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I’ve played a lot of games... and a lot of RPGs. My first video game that I got addicted to was Legend of Zelda - the most incredible RPG saga ever made (arguably). When I started playing Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2, I was beyond impressed. Like, those games are SO well done. Amazing. POE is its own beast though. Honestly I don’t think I’ve ever played a game with such an insane amount of spells, abilities and class combos to choose from!! Going through the Wizard tree I was like wtf there’s gotta be like 75 different spells in here, lol. Some of them sound so badass too. (Edit b/c too much reveal) Another thing I enjoy is the overall story and incredible gameplay and sometimes dialogue decisions impact the build you’re doing! I’m not gonna do a full review in here, I just wanted to say I think this is a fantastically well thought out and immersive game that I’m going to recommend to a LOT of my gamer friends. I am 100% addicted. RIP my life

A Forward looking replacement for the cancelled E3 trade event featuring informational discourse relating to prominent game software releases from the foremost publisher of entertainment software, Ubisoft (TM)(R). Get all your information on watching dogs, assassinating creeds and crying far in one convenient package and receive award winning Watch_Dogs(TM) 2 for free on Uplay! Due to unprecedented demand the free W_D2 offer has been extended, so anyone who missed out on the live event gets their chance. Thanks, Ubisoft! ie basically a Ubi upcoming release event held a few days ago. You were meant to register beforehand to get W_D2 but the system was unsurprisingly- indeed, that was probably part of the PR strategy- swamped so the giveaway has been extended.

Trump doesn't lie. A lie requires... intent, doesn't it? Most of the time he just doesn't know any better and in the cases where he potentially would his personalilty traits substitute an alternative reality. It's not that uncommon. We had a guy like that at work, he secretly worked for a different company for a year, then switched and later blamed our managers for ruining his carreer after getting fired from his new job because, to quote, they "actively prevented him from poaching customers" and that's why he failed at his new job and got fired. In no objective reality this could be considered the truth, but for him it sure is. He's just incapable of conceiving anything else. Trump's the same. He looks at the pictures of his inauguration and he really sees bigger crowds than at Kenyian Muslim president's. Whether or not that makes him fit to be president is something else entirely. Objectively that's a no. He's like a post-brain fever Caligula with less proscriptions (probably because the US doesn't have prosciption lists, not because he would find the concept repugnant). He even had a fake victory over Britannia Syria. Go there, lob a few missiles, pretend like Oboma failed to deal as decisively with Assad as he did and leave.

You people, Trump can't even post his lunch on Instagram now? Really? Just leave him alone already.

And on Trump's instagram.... Apparently now he's just directly ignoring the legal aspects... "An employee shall not use his public office for his own private gain, for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise, or for the private gain of friends, relatives, or persons with whom the employee is affiliated in a nongovernmental capacity."

I have now finally behind me the hardest bossfight, I have ever fought. Dark Souls 2 Ancient Dragon (if you do not use one of the cheesing strategies of course)... Compared to him, Kalameet in Dark Souls 1 is just like a little dragon baby... The mechanic of the fight is not that hard, the issue is complete unpredictability of his Rain of Fire ability... I have decided to not use cheese on him and learn how to fight him as was intended by the developers... Well, it took me much longer than expected... 139 tries in 4 gaming sessions across 3 days... 99% of the knockdowns was, because he have flown up to completely random position, and then fried my ass with his fire attack... My moves, which worked dozens upon dozens of times, provoked completely unexpected reaction of the AI in random situations... But well... He is now down, and I have nice 12 minutes long video of me running around like a headless chicken spamming spells Enjoy

I miss "Go Dwarves, Go!" Volourn.

Is it of your opinion that Trump lies less or the same as other politicians or are you just playing the devil's advocate? I base it on having eyes and ears. That the various factcheckers confirm my belief isn't really important to me. That being said. It depends on how you define a lie. Does Trump truly believe his father was born in Germany, or is that a lie he keeps repeating to save face? Like the guys above say, it's hard to know which of his untruths are intentional and which are not.

