Review RPG Codex Review: Pillars of Eternity - By Vault Dweller and the Spirit of Grunker

[razvedchiki]

but i must give thanks to sensukis thread about the charging of the shill light brigade.
without it there would be no VD review,at least at so short notice.

it turns out people actually have choices

 

[felipepepe]

Well the thing is that easy and normal will always be watered down, but maybe hard can get some of the stuff PotD had. I know I expected hard to be the intended way to play with the others being watered down compared to it and PotD being some special mode I probably wouldn't care about.

Yeah, they handled it horribly, presenting PotD like some crazy mode for ultra-hardcore guys... so we all went for Normal or Hard, at least on the first playthrough. And we all got burned out by playing 60 hours of a subdued, anemic system.

But that doesn't mean PotD is the salvation of Pillars of Eternity. There's a lot of enemy bloat as well. On some fights it's cool, but on others it feels cheap, and makes things like AoE abilities and Concentration skill far more improvident than they should be. This is what is absurd to me, how Obsidian nerfed the system in 3 of the 4 difficulties, and instead used encounter composition to balance the challenge. It's a backwards decision, that makes encounters all feel the same since all the enemies abilities are borderline irrelevant, even on hard.

 

[DeepOcean]

Take my hat to Vault Dweller an Grunker, very good review. Now that is a codexian positive review "Obsidian, kinda lieked your game but its still a piece of shit, next time you will make a good RPG."

 

[razvedchiki]

hey kzerso or how the fuck your name is,are you in some cult or something?

why in the name of cthulu you keep brofisting every post i make?

 

[Lhynn]

Well the thing is that easy and normal will always be watered down, but maybe hard can get some of the stuff PotD had. I know I expected hard to be the intended way to play with the others being watered down compared to it and PotD being some special mode I probably wouldn't care about.

Yeah, they handled it horribly, presenting PotD like some crazy mode for ultra-hardcore guys... so we all went for Normal or Hard, at least on the first playthrough. And we all got burned out by playing 60 hours of a subdued, anemic system.

But that doesn't mean PotD is the salvation of Pillars of Eternity. There's a lot of enemy bloat as well. On some fights it's cool, but on others it feels cheap, and makes things like AoE abilities and Concentration skill far more improvident than they should be. This is what is absurd to me, how Obsidian nerfed the system in 3 of the 4 difficulties, and instead used encounter composition to balance the challenge. It's a backwards decision, that makes encounters all feel the same since all the enemies abilities are borderline irrelevant, even on hard.

PotD is total lame shit. I have no idea why you like it.

 

[Sensuki]

Reviews as simple expression of opinion are nice, but if you look at the bigger picture, where the Codex has an opportunity to make a real impact with its reviews is when it functions as a kind of semi-professional crowdsourced player feedback, advising game developers in detail on what they need to change for the sequels to their games.

And that message should be: your mechanics are fucking shit not patting them on the back for doing a shit/mediocre job. This is the entire reason for the divide

Path of the Damned also isn't as good as most people say it is. It makes the game stay a bit more edgier like early in Act 1 (e.g. Temple of Eothas), making encounters require more strategy to beat, but not tactics. All it does is delay the point at which the game becomes a whitewash.

Path of the Damned is also simply a byproduct of the other difficulties. It is completely by accident that the point at which the game starts to take some modicum of brain power happens to come from adding +50%+ to various enemy stats - indicating that the system design sucks. The system is meant to be symmetrical - where a level 7 guy has the same stats and shit as you, and that symmetry creates shit gameplay.

For those that do enjoy the mechanics, if you ever want anything different, I suggest you get on Something Awful or badgame, disguise yourself as a goon (some of you already are) and plant the seed. That's the only chance you have - even better - join Josh's Ars Magica game

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Reviews as simple expression of opinion are nice, but if you look at the bigger picture, where the Codex has an opportunity to make a real impact with its reviews is when it functions as a kind of semi-professional crowdsourced player feedback, advising game developers in detail on what they need to change for the sequels to their games.

