Artaios

I share your feelings. Looking at the new companions I will likely have to sacrifice Pallegina. In the first game I found that she can heal plenty and it was usually enough for me so maybe just have Pallegina focus more on healing?

yes, check out the announcement forum, there is a post explaining some details, including new portraits. Link https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/96803-critical-role-meet-pillars-of-eternity-ii-deadfire/ Thanks! I was referring to player character portraits though

Would do the complete opposite? Make exporation and combat more of a pain in the butt? Frankly, if you go for the top down perspective, the game should be playable without flipping the entire world upside down all the time. I got Dvinity: Dragon Commander for free a while ago and booted it up recently. Wow, the camera might make me not boot it up ever again. I agree, it should be playable without doing that, but I often found myself wishing that I could rotate the camera during combat in PoE I. Don't see how rotating would make for worse exploration though. At worst you can always ignore the feature. The only thing it would do is make things much more expensive if you want to achieve similar visuals. Games like Exanima show how this can be done.

do you mean the smart camera system they implemented recently? it's just a feature that locks the camera to be centered on your party, so you can explore without dragging the mouse everywhere. No, take a look at this video starting at second 40: Might just be the world editor but don't see why you could not have the same thing in the actual engine when the editor lets you do that. Also: Yay, for centered camera and welcome to the 21st century :D

I just saw it rotate in one of the videos and assumed that was a thing now. Would not say no to a fully 3D world. Would help immensely with combat.

Correct me if I am wrong but can't you rotate now in PoE II?

So you could buy the game for just 7 rubles?

I am not particularly bothered by fully voiced dialogue. Games like Skyrim have it as well and you learn to deal with it. Namely, ignore it if it gets repetitive. What I am hoping is that the dialogue in the second game has a faster pace and that not every character is a professionally-trained orator. I would like them to feel more like conversations. The pauses between the sentences were often too long, for example.

A bit off-topic but I was wondering if any of the new player character portraits have been revealed yet (aside from the beta, don't have it).