Pillars of Eternity: Obsidian's Kickstarter RPG

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.