Bateau
3123
I’ve been somewhat rushing the last part of the campaign (never finished the game, shame on me!) and I have to say that the final parts of White March part 2 are tedious as shit. Mob stats are way too high and all those monks are just unfun to fight. I’m looking forward to wrapping it up so I can return to the main campaign and hopefully finish that fast (I’m just before the Burial Isle) so I can move on to greener turn based pastures in PoE2.
That was the part I found incredibly tedious and difficult, too. I turned the difficulty way down.
Overall I found this game sort of fine.
There was a lot I found jarring about the setting (weirdly, the most jarring thing I found was the celtic-myth flavoured backdrop filled with American accents!). There was a lot that I found unpleasant about the writing (especially the amount just dropped on you; I desperately needed an accessible world map with a summary of the nations). And some of the classes (priest, monk and cipher, especially) seemed both to foist a great deal of unexpected narrative weight on you without ever exploring that aspect.
But there was a lot I enjoyed, too. I liked Durance’s subplot especially, and how it tied to the game’s main events. Some of the characters were better than others, and they all seemed to have completely different structure for quests and interactions, but they were all engaging in their way. Many of the quests were interesting, and the main quest was enough of a hook (at least, when it showed up to wave and say hi) even if very brief.
(re)read through all 3100+ posts here, as I’m finally committing to my Pillars 1 run. Been posting some thoughts on Twitter, so won’t repeat them here, but largely have gone through the same arc of feelings towards the game as many of you - @inactive_user in particular. I do, overall, like it a lot, especially as I know the lore very well now (and have read the hardcover guidebook, almanac, and even the short story/audiobook) - but not as much as I originally expected. I do expect I’ll like Pillars 2 more. It’s interesting to read some of the initial impressions based upon earlier states of the game, pre-balancing nerfs (such as having access to all level 1-2 spells “per encounter”, which would have been overpowering, imo; or people valuing the utility of the AI addition).
I’m over-leveled for some of the content now (I’m a completist, through and through), and enjoying my cipher main character, while largely alternating through the pre-white march party members to get as much of their quests/stories done as possible. I took an almost year break before resuming my playthrough (essentially immediately prior to Act 3) so I’ve been spending a bunch of time revisiting places just to refresh my memories of the state of things and solving outstanding texts/quests - have “solved” Eder/Aloth’s quests (strange non-closure, which I actually find refreshing) and gotten down to level 14 (?) (the locked door) and made the error of going to the White March battlefield early but culled a few outliers before fleeing, have done the possible bounties, maxed out the stronghold, and just have a couple of Defiance Bay things to do before advancing to Act 3 at level 10. I really am not inclined to enable level scaling either, but we’ll see.
Haha, I have posted in this thread rather a lot, haven’t I?
I know a lot of people hate it, but I actually enjoy real time with pause combat, and think it fits Pillars 1 just fine. RTWP gives the player a lot of control over the speed and tempo of combat…something turn based systems can’t quite achieve.
Agreed. I love turn-based mode, but honestly something like RTwP can have really high tactical highs/rewarding feelings that turn based just can’t achieve. When it clicks, it really clicks, and it’s fun to see all the action happening at once (hopefully in a pace that’s easy to follow). But when it doesn’t click or work, it can feel like chaos, even after hundreds of hours of playing games like PoE it can still be hard for me to follow the action.
PoE 2’s turn-based mode is probably my favorite way to play, because while it lacks those highs, you never get the lows either, and it ends up being a consistently positive experience.
I think they’ve said it’s very unlikely.
No, and completing act 3 actually ends the game entirely. You’re expected to do everything in the White March during the main game content as far as I know (I think there might be an option to skip directly to it from the main menu, but I forget.). You can have it level scale the later original game content to compensate for the extra power you’re accumulating by doing so, though. But yes, be warned that it’s higher level content, with the second part of the DLC being the highest native level content in the game.
The RtWP combat in Kenshi is okay, but I have 100+ men in total, and the combat is really simple. But in a game where you only have 6 party members but dozens of potential spells and feats, I would rather it be turn-based.
