[...]I was rather busy and what little time I had I devoted to finishing this game. And finally I did, with what is probably a record breaking completion time of 168h 49m 38s (for 3/4 of the game I read absolutely everything: all the dialogues, books, weapon descriptions, etc.). Now, everything has already been said about Pillars, so I'll just offer a quick outline of my impressions:
Gameplay
- an interesting, yet way overthought character development system; on the one hand it proved to be really flexible and allowed you to experiment with various builds, yet on the other, because of the overeagerness in the balancing™ department, it wasn't very rewarding - where there is no punishment for failure, there can be no reward for success;
- combat mechanics were mediocre at best and deeply flawed at worst; could have been saved by good encounter design;
- which, unfortunately, was for the most part rubbish; as a result, while playing on Hard, the only difficult fights I recall were some Shades and Shadows at the beginning, that overwhelmed my 3-man party with numbers and could teleport to my mage and the Adra dragon (I steamrolled over the other dragon and the final adversary);
- I liked both the interface and controls , the AI, however, was occasionally utter crap.
Story
This is a funny one; I think it was the best element of the game and yet the most disappointing for me, because it could and should have been much more:
- I felt that they were too ambitious with it - trying to show us too much detail, tell too many little stories, hence the constant expositions; the absolutely worst thing about it, however, was having to read about (or sometimes listen to) the same things over and over again; they should've concentrated more on:
- the PC's personal story - it was presented in an interesting way: we first found out what the main character has to do, and then, as the story progressed, we discovered why: we learnt about his past actions, people he knew, his arch enemy and the relation between them and finally the PC's motives; and those motives became clear only at the very end, when you had all the information and could make up your mind; it is a peculiar feeling to hit the road in order to find out why you are hitting the road; whether intentional or not, it is an interesting narrative device... shame the execution wasn't very good. All those bits and pieces, the emotional ties, the political and cultural implications and most of all the personal story of the main character got drowned in the sea of exposition; a real shame;
- the overall story was also brought down by the omnipresent leftist ideology and propaganda, the best example of which was Sagani and her ridiculously nonsensical tribal society.
Presentation
- graphics were very good; I liked the style and for the most part the area design; there were, however, a few lacklustre maps;
- the music was overall adequate: there were a few dull pieces but also one or two that I'll add to my best game music of all time playlist; sound effects were OK.
To sum up, it might not seem like it, because I concentrated on the negative, but I think Pillars of Eternity is an above average to good game. I probably would have been disappointed with it, if it was a direct sequel to, let's say, Baldur's Gate 2 and was released in 2002. But we live in different times now and compared to the majority of products corporations are trying to sell us as RPGs these days, it's a great game. And it's true for all the recently kickstarted traditional RPGs*: without them, we'd be playing (nothing or) Dragon Age Inquisitions and bitching about the decline. So yes, I welcome this new wave with hope - I hope it's a humble but promising beginning of a new era, the Era of Incline.
*I understand from what little I played and hear from others that Original Sin is way above this level, but I'm still waiting for the EE, so...
