Recent reviews by Terra_Ex

Probably best described as a non-linear, Danganronpa-esque open world walking sim with some collectables thrown in, all played to the backdrop of some great music that truly ties it all together.

There's a certain type of zen feeling as you're gradually exploring the island, finding collectables & clues, all the while peeling back the mysteries of the island/game world.

I have some nitpicks - the consumable blood gems being used for fast travel can get a little annoying towards the end if you run low on them, but there are some permanent buffs you can acquire to make finding collectables & traversal much easier, so it balances itself out for the most part. The trials all taking place at the finale of the game also gives the ending an abrupt sort of feeling, especially given the trials themselves are mostly open & shut cases provided you've gathered enough evidence; there's no real opportunity for any of the defendants to throw a wrench in your prosecutorial case against them, which is a shame given how lengthy and back-and forth Danganronpa/Ace Attorney's trials tend to be, you can't help but think the conclusion here would be a bit more epic if there were more of a showdown.

Overall, though; a lot better than I thought it would turn out, it's a really nice palate cleanser between other games if you fancy trying something different.

An immense, sprawling CRPG that continues building on Kingmaker's strengths, adding in mythic scale epic encounters and considerable replayability through player choice.

Act 1 is certainly the weakest part of the game by some measure, in terms of pacing and story build up. There's also a disproportionate amount of front loaded dialogue with companions & NPCs in your temporary hideout for such an early part of the game. Thankfully things pick up from Act 2 onwards as your character rises to power and becomes the focal point of the game.

Even on powerful PC setups, you'll see low GPU usage in the game's larger areas, the demon city of Alushinyrra being one such example, as the game is heavily CPU bound. This can become more problematic in RTWP mode as on top of the existing GPU usage issue, the veritable cataclysm of spell VFX you'll see going off simultaneously if you get into a big fracas will further exacerbate the problem, resulting in some nasty framedrops in the heavier encounters. The game needs some serious optimisation in these larger areas (and this is likely a big contributor to the console release's delay till later this year), personally I'd expect to see any such optimisations alongside a predictable "enhanced edition" release alongside the console debut. If you intend to play in RTWP, be aware this is an issue, even on beefier setups.

Tutorialisation is better than it was in Kingmaker, with the game drawing examples of why you're attacks aren't working from the combat unfolding onscreen and offering suggestions on how to overcome enemy defenses if you seem to be struggling.

Weapon diversity, a problem in Kingmaker, has absolutely been addressed in this game and you'll doubtless run into weapons of every category during a typical playthrough making it a lot more viable to vary up your weaponry.

Like Kingmaker, this is another fairly monstrous game in terms of length, Owlcat claimed it was shorter with an emphasis on replayability, I found it to be as long as Kingmaker (and with additional replayability on top). You'll need to set aside a fair chunk of time to get through it.

The Crusade side of the game (army management & battle layer) feels unfinished, but still servicable as-is. I'd be strongly tempted to disable the crusade system for any future replays but I would still recommend leaving Crusade Mode enabled for a first playthrough, be aware it's a significant timesink though.

As far as companions go, I found Wenduag, Daeran, Regill were the standouts. Camellia almost got there too. Arushalae was okay but I expected something more and Nenio added some levity to proceedings. Nobody was outright bad, at least, with each having their own personal stories that unfold over the course of the game and will branch depending on your actions/choices.

Ultimately, I found Wrath to be a fantastic CRPG once it settled into its stride (Act 2 onwards), while it's easy to place Baldur's Gate 2 on some untouchable pedestal, Wrath may well be up there with it when it's playing to its strengths. Particularly given the Mythic scale of the encounters in Wrath, the game gradually conjures up the same feeling of epicness you get at the end of BG2/ToB, as your own Mythic powers grow over the course of the game and more & more powerful entities start taking notice. I've only read up on how some of the other Mythic Paths branch out from each other, but even just what I experienced in my single Aeon run felt impressive, with one or two companions in particular having many variables at play in terms of how their quest line resolves; suffice it to say, you get a real feel that your choices are doing something as you progress through the game.