I think the real time with pause works well with what they are trying to do with Pillars 2. But … I layed a ton of turnbased (after that weird patch) and I actually like that more.
Finally got past this puzzle, which is where I had given up last year, so far I am enjoying this again on STORY mode.
SamS
3135
One thing that really peeved me about this game was after 60 hours it took me to finish, it never told me what a freaking Biawac was.
You learn what those are in the tutorial - they are the storms that your character seem uneffected by, but most others are turned to ash during. It’s a natural thing that occurs near old ruins or the like, or they were forming when the “machines” were turned on, though I’m not sure if it’s clarified for sure or only hinted at their.
Scuzz
3137
But isn’t it also established that it was a Biawac that made your character a Watcher?
I am currently playing the game, just finished the 5th lvl of the Endless Paths of Nua.
That was the machine that did that, not the Biawac (the Biawac was a side effect of the machine being turned on, and the fact that your character in a past life shared a history with the main bad guy in that scene is a twist of fate).
SamS
3139
I thought first playing the game a big scary wind storm that kills people was pretty cool and something I would have to deal with eventually. Nope, never mentioned again.
Sam having played through Pillar’s 1 twice… I feel your pain. There is something about the story and how it doesn’t quite connect – sure Scott is right (above) about the details. He should be he knows this game well. But I, for one, never did connect with the overall story line.
Pillars 2 story is a bit better. I guess. Something about these two games is missing a cog in the storyline but for the life of me I don’t quite know what it is. Aside from that though: These games are really great to play mostly. Except maybe Pillars 1 kinda fumbly crazy combat.
IMO the missing piece is characters you connect with.
I don’t even know why it is that they don’t work on the same level as the BG 2 cast. I like quite a few of them - Aloth and Éder and their stories are good meaty RPG stuff, and Durance is pretty great if not super likeable or relatable. Maybe it’s the main character being such a pure cipher, where the Watcher thing never landed for me like the Bhaalspawn hook. Maybe because the Watcher concept is a thing that happens to you, where being a Bhaalchild is part of your self and struggling with that aspect is the same struggle we all go through every day against selfishness, wrath, etc.
I still love Pillars, but it’s not the seminal achievement BG2 is despite all the pieces being more or less there.
This is a tough one, because in some ways you are absolutely correct but it’s not quite as cut and dry as that.
I’ve been playing BG2 for over 45 hours now and it’s just amazing, but it’s not really a better RPG either. A lot of this runs to taste of course, but BG2 being saddled with the 2nd edition rules isn’t helping it at all (though it’s triggering a lot of nostologia for me, that only works for people like me that was introduced to D&D via 2nd edition). I rather like the mechanics of POE1 better, especially as they became refined in POE2. And while BG2 is a really good looking game, the animations (what is up with that fire ball animation? I’ve never liked that - and you can’t tell where to place your spells, either!) aren’t great. Some spell animations are fantastic though, so it’s a bit of a mixed bag.
And as for the companions, I want to touch on this because I disagree - I really like almost all the POE 1 and 2 companions and appreciate how much banter they have with both the character and each other, and every one of them has a detailed quest, many of those I found engaging.
BG2’s cast is great, but outside of lines they say here and there (and at the craziest times - the number of times we just wrapped up a huge fight and then control was taken away so Anomen could awkwardly have another heart to heart with me is a significant number). I mean, several characters like Minsc and Valygar don’t even have quests (Valygar sort of does with the Planar Sphere but his presence is not required and he only had a few extra lines for being in the party with it, and later some focus stealing musings about the nature of evil).
Aside from quests and how often characters talk and have personality, I think both games are (for me) on an even level in that I really like both of them. I see the sentiment about connecting with the characters more in BG2 around and I generally agreed until I played BG2 these last few weeks after having played POE2 several times and now I think it’s a bit nostalgia fueled. Both games do some aspects of companions (and other gameplay facets) better than other facets, and some are a little thinner than in other areas - overall I’d probably give them both the same score, which is like a 9.3 or something. Nearly perfect games, with minor flaws they don’t share. I’d say in terms of sheer content BG2 EE has POE2 beat though. This game is massive.
