[JOSH SAWYER REGRETS: Hard counters, sillier companions, and more]

I, too, agree about the silly characters point. Then again, I loved the over the top, tongue in the cheek attitude of Divinity: Original Sin, so my opinion is strongly influenced by personal taste for that kind of a style. 

 

The early game lore dumping was kind of irritating as well. 

[Pillars of Eternity: My Experience $50 Later]

I agree about the companions, as they for sure are the least interesting bunch I've ever come across in an RPG. I tried SO hard to get into the companions, but it all just felt so shallow and pointless. They could not capture my interest, not a single one of them. The interactions — and especially the little comments they made in the conversations — were all so superficial and felt so tacked on that it was borderline immersion breaking. 

 

The way they presented the story to the player was poor as well: dumping tons upon tons of lore on the player right after they have started playing is NOT the way to go. This is simply overwhelming and too much, too quickly. I think that a lot of the stuff felt uninteresting and unimportant. They would constantly reference these gods which kind of got old fast. Apparently everyone is a theist in this universe too, btw. Also, some of the descriptive grey text did not match with the visuals. For example, the text said something along the lines of "the sky dragon descended from the sky" but in the actual visual I just saw the dragon casually walk up to me. I was like really, are you ****ing kidding me?

I think the whole concept of the Animancy, the Waidwen's Legacy/hollowborn problem, being reborn into a new body, awakened souls, etc was really cool, but they waste these concepts on some half assed story of chasing a generic "har har I'm a bad guy who is part of some generic, boring ass cult"? Wow, what a waste! I didn't find the Leaden Key interesting at all. In fact, it was the opposite of interesting. I've seen this "It's an evil cult behind it all and the cult leader!" plot WAY too many times. The main quest was truly pathetic for 90% of the time. It's a shame because the hollowborn situation could have been utilized so much better in a better plot. 

 

The ending, too, was a bit unfulfilling. At the end the whole thing kind of made sense, but somehow it felt very anticlimactic to me. It was already too late because it is the JOURNEY that matters, not the destination. They failed hard at making 90% of the story interesting. They tried so hard to be all philosophical about it, maybe too much so. Even during the ending slides, I didn't care about the companions' fates at all, either. 

 

What did I like about the game? The combat; I absolutely loved the combat. A nice selection of spells of all kinds: single target, AoE damage, buffs/debuffs, etc. Some cool melee abilities too. I also really liked the way they made the deflection/fortitude/reflex/will thing. Combat was really good, imo. I also didn't mind the item system. Sure, you can enchant any item, but the uniques will always have better base bonuses. Anything below Path of the Damned is a bore, though. 

I think the way you could read the souls was also a bit inconsistent. Like sometimes you were in first person looking from the soul's eyes, and sometimes you were in third person viewing from the side somewhere. The game randomly seemed to keep switching between perspectives, which was very confusing. At least that was the impression that I got.