For those who've beat it, what are your thoughts?

[Verde]

Beat it in 45 hrs, Orlan Swashbuckler siding with Principi on Veteran.

 

Overall I enjoyed the game but missed the philosophical oomph of the first. In this one, it was easy to defy the Gods. They gave me no reason to stop Eothos. In fact, he was my favorite God. Rendered very well.

 

The bugs really got to me in some quests. Coupled with lack of meaningful banter outside the critical path (I do believe there were trigger bugs involved) made me rush a little more through the story. Plus the game was damn easy on Veteran.

 

Anyway I give it a solid 8/10. With patches and DLC I'm hoping it moves up to a 9/9.5. I'll wait till the reception 1.1 to consider rerolling another character, but will definitely come back in a few months.

 

Your thoughts?

Edited June 6, 2018 by Verde

[Maximuuus]

Huge disapointment.

Waiting for a better game than POE1 but POE2 is just "funny".

 

I'll remember POE1 as the spiritual son of BG and I will probably play it once each 2 years (as BG).

I'll forget POE2 in 2 years after 2 runs.

[FecklessFool]

I like it, but as a Sid Meier's Pirates! RPG. They should have just dropped the main story and polished the factions and naval stuff. 

 

Like have other ships actually attack each other and not just the Caed Nua. Pirates ignoring merchant vessels to seek out certain death is weird. 

 

The main story is poop, and they managed to make an even worse main story than POE. 

 

Though I'm more against the execution of the main story as with POE. The plot can work, but the execution is just horrible. 

[bugarup]

Loved it much more than PoE, sank 150hrs in already, predict 300+ in total. One of the top favourite games ever.  Them different opinions, eh? 

 

For me, the gods were the most banal part of both games. Every self-respecting fantasy writer and their dog feels the need to create their own pantheon, add all the buggers from already existing mythologies and this market is seriously overexposed. Yaaaaaaawn.   Waidwen's Legacy, on the other hand, was great concept and criminally underused in favour of a bunch of trite mythic critters. But PoE2 has well developed faction stuff and thus the god stuff is easier to skim through. Add the original setting (I'm so over moth-eaten Anglo-Saxon/Gaellic/Arthurian/Tolkienistic dwarves-elves-English-countryside settings), voila -- PoE2 forever. 

Edited June 6, 2018 by bugarup

[wRAR]

Good game even on release (after you get the idea that you need to do intertwined quests carefully). Will definitely buy DLCs and play with them, will probably replay at least once even before the first DLC.

A lot of shallow and skippable things (like ship combat outside boarding), just like in PoE1 1.0.

The sea is empty after doing bounties.

Didn't care about low difficulty.

Didn't care about short main quest.

Expected the game to be longer than the first, but it isn't.

DLC descriptions (1 and 2 at least) suggest they are less interesting than White March.

[Slotharingia]

Also one of my fav games of all time, highlights being (not in this order):

• Tekehu
• Tekehu being immune to the slog effect
• Possiblity to resolve things in multiple ways, often allowing you to avoid combat
• Being able to act like a shifty / manipulative git / bossy grumpus to resolve convos
• Colourful, jolly setting as opposed to the usual glum the end is nigh atmosphere
• Corpse eating
• Multi-classing
• Different cultures having different ways to express themselves (accents, wording, actual words etc)
• Imps
• Talking pets/sword
• Being able to recruit a motley crew for the ship
• Weapons with unique effects
• No inventory limit
• Not having to traipse to x place to craft (ik these 2 are unrealistic, but so are the loading screens)
• Random ambient banter
• Being able to joke a lot
• Rekke
• Eothas is kinda sexy
• Edited to add: DRUNK POSE I love this lol

And more I can't think of off the top of my head of a morning when it's hot af.

 

in spite of having various flaws, which are:

• Maia (not a flaw, I know xD )
• a bit too buggy  - hopefully will be resolved for the most part
• the approval system in its current state, will go down as worst approval system of any rpg I've played if it stays as is (no consequences good or bad for most things, judgements made on a banal, superficial basis, etc)
• not really a fan of the treatment of characters from POE1
• having to suffer the same ocean events over and over
• loading screens
• the fact my last character experienced tons of events in Neketaka but my current and first one didn't get any
• grimoire system was better in 1
• Main story is meh and feels randomly thrown in for good measure
• NPC's being so stupid as to walk into pitched battles and guards only reacting to said battles when NPC's were thusly dim

And probably a few others I can't think of for the same reason I mentioned above. However, I'd say a lot of the cons fall or could fall into the bug category.