And that message should be: your mechanics are fucking shit not patting them on the bat for doing a shit/mediocre job.

Path of the Damned also isn't as good as most people say it is. It makes the game stay a bit more edgier like early in Act 1 (e.g. Temple of Eothas), making encounters require more strategy to beat, but not tactics. All it does is delay the point at which the game becomes a whitewash.

Path of the Damned is also simply a byproduct of the other difficulties. It is completely by accident that the point at which the game starts to take some modicum of brain power happens to come from adding +50%+ to various enemy stats - indicating that the system design sucks. The system is meant to be symmetrical - where a level 7 guy has the same stats and shit as you, and that symmetry creates shit gameplay.

For those that do enjoy the mechanics, if you ever want anything different, I suggest you get on Something Awful or badgame, disguise yourself as a goon (some of you already are) and plant the seed. That's the only chance you have - even better - join Josh's Ars Magica game

what is it about SA and badgame that makes it the only place JS posts to or listens to with regard to game content? I mean he does not even seem to read or notice Obsidian forums, the place he works for... I don't get it..

is it as simple as because SA and badgame are both places that will constantly kiss his ass and feed his ego? or iis there more to it? I can't get into the forums at badgame to even have a look it seems like..

 

[sser]

I played PotD for my first playthrough and I didn't think the game particularly hard at all. Pause of the Damned just clutters the screen up with more enemies who hit harder. The real difficult mode is Expert Mode which I didn't really bother with because I like my cones and cone accessories.

 

[Zeriel]

The review calls the game a retarded abomination, frustrating in the sense of being wasted potential, boring, lacking, and a whole list of etcs but then it calls it Best kickstarter RPG? i chuckled. having DF, sits and D:OS that statement is stupid.

If anything this review is even more nagative than roxors in a lot of ways, but also less helpful. There are some things wrong in the review tho, the character system does offer trap choices, its just that your choices have close to 0 impact on the performance of your character or its ability to stay effective. Levels are all that matter, etc. Overall decent i guess.

I'm pretty sure that statement was written before SitS was released, just fyi.

Still no excuse for ranking PoE higher than D:OS. Codexia is truly artfag central, on this we must finally agree. If it has 2D backgrounds, its GOTY.

 

[Bester]

Best review I've read. One thing though. What the fuck do you have against wikipedia? I sometimes read it passionately till 6 in the morning, while PoE doesn't feel like wikipedia at all. A very poor comparison. PoE reads more like a manual for a washing machine.

 

[Prime Junta]

But that doesn't mean PotD is the salvation of Pillars of Eternity. There's a lot of enemy bloat as well. On some fights it's cool, but on others it feels cheap, and makes things like AoE abilities and Concentration skill far more improvident than they should be. This is what is absurd to me, how Obsidian nerfed the system in 3 of the 4 difficulties, and instead used encounter composition to balance the challenge. It's a backwards decision, that makes encounters all feel the same since all the enemies abilities are borderline irrelevant, even on hard.

It also borks the armor system. With the boosted enemy ACC and damage, DR doesn't do shit. I just switched my barb from plate to hide, and it made barely any difference to his survivability. I suspect it'd be better to have everyone go nudist and focus on buffing Deflection, Concentration, Interrupt, and attack speed for the frontliners instead. If they bring Accuracy back into the attributes in 1.7.0, that's gonna further reinforce it.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Thank you, VD. You have restored my faith in the Codex...and in butthurt drama threads.

 

[Tigranes]

My main concern ATM is that nobody has given Obsidian the message that they're onto something with PotD, as felipepepe discovered, and that the game needs to be more like that.

