POTD Deadfire Playthrough Completed - Thoughts

[Yosharian]

When I say 'completed', I mean... I used the Unity Console mod to speed things up a bit at the end because I just wanted to end the game and not spend another 15 hours grinding side quests in order to beef up my ship and upgrade my items.

 

But anyway.  My thoughts.  These are all my own opinions.

 

PROS

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• Mechanically the game is massively improved: skills and their implementation, customizable AI, UI, how PCs handle in combat, etc
• Graphics are amazing
• Performance is better than the first game
• Main quest is generally quite interesting, and has some pretty epic moments in my opinion (it doesn't bother me that it's short)
• Companions are extremely well-designed, aesthetically, and some of the voiceover work is excellent, such as Serafen (my favourite character by a mile)
• Itemization is vastly improved from the first game conceptually (many unique abilities instead of flat bonuses)
• Some music tracks are quite memorable, and the way the music system is designed is quite clever
• The way the main quest is told represents a quantum shift in storytelling over the first game; lots of visual storytelling (especially with the gods, excellent work there) and a lot less reliance on exposition dumps - although they are still there, you can ignore them most of the time because the main plot is very easy to understand, visually and thematically
• A lot of the exploration elements really work well.  Discovering a random dungeon on a random island, going inside not knowing jack **** about it, discovering a quest organically...  this is really good stuff.  This is FAR BETTER than the usual 'go to quest NPC, get quest, go to quest location, do quest, return to quest NPC, get reward' bull****.
• Multi-classing feels reasonably balanced and offers a lot of customization
• Dialogue/conversation generally feels far, far better than the first game.  Dialogue itself is a lot tighter, easier to read, more vibrant.  The majority of the narrator dialogues are easier to read, or you can just ignore them if you want.  So overall it's a lot better than the original, which felt bogged down by tons of impenetrable dialogue & description

 

CONS

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• Irritating bugs, even post-1.1
• Respec is too expensive given how important gold is, and is quite buggy, even post-1.1
• Side quests are generally poor, feel like busywork; sharp contrast to the main quest; too much reliance on aforementioned 'quest NPC -> quest location -> quest NPC -> reward' fetch questing.
• Factions are boring, didn't grab my attention at all
• Some VO elements are lacking: Xoti's voiceover feels very out of place and the narrator gets irritating fast (and can't be turned off/down? this seems like a rather obvious oversight)
• Companions generally feel like wallpaper, despite having reasonably frequent interjections and banter.  I didn't consider the loss of full creative control (stats, starting abilities, class selection) to be worth what they brought to the table, despite some excellent VO work.  This seems contradictory, but... I felt like they were just very nice wallpaper.  They didn't feel as alive as BG2 NPCs.  The companion sidequests I engaged with (Serafen's and Xoti's) were distinctively lacking in vibrancy and memorable moments (I loved Serafen in spite of this).
• Itemization, cont.: ...but in practice a lot of these items are just garbage and will never be used; I feel sorry for the people who designed items that 99% of players will never buy because they are utter rubbish
• Frequently nonsensical/out-of-place disposition placement in dialogues/choices
• Customizable AI really needs more work, but this is somewhat forgivable given how much of a vast improvement it is over the first game
• Music quality is not quite as impactful as the first game, with the exception of a few tracks.  The first game's music literally made me stop playing at some points and just sit there enthralled by the music.  Deadfire didn't have that effect.  Still, I think the music is ok.  I have seen complaints about instruments not being in tune in some pieces, but I don't have the musical ear to pick up such nuance.
• Ship combat feels a little undeveloped, due to the lack of strategies... at least, as far as I was able to tell.  Why is it that the heaviest ship in the game, The Junk, can outpace the Dyrwoodan Sloop in combat?  The sloop should be able to escape a Junk encounter easily, but it can't, making ship progression essentially linear.
• Lack of ship combat tutorial/explanations.  WTF is a 'jibe'?  Oh, it means turn around?  Why not just say 'turn around'?  Oh well.  It's very authentic, but it's disorienting.

Edited June 17, 2018 by Yosharian

[mammasaura]

I think they tried to keep naval words for their ship system, and it makes sense.

 

During the interaction dialogues in the map exploration, when you get caught in storm, the usage of other naval terms have their on hyperlinks that helps understanding the terms used.

Adding hyperlinks in ship combat should be a good move.

[Yosharian]

I think they tried to keep naval words for their ship system, and it makes sense.

 

During the interaction dialogues in the map exploration, when you get caught in storm, the usage of other naval terms have their on hyperlinks that helps understanding the terms used.

Adding hyperlinks in ship combat should be a good move.

 

> Adding hyperlinks in ship combat should be a good move.

 

Yes, that would be ideal.

[xzar_monty]

I am only going to comment on the itemization question, because my experience with PoE2 is extremely limited, as I am still waiting for the game to be properly balanced (it'll be no problem if this takes six months, I have other things to do).