Edited June 6, 2018 by Slotharingia

[E.RedMark]

You know when you watch that trailer ? and see Eotha crawl his way pretty much from underneath your castle ? and peoples and you die...

 

And you are going 'OMG!!!!!!!!! SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESH!'....I want this game so badly! 

 

But...the story isn't well delivered . it's like in the back burner , and that's the biggest let down for me . I don't care if they want to mix strategy and open world (I'm of the opinion you shouldn't , because 'cool idea rarely match the reality and you usually half way trough  you find how hard it's to make and you end up with a half assed game' ) .

 

I mean , I get it . Maybe this game is a setup for the 3rd sequel . But you can still do that and give peoples a gripping story . I didn't buy the game for a cool boat and play Pirate (I never watched Pirates of the caribeen for a reason , Pirates always end up dissapointing you Har Har ) . Those were 'features' , and weren't the selling point for me . The story is the Biggest 'I'M GONNA GET THIS GAME AND I CAN'T WAIT FOR IT TO COME OUT'' . 

 

So..will I play it again ? I'm waiting for the patch to fix the companions and slider , since my 1st playtrough was screwed (sided with the wrong factions ) . 

 

But it's not the game with the story that will make me blabber for a year or so until the next one come out . 

 

That's the dissapointement I guess ...

[Farsha]

It's a good game, spent 90hrs on first playthrough.

 

Issues.

Difficulty issue is knowm, and being addressed.
Wold map ship movement (takes 1/4 of game time and it's boring, it's like really bad Sid Meyer's Pirates ripoff)
Ship combat not enjoyable after few battles.
Small side quest and exloration maps, and no real dungeons (Beside Old city, and Pokokahara), This is partially cause you have to lengthly travel to distant Island and then you find out, there is 1 room and 1 fight in a temple. And that is all. Then you have to sail back again. (they really need to add fast travel)
Main Quest is short and feels like it lacks something.
Compation quests are not that great and are pretty short. (Maia's one suprised me and I think her's is the best one)
Companion Romaces are abbysmal, some of the worst writing we've seen by Obsidian. Also their sex humor is just terrible.
Some gear types and weapons are really under-represented - rapiers, maces, heavy armors for example.

There are good things too:
Neketaka and most of it's content is really really good.
Factions quest and their design are great. They are the real focus of the game.
Combat mechanics & multiclassing opens amazing options.
Presetation.
Music
Nemnok & Worthless Idiot! Imp Power!

It's a good game, but I don't think it's better than POE. But might be better than POE was on initial release though.
Looking forward for future walthroughs, once difficulty balance patch offcially drops.
Also got big hopes for expansions. I do hope they'll be on POE-WM level and not like Tyrrany DLCs.

Edited June 6, 2018 by Farsha

[Verde]

I think the playability far surpasses POE which became such a chore for me with the DLCs.

[Starwars]

Fantastic game overall, looking forward to jumping in to replay it soon-ish.

 

Time will tell on where it will fall on the good ol' "my favorite RPGs" list but it's definitely up there with Obsidian's best at least.

[Reposter]

I would say that this game is good, but I think Bounty payouts should be higher so that one can buy unique items without worrying about exploring the Archipelago and the costs of maintaining your crew.

 

8.5 / 10 rating from me.

[evilcat]

I generally like it, the game.

Good: funny characters, big fat monsters, exploration, some no violence quest, some good locations like Fort Deadfire, or Undead Island, Multiclassing, interaction with godlike, companion input and barters.

 

Main Stroy wasnt that great, and it is hard to see if our action does matter when it comes to main quest, especially if we choose lone path at the end, we could one faction,but all of them are not worthy. Berath dont want romance us, but that is no reason to destroy her, Eothas is not exacly a villian. On the bright side i do not care much about main quest, and just happy clearing sidequest is fine. Medium size side quest (like slavers islands or Archmage Heist) are generally more fun.

