A while ago I mentioned that I started playing Pillars of Eternity(PoE) and I liked it, but that it was very story-based. Well, this is true, and I just finished it recently actually because it required some commitment to follow all the quests and explanations and all that.
It was an amazing experience and I want to review it.
As I mentioned before, Pillars of Eternity is an old-fashion RPG with isometric perspective like Baldur´s Gate. You have a main character, that you can customise at will, and you can get a number of companions with different personalities that assist you in your quests and travels. If you´re not convinced with the named companions, you are free to hire random Adventurers that fill the space and help you with fights and such things, but I'd say it's really worth to travel with characters that have their own plots and personalities.
The game is similar to D&D but uses its own classes, lore, skills and rules for combats and interactions. And it's based around quests. You see, killing enemies in PoE doesn't give you experience, so there´s no grinding possible, you only advance by making quests. There´s lots of them, and they're quite varied and with lots of options and possible resolutions, really using the different skills that you may have. Not many require to kill enemies, and the ones that do tend to be about one single big enemy, no need to bring back 10 wolf pelts and similar stuff.
From the start, you can feel the game is heavily story-based. Shortly after beginning, you find a moment where the game explains a situation with narration and text, where you can choose a course of action, but where your skills points and previous experience can change the outcome or the options. This is really immersive and opens thousands of possibilities outside the normal game mechanics, where having high intelligence or good athleticism does matter and can get you the best results. For example, you find some kind of mechanism next to a closed door. If you have good strength, you can break the mechanism. If you have good mechanics, you understand how it works and operate it. If you have a high intelligence, maybe you recall a previous mural and understand the steps to use it. All are different options that result in the same, opening the door, but unless you have the required attribute they will not even appear to you, or will fail if you try them. This moulds your character a lot more than what I´ve seen in other games.
Similarly, the concept of morality, good or bad, has been developed here much further than other rpgs. Things are not as simple as good or evil, with good points or evil points. Here you have reputation. And reputation includes lots of things. You may have a reputation from being clever, diplomatic, honest, cruel, violent, benevolent, tricky, misleading, rational, etc. This depends on your conversations, on what you say and on what you do, and having a high reputation in one of those aspects does not mean you cannot use a completely different action in a certain situation....but it also opens chances to use this reputation for your advantage. For example, being honest allows people to trust you at your word. Then again, because people trust you on your word, if in certain moments you lie people don't expect it and trust you anyway. Or if you´re rather diplomatic, then new conversation options will show up that will help you resolve conflicts differently. Or if a certain town or faction has a good impression of you, their interactions will change. You may get more rewards, more information, better prices, etc....At the same time you can gain bad reputation with cities, factions, etc. At some point of the game, for example, you need to choose between some factions, and good reputation in one will probably be obtained because you will get bad reputation with another.
In general these details add a big layer of complexity to the gameplay when you interact with others, and allows you to really shape your character. You´re not limited to the goody two-shoes or the evil psychopath with more moderate behaviours being punished by not having special interactions. Here you can develop a benevolent character that lies and still will fight at the drop of a hat. Or you can be cruel but honest. In general, you can really, really personalise the way your character is perceived and interacts with others, and there's no out-of-character, you could be honest most of the time and still trick people sometimes, or be diplomatic and once or twice straight up murder someone who´s being a total idiot. The level of flexibility you have in this is amazing, rewarding and really interesting. And this same reputation changes conversation options and also these scripted-text only interactions where you choose different actions, so it manages to expand your choices and the way you resolve problems.
The story itself is rich and detailed. PoE creates a different world, with lots of races, factions and interests, that sometimes it's a bit hard to follow from scratch. It immerses you in a complicated zone with conflicts and troubles, where a plague is making children to be born without a soul, not dead but not moving or reacting to anything. In this world souls can be fragmented, used, reborn, split and manipulated, they can be ripped apart or be eroded, and a big part of the lore is around these things. There are gods that oversee the world with different skills and responsibilities, but they seem far from the daily lives (at least in the beginning). All the world has also ruins of some ancient civilisation that manipulated souls at will, with strange machines of unclear purpose that can provide light and power or just as easily convert to dust all the people nearby. As the main character, from an initial moment where you don´t have any clear purposes, you get inflicted with what seems to be some curse/blessing that may drive you mad, and in your travel you're searching for a solution to your problem, while helping others, influencing the local politics and trying to find clues about the plague that the region is suffering. Things start slow but turn into epic proportions after a while, unravelling a complex plot and discovering several refreshing takes on the fantasy genre.
