Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire

Best CRPG I've ever played. One of the best games I've ever played, in general.

For some context: I grew up playing Neverwinter Nights and Dragon Age Origins. I got back into CRPG's through Divinity Original Sin 2, however I didn't love how sandbox-y/sometimes silly that game felt. There was a focus on puzzles and metagaming, rather than immersion and role playing. I also LOVE real-time-with-pause. I played Baldur's Gate 1 + 2, which were fun but dated, and honestly some of the gameplay in Baldur's Gate 2 was so convoluted and obscure that it felt like the only way to enjoy the game was on a second playthrough once you know how to prepare for each zone. Pathfinder was buggy and had timers and kingdom management which turned me off.

Which brings me to Pillars 1 + 2. I played Pillars 1 and fell in love with the game. The atmosphere was perfect, the systems were fresh and felt designed around being a fun videogame rather than trying to take an existing system and make a videogame around it. However, I wanted more. I wanted more depth, more story, more exploration, more variety. Pillars 2 scratched that itch.

It's hard for me to think of this game without getting excited about all of the different ways you can create a character. It feels like there are infinite options, each one well thought out and on a standard difficulty, it feels almost difficult to go wrong! That's a huge achievement for this genre. The gameplay is a blast. Changing abilities to per-encounter from per-rest was a huge improvement alone, and should be the standard for CRPG's.

The story is wonderful. I read a lot of comments from Gamers™ who complain about moral ambiguity, or that the characters they want to support morally are not likeable enough. For me and for that reason, I found this to be one of the most honest depictions of colonialism/imperialism in gaming. It does not fall into a noble savage trope. It often goes out of its way to create friendly and likeable characters who support the colonial powers. It makes you think about your choices in the context of what is moral and ethical for the game world, not just for your favorite characters. I think it's bravely written and very interesting, far more interesting than a stock fantasy story. And yet, it doesn't subdue its fantastical elements which stays front and center in both gameplay and story.

10/10

I want to say that this is my favorite Crpg so don't expect an unbiased opinion.

Pros:
* The world building is just insanely good. It has different religions, different factions with well defined goals. You can easily tell apart people that have different cultural background by accent, clothing, aspect, ideals, etc.
* The lore is quite fascinating. From the moons to the gods, from the nobles to the poor, from the kith to wildlife everything comes together to make a whole planet feel alive.
* Love the multitude of builds you can do and most important how much this game supports wacky builds. Want a Barbarian that is super smart and has no str? Viable. Want a party of 5 chanters? Viable. want a Paladin that casts wizard spells? Easily done. Want to role play as Snow White and the dwarfs? Done!
* Gameplay is quite awesome. I really like the different spells and abilities and how cool the encounters are. On top of that you can choose to play the game using RTWP (real time with pause) or turn based.
* The atmosphere has this pleasant nostalgic feel to it. The art, environment, music, sound effects, visual all come together in a really soothing atmosphere.
* The music is really good and fits incredible with the world they created.
* The writing is witty and interesting. In my opinion Obsidian has the best writing in Rpg's and I am here to enjoy it. They are masters of the pen.
* Voice acting is amazing. While the voice actors are talented I want to give credit to the audio direction. The people working on it did an amazing job.
* Dragons!
* Companions! While they don't really fit with my own personality, the companions are awesome. They are well written, they feel real, they are not here just to suck me and feed my ego, they are here because they have a goal. I really like the fact that they actually have a personality and THEY are NOT player centric. They actually leave you if their interest is not the same as the player and that is AWESOME!.
* Font Ligatures!
* Love the feeling of progression and power that my character earns throughout out the story.
* Items are really interesting and have active abilities and not only boring passive dmg increases.
* Choices that impact the world.
* Quests can be approached from different angles and have different outcomes. (Fort Delight comes to mind).
* Contrary to popular opinion I actually really liked the main story. The big Adra Giant is fucking awesome!.
* The magic water fish bowl in Kahanga Palace.
* The idle animations!
* Queen Onekaza!
* You can setup the AI for your companions in combat and it's way to good.

Cons:
* Balance. Sadly balance is all over the place. It might be because I only played the game on POTD (highest difficulty) but the balance is bad. You either stomp everything or you get stomped. There is a decent amount of in between but not enough. Luckily Obisidian agrees with me and gave us a way to craft or own difficulty by using Berath's Blessing's / Magran's Fires.
* Pacing and encounters. You can achieve max lvl WAYYY before reaching the end game and this leads to a feeling like there is no progress to be had. Some encounters are badly placed (mostly in Neketaka). You can encounter random fights while exploring between districts that are to tough to beat and could lead to being stuck or having to clear the encounter in a way that you didn't want to.
* Queen's Berth Timed mission. (It ruined my first playthrough, Ruined I SAY!)
* Naval exploration. This is just a personal dislike so you can ignore it, but I HATE SHIPS. (The name is awesome though - The Defiant!)
* Thaos IX Arkannon is not in the game.
* Superbosses. This is actually a plus and a minus but I lean towards the negative because of how limiting the strats are on how to deal with them. Wish there were more flexibility to the fights.

