splicer777

Don't get me wrong I love this game. Since COVID I went on a marathon playing isometric RPGs. Baldur's Gate 1-2, Planescape torment, icewind dale... completed them and became really good with RTwP. I heard bad things about Pillars so I was hesitant to try it. I was surprised by how great it is but Poe2 REALLY blew me away. Anyways, I play on PotD RtwP at a faster combat pace so it feels like Baldurs Gate. The game was challenging at spots but now I'm level 20 and it's dawned on me that my Chanter can endlessly spam weapons and they tank and deal more damage than my other characters. It's like I don't even need my main tanking anymore because the weapons do all the work. Each fight the chanter summons weapons, they surround the enemy and bring them into a tight little cluster, then my wizard does empowered rain of fire along with the priest's empowered rain of fire and the fight is over in seconds The tank -- which is my main hero who is literally invincible but does no damage -- can sit back and watch, without even participating in the fight. The summons do all the tanking. I kind of wish they had toned the summons down because I'm leaning on it and it's made the combat rather trivial at level 20.

The dialogue has to be witty in some way or it is not worth reading. The characters and voice acting make me cringe and directly interrupt my experience of the game. Maybe it's just me being an adult and I have a low tolerance for these things. In Icewind Dale I created a party with 6 original custom portraits and my imagination did most of the work. Its enough to have good music, nice scenery, and swift pacing for an RPG like this. I think the greatest strength of the Infinity RPGs is CUSTOMIZATION. Just let me create the perfect character, the way I want to in my particular flavor of lore (very adult like, Witcher 3 style, no false heroism or epic cheese) and I can tolerate everything else about an RPG. No need for loads of text. Personally I don't like companions that talk to my character, even in BG1 I couldn't stand Imoen. I feel more connected to my characters when they are original and they are mine like in IWD1. This allowed for a far more immersive experience.

It is so frustrating, isn't it? You would think this game has everything us old-school, nostalgic gamers would want. I think Betrayal at Krondor was one of the greatest RPG's ever made FFS. But the writing...! It's as if it was meant for children. All modern RPG's including the vaunted Witcher 3 have the console-ized trappings that I am trying to escape with these Kickstarter endeavors. But I am so, so disappointed by the lore of these games. To be honest, Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2 have the same problem. Cringeworthy dialogue that makes the game unplayable. It makes me think that the Kickstarter titles suffer from the same problems as triple-A overrated failed RPG's like Dragon Age. Its basically the people that they choose to hire. Obsidian is too big, they have figured out a good formula to get insane Kickstarter donations but somehow the integrity was lost along the way. Kickstarter has given us some gifts, especially Darkest Dungeon. Darkest Dungeon is the perfect example of a game made by an indie developer that really gives us old-school gamers what we need. It seems like Obsidian is *too big* of a company which compromises their hiring decisions, and they have exploited Kickstarter to give us these mediocre results.

I really want to like this game. But I'm just not a fan of the writing, there's basically a problem with over-exposition and there dialogue is not clever or witty in the least, so there is eventually no reason to read it. I found myself playing Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition and I am having so much more fun with that. Being able to fully customize a 6-man party without managing fake "relationships" between my characters is more appealing. Icewind Dale let my imagination do a lot of the work and really felt like I was roleplaying through a game in my own style. In Pillars of Eternity I cringe so often from the dialogue and writing it makes it impossible for me to enjoy or get through the game. Should I keep playing and try to get hooked on it?