The thing with most of Trump's lies are that they are so small and petty that it's easy to chalk them up as him just misspeaking but since he also has a tendency to double down on them every so often that it mostly disproves that theory. A good chunk of them don't require any serious fact checking and can simply be googled. I mean his term started off with a lie about such a stupid thing as crowd sizes. It's mostly pointless lies but the volume is such that his every word draws scrutiny and his antagonistic relationship with most journalists and news organizations isn't doing him any favors in this regard. Most of the extra scrutiny that he gets he's brought on himself. That said, it has otherwise been a wildly successful tactic for him whether it's intentional or not. He is president after all, an unpopular one to be sure, but still president.

That's one of those should be obvious type things. Last I checked black people only make up about 13% of the population so if they got shot more in total numbers than non-Hispanic white people, which are over 60% of the population (I think all white people are around 75%), then something would be really, really wrong. Also, who checks the fact check checkers?

After Boy Was Abandoned at Hospital, Peter Was Asked to Take Him for a Weekend-And Kept Him For a Lifetime

The official reason, given by Jim Butcher (in the interview below) is that the pacing of the two books together was all over the place and didn't work but by splitting them it fixes this. I suspect the pricing excuse is what his publishers cooked up.

The official reason by Jim was that they would need to price the book differently and the people who buy his books expect the price they payed for the previous books... Which I don't understand as it's more expensive to buy 2 books...

am very much against any individual who resorts to violence to make a point much less murder. 'course you blame antifa and blm for every cop who is murdered 'cause o' your perverted transitive property fails. most o' your other claims, (eg. atifa rapists) is lunatic fringe stuff and hardly merits response 'cause again, you latch on to singular examples from the most tangential related individuals and actions to condemn literal thousands. such behaviour is obvious unreasonable and wrong and doesn't need reply save for our repeated mention o' sadness o' how quirky kanadian gamer vol were amusing and the 2020 incarnation is something else. what a shame. and your selective quoting is not helping you make a case... you left out, "for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise, or for the private gain of friends, relatives, or persons with whom the employee is affiliated in a nongovernmental capacity." either intentional or a grammar fail, but is not that the product endorsement need be for personal gain to be inappropriate and illegal. 'course campaign activities on federal land/property is also illegal, which is why yesterday's rose garden speech were so bizarre. we do miss loony and harmless vol. HA! Good Fun! ps we has expressed many times how much the goals o' antifa offends us. when first amendment rights, put into practice, offend a listener, the response should be the one described in our signature as expressed by J. Brandeis. just as is a failure o' character to respond to nazis in skokie with silence, it would be inappropriate to stop their parade with force. am thinking we ain't been subtle 'bout our displeasure with antifa espoused goals, but such is a long way off from blaming antifa for rando murders.

rip ie game vol. his extremism and frequent bouts o' incoherence were quirky when weren't 'bout race. but 'cause vol wants us to stay on topic... trump is unconcerned with law and even less bothered with right. the only remedy for Presidential behaviour with the current doj is impeachment, and the President knows if they didn't impeach him for his obstruction and russia entanglements, and the senate didn't convict him for the ukraine stuff and his attempts to bury the resulting ig report, then there is little he need worry 'bout from a practical pov... at least until january 3, 2021. if senate flips, then is a new ballgame. HA! Good Fun! ps there is no double jeopardy for senate impeachment trials.

Volo Lives Matter

Or the "Boring Rectifier" I haven't been paranoid enough with my checking recently . I changed my mind, because we have neglected something : the initial tick ! For passive effect it doesn't matter but for Ancestor Memory, making it 6hp/6s will basically make the initial tick give +5hp than now. +5hp per phrase is huge, especially with Brisk recitation. For sure, hp per tick can be tuned down to compensate, but I think it's too much tweaking for a minor concern. Also I start to think that adding PL scaling for passive/modal/phrase Healing is a bit unecessary. Exalted Endurance and Ancient Memory are good enough as they are, constant recovery is going to be tweaked anyway and other Healing effect are self-rez more than healing (providence and unbreakable). Only one that seems necessary is Soft Wind, but more because it is a drain than a Healing effect. I had more concern for damage abilities, mostly because of PEN, but adding damages and acc scaling still feels appropriate.