The named companions you can get help you along the way but also have their own motives and stories, and you can help them resolve their issues and know them better, gaining their trust and learning about them. There's also a sense of familiarity created as you travel with them and they talk with each other and interact also with people you talk with. Some of them are less interesting or do not fit quite as well with your style, but all of them are worth exploring, and most of their quests are really interesting, although sometimes you need to wait to advance a lot in the game to complete them. The shame is that you're limited to 5 of them, and also that, of course, they need to adapt to your class to combine well as a party, so you usually have a strong core of characters that must be with you at all times and then one or two slots where you can change things and explore different options.
Apart from the stories and conversations, there's combat of course. The fights can be challenging and intense, with a lot of micromanagement needed to succeed, but also very rewarding. You can also keep doing quests, go up levels and make your life easier by reaching top levels early on, and this way have a kind of god-like strength. Combat is based on endurance, which indicates how tired you are, and once you run out of it you pass out. This means you can still win the combat with other characters, or even restore yourself with some healing skill. However you will be hurt and will need to rest afterwards to recover. You also have life, which cannot be restored really except with one or two excepcional skills, so when it's low you also need to rest. Characters that run out of life are dead for real and cannot be recovered, and if your main character dies or all your party becomes unconscious, it's game over. However there's lots of autosaves every time you enter a map, so you're never that far behind after this happens. Even with top level, some fights are really really hard, but also some of those have Pacific ways to resolve the issue or avoid conflict, although it may depend in a lot of other factors.
It was an amazing experience and I want to review it.
As I mentioned before, Pillars of Eternity is an old-fashion RPG with isometric perspective like Baldur´s Gate. You have a main character, that you can customise at will, and you can get a number of companions with different personalities that assist you in your quests and travels. If you´re not convinced with the named companions, you are free to hire random Adventurers that fill the space and help you with fights and such things, but I'd say it's really worth to travel with characters that have their own plots and personalities.
The game is similar to D&D but uses its own classes, lore, skills and rules for combats and interactions. And it's based around quests. You see, killing enemies in PoE doesn't give you experience, so there´s no grinding possible, you only advance by making quests. There´s lots of them, and they're quite varied and with lots of options and possible resolutions, really using the different skills that you may have. Not many require to kill enemies, and the ones that do tend to be about one single big enemy, no need to bring back 10 wolf pelts and similar stuff.
From the start, you can feel the game is heavily story-based. Shortly after beginning, you find a moment where the game explains a situation with narration and text, where you can choose a course of action, but where your skills points and previous experience can change the outcome or the options. This is really immersive and opens thousands of possibilities outside the normal game mechanics, where having high intelligence or good athleticism does matter and can get you the best results. For example, you find some kind of mechanism next to a closed door. If you have good strength, you can break the mechanism. If you have good mechanics, you understand how it works and operate it. If you have a high intelligence, maybe you recall a previous mural and understand the steps to use it. All are different options that result in the same, opening the door, but unless you have the required attribute they will not even appear to you, or will fail if you try them. This moulds your character a lot more than what I´ve seen in other games.
Similarly, the concept of morality, good or bad, has been developed here much further than other rpgs. Things are not as simple as good or evil, with good points or evil points. Here you have reputation. And reputation includes lots of things. You may have a reputation from being clever, diplomatic, honest, cruel, violent, benevolent, tricky, misleading, rational, etc. This depends on your conversations, on what you say and on what you do, and having a high reputation in one of those aspects does not mean you cannot use a completely different action in a certain situation....but it also opens chances to use this reputation for your advantage. For example, being honest allows people to trust you at your word. Then again, because people trust you on your word, if in certain moments you lie people don't expect it and trust you anyway. Or if you´re rather diplomatic, then new conversation options will show up that will help you resolve conflicts differently. Or if a certain town or faction has a good impression of you, their interactions will change. You may get more rewards, more information, better prices, etc....At the same time you can gain bad reputation with cities, factions, etc. At some point of the game, for example, you need to choose between some factions, and good reputation in one will probably be obtained because you will get bad reputation with another.
