The First Impressions Thread

[algroth]

- Eder might steal Xoti from me.

 

Oh god, I *want* to ship Edér and Xoti so badly. Right from the first line it's like they're made for one another.

[Shepard]

Aside of a few weird quirks, like spending over 80 medicines to heal just one crewman, and a few bugs here and there, the game is fantastic and is growing to be GOTY, imho.

[M4xw0lf]

 

- Eder might steal Xoti from me.

 

Oh god, I *want* to ship Edér and Xoti so badly. Right from the first line it's like they're made for one another.

 

I find this rather cute, actually. Way better than romancing her myself :D

[rjshae]

Things I like:

• The voice acting of ambient conversations is a very nice touch. It feels very immersive.
• Lighting and shadows add a lot of depth to the environment.
• I really enjoy the level of detail and options in the character creation.
• Having more interacting ambient characters is always welcome.

A few concerns:

• The multiclass level up progression interface is a little unclear. If I wasn't already familiar with the design goals, I'd probably be confused.
• It was difficult to find the combat speed slider.
• The repeated fade out/fade in sequences are tedious.
• The incentive for me is to max up specific skills rather than spreading out the points, but with two skill points per level up, it doesn't feel like I have much option in the skill progression.
• Changes in art style between the OM, tactical view, and intercity block transit is a bit jarring.

[Giubba]

First impression let's see......

Create a new game ok

Watch the cutscenes ok

Reach the first conversation....game crash even before reaching character creator

 

2nd try

 

Reach char creator and complete it

Move to the game

Nice first impression game seems more polished and involving than POE 1 beginning

Pass the very first sequence and reach the first map and....i start noticing strange stuttering and freezing,drop in the frame rate etc.

After a couple of minutes game crash

 

3rd try

Load the savegame

Went inside the first cave

Spent some time inside and game freeze for a good minute when i finish levelling up for the first time with my char.

 

I DID NOT uninstalled the game but god dammit i was close to do it, i thought that with poe obsidian finally move on from they ****ing trend of releasing game bugged to kingdom come.

 

I guess i'm gonna complete a POE game first so some patch will roll in and i hope it will fix some ****.

[Mygaffer]

I will have to play a lot more before I decide how I feel but one thing I'm not in love with is the change to the health system. I really, really liked the endurance/health mechanic from the first game. It let you stay in a fight as long as you didn't take too much damage all at once and gave you one pool to manage short term, i.e. only in the encounter, and one to manage long term, i.e. how far to go before resting.

 

Now it feels really weird. I always played with injuries, so my characters still got injuries when knocked out, but there is just less to manage and less going on by getting rid of the of the two health pools. Really doesn't feel good to me right now.

 

Another thing I'm noticing is that some skills/spells/etc. seem to not have enough detailed information associated with them.

Edited May 10, 2018 by Mygaffer

[Isometric Chicken]

Finally got my ship, so I'll throw in my first impressions, round 2. (Second impressions, I guess.) I'm using a custom party with a Swashbucker (rogue/fighter) (the MC), a Priest, Warlock (barbarian/wizard) and Paladin. I don't care for companions.

 

On the plus side:

 

- Pretty much finished up on the first island, and still haven't had a need to rest at all. This isn't all good, as it does tend to make things a bit too easy. But I think the good more than outnumbers the bad. Because I don't need to rest, the game flows much better in dungeons, as I don't have to go back to town to sleep every ten minutes. But it also means it's "safe" to let the priest and warlock use spells automatically, and I can play with all my skills a lot more than I ever did in Pillars 1. I don't need to concerve skills anymore, but let rip whenever I feel like it. Plus, I noticed that when my priest gained a level and got rank 2 spells, I could use them immediately without resting. Very nice. Yes, it does make things a bit easy, but also very convenient, and you can turn up the difficulty to counter the, uh, difficulty anyway.

 

- The world feels alive. I was walking down the streets, when two NPCs started talking to each other - fully voiced. Very nice. It also surprised me when I was on the docks and saw a ship sailing past. Not sure why such a small detail was so impressive, but I loved it. It makes the world feel alive.

