Another My Thoughts on POE2 (sorry about this)

[draego]

I know there are a bunch of these with similar info but...

I finally finished a POE 2. Ive been restarting since it was released. Overall I liked the game and it did some good stuff that was an improvement over POE1 but i still like POE1 better than 2 by a lot. I played around 900 hours in POE 1 with lots of playthroughs and POE 2 was 1 playthrough and lots of restarts. And not sure when ill go back. I also didnt do any DLCs this may get me to go back but toward the end i just wanted to finish the game. 

This isnt comprehensive list i'm sure i may think of other stuff. and i realize this list is subjective so if you liked something i'm not saying you are wrong this is just what i thought POE 2 did better or worse than POE 1

Better: 

• Graphics
  •  just really nice step up the world and characters and enemies all good stuff
• Level Designs
  •  I have to say I really appreciated the level designs. One archetype I like playing is a stealthy character (which is what I did on this run) and the level design I felt definitely supported. I was able to sneak around avoid tons of fights and use bombs and even cheese a little to get around and it was very fun. This could still be really improved if they let say one character go into an area or house by themselves without having to go remove all your characters the go back and then go get them when your done. i only did this maybe once so for the most part the levels let me sneak around how i wanted and even get my party through sometimes when needed
• Itemization better and worse 
  • The weapons were cool with unique abilities.
• Companion Choices
  • Spoiler

    It was cool your choices carried over to POE 2. i told Aloth to leave in POE 1 so didnt have him in 2 and in 2 i sided with the druids on Sayuka and then killed Maia Rua when i confronted Okaya nice stuff. 

     

Worse 

• Story
  • One of the main issues that kept me from enjoying the game more. I didn't like the beginning hook about Eothas it was fine but just worse compared to POE1. I liked the slow start of POE1 and the mystery. The main story was to short and felt disjointed from the factions. If felt like was playing two different games part of the time. Once I really ignored the main story and played the factions as the main story the game got more fun. 
• Neketaka
  • I don't like giant hub cities at least the way this was done this is related to the story issue I had and was the main reason i would quit playing. I would get to the city and go talk to queen within minutes and get told to leave the city. So right off staying in the city felt disjointed from story. I knew though main story was short so I would force myself to stay instead of going to hasongo and find myself feeling bogged down with so many quests. It felt overwhelming with all the quest i would pick up and disconnected from the story.  I did push through and started enjoying some of the content
• Itemization 
  • The distribution was horrid and didnt support character roleplaying being good at certain weapons. 
  • I dont like the switch between ton of weapon types for the sake of gaming the enemies. I want to roleplay my characters with specific weapons and pick a few weapon types and stick with them the whole game and find ways to work around stuff. This is just an aesthetic thing. But the weapon distribution made that impossible and there were just not enough weapons of certain types . POE 1 had some of this to but i felt POE 2 was just worse in this respect. this leads to the next category
• Meta Gaming
  • I felt that this game needs more metagaming than POE1 and on my first run that made the game worse. Because of the poor distribution of weapons i felt the need to metagame weapons i thought my character would want. This pulled me out of the game. On the subsequent runs i dont mind it because I would be focused on getting builds. 
• Druid Priest Abilities 
  • This was a small thing but The loss of versatility of these classes hurt some. I get this was result of per encounter spells change. And this did change some from the beginning maybe they need to give one more spell on power levels. 

There others stuff to talk about like the removal of all per rest abilities. Not sure i cared to much POE 2 was still fun enough in that respect i enjoyed POE 1 a lot to. 

Something else that could have improved was the call backs in dialogue to POE 1 choices. I wish there was a tool tip with more explicit info on what choice or choices in poe1 led to the dialogue part.

Edited December 5, 2019 by draego

[Gromnir]

will start off by recognizing how the spread o' weapons were not fantastic in the base game. because backers could sponsor creation o' unique weapons, there were a glut o' deadfire sabres--a problem which the developers recognized and attempted to address in the expansions.  is a fair complaint and obsidian recognized the mistake.

that said, your itemization and metagaming concerns is actual a bit self contradictory. unlike in other crpgs, and even poe, there isn't overwhelming benefits in "specializing" in a particular weapon type. a first time player who happens to discover the chromoprismatic staff but doesn't have staff modal is hardly gonna suffer game-changing penalties by using the staff as their primary weapon. admitted, there were a few modal synergies which were extreme powerful (specific build barbarians with a morningstar for example) but the morningstar user who finds the chromoprismatic staff late in the game is unlikely gonna agonize 'bout failure to acquire staff modal earlier. from a practical perspective, there is considerable less need to metagame weapons choices in deadfire than most any similar crpg.

