Pillars of Eternity

[Feo Takahari]

AKA Baldur's Gate: the non-D&D edition.

Seriously, if you liked Baldur's Gate, it's exactly the sort of old-school throwback meant for you. If you didn't like Baldur's Gate, it has a new setting and cosmology (lots of focus on reincarnation here), a much more balanced combat system, and a kitchen-sink approach to classes, weapons, and monsters. (This is the only game I've played that both has a dedicated wizard class and has no restriction against giving them greatswords.) I'm not very far into it, but it seems pretty cool so far.

 

[Ophiucha]

My husband backed this when it was on Kickstarter. I didn't get too far into it before I was swept up in The Witcher, but I loved what I did play of it. Lovely looking game for the style, particularly the lighting effects, and some of the companion characters are really fun to have around. And it's suitably tough, too. I definitely enjoy a game where a difficulty increase doesn't feel easy, or transparently cheap.

Also, I love any game where I can play a lady dwarf.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Now that I've actually beaten the game: that ending twist. Holy cow, that ending twist. I can think of at least two Mythic Scribes posters who would probably find it offensive, and that's not necessarily a bad thing! It doesn't preach at you, at least not besides the ideas the characters themselves discuss and argue--it just serves up the situation and lets you evaluate it.

Come to think of it, that's a good summary of the whole game: it presents the situation and lets you evaluate it. It's not completely free of the dreaded Karma Meter (you know you're an ass if you rack up Cruel points), but a lot of your choices aren't about good versus evil. They're about what you think is right among options that are each "good" in their own way, and the game won't try to shame you for thinking freely. This air of neutrality also helps it handle sensitive subject matter that other games would have struggled with, neither flippant nor lurid, just showing what makes sense for the world and the story.

On characters: Eder is a bro, plain and simple. Durance is obnoxious and his personal quest takes forever, but I can see now what the writers were doing with his character, and the payoff is magnificent. The Grieving Mother is so aggressively female that I'm amazed she could be written in such a male-dominated genre, and while I wouldn't say I like her as a person, I greatly enjoyed completing her arc. Hiravias is funny in some of the same ways Durance is annoying, Kana would be a lovable doof if I could figure out how to use him properly, and I don't really care about the other three.

Combat's the weakest bit, but still fairly solid. I felt like it was too chaotic for proper tactics--with awkward pathfinding, no way to change the aim of AoEs while casting, and a long cast time for even "quick" spells, I always had a hard time hitting targets and not hitting allies, and a harder time healing injured allies before enemies could finish them off. I wound up making most of my party ranged attackers just so they wouldn't get in each other's way.

If nothing else, I will commend it for being way better balanced than Baldur's Gate. You probably need a priest somewhere in your party, but none of the classes are super overpowered or totally useless. Abilities are pretty balanced, too, although petrifying still breaks the game in half. (Say goodbye, obnoxious bonus boss that two-shots most of my party at max level!) The only thing I wish for is more balance among weapon types. You'll have a much easier time finding a great Flail or Sceptre than a great Club or Blunderbuss, which sucks for characters like Eder who focus on sub-par weapons.

Overall, I'd give it 9/10. It's the Baldur's Gate game the D&D license wouldn't permit, the Shin Megami Tensei game Atlus would horribly butcher to make everyone into crazy extremists, and one of the few games where preventing a fight with wise choices is more satisfying than winning the fight.

(Protip: do not dumpstat Resolve like I did. You're an RPG hero. You should have Resolve coming out your ears.)