23rd June 2015, 7:13 PM
So I finally started playing Pillars of Eternity a few days ago. So far I REALLY love it; it really is like a new Infinity Engine game, after so many years! The Infinity Engine is my favorite RPG engine, so this is something I've wanted for a long time, and here it is. And it's a great game too, for the most part. I only have two issues with it, but I should say what they are...
First, the load times are obnoxiously long. There are often long black-screen loads before and after the screens with actual loading screens. It's really frustrating to have to wait so long just to go from one map to another, or into and out of buildings, or what have you.
And second, the resting system is overly cruelly designed, I don't like it at all. In Infinity Engine games, you can rest as much as you want. It's a key element of the game. But in this game you can't do that. You use up 1 campfire-supplies stock to rest while out exploring, and the number you can carry depends on your difficulty level. And of course you have to buy these at stores after you use them, unless you find them out in the wild. Worse, in Hard mode you can only carry TWO campfire supplies at a time! This is absurd and makes the game a lot harder than it should be. They really went all-in with limiting your rests and punishing you for taking damage, because the health system is a bit weird. So, you have Endurance, and when hit you lose it. If that reaches 0 a character is knocked out, and if all your characters hit 0 you lose. But if you win, everyone gets up and drains from their second health meter, Health, to refill Endurance. If a character with 1 health takes enough damage for their endurance meter to empty, they're dead forever, no resurrection, so if you've drained away all your health repeatedly refilling endurance, you really should either rest or retreat back to an inn. Resting refills health and endurance, but the number of times you can do is, as I said, is frustratingly limited. And spells are limited too, of course -- you can only cast a certain number of spells per level between rests, which makes mages frustrating because you can barely ever use their spells early on! Apparently later more spells might become per-encounter instead of per-rest, which would be good, but still, they really should have gone with a more D&D-like system here. The limited resting and health/endurance system is annoying and I don't like it.
Otherwise though, it's a really fantastic game so far. The graphics are beautiful, game well written and interesting, art great, gameplay mostly D&D-like apart from what I just described above, and more. I'm going to be playing a lot of this game, for sure.
First, the load times are obnoxiously long. There are often long black-screen loads before and after the screens with actual loading screens. It's really frustrating to have to wait so long just to go from one map to another, or into and out of buildings, or what have you.
And second, the resting system is overly cruelly designed, I don't like it at all. In Infinity Engine games, you can rest as much as you want. It's a key element of the game. But in this game you can't do that. You use up 1 campfire-supplies stock to rest while out exploring, and the number you can carry depends on your difficulty level. And of course you have to buy these at stores after you use them, unless you find them out in the wild. Worse, in Hard mode you can only carry TWO campfire supplies at a time! This is absurd and makes the game a lot harder than it should be. They really went all-in with limiting your rests and punishing you for taking damage, because the health system is a bit weird. So, you have Endurance, and when hit you lose it. If that reaches 0 a character is knocked out, and if all your characters hit 0 you lose. But if you win, everyone gets up and drains from their second health meter, Health, to refill Endurance. If a character with 1 health takes enough damage for their endurance meter to empty, they're dead forever, no resurrection, so if you've drained away all your health repeatedly refilling endurance, you really should either rest or retreat back to an inn. Resting refills health and endurance, but the number of times you can do is, as I said, is frustratingly limited. And spells are limited too, of course -- you can only cast a certain number of spells per level between rests, which makes mages frustrating because you can barely ever use their spells early on! Apparently later more spells might become per-encounter instead of per-rest, which would be good, but still, they really should have gone with a more D&D-like system here. The limited resting and health/endurance system is annoying and I don't like it.
Otherwise though, it's a really fantastic game so far. The graphics are beautiful, game well written and interesting, art great, gameplay mostly D&D-like apart from what I just described above, and more. I'm going to be playing a lot of this game, for sure.
![[Image: logo_bos_79x76.jpg]](https://www.tendocity.net/logo_bos_79x76.jpg){kind=logo}