for increased (or reduced) effectiveness.
- Since we're on the topic of variety, the pacing and gameplay variety in Pillars of Eternity 2 is one of its greatest strengths -- especially since this is an area where I feel many (especially longer) games fail. You have so many different types of gameplay, and you get the choice of how much to engage with each of them at any time: dialogue-based play primarily in cities and with party members, exploration on both the world map and in individual regions/dungeons, combat of course, choose-your-own adventure style segments (with skill and inventory tests -- I love these), the whole naval aspect, and of course strategic planning with items and character building.
- The battle system is fantastic as well. Depending on the difficulty (in terms of both the global setting and the relative difficulty of individual encounters) you can always fluidly choose on how much or little to interact with the moment-to-moment gameplay, from highly controlled very difficult encounters to extremely quick cleanups (the latter of which I sorely miss in many other party-based RPGS). And the tactical possibilities are almost endless, and even more importantly quite different for almost every encounter, based on the relative positioning of enemies, your party, your remaining skills, and the geometrical layout of the area you are fighting in.
- As you would expect from Obsidian, the writing is on point, despite the absolutely massive amount of it required to populate this large game. Characters and factions really come to live with it, and you notice how their background and disposition subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) influences the way they speak and frame different requests. It's not as heavy on the philosophical theming as some of my favourites in the genre, but in terms of grounded and thoughtful writing its excellent.
- After all this, with a game so enticing on so many aspects, you kind of expect a letdown, right? It's a smaller-scale production, so maybe its graphics aren't anything to write home about? On the contrary, Pillars of Eternity 2 is a beautiful game. The rendered, then artistically improved backdrops integrate fabulously with dynamic elements and lighting, and the various locales all feature incredible detail. Spell and battle effects are suitably impressive, and weather and atmospheric lighting features elevate it far beyond what could be accomplished with this type of graphics setup before.
As a massive fan of these types of games, there is now absolutely no doubt in my mind that Pillars of Eternity 2 is the best game ever in the legacy of the Inifinity Engine CRPGs. (I still like PS:T more, but it's undeniable that PoE2 is objectively a much better game overall)
If you read everything up to this part, then you really really should play Pillars of Eternity 2.
