TychoCelchuuu

Project Eternity, Obsidian's Isometric Fantasy RPG

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I finished the game late last week. Although it feels a little like they were ready for the game to be done by the time I was that far in I thought the main plot was well thought through and it had a satisfying ending (although I did think it could have been slightly more challenging?)

Loved it overall. Hopefully the expansions won't be too long in arriving for another play through.

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Yeah, it's interesting to see how good the Double Fine Adventure is by seeing a documentary that's not quite as good. You get a better sense of the actual process and the mood of the team in DFA.

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Maybe it'll pick up in later parts but so far it's not anything special. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone to watch it.

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Wow, it's taken me 4 months to get from the beginning of Act II to something my save game files call "ENDGAME."

 

But before I jumped into the endgame, I wanted to finish up other quests, like the Endless Paths!

 

But I can't.

 

Because of the Adra Dragon.  I die before she's even onscreen.

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I recently started this game after finally pushing myself to complete BG I+II.  Reading through this thread, I suppose I don't have much to add, but wowzers! this game really hit the spot.  After playing those old infinity engine games, PoE seems to address pretty much all the problems I had with the archaic UI and AD&D combat systems.  At a certain point, each of the BG games turned into a slog and it felt like I was just trudging through a swamp of outdated mechanics to get to the story.  I feel like those old games don't really hold up, but are very interesting as historical curiosities, so what a joy that PoE feels so modern and refreshing.  It seems like a major coup that this game is so good.  It's as if 2015 is becoming the year of things that are way better than they have any right to be.  I wonder what obsidian will do next on the back of this success.  It seemed like things were pretty dire before the kickstarter, but I hope they keep working in this vein.

 

Maybe it's because I just played a bunch of 15 year-old games, but the maps have some really striking art and the way the lighting and animated effects play over it really help inject a little life in there.  So nice to have good pathfinding after watching characters continually walk into walls in the BG games.  It took hours of running around before I heard "You must gather your party before venturing forth."  One of my favorite things is to send my party across a map and hit the period key to just sit back and watch them take the shortest route in military lock step. 

 

I'm enjoying the combat, and maybe that's due to playing an updated version of the game.  The new system was pretty daunting at first, but it all seems pretty intuitive after some time. Positioning seems super key and in some of the more open environments a few enemies getting past the front line can just rip apart those ranged softies before I know what's going on.

 

Also, I've never cared much about simple text in games, but taking the time to read through everything really seems to pay off.  The big draw for me is the exploration and the art, but there is some great use of language here.  Reading a post mortem on BGII, one of the things they were aiming for was short dialogue segments so the player wouldn't have to click through a ton of lines, and PoE seems to totally break this in a fantastic way where the writing feels rich and enlivening rather than bloated and indulgent.  And the voice acting sounds great when it happens.  Not that it just seems well-acted, but that the audio quality is high fidelity.  Anyway, I wish there had been more of these games in the last 15 years and I'm probably just gushing because I played BG I+II so recently.

 

So, my TLDR review is PoE: currently a better game than BG I+II.

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I haven't played Eternity for months now.  I put it down after arriving at the large, multi-area city.  I want to play and enjoy this game, but the city is so thoroughly uninteresting that I'm having a difficult time pushing on.  Do things improve after getting out of the city?

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The city does feel empty in the beginning, and compared to other areas rather empty. But more stuff will happen. Part of the city is needed in this way to be used later in the story,

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Finished this the other night on normal.  Overall, I'm really pleased with the game.  I was really high on the game after the first half, having poopsocked it over a weekend, but in the last third I kind of ran out of steam and some of the more obnoxious parts of combat started to get on my nerves.  I appreciate that there's a slow mode, but things still seemed to change really fast before I could respond.  I'm probably just too old for real-time combat.  However, I do kind of want to go back through on hard with a new character to dig deeper into the combat system.

 

Also, while I really liked the dialogue, the way it was structured seemed odd.  I'd select a response that I thought would move the plot forward, but then I would get returned to the same branch until I chose the "right" answer that would actually progress the story.  As reductive as some of the BioWare dialogue wheels are, at least they match my intent pretty closely.

 

Also, anybody else hear the Lord of the Rings theme in the music?

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I'm probably just too old for real-time combat.

 

Me, too.  I started Shadowrun: Hong Kong after finishing this game and just fund turn-based combat more satisfying.  I never thought I'd be one of those RPG players who had a strong preference either way!

 

However, I do kind of want to go back through on hard with a new character to dig deeper into the combat system.

 

Nearly all of my characters were ranged combatants, and from the Kickstarter updates it seems like they spent most of their time trying to get melee combat to work correctly.  So maybe next time I'll make some barbarians?  But I'll probably wait for the entire White March for that.

