First impressions thread!

[Tartantyco]

The beta is out, give us your first impressions!

[talharbash]

User interface and path finding needs another pass: Everytime I select group and click to talk to someone some other character in my party (and not me) walks up to the character I clicked on. Very annoying to have to deselect every time. Path finding is erratic at best.

[mstark]

Love the music.

 

Love the ambient sounds.

 

Love the (IE) mouse cursors.

 

Love how beautiful it is.

 

Love the dialogue windows.

 

Love how it feels right.

[BillyCorgan]

For me... loading time... ^^

[Osvir]

For me... loading time... ^^

^This. In high spirits regardless though I'm sure others have begun streaming, but I really want to get my own first impression and experience before seeing how others do.

[Ahvz]

The title screen is looks great. I'm okay with the UI (though I haven't gotten much of a chance to look at anything beyond a little of the settings menu), and character creation is amazing. 

 

Then my game crashes, but it's all good. Crashes are just as exciting during a beta. 

Edited August 18, 2014 by Ahvz

[DnaCowboy]

Love the music.

Love the ambient sounds.

Love how it feels right.

 

You're not wrong, the music is gorgeous, PoE has all the hallmarks of a classic crpg in the making. 

[Tartantyco]

The static vegetation does stand out, though. I would love to see the grass and trees sway in the breeze.

[Labadal]

My impression: You are already dead.

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/566645789821080877/CFD986303F5EB47F84BEC717E0AE2395C3525ABE/

[The Loyal Nub]

User interface and path finding needs another pass: Everytime I select group and click to talk to someone some other character in my party (and not me) walks up to the character I clicked on. Very annoying to have to deselect every time. Path finding is erratic at best.

 

Well this is very barebones I suspect and I wonder if they will include a tutorial that will explain party movement a little better? That said the pathfinding issue you mention is legit as I noticed that as well on my play-thru just now. 

[Ffordesoon]

I got a quest and wandered around town for a second, and then I decided to go off into the wilderness, where I was promptly murdered by a pack of lions.

 

I love it.

[Marceror]

I hope OE will give proper names to the BB party. BB Rogue, BB Priest, etc. just isn't very inspiring. Even for a short adventure, I'd like my party members to have names.

 

Also, minor point but it would be nice to have a customize option in game at least for your PC. I got into the game and noticed I had chosen the same portrait as another party member, and can find no way in the game to change it.

[SophosTheWise]

I played for about an hour now and everything is absolutely satisfying so far.

 

The only thing I'm still on the fence is the combat, but that probably is because I couldn't really look deep into it and didn't take the time to read all the spell descriptions and so on, because I'm dead tired. Combat felt a bit chaotic and the fight in the tavern was really confusing because I couldn't really make out what was happening exactly. So apart from that I'm really, really glad how it's turning out. The art design is awesome (and I love that I already have a colorful late medieval breastplate and an arquebus), the music is gorgeous (though still a bit repetitive but I guess that's because of the nature of a beta) and evokes a really different feeling than most RPGs nowadays. I really like it. More to come tomorrow

[The Mist Devil]

Those who were scared the game would be "easy"...well... fear not!

[averagedog]

I am having a lot of trouble figuring out what exactly is going on in combat. I would like it if zooming in was enabled so I could get a closer look and handle thing from there. The auto attacking bug  is also a little annoying.

[AdaMusic]

I am not playing but I have watched lots of streams.

 

Biggest plusses:

+ The game looks gorgeous: the backgrounds, houses, nature, props like stones, GUI, etc. Amazing artwork. 

All artwork is perfect except the character and enemy models. These models and their textures could use a little bit of work. I think they should look more gritty or more suiting for the rest of the world. Now they look just a tiny bit cartoonish/colorful compared to the rest of the world. 

+ The music and ambient sounds are soo good. Spot on!

+ Most of the dialogues seem really well written.

+ The lore looks more interesting "in game" than I thought it would.

 

Biggest minuses:

- Pathfinding and loading times seem odd.

- Character and enemy models look a tiny bit too cartoonish. Make them more gritty to suit the rest of world!

