- Joined
- Jan 30, 2018
After taking a break from it from it I managed to finish it today.
- While the factions that you helped out do lend a hand during the final dungeon they're only actually helpful if you're going in guns-blazing. If, like me, you do the stealth route then they offer no help at all. Outside of that, though, your choices don't seem to much affect the endgame portion much.
- You do get different slides depending on your choices but looking at the collection of ending slides on the game's wiki they seem kinda binary. Mostly 'you made the right choice' or 'you fucked up there'. Looks like I made all the right choices via being neutral and finding compromises between factions.
- The ending seems to set up future content. The lost military ship sounds like potential DLC while the Earth going dark seems like sequel bait.
- There's technically a second route throughout the game: you can turn in Phineas extremely early on and have (I think, I haven't done it myself) Sophia (who otherwise isn't introduced until near the end) be the plot dispenser instead of Phineas. Unfortunately, this again looks like a 'good choice' vs 'bad choice' type of thing.
- Outside of the faction and companion quests I don't think there was any side quests I actually liked. Most just felt like your typical busy work - collect x, kill y, talk to z.
- ADA felt incomplete. Early in the game they seem to hint that there's something unique or off about her but nothing ever seems to come of it. Her dialogue tree never updated past the halfway point in the game for me.
- I'm fairly certain Ellie was meant to be a romance option and that she was designed with that in mind but then they ended up cutting that stuff near the end of the game's development. As such she has a lot less content than most of other companions -- her personal quest is like five minutes long compared to the long, game spanning ones of Parvati and Vicor or even Nyoka's shorter but still lengthy one. Ellie's dialogue tree is also somewhat sparse compared to the others. Felix seemed to have suffer from the same fate. I wonder if they'll re-introduce it as DLC. I'm curious if the rather vocal disappointment of Deadfire's romances played a part in this.
- The ship events between party members were amusing and a nice touch but there only seemed to be like ten of them, so they got repetitive. KotOR II: Sith Lords had similar events on the Ebon Hawk.
- The flaw system is re.tarded. Taking substantial stat loses in return for a single perk point is really shitty design. Perks aren't at all interesting and with the max level cap being 30 you'll get 15 perk points to spend, which is more than enough to get everything you want.
- Equipment and loot never gets any better. Outside of the science weapons (of which there are only like five or so, which are largely just gimmicky) you'll probably see every weapon the game has to offer by the time you finish up Edgewater. The handful of unique weapons are just slightly buffed regular weapons that you can't mod.
Between the very simple gameplay mechanics, the straightforward and bland character system, the horrible loot, the disappointing exploration, and some missing content I have a feeling this was another incomplete Obsidian game. The difference here being that they've gotten a lot better at stitching together what they did complete and hiding the unfinished parts, especially compared to Sith Lords, Alpha Protocol, NWN2, and even New Vegas.
Maybe after a year of patching and DLCs this will be a better game but right now I'd easily rate it as a 6/10. As a whole I found it disappointing and underwhelming. Obsidian was really good at supporting Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2 for roughly a year each, constantly polishing and updating the gameplay mechanics, adding in new content, and releasing DLC. Microsoft might want them to focus on a new project for them, though, so who knows.
- While the factions that you helped out do lend a hand during the final dungeon they're only actually helpful if you're going in guns-blazing. If, like me, you do the stealth route then they offer no help at all. Outside of that, though, your choices don't seem to much affect the endgame portion much.
- You do get different slides depending on your choices but looking at the collection of ending slides on the game's wiki they seem kinda binary. Mostly 'you made the right choice' or 'you fucked up there'. Looks like I made all the right choices via being neutral and finding compromises between factions.
- The ending seems to set up future content. The lost military ship sounds like potential DLC while the Earth going dark seems like sequel bait.
- There's technically a second route throughout the game: you can turn in Phineas extremely early on and have (I think, I haven't done it myself) Sophia (who otherwise isn't introduced until near the end) be the plot dispenser instead of Phineas. Unfortunately, this again looks like a 'good choice' vs 'bad choice' type of thing.
- Outside of the faction and companion quests I don't think there was any side quests I actually liked. Most just felt like your typical busy work - collect x, kill y, talk to z.
- ADA felt incomplete. Early in the game they seem to hint that there's something unique or off about her but nothing ever seems to come of it. Her dialogue tree never updated past the halfway point in the game for me.
- I'm fairly certain Ellie was meant to be a romance option and that she was designed with that in mind but then they ended up cutting that stuff near the end of the game's development. As such she has a lot less content than most of other companions -- her personal quest is like five minutes long compared to the long, game spanning ones of Parvati and Vicor or even Nyoka's shorter but still lengthy one. Ellie's dialogue tree is also somewhat sparse compared to the others. Felix seemed to have suffer from the same fate. I wonder if they'll re-introduce it as DLC. I'm curious if the rather vocal disappointment of Deadfire's romances played a part in this.
- The ship events between party members were amusing and a nice touch but there only seemed to be like ten of them, so they got repetitive. KotOR II: Sith Lords had similar events on the Ebon Hawk.
- The flaw system is re.tarded. Taking substantial stat loses in return for a single perk point is really shitty design. Perks aren't at all interesting and with the max level cap being 30 you'll get 15 perk points to spend, which is more than enough to get everything you want.
- Equipment and loot never gets any better. Outside of the science weapons (of which there are only like five or so, which are largely just gimmicky) you'll probably see every weapon the game has to offer by the time you finish up Edgewater. The handful of unique weapons are just slightly buffed regular weapons that you can't mod.
Between the very simple gameplay mechanics, the straightforward and bland character system, the horrible loot, the disappointing exploration, and some missing content I have a feeling this was another incomplete Obsidian game. The difference here being that they've gotten a lot better at stitching together what they did complete and hiding the unfinished parts, especially compared to Sith Lords, Alpha Protocol, NWN2, and even New Vegas.
Maybe after a year of patching and DLCs this will be a better game but right now I'd easily rate it as a 6/10. As a whole I found it disappointing and underwhelming. Obsidian was really good at supporting Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2 for roughly a year each, constantly polishing and updating the gameplay mechanics, adding in new content, and releasing DLC. Microsoft might want them to focus on a new project for them, though, so who knows.