In general these details add a big layer of complexity to the gameplay when you interact with others, and allows you to really shape your character. You´re not limited to the goody two-shoes or the evil psychopath with more moderate behaviours being punished by not having special interactions. Here you can develop a benevolent character that lies and still will fight at the drop of a hat. Or you can be cruel but honest. In general, you can really, really personalise the way your character is perceived and interacts with others, and there's no out-of-character, you could be honest most of the time and still trick people sometimes, or be diplomatic and once or twice straight up murder someone who´s being a total idiot. The level of flexibility you have in this is amazing, rewarding and really interesting. And this same reputation changes conversation options and also these scripted-text only interactions where you choose different actions, so it manages to expand your choices and the way you resolve problems.
The story itself is rich and detailed. PoE creates a different world, with lots of races, factions and interests, that sometimes it's a bit hard to follow from scratch. It immerses you in a complicated zone with conflicts and troubles, where a plague is making children to be born without a soul, not dead but not moving or reacting to anything. In this world souls can be fragmented, used, reborn, split and manipulated, they can be ripped apart or be eroded, and a big part of the lore is around these things. There are gods that oversee the world with different skills and responsibilities, but they seem far from the daily lives (at least in the beginning). All the world has also ruins of some ancient civilisation that manipulated souls at will, with strange machines of unclear purpose that can provide light and power or just as easily convert to dust all the people nearby. As the main character, from an initial moment where you don´t have any clear purposes, you get inflicted with what seems to be some curse/blessing that may drive you mad, and in your travel you're searching for a solution to your problem, while helping others, influencing the local politics and trying to find clues about the plague that the region is suffering. Things start slow but turn into epic proportions after a while, unravelling a complex plot and discovering several refreshing takes on the fantasy genre.
The named companions you can get help you along the way but also have their own motives and stories, and you can help them resolve their issues and know them better, gaining their trust and learning about them. There's also a sense of familiarity created as you travel with them and they talk with each other and interact also with people you talk with. Some of them are less interesting or do not fit quite as well with your style, but all of them are worth exploring, and most of their quests are really interesting, although sometimes you need to wait to advance a lot in the game to complete them. The shame is that you're limited to 5 of them, and also that, of course, they need to adapt to your class to combine well as a party, so you usually have a strong core of characters that must be with you at all times and then one or two slots where you can change things and explore different options.
Apart from the stories and conversations, there's combat of course. The fights can be challenging and intense, with a lot of micromanagement needed to succeed, but also very rewarding. You can also keep doing quests, go up levels and make your life easier by reaching top levels early on, and this way have a kind of god-like strength. Combat is based on endurance, which indicates how tired you are, and once you run out of it you pass out. This means you can still win the combat with other characters, or even restore yourself with some healing skill. However you will be hurt and will need to rest afterwards to recover. You also have life, which cannot be restored really except with one or two excepcional skills, so when it's low you also need to rest. Characters that run out of life are dead for real and cannot be recovered, and if your main character dies or all your party becomes unconscious, it's game over. However there's lots of autosaves every time you enter a map, so you're never that far behind after this happens. Even with top level, some fights are really really hard, but also some of those have Pacific ways to resolve the issue or avoid conflict, although it may depend in a lot of other factors.
I played the main game and 2 expansions, and made sure to left the end boss for last. All the storylines were really great and it was extremely satisfying to reach the last boss extremely overpowered and manage to defeat them with ease, by that point you're really involved and want to finish them. I played as mostly good, and I'd like to try the opposite in another playthrough, but I dont know if i'll do that or just play the second part that seems also very very nice.
All in all a great experience, really immersive and interesting, and I highly recommend it.
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