Tennmuerti

First few minutes in, the camera especially in combat feels off, to be diplomatic; real bad clunky/swimmy to be honest. I had to switch from M&K controls to a controller jsut to make it bearable.

The fact the the mouse cursor "sticks" in place in menu selections until moved far enough away really marks the game as not designed around m&k as a primary assumed control method.

I don't buy many games for consoles, primarily playing on the PC and all, but I used to buy exclusively retail for the PS3&4, because the PSN store used to suck something massive when it came to payment processing.

Now two things happened, the stores I knew of that carried video games in around the town where I live closed or moved locations, and PSN at some point decided to join the rest of the civilized world when it came to handling transactions, so I can now actually buy games from them directly. So now I just buy digital.

That's a damn shame, I was always rooting for him to recover or at least stabilize.

Dude was a trooper fighting it to the end. And was arguably one of the single most positively influential critics for the PC platform over the years that is one of the reasons it's in a better place now. Even tho it was nowhere near the same over the last few years for obvious reasons his critical voice will be missed. He was also heavily influenced by GB and a fan of the site.

Rest in peace duder.

Hmmmm.

So I've just finished it. Done everything, etc.

I have some very harsh thoughts on the games overall main narrative and even harsher thoughts on the ending. I may need to sleep on it to mellow out, but this is the first time I've finished an Obsidian rpg and came away disappointed in their writing. This is the one criticism I did not expect to be making going in.

And apparently there were a couple of production factors as it turns out that might have something to do with it.

@captain_insano: Party members contribute a large part of their skill scores to your overall skill number in conversations. That way it's still you talking while they are still able to contribute to your overall skill levels significantly. Having a high level intimidate party member in the party will enable higher intimidation checks to be passed for example.

@arbitrarywater: I say definitely bump it up to Veteran. I've been having a decent time with it.

My original plan was to play it on Path of the Damned difficulty. But on trying it I decided not to do it. The problem with that difficulty is how it's implemented. If it was just more monsters using better/more moves/tactics I would 100% play on the PotD difficulty. But it very very directly and deliberately bumps up the difficulty in a very trite way. Basically all your to-hit rolls get a -15 penalty and that's just plain bad/lazy difficulty design imo. Hey we just made your combat rolls suck way more overall, you just roll the dice worse now every time. It's basically as if your entire party had 15 points of perception less across the board. Great no thanks. (they also get +15 more to hit against you as well). Which just completely shoots classes and builds that rely on crits in the knees since 15% is a huge margin for them.

Like yes it's doable and you can compensate for it. But imo it's just not a fun way to go about it.

I just wish there was a way to get all the extra challenge of Path of the Damned just without that silly 15 point buff to enemies accuracy and defense. If someone know an edit or a mod that would do it, I'd be all for it.

Oh wow. Thanks so much for this!

Had some more time to play the game now. Still dicking around in the main city, been in it for a few days now, it's beefy.

I definitely came around on the new and re-balanced class/skill system. It's an improvement over the last one for sure. As well as a move to a more per encounter reliant spell system. There are still per rest abilities and items, but they are much rarer. The fact that your companions also provide half their skill stats to skill checks is great it doesn't feel like they're wasted now. Along with the fact that there are jsut more now and they are much more frequently used in situations is also great, it feels like a properly fleshed out thing now. The reputation wheel representation is just a great quality of life feature.

Oh and I loooooove the new robust AI behavior customizer. If you take the time you can actually make your party autonomous for a lot of the fights, not do dumb things you don't want, and do do minor constant ability/spell use you would have otherwise have to do yourself every time. I've neglected this feature for a while just because there was so much other cool shit to focus my attention on, but as soon as I got my hands greasy I didn't regret it. It's similar to what Dragon Age Origin had but , way expended and way more robust. If you were ever annoyed as to why your auto AI is doing things you don't want nor do you want to do everything manually yourself, well the tools are there. It's a lot to take in all at once, but you can start by copying the pre existing AI behavior sets and going from there, to customize them for yourself, adding or removing a line here or there over time. Developers who have worked on this feature and it's UI, A+ job thse guys.

I get the logic of the move from 6 to 5 party members. Considering how much more active even non caster classes are compared to older school D&D rule set based games. Even with 5 party members there is a lot of things to keep track of and manage in combat. That said I still feel a little bummed now that I have all the core companions and now have to make decisions on who to take or cut based on their personality vs their class usefulness and synergy. That one extra missing spot would have solved a lot of my problems :)

The fact that buffs from gear now stack is a great small change, meaning no more having to joggle all your gear in a party around when someone gets a cool new item and you are min maxing. You have a better thing to wear? It works, period. If you want to stat stack something specific go ahead. The reverse change is also great for in combat buffs, its a great thing that buffs of the same type or that affect the same thing don't stack, meaning there is no more need to cast 10+ buffs spells in combat every fight and you are also more flexible in class choices for the party as there is overlap (which is also why 5 instead of 6 party members limit works)

There are just a lot of super smart overall changes from the first game to this one. From small ones to big ones, from the very obvious to the subtle. These are clearly systems designers and developers who learn from their previous work and take away a ton of lessons I would not have even thought to consider. I'm like officially impressed.