I finally got around to playing Bloodstained. Never played original Castelvania (or rather picked SoN when it came out on iPad, played it a bit and kinda forgot about it... because it's on ipad. Positive impression though, especially for such an old game). I had mixed enjoyment from various Metroidvania. I am nearing the end, and I don't think I like it. As far as world construction it's fine - quick travel rooms are well spaced out, and visually each biom is distinct with some real standouts every once in a while. It doesn't have a cohesion of something like "Hollow Knight" which unfortunately means I don't really remember the layout as much as I should after so many backtracks. However, for me the best metroidvanias have expended player repertoire as time went buy - new abilities not only acted as keys to new areas but also make platforming and combat more complex and interesting. But in Bloodstained things stay how it started. Sure there is a staggering amount of weapons and shards, with different stats but nothing so far felt different. Special moves - I don't find much use for those so far. And grinding. Sidequests are horrible. Crafting and cooking is annoying. And I am now at the end game with couple optional bosses and final boss to beat. It does the japanese thing - game up to the point was a walk in the part, with little to no effort required of me, but the side boss I tried to tackle is so much more deadly then anything else the game had to offer (and not in an interesting way). Running around and griding for items to built end game gear is just so very boring. Yhh... I might just wrap it up and leave the side content be. Though I am so close to finally feed the demented grandma who: 1) can't remember she just ate like 10 times in the row 2) is very picky 3) can't express what she wants. Mediocare platformer and a bad RPG systems. I give it 10/10 nostalgia googles. EDIT1: Ha! "Just" 2 hours of griding with a wiki open, and things became trivial once again. Bosses beat, game finished. Not a fan. EDIT2: Speaking of Dark Souls. I started playing DS3, at least for now. I can't run it as well as I wish I could which already was a bit of a problem in one fight. It's seems like a nice return to form after the disappointment that was DS2.

Psych 2: Lassie Come Home is out on Pea**** and you can watch it for free with commercials

I miss everyone is a SJW Nazi Volo. Everything is racist Volo isn't as fun. Sorry, Volo

I couldn't agree more. I think this game is pretty amazing. The sheer number of everything in multiple categories is staggering--classes and subclasses to multiclass, armors, weapons, consumables, wizard spells, cipher spells, druid spells, chanter spells, priest spells, types of bonuses or maluses, character voices, interactions, alignments and reputations, and many more without even mentioning how all of these things react with each other. The depth of the themes are worthy of adult consideration. The fact that you can't kill the god at the end I appreciate so much, and I can't help but think that the type of influence the main character has on the Deadfire is lost on many players: one person's choices make huge differences in a world where he or she didn't save the universe. Really, I think this game is too much for the average gamer. It is a shame that it's not recognized as the brilliant masterpiece that it is, but I suspect that time is on its side.

Comes with the age.

I would be in for unlimited duration. However I would maybe keep the base but slow down the tick rate (from every 3 sec to ev. 6 sec for example). Makes it line up with regeneration rings etc. and doesn't require so much meticulous timing when having to deal with overleveled enemy fighters I guess? By the way the Chanter phrase's name is Ancient Memory. Ancestor's Memory is the Cipher spell.

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219 It's pretty close to what I just said

Stop violating people with your closed minded, bigoted mathematics. https://babylonbee.com/news/2-2-4-insists-close-minded-bigot

Trump is a notorious liar who lies even when he doesn't have to. The amount of lies is unprecedented. Yes, the media gets a ton of stuff wrong, and other politicians lie too. Doesn't mean Trump is not a special case.

Thankfully Zor answered because I had no idea. I just saw an opportunity for a free game and shared it.

kinda reminds us o'... no gun rights angle, and end were a bit different. less known is the 1921 tennessee valley battle 'tween the klan and the soggy bottom boys. HA! Good Fun!

I'm on the third and final chapter now. It starts off with the all hope is seemingly lost portion of the story.

