rjshae

Time limits are the enemy of exploration. It just takes away an important element of the game, as I always feel like I have to blow through the plot without looking around. FO1 felt like that -- I couldn't just go randomly off somewhere, but had to constantly stay on mission. For me that ruined the experience, so I prefer to play it with the mod version that eliminates the time limit. They could add time limits as a game option, with a default of off, but then they would need to include failure consequences.

You encounter a soul thief--a creature that is able to swap her soul for yours--and she puts you in her body. Your party doesn't believe who you claim to be, at least not initially, and you are left to fend for yourself bereft of most of your powers in a feeble body. A sea cave dungeon that floods during each high tide, leaving you unable to rest. It is inhabited by amphibious denizens that work for a slaver company. They keep their prisoners in the high ground area at back, which doesn't get flooded. A mysterious island that only appears at night, when it is periodically visited by a ghost ship. Rumor has it that if you stay too long, you'll never be able to leave. A peculiar fellow who claims to be investigating Watchers. He has some agents in Dyrwood that have been following your progress, and he occasionally scrys on you with the aid of a magic tea pot. In his back room he has a collection of perfectly preserved corpses of prior Watchers. He is secretly looking for a means to become a Watcher himself, and will resort to any means to get it.

One of these days we'll see a cRPG based on Ars Magica and then all those mage junkies can go hog wild...

This is how the BGs work, though: the natural recovery rate of a character without superhuman constitution is minimal. It just happens that the setting has lots of readily available magical healing, so 1-2 rests worth of spells will fix whatever ails you (up to and including death once you unlock those spells). The IE games had their own sleep restriction though in the form of frequent random encounters when you tried to rest in hazardous areas. Your choice was to backtrack to a safe location, or keep reloading until you had a successful sleep cycle. Either way it penalized players who slept after each battle. I'd argue that camping supplies are a less cumbersome substitute that create more interesting choices for the players.

The difference in these features is between the tactical (constantly pausing to swap arrows during combat) and the strategic (deciding whether to avoid some encounters in order to conserve camping supplies). I think the developers want low level combat to flow smoothly where possible, but throw in some logistical friction in order to provide planning challenges. But seriously, how big a challenge are camping supplies at the normal setting? I rarely found myself in situations where I needed to restock without actually traveling back to base anyway. The system worked fine for me, so I don't have much sympathy for the issue.

The BG1/2 rest mechanic is a total kludge anyway. Realistically, you'd need several weeks to rest up following a brutal combat, and you'd want to do that somewhere reasonably safe. The camping supplies represent a reasonable compromise for what's essentially a logistical issue. Games are about dealing with challenges. Deal with it, I say.

Without pause Yes, I know. Edit it.

Wouldn't you rather see the devs working on the game instead? Video capture software is sufficient for this.

A mysterious submarine... grown from the back of an ancient sea creature, and powered by glowing adra. What is it for, I wonder? Does it have some malicious intent?

Convert all racial attribute modifiers into specific combat modifiers. For example, an Orlan could get +3 Will, -3 Fort, +3 Accuracy, +2 Deflection. The attribute ranges could still be modified based on the original attribute modifiers, so you could still build an Orlan with a 20 Perception.

The priest class healing spells seem to scale fine up until level six spells. Why isn't there an equivalent of the D&D heal spell? The only healing spell at that level is minor intercession. For high level parties facing a tough encounter, that lack of a heal spell is really felt. My priest ends up spending several 'rounds' spamming enough heal spells to get the melee fighters back up to snuff. There's a big gap between restore critical endurance and resurrection.

I think this is a game that will grow on people with hindsight. It was always doomed to fight a battle against nostalgia for a sixteen year old classic in combination with the AD&D system. For me at least, it succeeded at that task, especially in combination with WM. I enjoyed it more than many other cRPGs I've played over the last decade.

No. I have limited free time, so it may go several days between sessions. I need the quest log as a reminder, especially when I have a couple of dozen open entries in the log. Taking that away would not make it more engaging, it would be a waste of time.

Hmm, they could let us craft a variety of "missile enchantments" that we could apply to our current missile weapon of choice, which would let us fire of a series of X missiles having said enchantment. Hence a Flaming Missile: +5 accuracy, +5 fire damage, 10 shots. That would at least give the ammo some flavor.

Agreed. It certainly is a colorful and well populated area with plenty of one-liner NPCs mulling around. But it felt a little disconnected from the rest of the story. Maybe the developers had run out of time and energy at that point?

I miss the unique ammo types we had with the Infinity Engine. That made it feel like I had to do some logistics planning. Now it's just pew, pew, pew...

The post-apocalyptic genre feels like its been done to death. I get why people like it: with a tiny surviving population, the hero becomes a larger-than-life figure who can have a major impact. But isn't it time to explore some other genres?

New flash: most players never finished PoE. That's true of many other cRPGs as well. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/08/pillars-of-eternity-does-it-matter-if-people-dont-finish-games-any-more (I did finish once, then skipped the end game on the second play through.)

Shifting wind patterns and weather impacting movement across the overland map

Ship repairs

Oh dear, you might miss out on the really early access edition. Well that's a bummer.

A group of spoiled wealthy locals at the city docks want to hire out your ship for a fishing expedition. Once under way they complain incessantly about the mediocre conditions; lousy cabins, filthy hammocks, poor food, rats, a leaky deck, and so forth. Eventually, the ship is attacked by a giant sea serpent and all the tourists are consumed because the beast is attracted to their ugly vacation clothing. Your hired crew gives the serpent a big round of applause as it sails away into the sunset. Once you get back, the local government seizes your ship while investigating the attack. The angry families of the dead tourists hire assassins for revenge killings.