The game's only debatable shortcoming concerns the juxtaposition of its immense length and branching content, choosing which Mythic Path to follow can dramatically shape your playthrough and offer unique content you won't encounter on other paths, but at 100+ hours easily per playthrough, it's unlikely most people will have enough time to properly experience each unique path. One could argue a shorter game replete with this level of choice would allow more players to ultimately see more of the game as a whole. Of course, each Mythic Path could rather be looked upon as flavour, with the overall journey remaining the same for the most part. Myself, I prefer having a larger game, but it's something to keep in mind for anyone wanting to see everything the game has to offer.

The Expeditions series has long been a personal favourite of mine and with this entry it's seemingly broken free of its underdog status and achieved some recognition. Rome upholds and continues the traditions of the series; historical setting, tough encounters, resource management on the campaign map and interesting choices throughout. The game excels at what it sets out to do and is probably the strongest overall entry in the series. Hat's off to the developer, this was one that was worth waiting for.

It's another great entry to the series, albeit with more polish. If you like Rome, check out the rest of the series; they'd had me as a fan since Conquistador.

One of the best Warriors games I've played and hands down the best in terms of its story delivery and character development.

My only real dislikes about the game centre around its lack of an english dub and the problems brought about trying to read through multiple back-to-back subtitles while focusing on the action. To be fair, 75% of the time this is doable, however, in some of the later and more challenging stages, you can be facing huge numbers of enemies & officers, and will need to both actively fight them, read the subtitles and cross-reference any instructions/hints given through subtitles with brief highlights shown on the minimap. Now, if you have several officers all speaking one after the other and the action is pretty hectic, it is all too easy to miss a line or two. Thankfully the game does have a message log function in its pause menu, but this isn't really an optimal way to play, having to pause the action frequently just to check if the couple of lines you missed are important or not. Warriors has a sort of pleasing gait/zen feeling to it once you get into the zone, and so this problem can lead to you missing chunks of dialogue and having to go back to review them after you're back in a quieter moment. The Japanese VO is very good (nice to hear Kaz Kiryu as Hanzo), but like many people, when Koei decided to start cheaping out on the dubs (and making SW3 Wii-exclusive) I drifted away from the series as this reading subs/action gameplay issue isn't present in Dynasty Warriors. It was only recently I decided to try getting back into SW (big SW1/SW2 fan) since they were on a discount. Still, it's something Koei should think about; there's money on the table and they're keeping people away by not resolving this problem - I myself am a "lapsed" SW fan, who drifted away from the series pretty much solely due to the lack of a dub. By point of comparison, the likes of the Yakuza series pull this off because there is very little talking during battles, whereas here, there's quite a bit.

Battles are now woven into "multi-stage battles" which typically consist of 1-3 slightly smaller skirmishes before the main battle kicks off. There may also be optional battles that occurred at the same time elsewhere in Japan, and you can opt to tackle these as well. The non-optional battles allow you to accomplish certain tasks that will unlock stategems that can be used in later battles. For example, killing off a particular enemy officer can unlock a stategem to have your ninja impersonate the enemy officer in a later battle. These stategems allow you tweak/respond to aspects of the battle as it unfolds and add some additional to the encounters not seen in other Warriors entries. Gameplay is standard fare for the Warriors series; with this game building on SW4; Spirit of Sanada's combat system is fast, smooth and very satisfying thanks to the series' adoption of hyper attacks. I found the gameplay to be extremely enjoyable throughout, particularly seeing your characters grow stronger and gain more moves. By the end, Yukimura was an absolute beast. You also can upgrade your characters in several different aspects as well as customising their weapon to add traits, elements, skills, etc.

