July 11, 2023

🎮 Video Games

Last night I finished Pillars of Eternity.

The game has a great story, main plot, and sub plots. Admittedly I was confused about the main arc until the end, but I enjoyed all the milestones in it. The conclusion to the game makes me motivated to play the second game, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, and maybe replay the first one so I can do other quests and make different choices.

The least enjoyable part of the experience is that the combat got repetitive and became quite the slog. Apparently this was acknowledged as "filler-combat" by the game's Design Director, Josh Sawyer^[1]. Apparently Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire does a better job balancing this. This excessive combat was so egregious to me that I enabled the "Story Mode" difficulty so I could zip through combat and focus on the story.

The voice acting, music, and graphics are all good - especially for the time the game was originally released (2015). I really enjoyed the characters and variety and depth of the various party members.

I forget the date I started this game, but Steam says I logged ~145 hours on my playthrough, and my save file says 117 hours. This is probably 20-30 hours more than actual, since I accidentally didn't quit out fully and left the game running over night a few times.

My overall rating for this game is approximately 6.9/10

I'll buy and play Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, but not until at least next year, as I already own some titles in my game queue/backlog I'd like to work on.

Also today, I finished Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal which I've played a lot of but had shelved when Elden Ring came out. I only had a few hours left and I used the same "Story Mode" difficulty option to move through the remainder of the game efficiently. The narrative in BG2 was also good, but the graphics did not age well, even for the "enhanced edition".

Next up, is Valheim.

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