I'm only a few hours in but not liking it much, PoE 1 was born as a modern Baldur's Gate, PoE 1 succeded in giving us high fantasy setting in modern days, but if you put PoE 2 vs BG one on each side, they are basically two completely different games. Pirates are everywhere, trading companies, colonies explotation, caribbean themes, weird and annoying mix of italian accent and invented words that are becoming annoying fast, everything moves around tribes and casts, there's a small blue dwarfish thing companion that's so hypersexualized gay in everything he says and does it's like he's shouting "i'm a gay companion, so cool hey?, did you notice i'm gay DID YOU!?". I'm fine with gay companions, Mass Effect introduced gay reliationships and they were subtle enough if you cared for them, but this is a bit too much.
Also one of the most interesting parts of PoE 1 was that as a Watcher you could see a lot of inner conversations everywhere of so many characters, but that has dissapeared almost completely, and it's a shame since it added a lot of depth to the world and the characters. Also supposedly being a Watcher slowly made you mad, but it seems it's now perfectly fine for some reason.
Also as this is now a pirate game, there're guns everywhere, which is as far from classic high fantasy and DND setting as you can go, there was a bit of it on PoE 1 which didn't annoy much with one companion, but here it's just against classic fantasy cannon that there're so many guns everywhere, so it feels ridiculous that anyone carries only a sword with so many guns around.
So it feels so alien, so far away from classic high fantasy and BG, even though it's a ok game gameplay wise, i'm not enjoying it much, if they wanted to make a pirate RPG just ask for Sea Dogs licence and give it a go. Also ship fights were a joke, I think there was a several thousand dollars stretch goal for this, and really, all they did was a text based dull menu fighting system with 5 options to choose over and over? That's it?. I've played it just once and hated it deeply.
Same thing with the choose your own adventure text parts, in PoE 1 they were few of them and added to the whole experience, here you find them all the time and are becoming annoying, and at some points they feel like a cheap way to skip creating real maps and gameplay, like when you go in the underground on the poor part of the city, it feels like they just dropped creating that map and did a text "choose your own adventure" part instead and saved and few several thousand dollars in development.
I've read that the game is failing hard at retail, and I completely understand it. This is not what many of us old time fans of BG, IWD, NWN were expecting, at all.
I don't know if it will improve further on, but I loved PoE since it promised BG in the modern day and succeded, this is not it. I hope they go back to full high fantasy setting in PoE3, I was a backer on PoE 2, but I know i won't support PoE 3 if it ever releases and wait to see what kind of game it is, and if PoE 3 never exists, i really don't care much.
Only a few hours in, not liking it much
in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
Also one of the most interesting parts of PoE 1 was that as a Watcher you could see a lot of inner conversations everywhere of so many characters, but that has dissapeared almost completely, and it's a shame since it added a lot of depth to the world and the characters. Also supposedly being a Watcher slowly made you mad, but it seems it's now perfectly fine for some reason.
Also as this is now a pirate game, there're guns everywhere, which is as far from classic high fantasy and DND setting as you can go, there was a bit of it on PoE 1 which didn't annoy much with one companion, but here it's just against classic fantasy cannon that there're so many guns everywhere, so it feels ridiculous that anyone carries only a sword with so many guns around.
So it feels so alien, so far away from classic high fantasy and BG, even though it's a ok game gameplay wise, i'm not enjoying it much, if they wanted to make a pirate RPG just ask for Sea Dogs licence and give it a go. Also ship fights were a joke, I think there was a several thousand dollars stretch goal for this, and really, all they did was a text based dull menu fighting system with 5 options to choose over and over? That's it?. I've played it just once and hated it deeply.
Same thing with the choose your own adventure text parts, in PoE 1 they were few of them and added to the whole experience, here you find them all the time and are becoming annoying, and at some points they feel like a cheap way to skip creating real maps and gameplay, like when you go in the underground on the poor part of the city, it feels like they just dropped creating that map and did a text "choose your own adventure" part instead and saved and few several thousand dollars in development.
I've read that the game is failing hard at retail, and I completely understand it. This is not what many of us old time fans of BG, IWD, NWN were expecting, at all.
I don't know if it will improve further on, but I loved PoE since it promised BG in the modern day and succeded, this is not it. I hope they go back to full high fantasy setting in PoE3, I was a backer on PoE 2, but I know i won't support PoE 3 if it ever releases and wait to see what kind of game it is, and if PoE 3 never exists, i really don't care much.