Between battles, you will spend time in one of several cities and can explore, undertake minigames and tasks and interact with other officers and NPCs. In this downtime you will find some of the weaker aspects to Spirit of Sanada too - the fishing & farming minigames are both fairly minimal effort in terms of their implementation; you'll do them once and then forget about them. Exploration mode allows you to explore certain locations, find crafting supplies, complete fetch quests and engage in minor encounters with a few enemies. Exploration & most of the quests offered by town NPCs become fairly rote and unappealing pretty fast and I found myself not pursuing that aspect of the game pretty quickly. You can get a sense that SoS was trying to broaden the ingame world in a manner similar to the failed DW9, however, Spirit of Sanada strikes a much better balance between the old and new styles. I liked the town exploration aspects, but wasn't so keen on the field exploration & tasks. There's one particularly long segment of chained tasks you have to do in Osaka which drags on a bit too long. It's nice to see the series experiment beyond Battle>Cutscene>Battle, and indeed, in some regards it feels like it's lifting some very light aspects from the Nobuna's Ambition/ROTK entries, which isn't a bad thing.

The story, told from several characters perspectives and primarilly focusing on the Sanada clan is without doubt the best storytelling in a Warriors game to date. While the likes of Dynasty Tactics 2 had strong appeal to me due to their large number of hypothetical branching routes leading to a variety of different non-historic endings, Spirit of Sanada has one ending and the game leans into this by getting you much more invested into the characters than it ever has before, it's somewhat reminiscient of Kessen (3 in particular) in terms of how laser-focused it is on the character drama.

Think back to any satisfying Warriors character/faction arc and then imagine what it would be like if you layered in more details, expanding the story with twists and turns and giving the characters time to grow and develop between encounters. That's basically SoS, while its implementation of downtime between battles isn't perfect, it gives it's cast scope & time to interact with each other outside of purely cutscenes and battles, and as such helps build your own attachment to them and the locations they're fighting over. Compared with previous titles, it's quite the rollercoaster when it comes to betrayals and character deaths; you're in for a long ride with this game (30+ hours) and while the replayability is in question, the story & characters really make this one easy to recommend, it's a shame that this game seems to have gone completely under the radar.

Somewhat surprisingly, it's also not too bad of a port job from Koei (yes, resolutions over 1080 are now supported) and I didn't have any controller issues during the game, also ran pretty much perfectly throughout my time with the game.

It's almost ruined early on by the addition of the monokubs, a collection of annoying little ♥♥♥♥♥ that spout utter drivel and inject themselves into every scene early on. BUT, their appearances and dialogue is toned way down when you reach the first trial and the game becomes much more in line with previous entries from this point onwards. It took me a long time to power through the early-game because I found the monokubs *that* annoying but in many respects, particularly game mechanics & presentation, this is the best Danganronpa game.

Presentation/art wise, it's excellent, finally breaking free from the portable originals of its forebears, class trials especially look better than ever.

Voicework is great across the board.

Be warned that the ending can retroactively ruin the whole series for you though.

The initial release of SAM was beset with a litany of issues upon release, especially if you were importing a save from the previous game; continuity errors, bugs & an apparent lack of things to do in the game all contributed to dragging down an experience people had looked forward to since finishing the original game years earlier.

I wrote up my initial thoughts on the game after first finishing it here: (contains spoilers) https://sp.zhabite.com/app/441440/discussions/0/2144217924394813103/

After a subsequent playthrough (numerous patches & content drops later) I can say the game has improved and has addressed many of the issues that plagued its release (to varying degrees), however I can only go so far as to state that it is currently moving in the right direction. In my mind there remains some work to be done before this game is a worthy successor to the original.

Your overriding goal throughout the game is to participate in a book tour and simultaneously finish writing your new book by the end of the tour. The core issue is the motivation for the player to engage in optional content still isn't really there - and this seems to be by design - as the successful author from the prior game, money is no object in this game. Moving from city to city has no barrier for entry and in general there are no real roadblocks to progression.