 

WE CANT KILL EOATHS!

Why should we do that, he is a cool guy in the end, but that is the rule of cRPG that player should matter, and if he/she wants to kill the god, the game delivers. It was done before. The gods will help, We could use Adra Cannons, or chainshots to tie his ankles ln Hoth style. Then use Adra technology to invide his mind, and kill his personality in hand to hand combat and rock'n'roll. But we couldnt. That path would require some cooperation of all factions, like VTC giving teleporting technology, RDC giving their Junks, Huana water magic and Principii smuggling enought adra to shot down one stone giant.

 

There are some bugs in game, and bugs are the worst.

 

I miss that some companions (Ydwin) does not receive more content.

Edited June 7, 2018 by evilcat

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I liked it a lot more than I liked PoE at launch, hopefully it improves in a similar manner. Will probably go achievenent hunting with new dlc for berath blessings, but won't start a proper new game until DLCs and patches are released.

 

Issues

Main Story is ok, but easily overshadowed by the other **** to do. Doesn't really seem connected other than the factions wanting to get to Huana El Dorado.

No game breaking bugs, so far only had some visual and audio issues. Still annoying.

Party assist for checks needs review, it's dumb my party members can't give me a hand with certain interactions when they're right there.

Balance needs a major overhaul, as I'm sure all of you are aware.

Party reputation is weird and there's some headscratching incidents. I like the idea in theory but in execution I'm not convinced.

Lack of sea monsters, 1 kraken battle is a shame.

Sources of inspirations/afflictions seem all over the place, would be nice to see more sources.

Empower and Power Level favor offensive casters, ideally all abilities should be influenced by them. As is I'm not empowering melee attacks or buffs and using it only on spells or to restore resources.

There's a lack of information on the proficency screen and not a good dispersement of unique weapons, this means that without metagame knowledge it's possible to build yourself into a corner. In DLC I'd like to see underrepresented items get some uniques and through patching be able to see base damage, abilities, etc. for weapons in proficiency selection.

[Opheleus]

Tyranny > PoE1 > Deadfire

[Mannock]

Beat it in 45 hrs, Orlan Swashbuckler siding with Principi on Veteran.

 

Overall I enjoyed the game but missed the philosophical oomph of the first. In this one, it was easy to defy the Gods. They gave me no reason to stop Eothos. In fact, he was my favorite God. Rendered very well.

 

The bugs really got to me in some quests. Coupled with lack of meaningful banter outside the critical path (I do believe there were trigger bugs involved) made me rush a little more through the story. Plus the game was damn easy on Veteran.

 

Anyway I give it a solid 8/10. With patches and DLC I'm hoping it moves up to a 9/9.5. I'll wait till the reception 1.1 to consider rerolling another character, but will definitely come back in a few months.

 

Your thoughts?

Great game. I really liked it a lot and found it more entertaining than PoE1.

 

Right now I'm looking forward to the patches coming and I'll start a new game when the first DLC arrives.

[Soki]

Overall I did love the game, having put 106 hours in it (I am slow). It was a very enjoyable game, with lots of humor and fun/interesting quests. But like others have said, it wasn't a memorable game. I guess it's mostly due to the main story, which I was very excited for when watching the trailer, but failed to grip me in the way that PoE 1's did. It doesn't help that the rest of the game feels completely unrelated to it. And the ending felt so abrupt too, like you go through storms, defeat a mechanic dragon and everything to find Eothas. Only to not be able to stop him and just say 'ok could you at least inspire the people a bit' and then whoop that's it.

 

Other things I loved and didn't:

 

What I loved:

 

Imps. They are hilarious and adorable and forever the best addition to this game.

 

Hilarious convo options. "Have you ever been close to someone?" - "A god stepped on me once." Bless you game.

 

Most quests were really fun (e.g. Nemnok, Arkemyr's vault, undead island) and/or let you make some hard decisions (e.g. Shadow under Neketaka). Also love that there's often many ways to solve them.

 

Beautiful and very diverse locations, definitely a really pretty game.

 

Good music as always. I'm especially fond of the inn tracks, always love that kind of happy dancing music.

