Pillars of Eternity

porousnapkin, at the time I loved BG1 and BG2 but I wonder if that would be true now. I did buy the HD remakes and haven’t tried them yet. I’m curious as to whether I’ll find they have the same problem for me now with blobs. I knew the DnD rules going in, so the complexity didn’t throw me off at the time.

The blobs may be bothering me more now than in my first playthrough because then I had 2 fighters. They probably did a much better job controlling the battlefield. I’m only running with 5 characters now, 1 of them being a fighter.

I forget that you can do that. Anyway, I’ve only had to do it a couple of times on battles I was struggling with in White March Part I. I can live with myself for it I think. In fact I was pretty excited when I figured out that I could win that way. I WAS OUTSMARTING THIS DUMB GAME AT LAST HAHA!

BG/IWD are easier to handle because you just have way less shit happening all the time. I mean, D&D fighters basically go in and hit things and pop a potion in particularly tough fights. No such thing as “encounter” powers. Spells much more preciously hoarded.

I love POE, but it’s very much an RPG system design by nerds, for nerds. I totally get the impulse to make every class more interactive, but it does end up with a lot more buttons to push, particles going off, and things to keep track of as a player.

Oh. OK then, if you were enjoying yourself that’s all good.

@Adam: My feeling is it would work much better with much smaller groups. With 6 characters, it’s just a terrible grind without AI. And even then, they should convert many of the per-rest powers to per-encounter. Using a per-rest power should be a deliberate decision by the player, and always hugely impactful. Each character shouldn’t have many of those.

Yeah! I think that’s probably true. My first playthrough also had two fighters, and my current second playthrough has a fighter and 2 off-tanks (a Barbarian and a Monk). This second playthrough is harder in some respects because if one of my off-tanks gets focused it can end the fight abruptly, but the Barbarian and Monk seem to have good escape options and at least decent survive-ability.

I’m ashamed to admit that this took me way too long to figure out.

FWIW, I still like the way POE handles supplies and per-rest powers and health/endurance. I just think the combat is a little spammy, like others have said, and opined as to why I don’t feel that way in BG/IWD.

My larger problem – I don’t think “a little spammy” is all that terrible to be honest – is that their spellcasting/buff/debuff system is waaaaay too complex. It’s gotten more reasonable as I’ve committed more spells to memory and they’ve (dramatically) improved tooltips and usability in patches, but I still think it’d be a better game with fewer but more impactful states. Do we really need four different versions of “misses more often” and “is weaker to Will attacks”?

I’d be absolutely shocked if the vast majority of players don’t pick 6-10 spells they like for their party and mostly ignore the rest. Lord knows I do.

It ain’t just you guys.

I’m in the same boat. This is the main reason why I’d like to see hotbars make an appearance, that way I could just slot my preferred spells and forget that others exist. It feels pretty silly if you pick up Hiravias around level 6 or 7 without having played a druid before. Suddenly you’re looking at a list of like 20 or 25 spells on a single class. Priests have exactly the same problem, wizards are at least limited by their grimoire slots. Other classes are more or less fine (although there’s literally nothing that will ever convince me to have a chanter in my party, that’s how much I dislike their mechanics) but it’s a bit hard to gauge the usefulness of various +5 accuracy or DR talents on your first pass through the game. It’s a nice system with lots of depth but I’d prefer something that’s a little more intuitive rather than a ruleset that requires memorizing a 50 page rulebook first.

A more robust AI system (something like Dragon Age: Origins had) with if/then system would also be very welcome.

Someday I’m going to get someone to fund and/or help me build my dream tactical RPG that has a whole scripting system that is the primary way you interact with the game.

Frozen Synapse but with fantasy battles, is what I’m saying. It’s gonna be awesome.

Oh god this. I played through on normal recently with both the expansions and enjoyed it, but I doubt I will ever go back. If they added the above I would crank it up to Path of the Damned and start out again with a custom made party tomorrow.

After leveling up some I was able to go back and beat the first boss battle in White Match Part 1 pretty easily. It’s amazing the difference a 2-3 levels can make.

These are both excellent criticisms. They should consolidate buffs/debuffs, consolidate resists, and ensure that every ability is distinct both in functionality and cosmetics.

I’ve completed The White March Part I and just started Part II, but I don’t know how motivated I am to continue. I still have the same complaints.

Combat turns into a blob. It’s hard to see who’s who and what’s going on. The main difference is that in my first game I had 2 fighters, both with their engagement ability maxed. This probably helped keep enemies contained.

Also, I wish combat speed could be turned even slower. Too much is happening at once and I don’t want to pause every second. The log fills with lines of info so quickly too.

The difficulty is also erratic on hard. It varies between being really easy (select all guys and attack an enemy), to pretty darn hard - keep pausing, micro everything, unload spells and abilities.

If every combat was rock-hard, it would get very tedious very fast. That’s the “path of the damned” difficulty. I like how PoE plays now that it has AI, although I must admit the AI is fairly poor compared to what we had in the Baldur’s Gate games. I’d like to see that improved also, and include support for user-created AI like BG too.

I’m happy I never picked this one up, for that I thank all those who participated in the discussion of the game in this thread.

Poe is not perfect, but sometimes nostalgia colors people’s memories of older games like the Baldur’s series. PoE is a lot of fun, has some decent writing and companion NPCs, is often beautiful with certain areas/maps really showing some loving attention applied by the artists that drew them, and has combat that offers up a lot of options in how you approach it. A friend came over once while I was playing BG1 and thought the constant pausing and issuing of so many individual commands seemed like more work than fun, but for me it felt like I was being given more control. Throw a D&D fighter into a big brawl and what exactly were your options again? What were your leveling up choices for a lot of those old classes?

And Concelhaut is dead. Went back after finishing up Part II and he died on the first try. Cheesed the fight a little. Youtube videos from months ago show his minions being pulled out of the room a few at a time, but that no longer works (attack one and they all come). So I hit one with a spell, threw up wall of draining across the doorway, had my tanks parked to block it so the fight wouldn’t get out of hand, and rained spells down on them as they got congested up in the doorway. Dick lich took out on of my party with his hammer spell, but went down fast when all the others dogpiled on him.

Alpine Dragon is next. All secondary weapons have +25% beast damage modifiers now.

I’m currently playing BG 1 on the BG2 engine. It’s tons of fun, and I love that level of control. I am worried about BG2, when I start needing to use dozens on cure light wound spells, and all mage those 1st level spells become a bit of a chore. Still, I’m glad I have NPClevel1 mod, so that I can refine the characters a bit more to my liking.

I don’t understand how mods work for you guys. Whenever I use mods they feel like cheat codes and I quickly lose interest, probably because I’m not beating the “original” game anymore.

Most mods simply add features or fix issues. They’re hardly cheat codes, for the most part.