Good Guys 1 Bad Guys 0

Topping Soil With Rock Dust Could Suck Billions of Tons of CO2 From the Air and Increase Crop Nutrients – Study

parenthetical side note - one of the deranged outcomes of health/endurance system is that i hated infinite constant recovery. in some fights i would be deliberately trying to knock out eder so that he wouldn't be in permadeath risk by having too low health compared to endurance. i would argue that this is more a case to be made that bloodmage should have capped self-heal, but in practice i think the drip is so low that in most fights the fighter will do better. i don't know about ancestor's memory + exalted endurance though, that's rough from a balancing perspective. one advantage of durational effects is that they can itneract with suppression, cleansing, meppu, ooblit, intellect, etc. i find that more interesting, mechanically. maybe if you want to tune up constant recovery, you just increase the base duration? even ancestor's memory can be stymied by an arcane suppression (which will block refreshing chants). i think the real problem may be the infinite versions of those effects (including but not limited to the regenerating belts). just my thoughts

For The First Time, Scientists Have Completely Sequenced a Human Chromosome. We really need to institute a national DNA database.

Watch Dogs 2 free until midnight tomorrow Pacific time, I think https://register.ubisoft.com/ubisoft-forward-reward/

You're not the boss of me. I even went and liked it. What are you going to do about it? Huh?!

were kinda funny reading the mueller op-ed, 'cause he still can't bring himself to talk like a person as 'posed to being a lawyer. all those "russiagate" folks don't seem to be aware that the mueller report found considerable evidence o' obstruction, and the op-ed stressed how there were no sustainable basis for legal conspiracy charges 'gainst the trump organization, but for all intents and purposes mueller tried once again to get people to understand there were definitely collusion 'tween russia and trump org given any ordinary understanding o' the term. 'ccording to mueller, russia were looking for dirt on hillary and were active working to help trump. trump org were active encouraging russia to help and made it known they would welcome aid from russia. however, in part due to trump bumbling incompetence (Gromnir editorializing and not a mueller specific point from the op-ed) there were not enough intentional entanglement and organized planning for a finding o' conspiracy. mueller report did find much evidence o' obstruction and there were also a pattern o' collusion... just not enough coordinated collusion to merit criminal conspiracy. most o' the media lies concerning russiagate is based on successful gaslighting by barr and trump. btw, two fed judges has condemned barr's summary o' the mueller report as implausible given any reasonable reading of the mueller report. were deemed impossible for anybody with any meaningful legal background to read mueller report and to have concluded as did barr. sure, the media gets stuff wrong all the time, but the above is major stuff and somehow media getting it right has been inverted and perverted so that +30% o' the country sees what should be media vindication by mueller as the opposite. @Darkpriest every scotus case is precedent worthy, but scotus is free to ignore scotus precedent. lower fed courts should read as binding. however, Congress has actual repudiated most treaties with indians, so is not too many additional situations where mcgirt will apply. mcgirt didn't says that wherever the US has broken a treaty, the natives get their stuff back, or anything even close. mcgirt were viable specific 'cause Congress never actual broke treaty. have already addressed land ownership. mineral rights is part o' property law. have no idea what you mean by estates and infrastructure is overboard. am s'posing if oklahoma state built a road or ferry on 47% land, then charge natives a toll could be inappropriate. build the road or ferry itself on land which had previous been sold to state is not gonna result in a new issue. already discussed our concerns 'bout consequences. most money issues will be addressed. tribes in ok have already made clear they is willing to make deals to address basic monetary issues. what ain't ez to predict is where mcgirt touches fundamental rights. will need be handled individual, which will take a whole lotta time and money and effort. HA! Good Fun! ps if one wishes to review our comments on mueller report will see 'pon initial reading, two things struck us. 1) were no way to read barr's summary as anything other than intentional misleading. 2) a side-by-side comparison with nixon misdeeds made trump look far worse particular all the obstruction stuff and mueller explicit observation he believed trump were not truthful in his interrogatory responses, which in and of itself were highly unusual. have been genuine baffled by the degree to which trump admin misrepresentations and far-right media efforts to gaslight were so successful. is just no possible way to read mueller report as some kinda exoneration, and yet...

