Pillars of Eternity Backers' Beta Impressions
Posted: 2014-10-11 07:28pm
After shelling out an amount of money that's downright embarrassing for a game, I now have early access to the Backer's Beta of Pillars of Eternity.
(no, there is no Mac edition yet- I'm running Win 7 with Bootcamp)
First of all, the Backers' Beta is NOT a complete game. It currently consists of one small village, some wilderness, and a dungeon. You are given an XP dump at game start to bring your character up to mid-game level, then given companions with such creative and exciting names as "BB Fighter," "BB Wizard," "BB Priest," and "BB Rogue." The number of quests can be counted with one hand. Having said that, impressions:
The Good:
The writing! It's been ages since I've played a game with a level of writing this good (it was Mask of the Betrayer and New Vegas, notice a pattern?). There are little flavor descriptions everywhere, NPCs are well done, even minor quests are well-written and have unexpected twists. There is grimdark, but it's so well done it seems organic, rather than contrived.
The reputation system had been redone, with many lines in dialogues now carrying tags (Aggressive, Benevolent, Rational, etc). The number of times you select these options is tracked, and checked upon in subsequent conversations (so, you would be able to succeed on an intimidate check if you've taken a number of Aggressive conversation choices, or get people to open up to you if you are seen as Benevolent, etc).
Chargen is detailed, and decently done, with you selecting race-subrace-class-flavor subclass (like your deity if you're a cleric or, your paladin order)- culture-background. Attribute system is based on the good old days of D&D CRPGs, skills are limited to Athletics, Mechanics, Stealth, and Survival. There are talents, that are akin to Perks. My only complaint with the Chargen is that Attributes are selected before Culture, which gives attribute bonuses, so if you want to fine tune them, you need to go back.
The Bad:
The combat. It's horrible. The game is generally unbalanced as hell- the chanter class dominates all, while certain builds are basically unplayable. There was a hilarious gameplay demo on Youtube where Josh Sawyer and Obsidian's lead programmer did a gameplay demonstration and had their entire party wiped out in the very first combat encounter. I'm proud to say that I've managed to avoid that with only half my party down. Other encounters, you just dominate. The game map is jam-packed with trash mobs that are either total pushovers or massively overpowering, which is especially mystifying as the game doesn't give combat XP. I do hope it's just a beta thing. There are two health systems- Health and Endurance. Endurance depletes rapidly in combat and characters are knocked out when it hits zero. It is increased by healing spells and potions. The other bar is health that depletes much slower and cannot be healed in any way other than resting. Dropping it to zero perma-kills a character. Resting can be done anywhere outside of cities and combat (dungeon resting is a go), but it consumes a tent to do so. Camera angle is either too high or too low. Oh, and traps don't really work yet. Neither do half the spells.
The Ugly:
BUGS! Bugs everywhere. This is an Obsidian game, and it shows. In the ~5 hours I've played it, I've encountered dozens of bugs, from audio playing the wrong sound in the dungeon (sloshing water footsteps while walking on solid rock), graphical ones like the game showing another party member's name and character sheet instead of the player character's (the stats are correct), to horrible game-breaking ones, like when a quest item failing to spawn. Also my fighter suddenly turned permanently invisible then. Yeah, it's that bad
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin
(no, there is no Mac edition yet- I'm running Win 7 with Bootcamp)
First of all, the Backers' Beta is NOT a complete game. It currently consists of one small village, some wilderness, and a dungeon. You are given an XP dump at game start to bring your character up to mid-game level, then given companions with such creative and exciting names as "BB Fighter," "BB Wizard," "BB Priest," and "BB Rogue." The number of quests can be counted with one hand. Having said that, impressions:
The Good:
The writing! It's been ages since I've played a game with a level of writing this good (it was Mask of the Betrayer and New Vegas, notice a pattern?). There are little flavor descriptions everywhere, NPCs are well done, even minor quests are well-written and have unexpected twists. There is grimdark, but it's so well done it seems organic, rather than contrived.
The reputation system had been redone, with many lines in dialogues now carrying tags (Aggressive, Benevolent, Rational, etc). The number of times you select these options is tracked, and checked upon in subsequent conversations (so, you would be able to succeed on an intimidate check if you've taken a number of Aggressive conversation choices, or get people to open up to you if you are seen as Benevolent, etc).
Chargen is detailed, and decently done, with you selecting race-subrace-class-flavor subclass (like your deity if you're a cleric or, your paladin order)- culture-background. Attribute system is based on the good old days of D&D CRPGs, skills are limited to Athletics, Mechanics, Stealth, and Survival. There are talents, that are akin to Perks. My only complaint with the Chargen is that Attributes are selected before Culture, which gives attribute bonuses, so if you want to fine tune them, you need to go back.
The Bad:
The combat. It's horrible. The game is generally unbalanced as hell- the chanter class dominates all, while certain builds are basically unplayable. There was a hilarious gameplay demo on Youtube where Josh Sawyer and Obsidian's lead programmer did a gameplay demonstration and had their entire party wiped out in the very first combat encounter. I'm proud to say that I've managed to avoid that with only half my party down. Other encounters, you just dominate. The game map is jam-packed with trash mobs that are either total pushovers or massively overpowering, which is especially mystifying as the game doesn't give combat XP. I do hope it's just a beta thing. There are two health systems- Health and Endurance. Endurance depletes rapidly in combat and characters are knocked out when it hits zero. It is increased by healing spells and potions. The other bar is health that depletes much slower and cannot be healed in any way other than resting. Dropping it to zero perma-kills a character. Resting can be done anywhere outside of cities and combat (dungeon resting is a go), but it consumes a tent to do so. Camera angle is either too high or too low. Oh, and traps don't really work yet. Neither do half the spells.
The Ugly:
BUGS! Bugs everywhere. This is an Obsidian game, and it shows. In the ~5 hours I've played it, I've encountered dozens of bugs, from audio playing the wrong sound in the dungeon (sloshing water footsteps while walking on solid rock), graphical ones like the game showing another party member's name and character sheet instead of the player character's (the stats are correct), to horrible game-breaking ones, like when a quest item failing to spawn. Also my fighter suddenly turned permanently invisible then. Yeah, it's that bad
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin
