Voss

I'm finding a fair amount of broken dialogues and quests. The conch shells are an perfect example- finding the conch of the depths (which no one had asked for) jumped the quest for the conch of the heavens by several steps. And the random lackey behind the wall acted as if we had met before and all was going to plan (and knew about the mural in the place she hadn't seen yet) I suspect several of the quest writers thought the game was far more linear than it actually is.

Eh? Both Maia and Serafan rather exemplify the 'promisicuity stereotype.' Maia is just awkward about constantly running into former lovers with a current one. Haven't spent much time with Tekehu in the party, but his urge to share his gifts doesn't seem that much different- he comes across as a teenager burying his insecurities under sex (and being able to talk to his 'mom' about him doesn't help that impression).

If you mean Dunnage, to visit captain Furriante, there actually isn't any reason to go there. (You get credit for benwith at deadlight) The real path is to Neketaka. For all the open world feel, the main plot and most of the side quests are fairly linear. And currently have a tendency to break if you do them out of order.

I don't know why people were expecting something profound from a stolen baby from an end-game side quest. Especially given how short and not-so-sweet some of the companion quests have turned out.

I take it you mean the pronunciation? Because it is the same title.

Spellblade doesn't get sleight of hand- its coming from a background, which is why it isn't getting the bonus. No bug.

Definitely Hylea. She's watching you through the birds anyway. But, yeah, dispositions seem like they're problematic at the moment. I'm not even halfway through the game and I've got 4 maxed, several others halfway, and stray points in everything but cruel. And for the strays, I've got 'em because I didn't have a choice but to pick 'em. I'm not sure how priests and paladins can manage at all.

Eh. DTC seems to be the only rationale actors in the area. A few discrete 'tidying up' of details (and a few people) seems a lot better than wholesale murder/slavery, destruction of souls, and/or wide-scale repression and literally feeding the bulk of the population garbage (and just murdering the ones that fall ill).

That isn't a good trade off. From a game design perspective, that's a terrible trade (a class should be enjoyable at all level and not an 'I win' button at any level). From an 'anyone who isn't playing a wizard' perspective, that's a terrible trade (protect the gimp so he can make me irrelevant later).

Considering its optional... what would even be the point?

I've met her in game and she really isn't Goth, more like distracted nerdy girl if you really want to use a cliche descriptor. She's a pale, socially awkward blood drinker who ignored convention and did a stupid experiment with her own soul to achieve a kind of immortality. That's pretty much the goth ideal (even thouh it completely falls apart at the last bit in the real world). I really don't know what the term goth means to you at this point, unless you're bringing in the Gothic tribes from early European history. @akrasjel- if there is zero content after you recruit her, she doesn't have plot hooks. A few plot references maybe, but those would have been exactly the same if she'd been a static NPC rather than a sidekick.

Eh? It seems more like a continuation of the have-high-resolve-to-progress problem they created in POE1.

New cheese King? Apparently you aren't familiar with the last 4 decades of the D&D derived branch of the fantasy genre.

It's pretty bad. The number of times it will actually help is pretty small- when I've encountered things where AR is a problem, they've got AR In the low teens and adding 2 to 7 to 9... Strangely makes no difference. Switching to some other weapon or just putting up with grinding them down slow is sadly better than trying to work with the pen system. It's just that bad.

The voice acting is only a bit above average quality, it's nothing special. Some people are giving the voice acting too much credit, and it's only because they didn't expect it to be done "good enough" in the first place.Then the narrator, which seems to be a hit or miss with people. I didn't say the voice acting was anything special. I said the voice *actors* are talented. The game could be an interesting story about human-relatable issues like trade/exploitation, leadership and (two way) loyalty, and the framework is in place, but instead it just dumps made up (and inconsistent) gibberish about souls into everything. No amount of voice acting talent compensates for that.

Eh. That would make fights longer, but wouldn't make them interesting (or challenging). I've had to reload for exactly two fights: One my cipher was in conversation range (melee range) with a red, three skull rated ogre bounty, and the other was my first ship battle, where my cipher was in pistol range of 8 or so enemies at the start of the fight, and I didn't know or have any way to anticipate at 4 more melee enemies would hop the upper deck railing and run down at her. Because nothing and no one has ever been able to move past an obstacle ever before in these games. :/ Other than that, I've had one character fall in battle...ever, in some sort of wave battle against undead in the Undercity, where they just kept spawning. Accuracy on both sides seems to be a real issue, as bonuses are much more rare, but defenses seem to be roughly the same as they were in pillars 1

Nothing. I wouldn't build a character that way, especially in pillars. 'Teleport' and cc point towards fighter or rogue, maybe barbarian (or just a pair of leap boots). Nothing else really even halfheartedly does what you want.

Blah. Pass. Do something useful with the DLC instead of trying to flesh out Emo MissGothypants with more cliches and idiocy. At this point, the only use for the sidekicks is filler because most of the seven companions are inherently factionalized. Unfortunately the class selections of the sidekicks are a problem in making them useful replacements for several companions- priest and paladin choices in particular would have improved their lot immensely.

Honestly I'm more impressed that the negative reviews are about real issues and bugs and not anything else. Though it's a little embarassing and sad that the game was delayed a month under the auspices of bug-fixing and still came out in this state. What was it like in April? The mind boggles. Negative reviews of 'this isn't working right' are both valid and reasonable. At this point I feel like I've done a warm-up run, and a real play-through of the game will have to wait a month or so, with a class that actually works well with the game mechanics and combat design. And yes, while the voice actors are talented, the constant VO stresses that the writers.... have issues. Very few conservations flow naturally, and several give the impression that the writers are paid by word count, rather than coherence. And quest chains snap and jump often, for all the wrong reasons. Picking up a related object (the other conch shell) shouldn't progress a quest, or make strangers recognize me. Making a big deal about not being introduced to a character seems like a bug when you can find said character yourself.c dispositions and reputations are just weird. I have most of the disposition traits, and several at max, less than halfway through the game, several because I had to pick one I didn't want, despite having three favored dispositions (and getting a reward for turning over an object should never be 'benevolent') [Edited for my own coherence issues.]

Palle's expanded backstory is... unfortunate. Basically it turns out that Yay. The woman with no agency was further reduced to a whiny teenage retcon, and that's why she's so angry and stuff.

Easily. The ranger class has a couple passives that help ranged builds, but its mostly centered on the pet. Almost any noncaster class will build a better ranged attacker. As will chanter.

You can either land at a port or an anchor icon on an island. Just click.

-1. Fix the basic stuff first. Lots of bugs still to be stomped out, and loading time optimization could use a bit of work. Frankly potd ranks behind a decent array new portraits, especially with the old ones reused for shiphands.

Kinda? Between factionalized companions and class combinations, skill functionality (and use opportunities) weapon availability, and just how things work (particularly armor and pen), this game seems to require an extra heaping helping of meta knowledge. Add on the things that you can choose but not change (class selections for npcs, before you can find out what those choices do) and various game state bugs, its in a weird place.

She isn't a companion or sidekick