https://imgur.com/gallery/QLdS1SF

I only recently started to play Deadfire and came here to look for information on a third part. It saddens me that the game didn't sell well. I find the worldbuilding really intriguing and would love to see where my watcher and her friends and foes would go next. Anyway, I second the sentiment that DLCs need a new level cap. I'm level 19 right now, played a bit of the DLC content and there is still lots of thing to do that I am basically overpowered for. Full blown expansions, set after the main story, instead of mini DLC would be my choice as well. I greatly enjoy the prose and flavour texts. I think they are a necessity as we can't see the characters emoting from our top down vantage point. But then again, I was one of the 5 people who greatly enjoyed Torment - Tides of Numenera. I might be in a minority of people who like reading lots of text ingame. There asolutely needs to be spoken banter though. It's one of my favorite parts of PoE, especially when Eder gets bitten by Itumaak. Romance - eh, it's not a necessity as far as I am concerned but a minor pet peeve of mine was that everyone is bi for the watcher. I totally buy it for Tekehu and Serafen. But Aloth, who went into full "no homo" mode twice? The BG2 EE did that better, characters have their preferences and that feels a lot more natural. But as I said, that is a really minor peeve. As for age groups, I'm in the 30+ range as well. Unfortunately that is also an age where there's work and family to take care of which leaves little time for gaming. Maybe some more concessions for the newby generation need to be made, as sad as I think that is. It's better than having the genre die out. Just don't dumb it down as much as Elder Scrolls.

You want to seriously tell me that you are readig slower in your mind than a narrator who reads the text out loud? Full VO is completely overrated. There are plenty of indie games that don't have the slightest VO whatsoever but sold better than Deadfire. I personally would make the next game without localisation and VO but make it very mod-friendly so that fans can make their own localisation and VO if they want to. Maybe even build my own hub for such mods so that you can install them right from the game. The quality of most VOs will not be that great than if professionals did it, but the localisations will not be worse. This allows for a smaller team and less investment overall. That way the odds of a PoE3 happening would be higher.

Voice talent is extremely expensive, which is why I'm not a fan of it, except on a very limited scale. Now, if most of the companion dialogs were text based, that'd be fine by me.