I'll draw a comparison to some other titles just to indicate why this is in an issue - I would liken this game to an epilogue chapter from a JRPG, Lunar Silver Star/Eternal Blue come to mind. I love epilogue chapters; they're great, they're quite rare in that they give you the opportunity to explore the game world after its been "saved" in a limited fashion; you can usually walk around and get info & updates from key cast members and find out what they are doing now the adventure is over. The key thing being that upon reaching said epilogue chapter, there's no more fighting, there's no more threat, all the various intricacies of the game are over and you're basking in the afterglow of a job well done for that final hour of gameplay. Another apt comparison would be to think of fanfiction that caps off the story after the end of a game - it's nice, it's warm & fuzzy, but there is no real plot progression, i.e: it's nice to have, but is it necessarily something fun to base an entire game around? For better or worse, that is what SAM feels like; an epilogue/continuation to a compelling story, stretched out into an entire game. That's the best way I can describe it. You're kicking back and chilling for the entire length of the game. As for whether that appeals will depend on the player, for me, even with the content updates and polishing, the game is still lacking in terms of its main narrative thread; there's nothing there pushing you along and by extension that renders the overall experience somewhat mundane. This could be argued to be by design - you've achieved your lifelong goal, what now? But does that really make for a compelling game experience. moreover, is it a worthy sequel to the original?

Unfortunately for me, this game makes me wonder if the original story was best left where it ended in ASM.

It's not all negative, the ending has some real work put into it but to describe it would be to spoil it. The artwork is nice, although the game's viewpoint is too zoomed out to really appreciate a lot of it, a toggle to play from a more zoomed in perspective would be appreciated. The start of the game likewise sets things up nicely too with a little prologue chapter, there's just *something* missing between those two points. I will note two things:
-The content additions that the developers have been adding since release have been moving the game closer to where it needs to be. For example, there are now new events on the tour bus, there's a date with your spouse and these additions are polishing the experience and moving it more towards being a worthy sequel - they are fleshing out and adding nuance to the overall experience. It's not quite there yet though.
-Character/Immersive mode - this is in an progress feature that basically allows you to choose between a silent protagonist or having a more defined personality (the PC will have additional dialogue beyond what you select in choices.) I am normally a huge fan of silent protagonists and vastly prefer that approach in rpgs, however, ASM's protagonist was more defined and the switch to silent here didn't work as well in my opinion. The "Character/defined" mode is still under development, but I experienced it during the date with the spouse and will say it was one of the few moments that made me feel like I was playing the actual follow up to ASM - the dialogue and interactions between the PC & spouse felt substantially improved during this scene. The exchanges and dialogue flowed much better here than elsewhere in the game. Perhaps when this feature is rolled out to encompass the whole game, it will the form the missing piece of the experience. I expect it will fill in a large part of what's missing in the game, at the very least.

As things stand, I would advise against fans of the original playing this, largely because it serves to mar the original by being an underwhelming follow up. I really wish this wasn't the case, especially given the lengthy development time & delays, but the conclusion of ASM simply felt more meaningful than this game's continuation.

There were many warning signs during the development of this game; Jill's redesign, the game supposedly being developed by a "B team", no Mercenaries mode and a rushed development schedule to name but a few, so this game's shortcomings came as little surprise to me as a longstanding fan from the PS1 original days. The game's got all the hallmarks of a rushjob thrown out the door to clumsily try and capitalise on RE2 Remake's success and fan goodwill. "Hey RE2 Remake was great, so RE3 Remake will be too, right?"