I don't have much hope in this regard, honestly. They aren't that stupid, they know what system they have. VD's review is spot on, this is a game made to sell, to be familiar and accessible, where people can't fail. The biggest difference in PotD is that you are required to adapt and respond to what's going on or you will wipe & have to reload. And that is bad - too bad for Obsidian's intended audience. So they intentionally watered the game's combat until nothing mattered.

When fighting Ghouls in PotD, I had to spread my characters to avoid the enemies' poisonous vomit attack, as it would severely wound everyone. That's as basic as you can get, even MMOs now consider things like "don't stand in the fire" to be basic player knowledge, yet Obsidian didn't allow players in their old-school RPG to experience that. Stay in or out of the hazard, it barely matters, you'll win anyway. At most you'll lose one or two party menders, but they'll be back in full health after the battle is over.

As result, PoE has a 90 metascore, very positive reviews on Steam and people like SuperBunnyHop calling it all kinds of awesome, praising the "tactical combat". Do you really think their priority now is making the game harder and more demanding?

What's left is to be happy that we at least got the PotD difficulty, which shows that someone out there still think of the children grognards. But I doubt we'll ever got more than that.

On one hand, just about every RPG in this century (and many RPGs before that) have suffered from this problem: that they are dialled down far too easy, so that all the complexity and interestingness their systems may have possessed become drained out by the back door. Consider how in Shadowrun, enemies on all difficulties attack only once per turn even when you know they have the actions remaining. Think about that. That is an incredible castration of difficulty with exponential repercussions. POE suffers from the same, such that a highest difficulty game, and/or ones with house rules, can be much more fun and tactically varied. On this point, I can't foresee much improvement; look at all the people who complain Easy is too hard! It would be suicidal to make the whole game harder. My solution would be super-customisable difficulty sliders, but I don't know if they'll do it.

On the other hand, 'other RPGs did it' is no excuse, and there are also ways for systems to become more relevant for the player without racking up the difficulty that POE should have explored, and that I hope POE2 does explore. This is something that I think Obsidian will improve, and if they don't, they have no fucking excuse for sucking. Why are status effect animations so ethereal that nobody even notices? Why are they simultaneoulsy made so easy to hit (thanks to graze system's bad synergy with status effects) and also not significant enough in some (but not all) cases? Why don't more monsters have special abilities such that they are defined by their status effects (like Shades and Crystal Spiders already are)? Why aren't there enough human parties or other set pieces where the creatures are set up with synergistic spells / effects / builds? Why aren't there any special situations like no-rest situations or anti-magic zones? In that aspect, I expect improvements with each expansion pack and sequel, just as IWD2 tried to introduce crazy set pieces that older IE games could only dream of.

 

[Morality Games]

I played the game Expert Super Mega Hard Core Path of the Awesome Mode and it was all a little easy for me.

 

[Prime Junta]

I think the main mistake with the difficulty was to have the same rules for all levels, and just use different enemies instead. Nice in theory, but doesn't work in practice. If they had allowed themselves to adjust the numbers, they could've made a much broader spread of difficulties much more easily. It's also clear they could've made hard difficulties that don't just rely on bloated HP.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

- Avellon left Obsidian for a reason.

For a career in interpretative dance?

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

hey kzerso or how the fuck your name is,are you in some cult or something?

why in the name of cthulu you keep brofisting every post i make?

It's part of brofist inflation - aka broflation.

It's a plot by the Chinese to devalue the bro fists of the RPGCodex so that they can come in and buy up all our brofists and then somehow take over the codex or something. It's a classic currency manipulation scam that the FTC would be all over, if they actually cared about brofists.

It's all the fault of liberals like DU. None of this would have happened if we had kept brofists on the BLOBERT BRO standard instead of printing brofists like crazy and racking up a brodeficit.

Vote Lambchop for Codex Staff Member in 2016. Lambchop will end the brodeficit. Lambchop will give everyone free cell phones and government butthurt care. Hope and change! Hurry before I stretch this metaphor so far it snaps!