As my CLEARLY UNBIASED opinions that CANNOT be wrong come to an end I want to finish by saying that I absolutely loved the experience this game offered me and I recommend it to anyone that has an inclination towards isometric crpgs.

P.S. Obisidian please give me Pillars 3 and Tyranny 2!!!!

It's taken me a long time to figure out what I feel about the Pillars Of Eternity games. The first one was rougher in so many ways, and I thought I hated it. The second one, this one, Deadfire, I thought I hated, too.
But with both of them, I just kept playing for some reason. All the way to the end. Multiple times. And then I realized that really, it's not that I hated them, it's that I wasn't really seeing them. I was seeing what I was projecting onto them.
Deadfire is the (slightly) larger of the two and most recent, so I'll put the review here, but the first one really is a masterpiece in its own right (ragged edges inherited from clumsy D&D paradigms and all). Both games benefit tremendously from a few judiciously chosen mods to either polish or expand or balance certain little things.
Mechanically, if there were ever a spiritual successor of the famous Infinity Engine RPGs like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale or the Electron / Aurora Engine NWN, it must be Pillars Of Eternity. Which should surprise no one, given the lineage of the designers and direct references. Absolutely luscious, gorgeous environments, tactical combat with just enough complexity and depth to be tactical, and a good basketful of companions to take with you, both games are the perfect archetypes of classical western RPGs. No one could say they have a right to comment about the RPG genre without having played these two.
And so now I'm gonna give critical comments about them.
Although the companions are diverse and usually have compelling personal stories and interesting or attractive personalities, they (almost all) suffer from a crippling problem: they're extremely "safe". They tell boringly predictable stories about tediously superficial drama and your relationship with them resembles nothing quite so much as being their unpaid therapist. This is a problem born of the demands of corporate-governed game design, and it's just tragic. Thus, the companions come across as shallow Saturday morning cartoons for tweens. For one example, Tekehu is an obnoxiously blunt token hypersexual himbo whose story mostly revolves around his privileged immaturity... but his confrontation with the exhaustively-demonstrated injustices of his culture consists of approximately three lines of dialogue in which he mopes that he wants you to hug him. So brave. A man asking for a hug. Such radical progress. What an amazingly non-toxic masculine - NO, he actually is just a shallow slut dumping his insecurities onto you and requires you to tell him what to think about it all. After a short exchange of melodramatic navel gazing and clumsy, rushed pleas to be your lover. Eder's major foible is that he's supposed to be "racist". Not racist like ... *racist* though. No no no. That would be too much. He's "racist" with quotation marks because he wants to pet the Orlans like he pets literally anything smaller and hairier than he is, and sometimes he says so and ohhhh isn't that super awkward and racist you guys?! Woooooow... If he were allowed to be portrayed as unlikeable or hateful somehow, that would be a line too far for the game's main character. Yes, Eder is the main character.
This pattern is one demonstrated through virtually every dialogue interaction. Your companions just can't help themselves but to constant provide vapid one-liners and trivial interjections begging for a giggle that's almost never deserved. Why? Because any sincere humor would be risky. The horror is mostly just a muddy old ruin where there's some stinky piles of poop laying around. There is one dungeon that attempts to really go all the way, showing how the lives of the underclass ~~slaves~~ workers rot in heaps where they were disposed in the dank bowels beneath the city. But this is not really a point ever remarked upon or brought up elsewhere. You see the environment, but it may as well just be a random undead-themed dungeon. Once you emerge from that place, none of your companions ever talk about it. There's a token throwaway comment about it in one dialogue when turning in the quest and that's about it. When you go to the island where the ~~slave~~trade is being conducted, this shrieking silence continues. The game obviously wanted to confront the ugliness and realities of colonial-era labor rights and industrialization, but absolutely and completely failed to do so. Except for the technicality that the plot designers took care to point out that no one in the Deadfire is actually "the good guys". But that was a perfunctory, bare minimum. The overall moral of this fable about the responsibility of divinity is handled in such abstract terms that it actually fails to have emotional impact because even the few moments during which the player is confronted by this plot point are presented in such a casual, nonchalant manner.
If you are able to understand the constraints placed upon a work of art like this by the accountants and executives at Obsidian, you can probably forgive them for not really exploring these things in the depth they would need. For one thing, it'd be rather expensive. The plot could easily sprawl far beyond its scope just to discuss and illustrate those things (the Watcher is able to subvert and weaken certain factions in some ways, but leading a revolution to liberate the oppressed and exploited slave-caste of Neketaka, for example, is just not possible).
Similarly, if you can overlook the now-well-examined frustrations of ancient D&D game design mechanics (Vancian spellcasting, I'm looking at you...), or if you can install a few mods to help alleviate the most egregious problems, you can fairly well enjoy the tactical combat while also having an immersive fantasy life experience. The multiple difficulty settings allow you a great deal of power to determine the degree and type of difficulties you face.
Perhaps the only fault that truly is the responsibility of the game developers (rather than their managers, marketers and financiers) is that the character models are... ugly. Especially if you want to wear robes.
Last notes: don't use the turn-based mode. It was added eventually just to satisfy some loud, toxic voices of their playerbase. Mechanically, it is absolutely not balanced (since the fundamental design of your action economy being affected by your choice of equipment just goes out the window), and is simply not necessary, either. And use a mod to get rid of the absolutely stupid non-party-friendly AoEs. Yes that will make you "more powerful", but in practice it's only a quality of life improvement.
These many years later, the Pillars Of Eternity games are both masterpieces of their genre, only surpassed by the more modern Pathfinder games by Owlcat.