I'll do a rushjob, bullet-pointed review to match the game:
- Sound mixing often lacks the "oomph" of the RE2 remake. The terror of having Mr.X hunting you down with heavy, foreboding footsteps has not been replicated in this game (or at least sounds very poor comparatively on my 5.1 setup).
- The game shares RE2 Remake's problem of assuming you want to play with a controller even when you're using a mouse and keyboard, so expect your idle controller to be vibrating away happily until you manually turn it off
- Jill's new outfit is uninspired, thankfully an approximation of the original is available which looks much better and is more in keeping with the original.
- Encounters with Nemesis early on lack impact as he can be one-shotted by a single grenade.
- In 2020, particularly with RE2 Remake's Mr.X stalker framework having already been established as a proto-Nemesis, I was expecting a much more dynamic Nemesis with encounters that could happen more organically (think the alien from Alien Isolation). This was far from the case. I've no clue what happened during development but the devs definitely indicated early in development that this remake would be more open than the original (and presumably Nemesis would take advantage of this). The game is anything but open, so presumably something happened during development that caused plans to change. Nemesis has no stalker-mechanics like Mr.X from RE2, you won't hear Nemesis actively hunting for you - because he can't. His appearances are linear, scripted affairs, you'll always know when he's around because you're either in a boss fight with him or a brief evasion sequence leading up to cutscene/boss fight. Nemesis feels incredibly primitive in terms of what he can do outside of boss encounters. As the namesake of this game his systems should be an advancement in every way from what we saw back in the original game, but they really aren't.
- Nemesis has essentially been neutered and held back from what could have been his true potential to a series of scripted encounters, likely as a byproduct of babies whining about Mr.X "ruining" RE2 Remake due to his constant stalking the player through the police station.
- Nemesis' forms are more varied than the original, Jill has amusing quips to make throughout the game about this, but I felt he lost him iconic look far too quickly in this game.
- Voice acting of a high quality throughout with one or exceptions here and there.
- The game is as short as you've heard, I clocked in 5.30 hours upon finishing my first run and I wasn't rushing.
- The choice system from the original has been completely removed, the game is far more linear and streamlined as a result. It feels incredibly railroaded compared to the original due to these missing divergent paths, this and the missing Mercenaries mode harms replayability.
- Ultimately the game feels like a rushed cash-in, cynically hurried to market without a team that loves/understand what made the original great, chiefly to quickly cash in on fan goodwill towards the previous remake. Capcom may well be heading down the wrong path again

The game honestly is more reminiscent of the re-imaginings of RE found in the Wii Umbrella/Darkside Chronicles titles -a condensed, streamlined compilation of highlights- rather than an homage and elevation of the original game. It's like they started making a good game and for some reason just cut a bunch of stuff out so it could be thrown out the door asap. Wait for a sale, this isn't up to the standard of the RE2 remake. better yet, play the original, because this game sure as hell does not match up to it.

Many years ago Harvest Moon Back to Nature was released on PS1. Like many newcomers to this genre I initially scoffed at the idea of playing a farming game - it sounded far from appealing. I happened to acquire a copy of the game years after release and figured I would confirm my suspicions. Little did I know what an enjoyable little timesink that game would turn into. Formulating a routine that allowed you to water all your crops, care for your animals and make your rounds of the village became a way of life.

For many years to come, for reasons known only to them, the developers of Harvest Moon steadfastly refused to release a new iteration that came close to BTN. Either the crop fields were tiny or the game was riddled with performance issues, every new game floundered in some key aspect.

Years later, one guy set out to make a BTN spiritual successor and not only succeeded, but probably surpassed the original work.

I'm not going to go into how it all works; it's a Harvest Moon game with Rune Factory's combat essentially and it blends everything together extremely well. If you've never tried a game in this genre before I can think of no better place to start, but be warned - it is very addictive.

This game stands as a testament to reaping much-deserved rewards after giving a fanbase what they want - do it or eventually someone else will come along and do it for you.

A true spiritual successor to the Infinity Engine games; not a statement I'd make lightly. I backed this on Kickstarter but waited a good while to actually start playing through the game; long enough for many, many patches & hotfixes to make it out of the door and ensure my first experience with the game was a good one. This isn't how I'd typically review a game but what follows is a summation of my general thoughts on the game back when I finished it in early 2019 (pre-Enhanced Edition). Prior to the Enhanced Edition releasing the developers sent out a survey to gather feedback with a view to improving the game and many of the issues & ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I encountered have seemingly been addressed, as such I've noted below any aspects that the EE has improved since my original playthrough.