And while I get why every streamer is pissing their pants with joy now that all character dialogue is voice acted and singing the games praises, because they no longer have to readout out loud a novels worth of dialogue to chat. Honestly this was never a huge deal for me in the previous games just playing it, reading stuff for myself in crpgs was par for the course. I was actually a little apprehensive about the full voice acting decision for this game as this kind of consumerist decision usually leads to simpler less interesting dialogue and dialogue choices overall; but so far even if this is true I'm happy to report that it is not noticeably so and in parts where it is , it is more or less well masked. Skyrim "dialogue" this isn't. I do wish you could still scroll back to read what was previously said in a conversation and that the dialogue box was just a tad bigger, like in the first game, not sure why they changed that.

PS:

Just because you have an option in conversations and events to use your skills sometimes does not mean they guarantee batter outcomes or resolutions in all situations, most of the time they do, but also sometimes they can skip interesting quest steps or just entirely remove alternate path solutions and outcomes that could have been "better". It's good that it's this way from a gameplay and narrative perspective obviously. But it was also a bit painful for my OCD rpg completionist ass as I found out yesterday to my chagrin; that me being a smarty pants, sly, smooth operator with one NPC quickly and easily solved a quest for me, but to the detriment of being to actually be able to help more people out of a bad situation on the back end. (and i wasn't willing to roll back that far back on a save)

PSS: also do wish there was at least one or two of a more evilly inclined party member ala Viconia or Devil of Caroc

@arbitrarywater: Ironically my PoE1 main character had the background of being from Deadfire and a Raider. So as cliche as it is to have basically a pirate origin in a pirate themed rpg I decided to stick with it since making a whole new character didn't really make sense for me from an immersion standpoint.

I'd definitely be interested in what people come up with in terms of multi class builds.

Personally im sticking with rogue for my character (again my PoE class) but had a really hard time deciding whether to multiclass her or not. Since exactly at second to last tier rogues get their best skill upgrades that I can already see offering a huge power boost. And if deciding to multiclass then what into, Barbarians synergise with crits, Fighters offer a decent flat dmg bonus, good passives and that juicy armor recovery reduction, while Cipher is also a dmg boost plus flavor on the side, then there also chanter/monk/paladin as other secondary class possibilities. Still can't decide what to do a proper start with :( Which honestly is a real good problem for a game like this to have.

I'm super super early in yet.

So far I'm not a huge fan of the engine move they did. The first game had that painting look to its backgrounds that was deliberately reminiscent of the RPGs of old that seems to be missing now. Yes technically it looks better. But I liked the feel of the look of the first game more. Also as a person who grew up for a large part of their life on an island on an equator, the whole sand and beaches setting is somewhat less appealing to me as a fantasy setting overall so that could be a factor.

Man they went through the skills and abilities with a fine tooth comb removing and changing anything that was even remotely unbalancing or broken from the first game, or even potentially too powerful. At first blush the skills systems seems way more balanced. At the same time I can't help but feel a little bit like a pouty kid that didn't get a third slice of cake. This is super subject to change tho, who knows what will be discovered with skills down the road. But it's also very reasonable considering they also have multiclassing to deal with now. It is super neat that you can just see the whole class skill tree from the start now, and the new sub classes are interesting for sure, and you can definitely have some fun with multiclass combos.

It's a bit too early to tell what I feel about the combat changes yet. A lot of changed to how things work and are calculated from the first game. At the moment it's all gut feeling of "it's not what I'm used to from the first game, therefore it's not as good". Which is super unfair. I need more time to dig into the mechanical guts to actually tell if it's all for the better. How damage resistance works now, how class resources work, power level (eew), buff stacking, overall stat balance, no real weapon focuses, new non combat skills, 5 party memebers , etc etc. It's also funny to me on a pure human psychology level now that I think about it, when PoE 1 came out learning new stuff and new systems is one of the greatest joys i get out of videogames like this, but now that it's a second game in the series changing mechanics I already know and basically nerfing all the broken and overpowered or just plain what worked best that I new from before, suddenly I'm pouty. Heh.

Now I just gotta finish GoW asap before i can truly take the deep plunge on PoE 2 and get lost to the world for a few weeks.

PS: while i get the obvious game balance necessities and your main character has an excuse, seeing a person you know from the first game loose all their pimped out shit and abilities with no narrative justification is highly annoying.