Achilles

I think all the party members are fairly badass in their respective roles. Ekun is probably my favorite companion, especially in Acts 2 and 3 where he really shines. I may be misremembering, but I thought she throws out a brutal gaze attack. "Baleful Gaze" or something like that. I said it above but I'll repeat it here; Blind Fight will make the character immune to this.

Yeah. Let's just say that Jubilost can be leveraged to make that a little easier, making him ever more of a rockstar in the last act

I realize that the way that I play isn't necessarily how everyone should or would even want to play, but... Never leave home without Linzi. Pure bard (no multiclass or even dip levels), spell book emphasis on buffs and summons, UMD focus for scrolls and wands. She's quite possibly the most important caster in the game. Also, a lot of people pass on the Blind Fight feats because they aren't sexy, but if you think about how many enemies have concealment (a ****ing lot of them for those who haven't noticed) AND that it makes the character immune to gaze attacks (bread and butter of the Sisters, Wild Hunt, etc), it's sorta clutch. That encounter is tough but I think part of the issue is a lack of defensive casters in your party. My 2 cents

What are you using for defensive prebuffs for that encounter?

Force bombs should be relabeled "cheat weapon"

I actually really like the game. I think the on thing it's especially guilty of is relying on meta-gaming. All of the tough encounters are a cake-walk once you figure out what the "trick" is.

FTFY

My recollection is that a lot of that was done because people complained about the mechanics from the first game. My guess is that the rest is the result of watching all of the Ultimate runs and seeing how some of the mechanics were abusable (i.e. consuming 15 meals and 8 potions before an important encounter)

Seeing "Aedyran Galawain" in the trailer reminded me of the Cinders of Faith side quest in Pillars 1. Fyrga offered us a glimpse into how the some of the Dyrwood viewed Magran; concerned with martial excellence and strategic prowess, strong but not brutal, etc. Ostensibly, this perspective is a meme (I'm using technical definition of the word here) that has evolved from, but is still based on the regions Aedyran roots. All this to say that I think a statue of Magran depicted as a young, vibrant woman in full armor is the reason that most of us saw a majestic human with a wolf and immediately recognized it as Galawain. Aedyran gods are going to be a lot more buttoned up than the versions we saw in Deadfire. Also, what morhilane said regarding Berath/The Pallid Knight above

I vaguely remember the first time that Skyrim gameplay was shown. It may be a coincidence that it looks incredibly similar, but it also may have been intentional. Skyrim has made Bethesda a ton of money. I can't blame Obsidian for looking to cash in on that fan base. *cough* especially if they can land the writing part *cough* EDIT: this isn't that, but still:

Shame this feedback won't be seen by developers because it was posted in the wrong forum.

FWIW, my understanding is that Tyranny met sales expectation but didn't do better because Paradox completely dropped the ball on marketing. https://www.pcgamesn.com/tyranny/tyranny-sales-paradox-obsidian (thanks to whichever smart person it was who originally linked me to this article)

I rather liked the scripted interactions in both games. Owlcat seems to have liked them too, as both PFKM and PFWotR have them.

Entirely possible. Hence why I've been careful to say "seems".

I bet if we had the numbers we'd see a sells spike for POE 1 and Deadfire since the announcement. So why use Eora as the setting? Because they already had two games in the setting and they're probably already financially benefiting from the games taking place in the same world. From what I've heard, it sounds like they won't be making any more isometric games. I don't remember where I saw it, but I seem to recall a spike in Deadfire sales when the pandemic started. Hopefully that helps too. And to your second point, I really hope that isn't the case. They made a fairly persuasive argument that gamers didn't stop wanting isometric games, rather publishers stopped wanting to fund them. My sincere hope is that they can convince Microsoft to keep making relatively-low budget isometric RPGs.

The game brought in $4m. I think their burn-rate is $1m/month. Conceptually, I understand why the argument seems intuitive. In reality though, it doesn't really hold water. You can't run a studio of that size on kickstarter campaigns that just happen to blow past the goal. And at the risk of nitpicking, I've backed games that never saw the light of day or shipped with huge chunks of promised content MIA. "Risk free" doesn't belong in this conversation either.

This may be the case with me as well. And since I don't play shooters at all .... Not going to lie, I really liked being able to switch back and forth in Skryim. Melee is much more satisfying in 3rd person. Archery and stealth are much more satisfying in 1st

I have to respectfully disagree on this one. I think if that were true they would have made more of an effort to march in lock-step with Infinity Engine games, especially once the grognards got a hold of the beta and started complaining about how different it was. I think this even more evident by how much of a departure the second game was from the first. Lastly, I don't think "small budget, niche game" and "cash grab" go in the same sentence

I'm only familiar with one of the games on that list. Which of these are RPGs? Regarding reviews; it's not an "agree to disagree" proposition. Either the industry is moving that way or it's not. Which games reviewed well before that trend started or how games that aren't part of the genre review well in the future really doesn't matter. Reviews, literally, have nothing to do with the new standard that RPG makers seem to be setting.

Agreed, though I would argue that PoE1 already is one of the greats

I think if they put one person in charge of the narrative and then get the entire team behind that vision, there's a good chance to re-engage the audience.

Everything you said here plus it's cheaper

I'm not sure what reviews have to do with it, but Obsidian's last big release was 1st person only. CDPR's next big game, arguably the most anticipated game of the year, is controversially 1st person only. Bloodlines 2 will be 1st person only. Regardless of how those games have been or will be reviewed, it sure does seem like RPG makers are favoring 1st person lately.

Well, we know it can't be more than 425 years in the past, otherwise the references to the Aedyr Empire start to fall apart.

Great post. Thanks for clarifying.