The best written story I have seen in any game.
You have to make choices, and there is no clear good option. By helping someone and trying to do what is right, you will always hurt someone else.

Surprisingly great
Pillars of Eternity I
The first game was a good game for me, however it had a huge BUT, it was annoyingly boring after several dozen hours.
For me, the were two main problems:
• Lack of interesting events over a time
• Lack of voice acting and overwhelming amount of text
Pillars of Eternity II It is a lot better than the first one.
I loved the world
• I finally understood what was happening during the Saint War (major event in POE I)
• I was captivated by talking to the Gods
• Neketaka (the main big city) is an enormously interesting location
• Side quests are very good and they have several different outcomes
I loved the text
• The text is much shorter, Thank God!
• Everything is fully voiced, and voice acting is reeeeeally good
I loved the combat
• Real-time combat is much-much better than in the first game, I finally understand what is happening on the battlefield
• The game has a turn-based mode, and though you can't switch modes during a fight you can change them via the command console, just type:
SetTacticalMode RoundBased for turn-based combat
SetTacticalMode Disabled for real-time
Unfortunately, I dislike the open world
• It has no markers! I have to come back on all Islands to know if I missed something or not, It's ridiculous!
• It would be better if the game had the same map structure as the first one, location exploration would be so much interesting
And I find the main plot controversial
• It's interesting, yes, but it's too short and isn't tied to side quests unlike Baldur's Gate 3, for instance
• I do not mind the ending, though it's a bit too hasty and has a cliffhanger. The good part is I still feel the weight of my choices, so I remained satisfied
All in all
The game is great. It's not perfect, nevertheless, It's a solid role-playing game with many choices, outcomes and captivating stories.

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is a masterpiece in Role-Playing game genre.

Having spent over a hundred hours immersed in the world of Eora, I can confidently say that Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is not only a stellar sequel but a significant improvement over the original. Obsidian Entertainment has truly outdone themselves with this gem, refining and expanding upon every aspect that made the first game great.

A living, breathing world, the archipelago of Deadfire is vibrant and teeming with life, offering a diverse array of cultures, landscapes, and ecosystems. The open-world exploration feels incredibly rewarding, with each island presenting unique challenges, stories, and secrets waiting to be uncovered. The dynamic weather system and day-night cycle further enhance the immersion, making Deadfire's world feel truly alive.

With enhanced combat and customization combat in Deadfire, it is a solid improvement over its predecessor. The introduction of multiclassing adds a new layer of strategic depth, allowing for endless character build possibilities. Whether you prefer the brute strength of a Barbarian combined with the finesse of a Rogue or the mystical prowess of a Wizard paired with the healing abilities of a Priest, the choices are vast and impactful.

With rich storytelling and meaningful choices, Obsidian's storytelling prowess shines brightly in Deadfire. The narrative is gripping, filled with complex characters, moral dilemmas, and branching storylines that truly make you feel like your decisions matter. The companion characters are richly developed, each with their own unique backstories and personal quests, adding layers of depth to your party dynamics.

With stunning visuals and a visually improved UI, Deadfire is a feast for the eyes. The detailed environments, character models, and spell effects are all beautifully rendered. The user interface has also seen significant improvements, with a more intuitive and streamlined design that makes managing your party and inventory a breeze.

The game's audio design is nothing short of spectacular, it's a truly immersive audio experience. The voice acting is top-notch, bringing the characters and dialogue to life with emotional depth and authenticity. The soundtrack, composed by Justin Bell, is a beautiful accompaniment to your journey, perfectly capturing the mood and atmosphere of the various locales you explore.

In conclusion Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is a masterclass in RPG design. It takes the foundation laid by its predecessor and builds upon it in meaningful ways, delivering an experience that is both familiar and refreshingly new. Whether you're a veteran of the series or a newcomer, Deadfire offers an adventure that's well worth embarking on.

don't play this game. it will make you want every other rpg to have this level of care poured into it's story, world and character building. and high expectations are not it in this economy. (ignore everything i said and buy it)