 

Quick Travel when arriving on islands. Bless being able to just click which part or building of a city you want to go to, saves a lot of time, a huge improvement from PoE 1.

 

Awesome boss battles, e.g. the Poko Kohara guardian, the Kraken, the dragons.

 

 

What I didn't love:

 

Bugs. Like for the most part they were easy to ignore but for one I am extremely sad that I didn't have Vela on my boat due to import save bugs. I was hoping you'd meet her again in PoE 2 and now I hear she's even on your boat and she can banter with you and companions??? And I miss it all cause I imported my PoE 1 save Also didn't do the quests in the right order apparently and eventually got stuck not being able to side with the Huana cause I missed out on a quest that was required. Downloading the Beta patch saved me but without it I wouldn't have been able to finish the game in the way I wanted (really didn't want to side with any of the other factions).

 

Ship battles. I don't understand them and I don't care to understand them. Please just give me a button that guarantees me to escape from them without losing 2000-3000 copper and a bunch of resources by surrendering :/

 

No quick travel between different islands. All the various quests require you to travel a lot back and forth between isles, especially from all sides of the map back to Neketaka. It takes so much time and I do it all by hand cause if I just let the ship sail there, I will encounter ship battles and I'm avoiding those like the plague.

 

Needing recourses for your ship. I was one of those people that wanted to do more with Caed Nua, and I do am glad that you can customize your ship and hire people for it. But having to constantly travel back to ports to resupply food and drink while you just want to explore the huge map? Very tedious and doesn't add much imo. Would be nice if this was optional.

 

Having to keep up morale. A fun mechanic in theory but very hard to achieve if you don't participate in ship battles. I had to do it via just food and drink and with water giving -1 morale the task was practically impossible. I ended up at 9 morale before endgame and I did try to buy as many + morale food and drink as I could. Giving water 0 morale would improve this a lot, it's a bit ridiculous that crew are going to mutiny simply cause they can't drink booze 24/7.

 

Companion relationship system. Don't get me wrong, I was excited beyond words when it was revealed this was going to be a thing. Traveling with a party is my absolute favourite thing in RPGs and being able to talk with them more or even start romances with them is an absolute bonus for me. The execution is sadly terrible though. There's hardly anything to talk about with your party members, their quests are very short, and they very rarely respond with likes/dislikes to the things you have to say (while they constantly respond to the things others have to say). Except when you say funny things, which wins over almost everyone except Aloth. Speaking of Aloth, it's damn impossible to make him like you. Getting him to +2 was about my main goal in this game and I never got farther than +1 (even while reloading everytime he disliked a thing I said), cause contrary to your other companions he only likes 2 things and hates everything else Meanwhile, Tekehu and Maia started flirting with me about 1 minute after I met them. It's a mess.

 

 

This almost makes it seem as if I hated the game, but I really did love the majority of it, just have a lot of small gripes. Am excited to replay it and make different choices for sure and will definitely get the DLC too. It just could use quite a lot of improvements still.

[Verde]

I hear you Soki. The lack of companion banter/input/relationships is prob my biggest gripe outside of bugs :/.

[Mari]

Currently, I like POE1 better. The story at least, since obvs the graphics and some features were vastly improved. The first game just had a story that was more personal and involved. I knew why I was doing the things I was doing. In Deadfire, I had trouble justifying why my benevolent character would even bother helping any of these organizations aside from money.

I don’t hate the game, but I dont love it either. I'm gonna wait for the bugs to be patched and for the final DLC to come out before I replay it and see if the experience gets better.

Pros:
- Sharing skills between party (God bless I’ve been crying about this since the first game)
- Sea shanties
- Eothas is pretty cool and I liked the dialogue with him.
- If you ignore how disconnected they are from the main quest, the sidequests are interesting.  
- Some of the responses you can give are really funny.

Cons:
- Game won’t let me smooch Eder. Absolutely criminal.
- Exploration is so boring and personally I don’t even count the islands. And when you take those out the world feels so tiny since all the other areas you can enter are small.
- Game won’t let me smooch Pallegina.
- There seems to be less quests then the first game?
- Open world is ****. I spent most of the game confused about the factions since quests weren’t in any kind of order and there was no buildup. I’m pretty sure there were story building quests and convos I missed cuz I accidentally did things out of order.
- Less companion conversations (bug?? Feature??) and you can only bring 4 of them with you.