 

- Voice acting is very, very good. True, that jerk in the first town sounds ridiculous at first, like the actor was trying his best to make the worst Italian accent possible. Normally, I would laugh at how bad it is. But it didn't take long before I noticed everyone talks like that in the town, and it somehow fits the town. And just like that, very bad turned into very charming. Besides, I've met people who aren't from the island, and they all sound fine. So it's just the people on the island, not the voice actor. Can't fault the game or that. )

 

- So far, I haven't had that annoying "TAKE NO PRISONERS!"... when smashing a barrel like in Pillars 1. Hahaha.

 

- Interrupting the gameplay with a lot of dull text in a book all over the screen should be boring, but even this works. The writing and voice acting is very nice, and when the story stops the gameplay to tell me stuff (entering a new area on the world map, meeting another ship etc), I pay attention. Baldur's Gate was supposed to feel like a table-top RPG on your computer, and these small text-bits really feel like it's the dungeon master telling me what's going on in better detail than would be possible in the game itself.

 

- The game runs a lot better than it did in beta on my computer. Was expected, but still very nice to see.

 

 

On the negative side:

 

- When I select a skill in the level up screen, the text appears under the cursor. Not a huge deal, but gets annoying, and makes the text hard to read.

 

- "Everyone" knows I'm the Watcher who pretty much saved the world in Pillars 1, yet they all treat me like an f'ing errand girl. I get why I'm stuck looking all over the island for various stuff, but it does get a bit annoying. It makes me thing nothing from Pillars 1 matters. And if it doesn't matter, why aren't we playing a new character in an all new story? Even Baldur's Gate 2 was a direct sequel to Baldur's Gate 1, and you still started back at level 1.

 

- Hopefully not a spoiler, but god there are a lot of traps in the dig site... Fortunately I'm a swashbuckler, so it wasn't a problem for me. But if I hadn't had a rogue or some sort with me, I could see this getting incredible annoying.

[Taurus]

First Impression:

-Lore tidbits like in Tyranny is a great adition

-VA is awesome

-Graphics / loadscreens/ animations vastly improved - and I'm playing on my weak laptop, since my main PC is now at my company.

However, just left the first island and combat in POTD seemed a bit (actually a lot) easier than the first game. I've heard that , unlike the first game where the first act was the hardest , now the game progressively gets harder, so I'm hoping for that.

 

[AndreaColombo]

+ Graphics look amazing.

+ Very good environmental audio, which is a somewhat of a rarity nowadays.

+ Great soundtrack and VA (I especially love that my character can have Allegra Clark's voice.)

+ Writing is stellar. I'm enjoying it very much.

+ Itemization is so much better than PoE's I don't even.

 

- We really need to be able to skip the slow-walk intro in subsequent playthroughs, as many have mentioned.

- A few bugs that need ironing.

Edited May 10, 2018 by AndreaColombo

[DankWhiteLeaf]

I'm 20 hours in so far after playing POE 1 for about 300 hours. Absolutely loving it so far. It looks amazing and everything feels polished, I haven't experienced any bugs at all. I didn't pay any attention to the development of Deadfire, so I am very pleased to find that they haven't messed with too much or tried to do anything drastic. What I was hoping for is exactly what they seem to have delivered: a highly polished, tightly written POE set in a new world. 

 

My only gripe is that I was hoping to start out with new companions. I don't hate that you start with some old faces, it's kind of cool that you have a shared history, etc, but I was expecting mostly new companions. 

 

Also... in combat I still find it way too easy to mis-click on players you're trying to control. I know, I know, I could be using the numbers or click and drag or what have you, but I like clicking on the selection circles and it is not the easiest. 

[Answermancer]

- Hopefully not a spoiler, but god there are a lot of traps in the dig site... Fortunately I'm a swashbuckler, so it wasn't a problem for me. But if I hadn't had a rogue or some sort with me, I could see this getting incredible annoying.

 

Worth mentioning that I believe every trap is visible to the naked eye as well, though obviously not super obvious.

