Pillars of Eternity
See you fantasy cowboy
Why
- Well written & voice acted
- A gigantic, crunchy CRPG to sink your teeth into
- Turn based mode! Very cool they went back to add it
Why Not
- You don't have 100+ hours to sink into a single game
Impressions
This is absolutely a game I would've burned 100+ hours on back in my days of gaming freedom, but with a wife and soon kids I do not have 100+ hours to burn.
Right from the start, Pillars makes it clear you're in for the long haul. There's more lore in the character creator/opening area than most metroidvanias have in their creator's head, and the section ends with typically 'chosen one' things happening to you. But first there's a town to find where the brilliantly voice-acted Eder joins your party, along with Aloth the split personality wizard. Both seem like interesting characters, though almost 20 hours in the only one of my 5-man party whose story had been explored at all was still Eder.
The turn based mode is a welcome addition since I could only play on my Macbook and with minimal clicking to avoid antagonising The Wife, but it might slow things down further compared to real-time. There's clearly plenty of depth to it but at least on regular difficulty I bulldozed my way through with minimal interaction with that depth and without much challenge.
My sticking point was the first main city, Defiance Bay. Up until that point the game felt pretty manageable; sure there were some alternate paths to take, a castle full of people to murder as a party of 5 and endless forests to drag my camera around. But it was mostly fighting with a bit of story thrown in. Upon arriving in Defiance Bay I was inundated with world events, politics, guilds, side quests... basically the realisation this was not a game I had time for. If you do, and you like this style of game, probably give it a go. I enjoyed the bits I did get to play; the story was off to a promising start, combat was varied enough to be interesting and your motley crew seem likeable or at least entertaining.