This is a very long game, you get a lot of RPG for your money.
If you are a fan of the old IE games and have been disillusioned/disgusted/affronted etc by the direction of BioWare's output in recent years then this is the game for you.


As seems to be a trend, dialogue with companions/advisors is somewhat front loaded; specifically, there will be a plethora of topics to discuss with them when you first recruit them however the well will then dry up somewhat, romances not withstanding. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that companion personal quests are spread out and gated by main story progression, which does provide new dialogue and developments as the game progresses. Take care not to miss the numerous inter-party banters that only happen when camping on exploration maps, these do not trigger on the world map when camping so watch out for them. ***Supposedly addressed in the Enhanced Edition*** While these exchanges were often humorous, they are only ever two brief snippits from one character to another. There are no instances of extensive back and forths. This may be by design so as to not elongate the camping sequence, but it stood out to me as a possible budgetary limitation in the same way that Pillars of Eternity 1's banters tended to be 3 lines at max per banter. Not a dealbreaker by any means, and there are some lengthier post-camp exchanges between characters I've witnessed to be fair.

On the whole the game's writing is very good, with great characterisation & development across the whole game, I felt engaged throughout the whole game.

Toward the later half of the game, you'll start encountering more typos in the game text; "trough" instead of "through" makes a few appearances, which can be a little annoying. Not to be overblown here; for the amount of text in the game, the problem is very minor, but some of the text could definitely use another pass to catch these typos.

Not being a Pathfinder expert (any systems knowledge/assumptions I have came from the Infinity Engine games) the trickiest aspect of the game for me was the levelling system, specifically the feats. Many of these tend to play off and require another companion having the same matching feat (Coordinated Defense for example) however the game doesn't do a great job in making this information apparent to the player on the level up screen. So if I need to know if someone else in my team has Coordinated Defense before I buy it for Valerie, I have to completely back out of the level up interface and check out other characters' ability pages. Given that part of the feat system seems geared toward team synergy, displaying the character icons for companions with the matching ability would be a huge time saver. ***This has been addressed in the Enhanced Edition***

The game does attempt to recommend certain abilities based on your chosen class, however in some instances it wasn't readily apparent if a recommended ability would actually be a good choice or not. For example, I was playing a touch-spell focused Magus and the game constantly likes to recommend taking Point Blank Shot, which at first glance appears to affect ranged weapons. It's not clear whether the feat also affects ranged spells. I imagine most of this is second nature for those familiar with Pathfinder PnP, for those of us with less familiarity with the system nuances it was something of a rough edge.

I'd probably recommend newcomers start and stick with a more basic class for their initial playthrough. It's worth noting that the game does offer "premade builds" upon level up which spend points accordingly upon level up, though I can't comment on these having never used them.

Weapon diversity is a problem. For certain weapon types there simply aren't enough instances of said weapon throughout the game; Jaethal's scythes are a perfect example, Valerie had a +1 bastard sword for most of my game, etc. There's certain "gotchas" for some weapon types where if you make the mistake in specialising in a weapon and there's only a few weapons of that type in game, it's gonna feel like you wasted a point in that talent. ***This has apparently been addressed in the Enhanced Edition***

Turning to the DLC content, I'd honestly say the Season Pass is worth it based on the content of the Wildcards alone. This adds a new class, companions and associated quest; one of the more interesting characters in my estimation. I've only played part of Varnhold's Lot, but it seems to be a solid mini-module with choices you can "export" to an ongoing main campaign. I've yet to play through the latest DLC so I can't comment on that. Overall, given how much I was enjoying the main campaign, I was happy to put down the money for the season pass midway through the main campaign.

Overall, it's been an incredible game, there's very little that can compare to it in the past decade and it kept me hooked for a very long time. There have been many games claiming the Infinty Engine/Baldur's Gate spiritual successor mantle but this is one of the few that recaptured the feeling of playing those titles back in the day. The focus & pacing of the game is completely different but I really enjoyed where the story for this game ended up and the insane amount of time I spent on it was well spent.