[Wormerine]

Ok, if it keeps the pace and quality I might be really really loving it. Sunk solid couple hours. Did one quest which topped Roderick's Hold and Monastry from WM... that's a strong opening. Wondered a bit Neketaka and gothered enough quests to sail away and do some stuff. I love how dense the game feels. PoE1 felt empty, lifeless, here there is a cool thing to find behind every corner. World map exploration in delightful, combat is snappy, quest design much more complex. 

[HooAmEye]

Weirdly enough the codex seems to quite like it. Not unreservedly, but still has quite a bit of praise

[vanyel54]

The game is more beautiful and more complex.

 

++ Beautiful graphics and nice environment that change for the classical fantasy.
++ Good audios and dialogs are really good

++ Good writing and i love the Italian/pirate flavor
+ Finally we could hide quests already done ! Wow !
+ Nice first dungeon (Fort Deadlight)

+ Some bugs (characters that cant move etc...) but nothing game breaking

 

= Recovery times is perhaps too long. But with multi classing there is much more things to follow. Not sure about it.
= The crafting icon location seems odd. I would have expected to find it in the inventory.
= Auto-health/Rest : For my first run, i play in classic difficulty and honestly i have never rest once. We will have to see what it will give at a higher level.

 

-- Ship fight : I find it absolutely boring and not fun (as it was in the beta). There is the alternative of boarding directly but this is a mess to due to the high number of ennemies and positionning (and I do not even want to think about soloing the game). I'm a little scared every time I have to go to sea and for a game based on sea explorations, it's a problem.
-- Weapon Proficiencies : I hate the fact that you are forced to choose them before event you know what you will do with your character. And a lot of them are bad. Well, nothing new from the beta....
- Abilities icons : with all the work done on the game, i'm really surprised that Obsidian could not draw twenty additional icons ("Defensive abilties ? Put a shield icon !")
- Leveling : As it has been already said multiple times during the beta, some leveling choices are really poor (+10 will or +10 for or a spell i will never use ?)
- Grimoire switch : The wizard if fun to play and the per encounter switch makes him more powerful OK.

But the grimoire switch is cumbersome (1) you have to remember the content, 2) keeping a grimoire just for one or two spells that you do not have seems a constraint)
- Walking soul intro : As it has been said by many, it needs to be optional
 

[Lorfean]

I spent my first few hours in the History editor because I have saves from several different PoE playthroughs and can't remember all the decisions I made between them. I was impressed with the amount of options in the editor, and it was also a good way to refresh my memory re. some of the plot points / characters.

 

I thought the opening immediately following the Caed Nua intro was very cool and I liked how choosing your history and then creating your character were tied into to it -- felt very natural. After character creation, the transition into the actual start of the game also put a smile on my face.

 

 

Having The In-Between slowly become more like the real world and having that moment of looking down at my own body was clever, and seeing Edér being the one holding a vigil made sense and made me smile. As a Ranger, a very cool bit of added detail was having my wolf's soul with me in The In-Between, and then seeing his physical form lying next to Edér in the ship's cabin.

 

 

Once I got into the actual game, it was instantly noticeable how much better everything "felt" compared to the first game. I really liked PoE, even loved parts of it, but so far Deadfire improves on it in every way. The presentation, the game systems, the pacing of both dialog and combat... I haven't gotten far enough to try ship combat, so I can't comment on that yet, but I love the world map, how open it is, and the way you explore it. I'm at work now, but can't wait to play more tonight!

 

Edit: Not having backer NPC's everywhere (or *anywhere*, for that matter) is a massive improvement in terms of immersion... Sorry to all you backers who put effort into their stories, etc. -- it was one of the very few things I truly disliked in PoE.

Edited May 11, 2018 by Lorfean

[Starwars]

After spending 17 hours in the game (according to STEAM) I must say that I am extremely impressed. Now, some of the changes to combat that I dislike makes the dungeon delving and combat encounters not as enjoyable as I would like, but wow... what a grand adventure this is turning out to be. I think I've spent most of the 17 hours running around Neketaka and I still have on district I haven't visited and a slew of quests open. Just now starting to sail around a bit in my ship (aside from the bits in the beginning of the game).

 

Very impressed at the moment with the scale of things, and yet there is a great density and attention to detail.