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I've almost finished it now.  Just need to clear out that endless dungeon before finishing up the main quest.

 

Did anyone actually use the crafting/enchantment system?  I completely ignored it.

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I've almost finished it now.  Just need to clear out that endless dungeon before finishing up the main quest.

 

Did anyone actually use the crafting/enchantment system?  I completely ignored it.

 

Yes; most of my weapons were enhanced with crafting.  You can't make anything dramatically better than you can find, though I took some mid-game unique weapons and upgraded them, making them just as good or better than the unique weapons I found later in the game.

 

I got to the end of the endless dungeon and couldn't win in a straight-up fight!  The game gives you other options, but I wanted to be tough for once!

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Yeah, I've used the enchant a lot, like mikemarino to update items that have a stat I really like, like the  2 sets of armor with "second chance" (free revive if knocked out), or anything that resists charming. That is the hardest part of some of the hard fights. The 10 vampires in raedric's hold, etc... 

 

I also used the stat enchant to try and keep different armors for dialog situations.

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I didn't bother patching the game as the patches came out on GoG (they remove them for some dumb reason) so I had to redownload the game and do a fresh install. I kept getting a Runtime Error when I tried starting it. The problem was that I once installed GoG Galaxy to try it out and it left a folder in the ProgramData folder. Pillars's runtime error was somehow related to that folder but renaming/removing the folder at C:\ProgramData\GOG.com\Galaxy fixed it.

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I had the same problem.

 

I finished it a couple weeks back, and enjoyed the story immensely.  I'm glad that I pushed through some of the less interesting mid-game content.

 

Has anyone played the expansion?  I'm thinking of waiting till both parts of it are available.

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Looks like I'll wait until then and decide whether I want to jump back in.  I didn't find the end of the main game super-compelling.

 

You discover that the gods don't have any real divinity, then are asked to decide which god's plan you want to follow.  Why should I give them any respect?  And if the end of the main game lowers its stakes like that, what can an expansion do?

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I think the expansion's story takes place before the game's main story ends, similar to BG1/Tales of the Sword Coast. I'm trying a new playthrough, maybe a cipher with not max strength isn't that bad anymore? Difficulty is set to hard, not POTD. Is anyone here crazy enough to try POTD?

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I think the expansion's story takes place before the game's main story ends, similar to BG1/Tales of the Sword Coast. I'm trying a new playthrough, maybe a cipher with not max strength isn't that bad anymore? Difficulty is set to hard, not POTD. Is anyone here crazy enough to try POTD?

 

I tried POTD in the main game, found it easy (but I didn't play very far, got bored with the combat and quit). The trick is to go to the inn and build a party of custom NPCs instead of those stupid suboptimal companions the game tries to foist off on you. Warning: POTD is not very interesting, enemies have so much health that you will quickly run out of per day and per encounter powers. You end up just trading basic attacks with the enemy (plus whatever your chanters are doing) and hoping your stats are good enough to win.

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The trick is to go to the inn and build a party of custom NPCs instead of those stupid suboptimal companions the game tries to foist off on you.

 

This is hilarious to me because the strongest part of the game is its writing, and most (not all) of the companions are interesting.  Whereas, the game mechanics are alright, but definitely not something that I'd seek out in and of themselves.  I'm quite curious to see how they implement the "Story Time" mode that they just announced.  If it's done well, I think it could be a significant improvement to the game.

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Wow, there's a lot of hate for the "Story Time" mode in the official forums.  The assumption is that it's just a super-easy mode.  That would be bit disappointing (the game isn't particularly difficult as it is), but I can see how implementing anything more sophisticated would be quite challenging.

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On hard with a cipher and the two party members you find in Gilded Vale I couldn't get to the end of the temple dungeon. I had to go pick up Durance and come back and even then I had to reload lots. How the hell do you fight the shades and shadows? They're immune to paralyze, all their defence scores are high. I probably fucked up with picking the mage spells on the level up :(

 

I like how you can respec/retrain all your characters at all inns for not a lot of money. Never tried making a fighter, turns out there's some cool passive abilites.

 

There's a new "multiclass" talent you can take that gives you the rogue's damage bonus when attacking from stealth etc. 

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On hard with a cipher and the two party members you find in Gilded Vale I couldn't get to the end of the temple dungeon. I had to go pick up Durance and come back and even then I had to reload lots. How the hell do you fight the shades and shadows? They're immune to paralyze, all their defence scores are high.

 

Yes, I don't understand the justification for this at all.  I have no idea how to fight shades at a low level.  I went to Defiance Bay first and leveled up as much as possible before returning to Caed Nua.

 

EDIT: Wait, I misremembered.  I trudged through that fight and then gave up on the next castle.

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