[Wormerine]

Overall I enjoyed the game but missed the philosophical oomph of the first. In this one, it was easy to defy the Gods. They gave me no reason to stop Eothos. In fact, he was my favorite God. Rendered very well.

I enjoyed the game a great deal. The point above is probably my main disappointment. While I have expected to be somewhat disappointed by the story - I don't believe you can follow a great story with a sequel - the change of narrative focus in Deadfire took me by surprise. However, treating it as a fallout2 style adventure it is a pretty good stuff. It might be trying to juggle a bit too many ideas at once (it is sort of openworld, but not really; its dungeon crawler, but not really; its faction focused, but not really; its about gods and events of cosmic importance, but not really etc, its about you your ship and making a fortune in Deadfire, but not really) but I hope it will start shining brighter and brighter with every but of polish. Right now it's a pretty damn good time and a solid RPG adventure.

[Taevyr]

Excellent game (once bugs and stuff will be cleaned out), excellent side content/faction stuff (again, once a few patches are in *cough* relation system *cough*), awful main story.

 

In terms of gameplay I'd rate it better than PoE and deeper/more strategic than tyranny. A 7.5-8/10 at release, already clearly improving with the encounter and difficulty patches since. It'll probably be a solid 9-9.5/10 in the end.

 

In terms of story I'd rate it worse than both tyranny and PoE1, though this is mostly because of the main "story", and the side content is excellent. Side/faction content with some dialogue/quest order patching could easily get an 8/10 if not more, though I'd give the main story no more than a 4.5/10, and I actually like philosophy and mythical/religious speculation. Probably can't be patched much, but Josh said they're looking into possible improvements, so I'm willing to hold out on it. Let's hope the DLC do better.

[Stephen Unsworth-Mitchell]

Played POE 2 2x now

Did POE 1 run before

Currently doing tyranny run

 

I really enjoyed game but does have lot issues for me.

 

Story would worked better if you hadn't had us complete the faction quest then done eothas right after. It just makes it that your getting over how nasty factions can be and your suddenly find can't change his mind at the end. One ending makes other ending feel empty. If you had space between people probably would accepted the main ending much better.

 

Did similar mistakes in tyranny having it divided into 3 acts and when reach act 3 suddenly very quickly game ends. On starting act 3 your making people feel still lots be resolved and by having end soon after starting act 3 made people feel like there was stuff missing.

 

POE 1 you made mistake of allowing the quest log empty when reaching 2nd city, this kills that last bit cause you feel reached end before you reached the end.

 

Companions POE 2 companions didn't feel so well done. POE 1 I hated durance at start, but liked him by end of the game. Grieving mother was great little story and pulled me along so grow close to her. Pallagina understood her and liked her in first game by second game stopped understanding her and disliked her. Aloth was consistent through both games but had me doing eye rolls too. Loved Devil of Coroc and Zahua. Even in tyranny I liked the companions and there stories. Deadfire just there quest short didn't make me feel much for my companions. Romance was bland. Sidekicks were worse then companions, they have potential be good companions with interesting stories but as sidekicks nothing make you really like them or adventure with them.

 

Personally think you decided to multiclass and this destroyed the companions as you then found need to have lot more companions to give player party choice with all possible options of multiclassing. I would suggest smaller group companions and just let people choose there role more.  If you don't wish give complete free choice then give more claas options when meet companion. Less companions gives team more time make them interesting and gives them longer quest each. POE 1 was nice that took most game complete person quest for each companion.

 

Combat POE 1 was headache inducing at times. At times in POE 1 felt like you went from one fight straight to next fight with very little break it up, if played for any real length of time it would give you headache from all concentrating need to do. Deadfire gone to far other way in some ways. I like that combat more spaced out, but dungeons often left me feeling like wow enjoying this oh what that's the end. Having mostly 2-6 room dungeons just starts get fun and bang finish please few longer well thought out dungeons.

 

Ship combat I like but you made way to much of it compared to tiny islands and very small dungeons.  Most islands are at most single dungeon lot have no dungeons at all and dungeons always small. Makes ship combat and travel lot work and dungeon delving feels even smaller.  If your going have such small islands and dungeons give people fast travel.

