Some Thoughts on Pillars of Eternity

It's been a few months now since the release of Pillars of Eternity. Those who had been salivating for a return to tactical isometric RPGs from the age of the Infinity Engine have had a chance to pick the game apart, myself included. Inevitably there comes a time where one will want to place the game in terms of where it stands compared to favorites of the past. Is it as good as Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale? Does it outdo them? Maybe it falls short. Whatever the case, there is that desire to place it in the pecking order, and it's something that I've been thinking about ever since I finished the game.

On the whole, Pillars tugs all the right heartstrings. The combat is very similar to games from the era it's trying to continue on from, albeit without the Dungeons and Dragons rule sets that were prevalent in many of those titles. If anything, this works out as a plus since battles could much more be designed from the ground up without having to tailor everything around those particular rules. Whatever the case, the combat is familiar enough for anyone who played these sorts of games in their heyday. I do wonder if I should have started out at a higher difficulty, though, as the game is a bit on the easy side on default settings.

Part of this was probably due to party composition and then also a bit of common sense. My character was a wizard and I also had Aloth in the party, so we had quite a lot of area of effect (AoE) damage from the start. By late game we also had items that did a certain number of AoE spells after each time the party rested and Hiravius was in the group, which just made it easier. Basically, I just had Eder take point while everyone else waited in a room down the hall, shoot an arrow at a group of enemies to get their attention, then have him run to the doorway and use it as a choke point while everyone AoE'd the baddies down. About the only time this was problematic was against ghost-like creatures since they can teleport, but on the whole it did trivialize a fair bit of the game.

I do think that this was in part because there weren't many enemies that could throw a person for a loop. About the only truly difficult ones that I ever encountered were dragons (not to be confused with drakes), and there are very few of them in the game. Pillars doesn't exactly have the plethora of enemies a game like Baldur's Gate did with the myriad of annoying abilities that could make certain battles rather complicated.

Nonetheless, it was nice to watch baddies melt from the unrelenting onslaught of fireballs and lightning storms that my party was hurling at them. I'll just have to remember to crank up the difficulty should I ever decide to replay the game in the future.

One area that I wish I could have liked more was the castle. As first it seemed like a neat little diversion getting a fortress to repair and call your own. It almost reminded me of Suikoden for a moment. However, the place ultimately felt like a money-sink with little value. I wound up completely upgrading the thing and hiring a bunch of mercenaries to keep an eye on the place, but there didn't seem to be much meaning to it. Sure, I could collect some taxes and do some fancy bounties, but the money I poured into the place hardly made it worthwhile. Even the mercenaries weren't that helpful. Whenever the keep is attacked, players get the option of going back and defending it themselves, or letting it auto-resolve where the mercenaries do all the work, and they aren't very good at their jobs. Each time I did this, my keep took a tone of damage and some sections needed to be completely rebuilt, so it became a necessity to take my party back before an impending attack and protect the place since the mercenaries were obviously not up to the task.

The stories, at least, were more or less enjoyable. The main one with all of the reincarnation talk and trying to stop a plan that's been in motion for thousands of years was pretty interesting. However, some of the party members' personal stories just didn't interest me and by the end of the game I didn't even bother trying to complete some of them because I just didn't care anymore. Durance and Aloth were the highlights of this aspect of the narrative for me, especially the former. I really wanted to know whether he was a straight up misogynist or maybe the war from a decade earlier had done something to make him that way. Aloth kept my attention because I liked the way he had two drastically different personalities, and it explained some of how the soul transferring and reincarnation worked in Pillars' world. Eder and Kana were alright. I finished up Eder's story just because he's such a nice country boy and I wanted to help him find out what happened to his brother. Meanwhile, Kana being the eccentric intellectual, who doesn't want to hang out with a guy like that. The rest of the main party members just didn't resonate with me, so I wound up just leaving them at the keep most of the time and in the end didn't help them at all.

As much as it sounds like I'm complaining about the game, I did enjoy it quite a lot. If not, I wouldn't have bothered to finish it, or delve 15 floors through a massive optional dungeon. The fact that Pillars exists and we're getting more games like it is great. I've really missed these pause-able real-time tactical RPGs and if we're about to enter a Renaissance for this sort of thing I'm a-okay with that. However, now that I finished the game, if I feel an itch for a game in the genre, it won't necessarily be the first game I reach for. As much as I've enjoyed it, titles like Planescape: Torment or Baldur's Gate will still win out in the end.

Review: Divinity: Original Sin (PC)

Over the last decade, there's been a shift in a lot of RPGs toward more stripped down, cinematic affairs. A lot of the meat and potatoes of the genre were removed in favor of a more streamlined experience. Some folks really warmed up to this. Others did not, though, instead longing for days of old when we had huge, open worlds to explore a la Ultima, or complex tactical combat like Baldur's Gate. This is where the deluge of Kickstarter projects swept in with games that would hark back to those days. One such title promising these experiences was Divinity: Original Sin, and now that it's out it has very handily delivered with a huge world to explore, interesting characters to meet, satisfying combat, and it looks pretty darn good to boot.

Random Game Talk - The Last Remnant

Sometimes I like picking up a game that splits the room when it comes to public opinion of it. Just watching the back and forth among those who've played it, half saying it's great, the other half saying it's terrible, just winds up peaking my interest to the point where I simply have to try it for myself. The Last Remnant is one such game. I'd originally picked it up for next to nothing at a Steam sale a few years ago, but it was only recently that I finally got off my duff and made a concerted effort to play it from beginning to end.

On the whole, I liked the game quite a bit, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it was amazing. The Last Remnant certainly has its flaws. However, I didn't find them to be enough to ruin the experience. I can see why some people never warmed up to the game, though, because it's an RPG where you have to love the battle system in order to enjoy the game. If it's not your cup of tea despite playing the game for several hours, it's probably time to bail and look for something else.

Krater Gameplay Impressions (PC)

Mr. Nash has been fiddling around in the beta for the tactical RPG, Krater, that is due out on Steam later this week.  In this video, he gives some early impressions of the game.