It's an improvement on PoE1 in most ways but there are a few aspects that drag down the experience. For starters, this game is far easier than PoE1; when compared against PoE in both its initial release state and current day state, PoE2 feels much easier. Combat, at least on Classic / normal mode is largely a hands-off affair, at least it was for my team using standard AI setup for all 5 characters (Monk PC, Pallegina, Xoti, Maia, Eder). I'd recommend bumping the difficulty up if you are seeking a challenge (although it must be noted that the relative ease of the game does hasten your progress through some of the more middling content described later).

Ship combat is best avoided tbh, it's an unsatisfying and slow paced affair which largely exists to waste time and artificially pad the game's length. Ramming & boarding the enemy ship will get you through the encounters significantly faster.

There's a plethora of bounties to chase after, these involve you hunting down a named enemy with a shady reputation. The overwhelming majority of these encounters are easily winnable using the standard AI, again, this just seems to pad length artificially. These tasks form the "herb-gathering" quests of PoE2 if I'm to be honest as they're just so numerous and by and large easy to steamroll.

Graphics are excellent throughout, the lighting system in particular makes many of the backdrops look spectacular, hats off to the devs in this regard. The usage of some of the larger 3D models such as Eothas as a background element in some scenes are particularly striking.

Companion dialogues are quite front loaded, you'll be exhausting much of the dialogue early on, it's rare that companions will have additional optional dialogues to talk about outside of progression along their companion quest. As expected of an Obsidian game, certain companions are steadfast in their allegiances to particular faction, which can lead to some interesting end-game results.

Voice acting is solid throughout, nothing to complain of here except to note that the vast majority of narrated text is not voiced outside the intro sequence and key moments during the main questline. This is initially quite jarring when the narrator falls silent after the initial opening sequence.

Pleasingly, your player character is unvoiced, as they should be, and Obsidian have done an excellent job in allowing you to roleplay your character however you wish. There are always plenty of options to cover every conceivable response to whoever you're conversing with. Hats off again to Obsidian here, this game made me get far more invested in my Watcher than the original did.

It's also worth underlining that both the text & dialogue of Pillars 2 successfully escaped from the "dry writing" complaints that were rightfully levied against the original. There are no instances I can think of in this game where you'll sit through 3 pages worth of soliloquies on the finer points of Dyrwoodan trading politics. Everything here is leaner, relevant and more to the point, much to game's benefit.

The open-worldish / non-linear nature of the game stands in opposition to the main plot goal of chasing Eothas and for me, the entire game would have been considerably enhanced as a more tightly packed and linear affair with less of a focus on sailing and a greater emphasis on the main plot (or change the main plot so it places less emphasis on chasing a god).

In conclusion, PoE2 feels like a "middle game", the revelations & outcomes explored here are both rewarding & illuminating and the game teases a potentially more interesting follow up in the future. Yet the prospect of such a game coming into being considering the apparent low sales of this one, not to mention the recent Microsoft acquisition, paint an uncertain future for the series.

Overall there's a decent amount of content, easily 70+ hours to complete most of the worthwhile content without even touching any DLC. That said by the time I hit the endgame, the high points of Pillars 2 had been sufficiently diluted by the overabundance of NPCs offering pointless bounty quests, world map traversal, samey ship battles and the fractured pacing these elements brought to the table that I'll be leaving the DLC content until after I've taken a break from the game. To underline the point, this is not a bad game, it's a very good game but one that would be better with it's weaker elements shaved/polished off, in much the same way that Pillars 1 became a much better game when disabling the numerous gold-backer-NPCs that littered the game world.

The main quest and a good number of faction quests kept me interested, but these moments are broken up by a little too much filler for my tastes that is both poorly realised and doesn't respect the player's time. Obsidian are improving their "Infinity Engine type games" between PoE & Tyranny, but due to several fumbles this one isn't the modern day Baldur's Gate 2 successor we've hoped it would become. It's getting closer though.