Responses. 1) 5 vs 6 person party. I can life with it either way. I find 6 person parties more fun because it's easier to build a party for the long haul. With 6person parties, I like to have a core of 5: a couple of front line tanks, a priest, a spellcaster (cipher or wizard), and a ranged weapon specialist, while leaving the 6th slot for either a jack of all trades character, or as a character I'm using for a specific purpose in a specific battle (like someone built to help the part deal with fampyrs). But with a 5 person party, it gets a good deal trickier, and I tend to lose the jack of all trades character. 2) Persistent level cap. Yes and no. I think that the problem with the DLCs is that the game is balanced for how it was released. And when the "normal" PoE1&2 DLCs are added, you end up with characters who could be might be much more powerful by the time you're making your stretch run for the final battle. I wish that the DLCs were more like the BG2 Throne of Baal expansion which was appended to the core game, AFTER the final battle of BG2 was fought. This way, you don't really have to worry about screwing up the core game with DLCs and a raised level cap. The expansion would have a higher level cap, and you couldn't reach it until after completing the main story line. 3) Nature of the Gods: Personally, I'd rather see a PoE3 ignore the Gods completely. I'm quite bored with the Eoran gods being central to the story. 4) skipped 5) Purple prose: Honestly, it never bothered me. 6) More companions, less open world. These should be two items. More companions, definitely. Less open world, I described how I'd like to see this accomplished in a post elsewhere. What I don't want to see is the game being like IWD1 or 2 where the storyline OBVIOUSLY forced the player down a super narrow path. This was super boring after a while. What would work much better is having a number of larger strategic level maps that covered, perhaps, different countries. And so long as that part of the story stayed in that country, it was open. But at some point, the main storyline would require you to go from country A to country B. And once in country B, you couldn't return to country A. You stayed in country B's open world working the storyline and whatever side quests existed, until it was time to move onward to country C. Rinse and repeat as necessary. 7) More companion banter and dialog, etc. Meh, I don't really care for this, because I foresee it eating up a lot of the budget due to voiceovers, which IMO should be cut wayyyyyy back. To me, voice overs are a waste of money that would be better spent on actual content, rather than pandering to people to lazy to read. Moving on to "Things I thought that were massive improvements from POE that I do not want to see replaced or removed:" 1. Spells and abilities being per encounter rather than per rest. Personally, I don't think that this was an improvement at all. Honestly, I didn't like this entire part of the new PoE2 combat system. I think that magic is vastly more fun when its use is limited and the player has to manage his limited uses of those things. 2. HP recovery and rest, etc. I kind of feel the same about this as I do about point #1. I like having to manage limited resources. However, regarding resting, thinking back to PoE1, I'm not really sure what "resting supplies" really are? Campfire wood? You can rest without a fire or even a fire to cool. There's plenty of food that can be eaten cold, and probably would be if you were in a dangerous area where lighting a fire could attract dangerous creatures. Blankets? While having a blanket would be nice, I don't see it as a consumable supply. Blankets seem more like something any experienced traveler would have as part of his travel "kit". As for where one could rest in the wild, it seems to me that resting in an area that hasn't been completely cleared would either not be allowed or come with the risk of being attacked by wandering monsters local to that area. On the other hand, say that you were on the 3rd level of a dungeon, but you'd cleared the 2nd level, I'd think that you should be able to rest safely on the 2nd level. Side note: It annoyed me that the party could be on the PC's ship and be making a long voyage, but not be considered rested. Seriously, you'd think that your party could be resting most of such a journey, barring moving through a storm. My thinking was that if you'd been at sea for at least 1 day uninterrupted, the party should have been considered fully rested. /side note 3. Romances: They could remove romances as far as I'm concerned. 4. Unique magical items: I think that greater effort should be put into making certain that there are at least 4 different weapons, shields, and armor for each type. 4a. Generic magical weapons/armor: Honestly, it annoyed me that there was so damned many +3 or higher magical weapons (I don't remember the proper adjectives for the different levels of enhancement) and armor. It seems to me that anything that's (probably) +2 or higher is extremely costly to make, and really is far too good for regular troops. Now, I suppose that the Devs may have seen these generic super enhanced armors and weapons as substitutes for other things like jewels or coins as a way to provide rewards. Personally, I'd rather just get the jewels and currency, though there may be other ways to do this. In the game Pathfinder, I think that they have a system where you can find valuable relics. Now these relics can be sold at a regular merchant, but for much below their proper value. What you apparently needed to do is find some sort of special merchant who deals in such relics and would give you top dollar for them. This could be an interesting mechanic. 5. Companions helping pass dialog checks: I agree 100000%. 6+7: Agree on these two as well.

Just my 5 cents: somehow i've started another (4rd or 5th, don't remember exactly) playtrough of PoE 1, instead Deadfire, which i've completed only 1 time and i don't want to return on these islands. It's some kind of weird magic - technically, almost every thing and aspect in Deadfire is better or comparable to PoE 1, but sadly, game couldn't touch my heart.

I believe the fault lies with Obsidian. Role-Playing games for the PC have consistently shown that they accrue success over time rather than being big trendy hits over the week. That has only somewhat been disproven by DOS2, which, by itself, is not actually that good of a role-playing game, but rather relies more heavily on it's presentation, which for a cRPG is awesome. I would never want anything more in terms of graphics or sound design in a role-playing than what DOS2 did... but gameplay is a different story. In addition, DOS2 did not have any competition when it released and people were damn hungry for a cRPG at the time. Putting that aside, I also compare how smaller modern cRPGs have evolved over time and look at Deadfire... and I think Obsidian have lost vision for that game. The atmosphere and tone of the first Pillars was more consistent. Gameplay was not so grindy and slow. Ultimate Achievement felt like an adventure rather than chore-work. I think Obsidian have gone through a lot of changes since F:NV, and Deadfire got treated as a CoD release rather than a continuation of a cRPG - ''If we put these features in the game it should work.'' The first time I saw that Outer World commercial after 76 released, I knew that the mentality that has created Fallout 1 has shifted.