 

Leveling and difficulty Starting of games POE, POE2 and tyranny can be headache inducing as you have very little work with and something like construct will soak up everything you got and some. Honestly by end of game I felt I probably could of destroy eothas, with tekehu, aloth, and xoti in my team using empower and there different large AOE's like comets raining down don't think even eothas would last to long. I know outside temple I though wow this will be fun fight and this massive giant lasted 1.5 secs due to magic and empower.

 

POE 2 not even gradual curve of increasing power due to size of main city, level up reasonable number of levels then when your in combat next sudden noticeable drop in difficulty in fights, then few levels after that every fight simply becomes cake walk.  There are one or 2 fights here and there in later levels that still fun and interesting and bit of challenge but not many. I know Obsidian are sorting fight difficulty but have put it here because hope they don't just try doing add in few more bad guys every fight, make this weaker and that stronger. Every fight really needs looking at and sort whole system out properly.

 

Way that system was changed from POE 1 took lot of attrition out which for me dumbs things down lot and doesn't really give me chance to adjust for level I am at. I know games are generally made easier then some would like as must fit for majority fine with that but destroying attrition just doesn't leave someone like me much keep coming back for. If things get to easy then nothing going make me want play it until after very long period of time has passed and I forget the system.

 

I dislike how hardly any soulbound items and lot of uniques are swords and hardly much else.

 

Likes

 

I like music.

I like game makes me laugh.

love sea shanties.

Game beautiful graphically.

I like multiclassing needs work but great.

Love the Imp power.

Do like some of the companions and sidekicks and see great potential wasn't fulfilled. 

 

Really is great game but I think Obsidian tried to do to much and it end up making game little less special. I would back POE 3 and hope you learn from mistakes of past.

[Mazama]

60 hour full playthrough and a 20 hour solo run. Good game, much better than the 1st game at launch. Not as good as a fully patched PoE with expansions. The graphics and sounds are great. Quests are a mixed bag: the side quests are good, but the main quest is too short and boring. The new companions are okay. I didn't like the characterization of the returning party members. Combat was very unbalanced and way too easy even on the highest difficulty. My playthroughs were fairly buggy: imported save issues, disposition wonkiness, and random crashes after being patched. I'll probably play it again when all the dlc is released and it's fully patched.

Edited June 7, 2018 by Mazama

[Vaneglorious]

Not too impressed, unfortunately.

 

The game is still missing many things they've promised us, and there's again the illusion of both choice and consequence. Granted, it's still an upgrade from PoE, but...I was expecting more for this money.

 

Combat definitely got dumbed down, big negative for me there. Imo they generally sacrificed story elements for pretty visuals. And I do appreciate those pretty visuals, but what PoE had was good enough for me. The lore is kinda confusing and the change of voice actors is bad, although understandable. Pronunciation of words also changed. So many retcons.

Edited June 8, 2018 by Vaneglorious

[Palas]

Overall i like Deadfire muchs. On my first playthrough there were no game-breaking bugs and veteran was quite easy, but with patch 1.1 most of this issus should be solved.

 

For me the sidequests and factions are the real winner. I enjoy them much. But i think i would feel more realistic, if you have to choose a faction far earlier. Its strange, that you could all faction quests except the last and nobody cares until the end. Tyranny made here a better job.

 

The main story is interesting, but only short and average presented. I don't understand, why Eothas thinks his goals would be make the lives of kith better. In consequence the whole plant could die out, if gods and kith don't find a solution.

 

My biggest dislike is, that the mainstory feels quite separared from the rest of the game. PoE1 did here a better job.

 

But the new setting, better gamemechanics, many ways to solve quests, all the bit and little stories behind the quests and a little humor make a great game with some little flaws.

[Shadenuat]

If you skip the story and go with your own party for power and loot it's way better than the first one.

Then again if you mainly ignore the story in the first one, it also becomes better than it is.

 

So I rate it 6.5 Storms of Zehirs/10 and wait until modders will fix it, remove the rest of the story and maybe add Aerie romance to it.

 

And sabres. There are just not enough sabres to dual wield for everyone in the party.