[Undying heritage - Sustenance for Aldheim]

And you could also send Saeda to get eaten as well, pretty evil thing to do but oh well. 

[Quest bug, Undying heritage - sustenance for Aldheim]

I'm on this quest now. I have no idea how to get the meat stew from Icantha.

The only person that you can send to get eaten is the Prisoners and Saeda, but if you already saved them, then you are out of luck, cause you are playing a good buy, and good guy do not sent people to get eaten. By the way its not needed to progress at all, it was just an evil thing that you could do. And you get a little power boost from being evil, but its totally not necessary to progress the story at all. And its not a bug. 

If you were playing as a evil character, you would have left the prisoners alone to be eaten by Icantha anyways. 

[Why the hype?]

I`ve been enjoying playing PoE quite a bit. But for the life of me I can`t understand the hype over the game which seems almost hysterical to me. After having finished the game I felt pleased but at the same time slightly disappointed, perhaps because I had expected more. I do not think it is an improvement over Baldur`s Gate at all quite frankly. In some cases it`s just not as good period. When I wrote a Metacritic review to this effect, where the flood of 10s is just beyond belief, I was subjected to a comical campaign of enraged fans who not only downvoted this review - fair enough really - but made a campaign of downvoting all my other reviews also. I have never experienced anything like it on MC, not even when I trashed a WoW expansion. It is quite amazing. Anyway, just so I`ve said it, these are my three main reasons for not agreeing with the hype:

 

1: Lack of replayability. There are not enough companions for replays to have much to offer. Yes I know you can make your own party members. But I never liked to do that in the IE games. I prefer the immersion of recruiting NPCs and having party members with some sense of personality. And eight is just one playthrough and change as far as I can tell. The eight there are are good. That isn`t the problem. But the way I play these games I will never play a monk, rogue or barbarian at all because there aren`t any.

Secondly it`s not open enough compared to Baldur`s Gate. Apart from Defiance Bay there`s only really ever one place you can go at any time, unless you want to be instantly killed of course. By contrast Baldur`s Gate had like 20 areas to choose between at any time and you could deliberately spend ages doing something completely irrelevant to the main quest. And you just can not in PoE.

 

2: Obscene loading times. There are just too many loading screens and they last for ages. At least 25 seconds is my experience and it just makes exploration a pain in the butt when it should be the best part of the game.

 

3: It is not better than Baldur`s Gate. And it should be considering that Baldur`s Gate is 17 years old.

 

To me this takes the game from a 10 if these, in my opinion major, issues were not present to a 7, which was what I gave the game on metacritic when the campaign against me there started. A good game but very far from a classic. It is also not the best game in genre, which I think it should be to merit a 10. Other than that the game is fine and I said so in my review. I did enjoy my one playthrough quite a lot and do not regret buying the game. In fact I love the genre and will happily support any devs making games like this, even if the games are average, just so more might be produced in future. But it still has to be criticized fairly a and not be fawned over like some rediscovery of a species believed to be exitinct. "Look everyone it`s a dodo! Don`t raise your voices or say anything disparaging or it might die off again!"

And the honest truth for my part is that I don`t imagine I`ll be starting a new game of PoE anytime soon, because I just can`t find a compelling reason to do so. Maybe in a couple of years after a few patches and after some more companions have been added. But just how is this game a 10 when BG is better in these respects by far? What is BG then? An 11? 12? I am hard pressed to find any aspect where I think PoE is the better game. That doesn`t mean it`s bad. Just that some people seem to have lost all sense of proportion when it comes to PoE. The hype is just unbelievable. I would be curious to know just how many of the people who are now raging while downvoting my reviews on Metacritic, simply because I had the temerity to criticize obvious shortcomings with PoE, will even be playing it in a couple of weeks, once their first playthrough is done with. Frankly I doubt very much if any of them will. I know I`d rather start my 53rd playthrough of Baldur`s Gate right now.

 

I know that you as an Reviewer has played many games, and probably has a system in which you rate games. 

But let me ask you one question, Did you enjoy the game, did the game brought the feeling of the 17 year old game back to your memories. Did it remind you of all the fun activities that you had when you were playing Baldur's gate back in the old days, and maybe even wanted to play those games again. 

 

In the gaming age where Graphics and open worlds and trees with leafs that blow in the virtual wind are all the rage, I believe that Pillars of Eternity did very very well. For a game that made me want to complete it and follow the story and learn the lore, its a 10 for me. 

 

Divinity Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity are starting to bring these games back to the Public eye, for years no one wanted to create games like the Baldur's Gate, but now another game is on the Horizon, Dungeon and Dragons Sword coast legends is also coming out. 

 

No game will ever be perfect, but if its a game that will possibly bring Baldur's Gate back to the world by having fans telling developers of the world that these kind of games will still earn you money. Then I applaud the Hype. 

 

Hype tells the Investors that this Genre is still alive, bring them back, tell us stories, people will still be willing to read ingame text. 

 

So Go Hype train, go loud, go the distance and give us Gamers more games to play. 

[Level Cap]

 

It's like everyone in this thread is forgetting plans for a sequel and the huge amount of work needed to create games without level caps.

 

If you want any semblance of actual plot progression, you need a level cap. You cry 'muh immersion breaking' when you can't level up more, but  having the final boss being killed in 2 seconds flat is more immersion breaking. What's the danger when any old adventurer can go through the world doing random stuff, killing monsters, and leveling up forever to take down any threat in the world?

 

Second, if you want games to scale without level caps....good luck persuading any game dev to balance the game to cater to every single person who comes to fights with different xp values.

 

"Oh but you can just make stats scale!" That's not balancing, and it removes the whole point of leveling up when no matter how much you level up, a wolf is still as difficult as when you fought it six levels ago.

 

Once again... The game has a finite amount of exp so why have a level cap? It's not like games where you can grind for an infinite amount of time

 

Please stop and listen to yourself, you are acting like every single person will be playing the way you do. 

Not every Player will be sneaking and unlocking every lock, find every quest do every single little thing that gives them that 1 extra exp. A game developer whom has a plan for your character that you created and reached level 12 to be imported into their sequel can not have a character that cheese the game by Soloing and gaining the bonus exp boost that probably gets you to level 15, therefore bypassing 3 levels of awesome new spells that you will get, new stats, new attributes that they might possibly put in their sequel. And then have Players like you , posting threats on how come their new game is so easy even on Hard or Path of the damned, because I am level 15 and I cheesed my way there but its not my fault, its the developers because you allow it to happen. 

 

Having a level cap of 12 allows everyone to start at the same point once the Sequel comes out.

 

If you still don't understand, even with finite EXP available, not everyone will get all the Exp available, some people who played the game blind, at best they might only accumulate 75% of the ExP available. Then are you saying that by not exploring everything the Gamer should be punished?? Should all gamers play the game the same way, do I HAVE to explore everything , everywhere, who dictated that I have to explore everything everywhere to experience the game I bought like everyone else.  Game developers have to assume that the majority will reach 75% , for those that reaches above it, they are more prepared for the fights, they have all the tools available for future encounters compared to those that isn't, but aren't punished other than having the fights lasts longer.