in bg2 for instance, how many paladins with metagame knowledge chose other than the two-handed sword option? were possible to go sword and board, but holy avenger made choose 2-h a forgone conclusion for most bg2 players. got a similar paladin situation in deadfire? in deadfire, being literal the only person to play a a berserker shaman o' wael 'ccording to telemetry early after release, we used the lord darryn's volgue for much o' the game w/o ever taking the pollaxe modal. switched 'tween morningstar and pollaxe and 'cause it weren't in the initial release when we played our contemplative, we didn't know 'bout karabörü 'til we stumbled on it relative late in the game, but we got considerable use from it as well.

yeah, if for pure role-play purposes you wanna use hatchets, then play deadfire results in a good chance you can play the majority o' the game w/o finding frostbite. if you are dead set on being a dual-wielding hatchet user, then for much o' the game you got the plant killer weapon and xoti's sickle, which would necessitate you having high religion to make use o' and would obvious further narrow rp choice. whatever. however, and is a big however, if you are using hatchets as part o' dual-wield, or as a tank or as a one-hand specialist, there is gonna be a multitude o' other equal viable (superior) options available to you throughout the game, and forgo a spear or club or dagger 'cause you just really wanna use a hatchet is kinda on you, no? 

dunno, but you make one complaint seem like two by mentioning metagame, which don't seem fair given deadfire's reduction o' the metagame conundrum.

am disagreeing with the nekataka complaint, but is more o' a taste thing so our pov is no more valid than yours. athkatla is often held up as a kinda gold standard for crpg cities, and very little 'bout bg2's city were essential to critical path story once you emerged from tutorial dungeon. need earn money to leave athkatla and get to brynnlaw. side with one o' two factions who got only brief impact on game. fact there is much to do in nekataka w/o being railroaded to follow specific critical path quest lines were, in our mind, a positive, and the factions were much more integral and had enduring impact in deadfire compared to bg2. nevertheless, am admitting is a matter o' taste.

am not disagreeing that priest flexibility in particular were hurt by the change from vancian to per encounter w/o a serious change to the spell catalog being implemented along with the change. we assume to save resources, the obsidian developers made minor adjustments to poe priest spells and in so doing they made far too many spells nothing but trap choices for the unwary. if you only got a couple spell choices per level, then highly situational abilities is gonna be objective bad choices. felt lazy. were any number o' options we saw which could ameliorate the problem even if the obsidian folks were too lazy or overworked to fundamental alter spell catalogs. during late beta we mentioned how providing "prayer beads or vade mecum or medicine bag or some deity-specific object which performs a similar but lesser role as does the wizard grimoire," woulda' been enough to make all those situational use priest spells viable.

*shrug*

our suggestion were too late, or too difficult to add... and the obsidian folks weren't bothering to read the obsidian board feedback anyway, which were made clear when josh noted how he were unaware 'til almost release o' deadfire the way in which might were affecting damage calculations in spite o' such being one o' the more common repeated concerns from the hardcore number crunchers routine posting in the deadfire feedback section o' obsidian's own freaking message board since almost firstest week o' the beta. reality o' pointlessness o' board feedback were utter mind blowing and complete disheartening... not that obsidian indifference annoyed us or anything o' the sort. not like am still bitter. nope.

HA! Good Fun!

[draego]

Yes a lot of this comes down to aesthetics. I get people like big cities and thats fine they just bog me down and lose as they did in BG 2 and NWN 2. so to each their own. and Yes the weapons comes down to my preferences in roleplaying specific weapons. So yes there really is no need to meta game if you like all the different weapons and the game doesnt really punish not specializing but when I go half the game without finding a weapon of the type i wanted i started reading wikis for where to find certain weapons so i can at least get one lol. 

Edited December 5, 2019 by draego

[thelee]

11 hours ago, draego said:

Druid Priest Abilities 

• This was a small thing but The loss of versatility of these classes hurt some. I get this was result of per encounter spells change. And this did change some from the beginning maybe they need to give one more spell on power levels. 

this got me real down at first (i don't pay attention to backer updates much, so i wasn't aware of all the changes coming down the line) - so the backer beta was a real rough experience for me as a priest-lover (not to mention the loss of interdiction as a global priest talent instead of a generic spell). fortunately the changes they made to the priest subclasses helped placate some of my concerns on spell diversity/selection constraints (for the unaware, priests [and druids] used to not get bonus spells, and priests were even more restricted based on keywords related to their diety... think wizard subclasses but worse, you could basically have like one or two valid selections for a given ability level depending on your diety).