I've been very slowly making my way through Pillars of Eternity II The Deadfire Archipelago. The first game I liked despite it's flaws. It was the first RPG in the old KOTOR or infinity engine vain that I had played in a very long time. I did have some pretty serious problems with it though. The environments all felt very similar, and while the writing was good, it wasn't perfect. Most of the side-quests felt sort of unimportant, irrelevant even, to the world as a whole. I especially had a problem with the companions who had phenomenal voice actors, and had super cool back stories. I especially loved Durance, and Eder's voices. Problem was, not all of their lines were fully voiced, and they just didn't feel completely integrated into the games story, despite how cool their individual stories were. I remember in KOTOR when I was a kid I liked how companion characters would speak up and call me out on my poop. Really interject in what was going on; demand answers. I remember one scene when Carth Onasi really early on had a hissy fit over having been "kept out of the loop". That type of thing never really felt like it happened in the first Pillars game, and when it did it felt minimal. Rather than having to have a whole conversation with them about it you might just get one offhanded comment from them.
Now, this all sounds very negative; the opposite of the point of this thread. I promise though, it's all secretly very positive. This is because, so far in Pillars II virtually all the negatives from the first game I've already mentioned have been removed, and replaced with positives. For example I already had to deal with a companion speaking up and getting mad at me for being too "traditional", I have another companion basically going insane as a result of the enemy I'm chasing down, and I've even had some of the crew for my ship speak up and force me to give a speech to help with moral. All of the characters mesh together so well now and I've had such a resplendent joy watching how they react to my character, and even interact with one another. Plus they're all fully voiced now (as far as I can tell), and not only that, I actually think they took the really solid voice acting from the first game and made it even better! All the Islands I've visited feel very different from one another too. some have been deserts, other's jungles, some have cities on them. Everything just meshes together so much better and feels so much better integrated and I have just been loving it so much. Also The music is some of the best music I have heard in video games in some time. Apart from the tavern music they play that's the same music in every tavern, I haven't had a single tune played that I didn't absolutely love. Sorry the post started out negative, but the reason my POE II experience has been so positive so far has been because of how far it feels the series has come since the negatives of the first game.
Log in to comment