Pillars of Eternity

Finished Pillars of Eternity! This was a game that I had bought so so long ago, played a bit, stopped, started a new character, stopped, started a new character, stopped so many times that I almost forgot about it. Eventually though I decided that this was the time to finish it, and so it was!

I’m glad I did since I had a (mostly) great time with it! I like CRPGs and never remembered why I never got far with this one (turns out it was just life things happened, learned after I checked the dates of my last saves).

I probably won’t go too indepth, but I really liked the world building and setting. The initial draw with the idea of the Hollowborns was really cool in addition to the way that you got introduced to new and newer areas. The initial companions you meet (Aloth, Durance, Eder) were also really good and both Durance and Eder were main stays in my party for the rest of the game.

Something the game I felt excelled at was having character interactions between party members at opportune times. Stuff like Eder riffing off of Durance, or Maneha interacting with Pallegina never felt forced or missing when interacting with other NPCs, they just occurred naturally which I appreciated. Their companion quests were also long enough to feel like I was helping them with a conflict while not being too long that they felt like they were too short.

The biggest flaw of the game for me personally speaking is honestly the combat/gameplay. I always had problems with pathing and the AI for party members felt too uncontrolled for me to enjoy. I personally felt Dragon Age Origins did this much better, but I really liked the Cipher and Chanter classes, and thought that the way they balanced rests and encounters was pretty interesting. The other issue I had was some enemy encounters just felt like a slog of a huge number of enemies to fight through, and with some party members needing lots of micro and some not, it felt like a chore to get everyone to do what I wanted them to do.

Overall though, fantastic game! I’ll probably take a break before I start the sequel, but I’ll get around to it.