 

I loved much of PoE1, but itemization was frankly very poor. As I recall, there were essentially just two items in the game that were really something you wanted to work for and keep: Persistence and Tidefall. I am perfectly willing to accept that there are/were more, but this is how it looked to me.

 

Conversely, there were tons and tons of unique items that were completely mundane, and once you earned shedloads of money, you also learned that although there were many stores in the game, none of them had anything you wanted to buy. (What I did buy, in the end, were the figurines that allowed me to summon nasties to combat.)

 

This was a major shock. A game absolutely brimming with unique items that you couldn't have cared less about. Somehow, the concept of "unique" lost quite a lot of its meaning in the process.

 

So, what you said about feeling sorry for the designers really hit home here.

[Yosharian]

I am only going to comment on the itemization question, because my experience with PoE2 is extremely limited, as I am still waiting for the game to be properly balanced (it'll be no problem if this takes six months, I have other things to do).

 

I loved much of PoE1, but itemization was frankly very poor. As I recall, there were essentially just two items in the game that were really something you wanted to work for and keep: Persistence and Tidefall. I am perfectly willing to accept that there are/were more, but this is how it looked to me.

 

Conversely, there were tons and tons of unique items that were completely mundane, and once you earned shedloads of money, you also learned that although there were many stores in the game, none of them had anything you wanted to buy. (What I did buy, in the end, were the figurines that allowed me to summon nasties to combat.)

 

This was a major shock. A game absolutely brimming with unique items that you couldn't have cared less about. Somehow, the concept of "unique" lost quite a lot of its meaning in the process.

 

So, what you said about feeling sorry for the designers really hit home here.

 

Hmm, I think POE1 had quite good itemization but the way that the stat bonuses functioned worked was detrimental the enjoyment of the game.  As in 'oh sweet, a +3 strength belt!  Oh wait, my hat gives +2 strength and +1 constitution, so this belt isn't worth equipping...'  Which is pretty much fixed in Deadfire.

 

POE1's items were quite diverse and most of them felt quite useful, as long as you could jigsaw them into your character setup.

[George_Truman]

There is an extreme over-abundance of gold if you choose to participate in naval combat. You can beat every ship in the game with iron thunderers. Grab the trollskin sails from dunnage and the military reinforcements from neketaka. Complete the bounties up until the third tier and purchase a Galleon + another thunderer (you should also have gotten Haelfric's Nose but I'm not sure if there is an option that excludes you from it). You don't even need to load up the other side with cannons, just turn to port=>hold=>fire=>full speed=>full speed=>hold=>fire... with 'report to' as needed in place of sailing.

 

It is a bit broken right now because it gets you a bunch of superb equipment at like level 4 or 5. With the Galleon you can go around and kill every named ship in the game. If a ship rushes you to board, switch to chain shot and blow their masts away. Then sail to ~ 500meters and turn around and stomp them.

 

Apparently larger ships can sail faster than smaller ships. It may have to do with the multiple sails and whatnot.

 

Also I totally agree on the Narrator. Her tone doesn't fit the game to me, and her intonation seems off.

Edited June 17, 2018 by George_Truman

[AndreaColombo]

CONS

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• Irritating bugs, even post-1.1
• Frequently nonsensical/out-of-place disposition placement in dialogues/choices

 

These are two of my main pain points with the game in its current state, along with recovery's never-ending slowness.

 

As for custom A.I., I agree it needs more polish (and certainly more conditionals) however in the interim this mod should help.

[InsaneCommander]

PROS

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lots of visual storytelling (especially with the gods, excellent work there)

 

That is a big improvement on the pure text descriptions. Definitely a pro.

 

CONS

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Companions generally feel like wallpaper, despite having reasonably frequent interjections

 

I have only Serafen in my first run. And that is because of my pirate character. I'll leave the others for later, hoping they will fix any remaining disposition/companion bugs and maybe even improve something else.

 

Frequently nonsensical/out-of-place disposition placement in dialogues/choices

 

Some conversations need at least one more option (neutral). What if I don't want to have any points in rational, benevolent, diplomatic and stoic? Ok, it's a minor thing, but it would be nice.

 

Ship combat feels a little undeveloped, due to the lack of strategies... at least, as far as I was able to tell. Why is it that the heaviest ship in the game, The Junk, can outpace the Dyrwoodan Sloop in combat? The sloop should be able to escape a Junk encounter easily, but it can't, making ship progression essentially linear.

 

Let's hope they add more options and revise things like this in the free ship and crew DLC.

[Shadenuat]

When it comes to itemization I feel that designers were given a task to make some "weird items" since in previous game without White March items weren't "weird" enough, and so they ended up with ton of weird crap like amulets that do completely random stuff, weapons that do useless stuff and the whole pantheon of weapons with "25% chance to [insert some useless **** your dude can do with a press of a button] on a crit for [usually] 3 seconds for 4.6 seconds [after you spend 30000 on an upgrade and 6 vithrak brains which do not exist]".

Edited June 17, 2018 by Shadenuat