Pillars of Eternity 2 Deadfire Critique

Watching and playing 3 years later with game version 5.0 the plucked fruit quest still bugged for me... Importing went wrong with Pallegina too. Still, I very much enjoy the fights with the added turn based option. Though many things are questionable (Why is the majority of the people in power female? Even Berath swapped genders.) PoE 2 is a better game than the first title.

I think AI mode is an essential addition, even for some fans of the old Infinity Engine games. I enjoyed the BG trilogy and, even though I didn't 100% click with the gameplay, it was manageable because a) a well-built CHARNAME can do all the heavy lifting & b) spells are big effects that you're not meant to spam constantly. In Pillars/Pillars 2/Tyranny, neither of those are true, which vastly increases the amount of micro, even compared to the old Infinity Engine games. Worse, the party AI in Pillars 1 was braindead, worse than BGEE.

i had to watch 10 reviews before i found one competent (yours). thank you!

This game is awful, in almost every way. It's like they fired all the talent from PoE1, and replaced with a bunch of diversity hires, who wrote with a political agenda. And I really don't understand why they changed so many of the mechanics, and foundations from the first game.

The addition of romances should have been a red flag for all. This game was written by children. A bunch of angry females, with blue hair, and nose rings. Hell, even most of the noticable NPCs in positions of power were female.

Even the artwork, the comic book parts, looks like it was drawn by street artists. It looks too 'new age' for this setting.

Great critiques, great channel, great insight. Thanks for sharing.

Was I the only person who found this game difficult? -.-

These videos are great, and I love the depth of your criticisms. I actually disagree with a lot of your opinions on writing and characters, but you’re videos are still a lot of fun to watch despite this. Keep it up!

The load screens r killing me

thoughts on story timestamp?

Pillars of HBO

Current game developers live in some fantasy world where the majority of people are bisexual or gay. This seems to be the case in almost all current crpgs. One or two companion are straight and the rest are openly bisexual and gay and they hit on your character...

I miss when games were made by D & D nerds who wanted to make great stories instead of activists who want to shove their political ideology down our throats.

Gave me a woke vibe and couldn't finish it, can't believe this game is made by the same studio as Fallout New Vegas

Way to go, make the first game ridiculously hard and taunt the players with an achievement requiring a perfect solo run, and then make the second game piss ez.

the story is bloated woke and boring

My problem: both main quest and character quests felt very short. I went that's it? many times

Edit: looking back and seeing your analysis I know why I was so disappointed by the ending, why I remember first game more, and why I romanced Maia. Because she was the most chill out of the bunch

And I liked the exploration, the world, and actually the ship combat

I expect if I put a hundred hours into this game, that 75 of those hours will be spent on load screens.

Я посмотрел каждое видео, и это последнее.

Seems some people don’t think the pirate island hopping is fantasy enough. Y’all really want textbook medieval done to death rigid fantasy every single time huh. I love that as much as the next guy, and I do like pillars 1 over 2, but really a change of pace is pretty damn welcome in fantasy setting crpgs. It’s like bloodborne bringing gothic/cosmic horror to the typical dark fantasy souls formula. Or something like different Final fantasy entries branching out from typical fantasy setting. We need these kind of departures.

Just picked it up yesterday, now I don't want to play it, negative landslide here..... yall really know how to rain on a casual gamers parade. I'll never watch anything from this person again.

PoE is one of the best games mankind has ever created, I'd love to watch your critique on it, but you sounds so incredibly bored, it is just unappealing.

this one was much more interesting and playable than first game but still I had a lot less memorable time with this than with games like DA:origins and divinity original sin.

alot of stuff in this game was actually good but I had 3 major issues with this game .
1st being absurd loadings in big cities and I have a good samsung ssd , I never thought I would have most loadings and time waste for a 2D game more than other rpgs on HDD lol !I can't explain this one enough ,you just gotta play to see how much loading this game has inside big cities !it was a pity because those cities had some good places to explore .


2nd naval battles were designed in a super boring way and if you wanted to skipped to man to man battle there was huge spikes during that in the last update so whatever you chose ended in a shit show called naval battle !


