Pillars of Eternity: Obsidian's Kickstarter RPG

I'm only 3 hours in, but I'm enjoying this so far as well. Mordy did you end up finishing?

Not finished yet- still playing

I'm still going too, though I hit a bit of an "oh wow there's still so much to do" bump at the end of act 2, which slowed me down for a while.

Environments are so beautifully drawn though, which is enough motivation to keep going. Might run out once I've seen all the maps and I'm just mopping up quests but that'll presumably be home stretch anyway.

just picked this up ... pretty dope so far

any expert advice for beginners?

I only got so far into this before getting distracted and going to Wasteland 2 instead. Will try again once I get my FO4 hours out of my system.

i was having fun until i got to the first main hub (i think), just after the tutorial bit. suddenly i had a bunch of quests that all seemed to revolve around talking, and after 3 hours of walking from place to place talking i just quit. i'm not suited for story driven RPGs because i just get bored

i got a little ways into act 2--made some stronghold upgrades, resolved the mad-king-of-gilded-vale quest, visited the big city--before getting sucked away by fallout (and by my o.g. baldur's gate party, who are deep in durlag's tower). the endless text is not always well-written as prose and the original infinity engine games (torment excepted) were terse and streamlined in comparison, but there are coherent themes (postwar trauma, history as memory, gotterdammerung) woven nicely through the characters+quests, and the environments are v lush+evocative even if what i've seen so far is generic european fantasy (don't always mind generic european fantasy). the best and most narcotic part of the game is the scrubbing back and forth across a big blank map screen, grinding and illuminating. this was the best part of baldur's gate too. (i never played bg2 because as i said i am in durlag's tower.)

i really like PoE's strange endurance/health/permadeath system, which cuts way down on the number of AH FUCK MINSC DIED style reloads (or for hardcore players: AH FUCK MINSC DIED style 10-minute round trips to temple plus 30 minutes of inventory management) without removing the dread from death. also really appreciate all the difficulty modes--the kind of optional cultist-flattering feature that gives kickstarter a good name--even if i gave up on the full-permadeath mode after sitting through the prologue three times.

only advice i have is to check the bestiary to read about monster resistances and be clever about yr damage types, also to make a real effort to interrupt enemy spellcasters.

if you get the xpac - play it before finishing the main story. the game doesn't allow you to continue on from the main story end -- which is stupidly terrible.

overall i liked the game. skipped through many walls of text. found the bazillion plaques for donors to be kind of dumb and distracting. and the battles were a bit too fast and a total cluster to justify the 800 different spell options you had. and the npc companions never reach the baldur's gate level of funny and memorable. liked the cypher tho.

i got killed by a bear

I just started playing this (actually the first game I've started in a long time). I'm enjoying this a lot so far, I forgot how much I enjoyed infinity engine games. I'm just enjoying walking around getting into random encounters.

restarted and marathoned this-- white march included-- in prep for the sequel, which i preordered but still have not played, because i have been playing baldur's gate. (idk when i'm going to get to it either, because i have also, in prep for finally finishing BG1, and in order to stave off buying a switch, dropped $50 on a i would say probably "G" original 2001 numbered copy of the baldur's gate 2 collector's edition, which yes does come with a cloth map, and also with a series of character trading cards, still untouched in sealed foil packaging, which i intend to open.) i don't know why i'm addicted to this genre. stuff like BG has at least the spirit of novelty but one thing PoE reveals is that crowdsourcing game design to nostalgic nerds creates a whole new form of weird pervasive ennui distinct from the one that AAA games have.

but i had plenty of fun. the 3.0 revision seemed to make attributes and effects a little less psychotically marginal. "fantasy colonial america" is a good idea for a setting. managed to not see the twist coming and enjoyed it, found it thematically resonant, etc., tho the last five minutes of a story are a pretty stupid jj abramsy place to reveal a villain's motivation. (in general the setting is compelling but the story is an almost total wash, which could be symptomatic of something, tho i'm not sure what, maybe just that this is a stupid fucking medium, idk.) enjoyed doing the faction quests in the first city and wasn't disappointed by the granularity of the ending-slide combination i got for them. really enjoyed the consistent pessimism of the companion quests, partic sagani's. enjoyed much of the attacks-vs-resistances combat, tho am unsure the game ever justified making rock-paper-scissors quite that complicated. really enjoyed the dungeons in the expansion and the one near the beginning w the mad king. really enjoyed kana. did not enjoy the loading times (absolutely obscene); the endless paths of od nua which i for some reason did all of anyway (each stupid floor is just one more reason the cities are so lifeless); the prose written for the backer npcs (game-ruining if not ignored); or tbh the prose written for the rest of the game (p much glop). loved the bestiary.

highly recommended to fans of the genre.