Story in Pillars of Eternity revolves around souls. As a result of mysterious ritual our character becomes a Watcher: being capable of communicating with souls, both living and dead. He or she also gains power of extracting their memories from current end previous lives. To learn more about this gift we set out for a journey. In our travels we will meet several companions, ten times more enemies and perform many quests. You know the drill.
Game uses isometric view as its spiritual predecessors. Visuals are of course a bit better. Dialogs of important quests are voiced but you're still in for a lot of reading. Parts of game are played as text adventures where you have to choose course of action between few available options.
Although game has its own ruleset it is obvious which RPG devs took que from. Pillars of Eternity mechanics are heavily inspired by Dungeons & Dragons. For good and for bad. I was never big fan of how spellcasting worked in D&D. Unfortunately this is exactly how wizards operate here. You memorize limited number of spells from your spellbook and can use them few times per encounter. I hope there is a possibility to get a talent that increases this number later on in the game.
Pillars of Eternity use the same combat system as Baldur's Gate: real time fights with active pause. And let me tell you - this game doesn't hold your hand. Even on normal difficulty you will often fight many opponents at once. Some of them hit like truck, others can turn your companions against you. Winning will require utilizing all support and crowd control skills your characters have at their disposal. Sometimes you have to skip particularly hard encounters and come back to them later when you become more powerful. While exploring one of first maps in the game i came across a bear that one-shot my character.
World is pack with quests and often there is more than one way to complete them. Depending on which option you choose and how you behave towards NPCs you will gain reputations. As a character and as a party. Main protagonist acquires attributes like "lawful" or "reasonable". Meanwhile party as a whole gains standings (on friendly-hostile scale) with different groups in the game. NPCs are supposed to react differently to characters with different attributes. The same goes for groups. I'm still too early into the game to tell how much reputation system affects gameplay but this system certainly looks promising.
So far the biggest gripe I have with Pillars of Eternity concerns setting. It's very derivative and if you changed few names here and there it would be hard to distinguish it from Forgotten Realms. Then again that might have been devs' intention. As I mentioned before game it's supposed to be spiritual successor of oldschool RPGs.
Judging from reviews the game is getting we have on our hands on of the best RPGs of 2015. Some already called it an instant classic. I'm going to withhold with such high praises until I finish the game. There is one more reason why you should check out Pillars of Eternity. For every game successfully founded via kickstarter there are several sad stories like Godus by Peter Molyneux or The Stomping Land. It feels good to see that there is still hope for crowdfunded games.
Speaking of which - 2015 is shaping up to be good year for crowdfunded RPGs. In February we got Darkest Dungeon, one month later Pillars of Eternity. And that's not the end of it. Chances are good we'll get Shadowrun Hong Kong later this year. If only I had enough time to play them.
Pillars of Eternity use the same combat system as Baldur's Gate: real time fights with active pause. And let me tell you - this game doesn't hold your hand. Even on normal difficulty you will often fight many opponents at once. Some of them hit like truck, others can turn your companions against you. Winning will require utilizing all support and crowd control skills your characters have at their disposal. Sometimes you have to skip particularly hard encounters and come back to them later when you become more powerful. While exploring one of first maps in the game i came across a bear that one-shot my character.
World is pack with quests and often there is more than one way to complete them. Depending on which option you choose and how you behave towards NPCs you will gain reputations. As a character and as a party. Main protagonist acquires attributes like "lawful" or "reasonable". Meanwhile party as a whole gains standings (on friendly-hostile scale) with different groups in the game. NPCs are supposed to react differently to characters with different attributes. The same goes for groups. I'm still too early into the game to tell how much reputation system affects gameplay but this system certainly looks promising.
So far the biggest gripe I have with Pillars of Eternity concerns setting. It's very derivative and if you changed few names here and there it would be hard to distinguish it from Forgotten Realms. Then again that might have been devs' intention. As I mentioned before game it's supposed to be spiritual successor of oldschool RPGs.
Judging from reviews the game is getting we have on our hands on of the best RPGs of 2015. Some already called it an instant classic. I'm going to withhold with such high praises until I finish the game. There is one more reason why you should check out Pillars of Eternity. For every game successfully founded via kickstarter there are several sad stories like Godus by Peter Molyneux or The Stomping Land. It feels good to see that there is still hope for crowdfunded games.
Speaking of which - 2015 is shaping up to be good year for crowdfunded RPGs. In February we got Darkest Dungeon, one month later Pillars of Eternity. And that's not the end of it. Chances are good we'll get Shadowrun Hong Kong later this year. If only I had enough time to play them.
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