- I dislike that during combat in the demo that you did during gamescom that there are these "swing/attack loading bars". In Infinity games these "bars" were "invisible" (i.e. didnt exist). I really think that was much more immersive. I don't think it looks hard to figure out what is going on in combat. Looking at this thread there should be some kind of option to disable/enable this kind of help. At the streams I've been watching this has been turned off (to my relief). 

 

Sorry for my language. Main language isn't english.

Edited August 19, 2014 by AdaMusic

[Eldram]

First off Pillars of Eternity looks and sounds amazing. I really enjoy the writing, the character movements and actions while in a dialog feel amazing! Reminds me of reading a good book and not just a wall of text! I did find the talents menu at level up very basic, would be nice to have graphics and text that really pop. I have always had a fondness for talents and find they add a ton to character customization, would be nice to have a UI to support the importance. Also a note if you are about to pick a talent your class is getting for free later would be nice, although this happened with my fighter on weapon specializations (which I admittedly could have picked a different one) so not sure if this is an issue with other free talents.

 

Also it would be nice to have some way to compare equipment, especially in shops.

 

So happy to be playing!

Edited August 19, 2014 by davebeaudoin@live.ca

[bzdanny]

Really enjoyed the character creation soooo many options!

 

Music was just .... could just listen to it for days!

 

Everything looked great, lots of small details come out from the way the different races looked, to the different nations style of dress and even the brown looked interesting/gritty.

 

Dialog choices were interesting, varied and hard to choose!

 

Only flaw to me was combat as .... you don't have a basic auto attach function on? I don't mind micro managing spells/abilities but basic auto attack?? Two felt odd how the fighter could take 3 Beatles to the face and his HP didn't go down but the wizard gets two shotted?! Cleric wouldn't cast spells half the time and wasn't being attacked so interrupt wasn't an issue. Already having issues picking out what spells to cast or how to cast them at lvl 5. Hope it takes a while to get there as it felt like I was playing end game Baldur Gate characters compared to BGII starting characters. Same level but way to many options and no idea what was good/bad.

 

Otherwise enjoyed my 20 mins of play before the crashed and enjoyed the missing daughter quest a lot. Got a bit of the Game of Thrones there in my DnD.

[sparklecat]

The beta is out, give us your first impressions!

I am feeling overwhelmed by all the lore I haven't been keeping up with!  It's very exciting, and I very very very much appreciated the mention of the presence of a matriarchal society along with the patriarchal one; I just hope all the actual in-game stuff doesn't wind up being focused on the latter.

 

Checking out the wizard spells and mentally translating to the closest D&D ones ("So... Color Spray?") was quite amusing, and that bit of familiarity helped with the "I have no idea what the status effects these spells apparently implement actually do and there's no manual yet" problem.  Also I foresee myself playing with the manual close by for quite awhile, once it's available.

 

You know what might be a lot of work but would also be very helpful, IMO?  A glossary.  Something like Civilization's Civilopedia that I can open up in-game anywhere, at any time.  Let me look up terms as I'm choosing my spells in character creation and figure out just what they'll be doing, for one.

Edited August 19, 2014 by sparklecat

[D.McMurry]

- I dislike that during combat in the demo that you did during gamescom that there are these "swing/attack loading bars". In Infinity games these "bars" were "invisible" (i.e. didnt exist). I really think that was much more immersive. I don't think it looks hard to figure out what is going on in combat. Looking at this thread there should be some kind of option to disable/enable this kind of help. At the streams I've been watching this has been turned off (to my relief). 

 

Turn off Combat Tooltips to disable the bars.

