My Two Cents - A thorough look at PoE

[Snayff]

Having just finished PoE, and havign waited for a good Infinity enginge style game for many years I wanted to put down my thoughts on how things went, and my thoughts on the journey. I hope this is of some interest or use to someone.

 

Disclosure: I am a huge Infinity Engine fan.

 

In the interest of providing a full appreciation for what you are getting in to I will break this down in to several sections, if you only want information on a certain area just skip ahead!

 

Story/Plot:

Yea:

Some difficult choices to be made.

Generally a lack of a binary good or evil setup.

The world is huge and the lore in depth.

 

Nay:

The main story is generic fantasy fair. Revolutionary it is not.

Sometimes hard to role-play certain types of character due to the lack of consistent options in conversation.

 

Quests:

Yea:

Meaningful and substantial, throughout the games.

Side quests are plentiful and offer a good reason to explore the world and get the most out of the setting.

 

Nay:

The pacing is a little off in places, potentially leading to a lack of drive to finish the story.

 

Characters:

Yea:

Very developed back stories.

A lack of one dimensional characters.

 

Nay:

Limited inter-party banter.

Party has no bearing on your actual conversations.

Bordering on blind followers. Seems like you could slap their Mother with a wet fish and they wouldn't bat an eyelid.

 

 Script/Writing:

Yea: 

Phenomenal writing.
 

 Voice  acting: 

Yea:

Some very impressive voice work, including some fantastic stand outs.

Plenty of voiced conversations; there can always be more, but for me there was oodles.

 

Nay:

During conversations there are written descriptions to bring the conversation to life. The voice acting does not pause for this, even when it says that the character paused! This can be jarring.

 

 Art /Design: 

Yea:

Art and aesthetics are always personal, but I loved it.

 

Nay:

Some random, extremely low resolution assets that would have looked old fashioned in the original Infinity games. Infrequent, but they stick out like a sore thumb

 

Impact of decisions:

Yea:

It was sometimes difficult to tell the result of your actions and sometimes it was obvious as a sword to your enemies gut. You traverse the world and cause waves of action and interest.

 

Nay:

Sometimes a little too unclear or obtuse regarding what would happen when making the choice.

 

Combat/AI:

Yea:

Clever, nuanced classes without thematic considerations.

Strong variety of moves.

Several options to support style of combat desired (e.g. turn based, slow mode etc).

Some challenging combat, with consideration and calculation being necessary. (Though of course a little luck never hurts.)

 

Nay:

Classic issues of not auto-attacking and getting caught on allies.

It is not obvious what move the hero is using until you actually select them (i.e. no overhead display of move selected for use).

 

 

Bugs:

Yea:

Not as many as expected, does that count?

 

Nay:

Voice cuts to halfway through sentences sporadically.

Voice cut out/became muted.

Some events fail to trigger.

Steam achievements didn't update for me.

 

 

Features/Options:

Yea:

Lots of customisable options, such as hiding meta information (e.g. possible conversation options you lack requirements for).

Regular, helpful tooltips.

 

Nay:

Tooltips don't always relate to what they pop-up for (seems to be on a keyword search so damage may bring up the "damage" tooltip, though it refers to "mitigating damage").

Some options don't seem to work as intended or implied (e.g. show relative defense values, limit stash).

Pets that add almost nothing.

Some locked slots on the inventory that never unlock (did I miss something?)

 

Noticeable omissions:

When in main team location you have to swap out characters to be able to look at their items.  

Humour - other than the odd comment (and maybe one particular character) there is very little of the light-heartedness or amusing comments as seen in other Infinity games.

Meaningful differences in loot. Each new weapon tends to be a small, numerical difference from the others. The few that seem to have potentially interesting differences are poorly explained.

Explanations of the enchanting system.

 

Overall:

 

Loved almost every minute of it. To anyone who enjoyed the Infinity games, anyone who has enjoyed a party based cRPG I would recommend this. I would also recommend it to anyone who has a passing interest in roleplaying, or immersing themselves in a new and fantastic world.

 

Some improvements are definitely available for the developers, but they are not needed to make the game feel whole and substantial. The game is polished and fulfilling and it is only a matter of time before I play it again.

[Eos]

Seems like we had a similar experience with the game. Found myself agreeing with you on pretty much every point. Well written

[b0rsuk]

The only one on your list that really bugged me as well is lack of conversation options. Too many times I was choosing by elimination, not among stuff that I would really like to say.

[redneckdevil]

Great review

[Snayff]

Thanks for the comments all.

 

Seems like we had a similar experience with the game. Found myself agreeing with you on pretty much every point. Well written

Thank you, Eos. I loved the game, I just hope they take on board some of the community feedback to tweak a few bits here and there.

 

The only one on your list that really bugged me as well is lack of conversation options. Too many times I was choosing by elimination, not among stuff that I would really like to say.

Absolutely agree, I started with a really clear idea of the character I wanted to play and had to give it up fairly quickly.