falchen

Though if you bought it you can get her as soon as you get there, just her quest does not happen untill later. Devil you can only get after doing a short dungeon, it's also avaliable right away but can be a bit of a challenge.

How's the new shaman class? And are there any new interesting items in this that carry over to BG2?

The new companion's quests take place exclusively in WM areas, they'll still have comments and party banter anywhere though. No companions affect the game outside of Grieving Mother for a single quest. White march can be done anytime before the endgame quest. If you do it at higher levels it will scale up in difficulty. It also drops some pretty good gear so you might want to do it early on.

...Fallout New Vegas? The gameplay consists of shooting up raiders, slavers and mutated wildlife and watching it explode into gorey chunks. The story is great but really not for someone who is all "let's just craft and not hurt anyone", lol.

Games like this usually have several romance options of both genders though, so that would have applied to Aloth and Eder too, the last Dragon age and Mass effect even had gay and lesbian romances - and neither had skimpy armor either (though technically nothing prevents you from putting Mahena's armor on Pallegina in PoE even now ).

Divinity Original is quite combat heavy too and blood spraying all over the place is even a part of the combo mechanics. I can't think of any RPG's that don't have combat to be honest, though some gimicky indie RPG's like that probably do exist. If OP wants games with story but no combat though I'd suggest adventure games.

It's pretty much just a question of whether this is worth the dev time it would take to change it, there's no other reason not to make these avaliable without companions somehow.

You can play a melee ranger and probably even beat the game with one, but there's like no point. They have a lot of good abilities for ranged combat and nothing for melee, plus you get bonuses for attacking things together with your pet which is easier if one of them is just shooting things from afar. So viable, yes, efficient, no.

There is a pacifist achievement for killing *only* 175 things during your run. No offense but sounds like RPG's just aren't for you, fighting things is pretty much the point with these games. While you could technically avoid a lot (but not all) of the fighs in the game, at that point you are not really playing Pillars, and then you are just basically skipping content plus you would need to already be familiar with the game (by playing through it normally before) to pull it off.

Ciphers, they are pretty much mage warriors, can work either melee or ranged, and none of their stuff is per rest.

I kind of agree that there wasn't any particularly memorable moment in PoE, but then I personally don't find the ones you listed from BG1/2 all that special either and can't think of any. I consider both PoE and the BG series good as a whole though so that's not really a critism.

Can confirm this happening.

Personally I'd like them to make you reach max level faster but actually balance the game around it, I like using high level spells and abilities more than poking things with sticks, but want to still be challenged at that point. Or just do away with traditional/vertical level progression altogether.

BG1/2 are pretty much what defined RPG's, it's true they didn't age too well (mostly due to the outdated D&D ruleset they use) but they were mindbreaking good when they came out and are still fun today if you can look past the old school stuff.

The dragons are all about positioning, the alpine dragon in particular can be beaten by hiding your party in the left corner of the cave while your tankiest character engages the dragon and his mobs first, that gives them time to buff and nuke his mobs then concentrate on the dragon itself.

Personaly I would have gone with something like jail but since that was not an option, I killed him, he's guilty and does not deserve going free.

I figure imersion just means you care about the story, characters and setting. Like I can't get myself to say, sacrifice Eder to the Skaen blood pool, whereas I have no qualms about running over civilians in GTA or raining fire down on a township in Skyrim. Think it comes down to Pillars feeling like a world with actual story and characters while Skyrim/GTA are just a sandbox to explore.

It's the final boss of the expansion.

Bought a new game on GOG once, never again, their patches are always late and their installer/gog galaxy sucks compared to Steam. Still great for those old games you can't get anywhere else though. For curiosity's sake though, what would a company gain by not selling on every avaliable distribution platform? Even if only 100 people buy on gog that wouldn't on steam that's still 100 more sold games isn't it?

You can get a nice wizard spell from Coleslaw, summons a giant hammer that keeps damaging and knocking down one target. Also draining missiles but those don't seem to do anything at the moment.

I hope it's going to be like pillars, therefore fun. Really none knows at this point though I imagine.

Actually they announced that yesterday, not much is known but looks to be another game like Pillars, but in a new setting.

At this point my only worry is that they don't go overboard with the evil stuff (as in forcing the player to be evil that is).

I think that'd only be an advantage if fighters actually had good abilities worth using. If anything I think the difference between them is that a monk requires micro while a fighter can just stand there hitting things.

It mostly is though, expect BG/IW even had the same setting too.