I'm not sure I have that much to add to a 10 page thread that's all speculation, but here are my guesses / grievances: There's very little about the game that's joyful. Stupid little jokes that you put in for the player to see. I'm not sure that a ton of people had fun making this game. The adventurer portraits in BGII, the Bob Newhart(?) tasloi autograph in BG I, the rug in the city tavern in Pathfinder Kingmaker, the Wild Wasteland Perk in F:NV, the 30s preacher clips in Wasteland II. Other than the unique way of assassinating a pirate, I don't see a whole lot of that in this game. It didn't give a large part of its audience what they wanted. Many players just wanted a 3.75 campaign, complete with cartoonish characters, vancian casting, rounds built in, power treadmill etc. Something Josh mentioned is that Pathfinder Kingmaker sold more than they did. I am currently playing Pathfinder Kingmaker, and am deeply unhappy with some parts of the game and while other parts are pleasant and innovative, but I recognize it as giving those players what they want. Apparently that works. It's worth pointing out that the Pathfinder devs. have separated from their publisher, so it probably didn't set the world on fire either. The combat lacks variety of player actions. It seems like Josh's reaction was to criticism was to hack out any attempt at a strategic layer, particularly the rest, health, and Vancian casting. The problem is that for any players preferred party this creates an ideal economy of actions with few at all differences in each fight. This had not one, but two negative side-effects: Wizard spells got the oomph taken out of them (which a significant minority of players expect, right or wrong); now you can do the same actions over, and over, over again, every fight. It made battles almost algorithmic, certainly some were tedious. This is really significant, because one of the reasons Josh took prebuffing out is that it made certain actions feel superfluos and game-y; with the new system it made all of combat that way. Related, but different. The combat lacks dynamic range. Since there's no Vancian casting / strategic layer, the very little difference between the mobs in place and bosses, and I didn't feel like we got proper boss fights until the end game boss and Forgotten Sanctum. No easy fights means not getting to see your power grow, but it also means there's a very tight limit on how difficult the bosses can be. They responded to this criticism with soulless, narrative free 20 minute boss marathons. The game is not very ambitious. They already had the changes they were going to make in mind and partially implemented when they went to kickstarter. Like dual-classing, full VO, and character portraits. That's all well and good, and the portraits and dual-classing made the game more interesting. Josh talks about why on his tumblr. The plot is just not great in Pillars II. It (and the limited advertising) misleads you into thinking it's a vengeance plot, when it's a pilgrimage plot. It was short-sighted not to let the players try to fight Eothas. Furthermore, it's superfluous compared to the much better, much more interesting faction mechanics. The characters are just not great, particularly the new ones. Very few of them have actual dilemmas in their personal quests. Very few of them have good reasons for joining or staying with you. They don't have a funny character (Eder is working overtime to fill different narrative roles.) A lot of people bought Pillars I, played it before Whitemarch was released and walked away unhappy. Whitemarch really should have been a standalone game like Dragonfall. The difference with the DLC is astonishing. It needs more content. About 10 more islands, maybe 15. Obsidian seems stuck in a place where they're having a hard time doing short (under 3 paragraphs), atmospheric story-telling. TToN, which had many other problems was better about this. Pathfinder is very good at this. BG I is the master of this. Obsidian has been working on shoestring budgets for so long, that they might have forgotten about the thrill of exploration and running across tiny little pieces of flash fiction in the wild. All this said, I liked the game quite a bit on my one and only playthrough. I think it's probably the most polished and well-put together crpg of the new era that I've played so far. However, I'm not going back and replaying it. For one or all of the reasons above I had 500 hours in Pillars I and 100 in Pillars II.