[bigstrat2003]

Played the game for 40 minutes, and have some thoughts:

 

• It looks beautiful. Seriously, well done.
• I don't understand, at all, the terms that the backer update mentioned like damage threshold, health vs stamina, etc. I guess that stamina is basically your health? Since all the priest abilities for healing heal stamina instead of health, and the enemies were damaging stamina. But beyond that, the game mechanics were completely opaque this first time at it. Old RPGs could be that way too, but they came with a manual I could read!
• Related to that, either I am the worst player in the world or the game is entirely too hard. I went on the first quest I came across (go take out the ogre that is harassing the town), and went to Dryford crossing since that was the direction I found out I needed to head. The very first encounter wiped me, with no realistic possibility of success. The enemies could drop a character in one or two rounds of them focusing fire, and my rogue/fighter couldn't even damage the enemies. Maybe I somehow stumbled into content that is too hard for me, but right now I have no idea if it's that, if the game is tuned too hard, or if I just suck. There needs to be some clearer feedback to the player regarding whether something looks like it's over their head or not, or at least make the first few fights guaranteed to be doable so that you aren't struggling to learn the game mechanics while also getting your teeth kicked in.
• The way skills take more and more points to increase the ranks is neat, I enjoyed that little twist to how skills work.
• During the character creation process, please consider not displaying the culture bonus to abilities on the point-buy screen, or move that part of character creation so that it comes before purchasing stats. Kind of weird that you can get your array of stats hammered out, then realize you have to go and change them because the culture choice you made is going to alter your build strategy quite a bit.
• The grimoire needs to be surfaced more prominently. I figured it out, don't get me wrong, but it's pretty counter-intuitive to have to dig in the inventory to get there.
• As others have said, which character gets sent to talk to an NPC seems completely arbitrary and inconsistent.
• Related to that, selecting one party member (when you currently have the whole party selected) should be easier. The most obvious way is to click on their portrait, but that doesn't actually deselect the other party members (and thus, allow you to do things like use abilities). You have to physically click on the party member you want, which is fine, but a little clunky.
• Some kind of warning when you have unused spells (and grimoire slots to fill with them) would be useful. I had to rest at the inn twice (and burn my precious coin!) because I didn't realize that my grimoire did not have the level-up spells I chose slotted in. I was quite surprised after the first rest when I expected to be able to use level 2/3 spells, and they weren't there!
• Maybe nit-picky, but the heads seem a bit too big for the bodies. Might be something I'll get used to, though.
• Overall, I won't lie and say that the game made the greatest first impression on me. But I'm going to continue poking at it and seeing if I can figure out some of the things which were giving me grief on that first (very brief) foray.

[Namutree]

I have an issue.

 

Game starts off too zoomed in and thus the character models are too large on screen. I tried to zoom out, but can't. I had hoped Obsidian would make zooming out as easy as pressing the + and - keys, but no luck pulling that off. There is a pan camera option, but I can't seem to get it to do anything with keys. I use a laptop and never played the IE games with a mouse; I use my touchpad. Now it seems I'll be needing a mouse now; too bad. 

 

OBSIDIAN! Be like the IE games and allow me to zoom in and out using my keyboard. If you won't do that; at least make the default camera distance further away. I can't stand how zoomed in the camera is. The large size of the character models on screen really kills the feeling of playing an IE game.

[Tartantyco]

Started out on Normal. Soooooooo difficult. I'm in the ogre cave, but there's just too many spiders in my way.

[Lillyhime]

Disappointed by the Godlike portraits and customization available. Female Nature Godlike get 3 (though they are all pretty similar) and Fire, Death, and Moon Godlike all get 1. Males only get 1 each I think. 

 

And while I'm actually fairly okay with this, as the female Moon Godlike picture is pretty, I'm upset that we can't actually give any sort of hair.. she just has that horrid misty stuff and looks bald. A pity her misty hair glow stuff isn't a tad more solid. 

 

And lastly, I wish we could play as the air/feathery Godlike. 

 

Also, the moving the map with my mouse or the keys is really slow, and I'd like if it was at least 50% faster. 

 

On a positive note, I like how the skills for the Cipher sound, I haven't progressed far enough to see combat yet. Still trying to make myself like my bald Moon Godlike lady.

[Almkaz]

First impressions:

 

Has that old-school RPG feel - lots of detail and can tell it is a labour of love.

 

Combat was chaotic, I think it was perhaps the speed - things just seemed to go too fast for me to keep track of. I would prefer about 1/2 the speed - not the animations mind you, just the time between characters and enemies taking their turns. Speaking of animations, felt a little underwhelmed with the hit animations - attacked lions and there seemed to be no visible reaction from a hit.