 

[Ulminati]

After perusing this fine work of literary art, we are only left with one crucial question to answer: What can change the nature of a man? When you press a button in PoE, do you get something awesome in return?

You will get exactly the same as if you havne't pushed the button. To do so otherwise would be to punish players who didn't notice the button and we can't have that.

 

[markec]

Interesting review. Let the shills be butthurt, now.

You dont understand the nature of shills and fanboys. They are completely delusional, which is obvious when you see them claiming things like that PoE has great enemy encounter design. Those people will grab onto tinniest of straws and hold on them like their life is depends on it and never let go. In case of this review its this line "adequate game which is definitively the very best Kickstarted game thus far". To them this entire review reads "While this game has some problems its still good game and the very best Kickstarted game thus far!".

 

[One-and-a-half-Ivan]

The review calls the game a retarded abomination, frustrating in the sense of being wasted potential, boring, lacking, and a whole list of etcs but then it calls it Best kickstarter RPG? i chuckled. having DF, sits and D:OS that statement is stupid.

If anything this review is even more nagative than roxors in a lot of ways, but also less helpful. There are some things wrong in the review tho, the character system does offer trap choices, its just that your choices have close to 0 impact on the performance of your character or its ability to stay effective. Levels are all that matter, etc. Overall decent i guess.

I'm pretty sure that statement was written before SitS was released, just fyi.

Still no excuse for ranking PoE higher than D:OS. Codexia is truly artfag central, on this we must finally agree. If it has 2D backgrounds, its GOTY.

PoE >>>> D:OS.
The fact that D:OS has a nice turn-based combat does not make it better than PoE, because that's the only thing D:OS does right.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

I don't get the PotD praise, if you have to engage in some serious stat bloating for system to work somewhat, isn't that a failure of it and/or encounter design? I always thought stat bloating is the laziest way possible to provide some more challenge and/or incentive to mix it up more in regards to tactics, might as well argue for level scaling then (it falls in the same basket as far as I'm concerned). I very rarely played IE games on anything other than core rules so I didn't like it there either.

 

[Ninjerk]

Ah, well, you've convinced me, mate. A game that manages to be mediocre at everything but environments is 4 signs greater than the game with not only vastly superior gameplay, but gameplay head-and-shoulders above the rest of the genre.

 

[Rivmusique]

Is PotD so much different from hard? Maybe because I was always going for the enemies weak defences even on my hard playthrough (at least until the endgame, ~lvl10 when everything sans dragon/thaos seemed to be made for a lower level groups, but that happened in my PotD playthrough too), I didn't notice much of a change. Was it unnecessary/overkill to bother with it when I wasn't playing PotD? I mostly just felt the larger group numbers in my PotD playthrough.

Has anything been heard from the devs (Sawyer) post release? I believe during development there was something about the game being designed around Hard, and that being the intended experience. I had the impression that PotD would need some kind of fully custom made, meta-knowledge-required party to beat, maybe switching up members/class builds based on what encounter you were up against. Definitely didn't think it was something we'd get through using the pre-built, un-specialised companions the game gives us.

 

[Tigranes]

Ah, well, you've convinced me, mate. A game that manages to be mediocre at everything but environments is 4 signs greater than the game with not only vastly superior gameplay, but gameplay head-and-shoulders above the rest of the genre.

Depends. I was delighted with D:OS, but there's no denying that it is also very easy (cakewalk on any difficulty once you learn the system), it is extremely limited in builds, and so on. Its real strengths are in the wacky stuff you can do in combat (which helps it remain fun even when it's trivially easy), and the same wackiness in quest solutions. Those strengths are so good they make up for terrible WoW art & the terrible spam writing, which is testament to how unique and strong those areas are.

 

[markec]

PoE >>>> D:OS.
The fact that D:OS has a nice turn-based combat does not make it better than PoE, because that's the only thing D:OS does right.

D:OS >>>> PoE

Atlest D:OS does something right.