I've been hearing that this is a good one of those old-school PC RPGs that is basically running Dungeons & Dragons. Since I never grew up playing those games when I was a kid, normally I'd brush this aside. But recently I've gotten back into Dragon Age Origins and I think the whole play-style of the game finally clicked with me.

Would this be a good next natural step from Dragon Age if I wanted to play another one of these D&D-esque games? I know DAO is supposed to be a heavily streamlined version of one of these games, so I'm worried the learning curve will be very steep.

Pillars of Eternity is also a very streamlined one of those games so you'll be fine. Mechanically it's fairly straight forward and is fairly linear all things considered.

Just know going in that the battle system is more fiddly than it needs to be. Still a good fun time though.

PoE is a pretty good starting point IMO, although some of the online resources are outdated since patches (most recently 3.0) changed up lots of skills and the like

You don't need to worry a ton about min-maxing and party optimization on normal, just go with god

Pillars of Eternity is a lot more "human friendly" than some of the other old-school RPG revivals out there, though as an Infinity Engine vet I can't speak to its appeal among newcomers personally. If you can get through Dragon Age Origins, you can probably get through PoE without a ton of trouble.

@mikachops:Can't be any more fiddly than DAO's combat can be at times. While I'm getting way more out of it, I can't tell you how many times I've called Alistair a piece of shit for not protecting Wynne even when I made that his top priority for his AI.

@iodine: Awesome! I do like a bit of min-maxing, but I'd also like to be able to try stuff and make mistakes while not eventually feeling like I need to restart my save file to fix it.

PoE is much more accessible than the older Infinity Engine games - the latter of which incorporate a whole bunch of esoteric DnD concepts that aren't difficult to learn but can be overwhelming for newer players. That being said, I would still recommend going back and giving Planescape or BG2 a shot. PoE is fine, but it still doesn't hold a candle to the classics.

@crysack: Cool. If I finish these two 80+ hour RPGs and I'm still hungering for more, I would definitely like to check out the BG games just because I've been a fan of almost everything Bioware made from KOTOR on. I'd like to see their roots.

Yep! Much more accessible than old school games such as Baldurs Gate. Great game also.

Mechanics-wise you should be more than fine if you can handle DA:O. Character progression is slightly more complex in PoE but also more open at the same time.

Just be aware that there's at least as much focus on conversations in PoE as in DA:O but most of it is purely text-based! You're going to have a hard time if that bothers you. Recording speech for everything is one of the few DO:A-innovations PoE ignores.

I'd say, go for it! PoE is awesome if you enjoy in-depth, party-based, tactical RPGs.