3rd problem also rise from last update ,you can't actually use any potion in this game if AI is on ,it sounds minor but imagine they just left this game at this state ,potion/item using completely bugged lol kinda made me feel they just wanted to make a mediocre game and be done with it
also graphics were just too bad ,DA:origins did not have best graphics either but still miles ahead of pillars 1&2

Almost impressive how bad all the company's are in both games

I played with no bugs today all fixed and also was hard since I’m kinda bad, so the game was pretty lol

If we were to take something from the classics, Morrowind and Baldur's Gate in particular, is that you should voice only the things of importance, making sure the VA is quality over quantity. (even if it means same amount of work is being done in repeating one line or hiring the right man)
Invest in a few wonderful harmonic songs for the starting area and menu. Dialogue for the few characters you start with should be memorable.
(Imoen, Jiub, Minsc&Boo, Jaheira, Yoshimo... , Azura, Socucius Ergalla, Caius C)

Voicing every line was definately overkill for me. Especially since size comparison: BG/Morrowind comes as a 1GB install, Deadfire? 44GB.
You need 3 GB to install a classic, but 100-120GB to install Pillars of Et.:Deadfire (50+70 in folder)
Morrowind has more lore and text and open world, unique Enchanting system/Soul Shards. BG2 has a tragic villain, class and spell combinations, a perfectly reasonable antagonist.

i just wanted this game o be longer.

Where the hell is my comment from yesterday? Anyway... Talking about sex, "adult themes", and sexual deviancies in a fantasy game all the time, isn't mature, but immature. We play these games to get away from these tired themes, that the far-left tries to force upon us everywhere nowadays. Fantasy games, books, movies are entertainment and escapism. Those that try to push and outdated ideology, such cultural Marxist propaganda, should be labeled as such, warning the buyer in advance. At least crowdfunded companies should understand this.

Yea I also just auto attacked thru. Same with the first. Rapid shot and there is a bow on an island that shoots magic missles as well and suddenly you just auto thru without paying attention.

the whole story sucks...rampant atheism, gods were created, an atheist paladin, spells have no unff, ..forget the bugs...the idea that you must always invent...most of the times suck...if its not broken dont change it just copy it forever

Someone was REALLY horny while writing the dialogue for this game.

First game overdid fan appeasement, this one overdid industry appeasement, then : )

Love the video
Can you turn the sound up?
Thx for the awesome insights!

I never knew it was this rough. I played early this year and I haven’t had any of this so props to the devs for fixing it

You wanna hear dos2 terrible theatre voice acting with awful jokes!!!

I love this game, spent 100+ hours in. But there depth of class development is not good enough comparing to BG2 or Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Good game, but I would not replay it after seeing the ending.

To be honest, I think Obsidian made game too much as something they wanted - while playing I don't feel any real agency, more like Watcher is a tool of the gods/factions - like they wrote the story for their beloved NPC and then added player character as witness.

i dont agree when u said that adding voice acting is a waste since point of gaming is immersion and when u can put a voice to a charter in ur head its always a welcome change my first crpg was disco elysium and it was all voice acted and i loved it since then i have tried playing many crpgs but lack of voice acting is a huge turn off for me since english isnt most peoples first language and it take way more focus ane energy and time reading heaps of text than to listen to dialog

I'm that guy that much prefers fully voiced games, as long as the voice acting is good.... enough. I like the narrator in this title. It's no Baldur's Gate 3, but still good.

I remember on release for the Xbox it was completely unplayable. Played it on steam with a few issues but it wasn't terrible. My single biggest problem was that the game just felt kind of meh. For some reason it didn't quite hook me the same way pathfinder WOTR or BG3 did.

game was dogshit same as 1st part ton of filler text boring plot chaotic combat to much filler crap every npc was like you talk with wikipedia...if they make part 3 they should name it pillars of boredom..game for true old farts

I'm so disappointed in this new version... So dissatisfied 😢

My first impression was it is a story mostly for clerics or paladins. Incompetent gods constantly making us lackey of their failing schemes & squabbles. Also: I played a Spellblade (Assassin + Blood Mage), loot and self-empowering matter! 🤣

Bottom line. Dumpfire absolutely sucks. Thanks.

Why is this guy's voice like ASMR? He's like whispering... WHY

People expect voice acting in games these days which can create a quandary for devs of these types of games which don’t really suit it. They don’t want to lose potential new fans by not including it even when it provides not much added value to old fans of this type of game.

This game is like imagine work/wife/party what you always wanted… first impressions is like wow in any aspects, can’t be better but … suddenly I stop played, feel bored and still can’t logic answer what exactly done that… like eat tasty cheesecake and being after sleepy because sugar in blood.

Can fart in a chicks mouth, 10/10

A bug prevented me from leaving my ship. And I realized I didn't care. I really liked the first game, but couldn't care about this one So yeah, I'm stuck in my ship forever and that's fine.

In defence of the Pirate Motif: There is an entire Pirate Faction, complete with Stronghold and Pirate Queen that the Player can side with, many associated quests, 2 Pirate Companions and the general aspect of being able to Roleplay a Pirate in an appropriate setting.