Pretty good, overall. I found the combat more approachable than I have ever found a CPRG, and the world was... I mean, it was Fantasy Land but I liked it anyway! I don't think there's much that's special about it, but it's done well at least.

The Stronghold mechanic was great, lot of fun. Got to taste the flavor of a basebuilding game without having to do much about it, and I liked how the beef with Lord Gothbin was a fun way to keep it tied into the rest of the game world.

The story was sort of... IDK, flat? I was surprised when I hit the end of it. My first reaction was just, "That was it?" and that impression has never really left me. In total, it amounts to seeing some guy in passing, following him to a city, and then following him to another town and fighting him. There isn't much more to it, and it never really feels like there's much by way of stakes.

Obsidian the developer of Pillars of Eternity have a long history of making great role playing games going all the way back to the CRPG classic of Baldur's Gate. Pillars of Eternity is a return to their roots of that classic style and it's a fantastic game with over 100 hours of gameplay and is the complete package including both DLC expansions of the White March parts 1 and 2. It's not perfect, but the short of it is if you're a fan of these sorts of games it's well worth playing.

Now onto the longer version!

Like most modern western role playing games POE allows you to create your own character including their race, class and even background which will occasionally all give extra dialogue options depending on what you choose during the game. The options can be pretty daunting at first and it took me over an hour just to create my main character before even starting the game. Once you start the game you are thrust into the story pretty quickly with your character part of a caravan traveling through a dangerous land giving you a chance to learn how to play the game. The caravan is attacked for trespassing on sacred land forcing you to run through the very ruin you are accused of trespassing in. At the end of the ruin you see a weird cult performing a rite at an ancient machine which has consequences for you, turning you accidently into a Watcher, a person who can see souls, both current and past and from there the adventure begins properly....

The story is actually pretty good mostly due to the excellent writing throughout. There is tons of lore found throughout the game from books, overheard conversations and dialogue interactions but what really shines for me was the main party characters, both their backstories and quips are genuinely interesting.

The gameplay is essentially over two parts, exploration and combat. If you never played Baldur's Gate or any CRPGs then let me explain, the camera view is a top down view with set camera angles on 2D backgrounds allowing you to look around, talk to characters, steal items, attack npcs, kind of do what you want. The game can actually played without a huge amount of fighting allowing you to talk, bribe or convince enemies instead of entering combat if you choose, or you can choose to beat them bloody. The controls do take some getting used to, with abilities and menus on quick access wheels which is fine but to talk to people or search items you have to hold down X then highlight what you want then let go. It's unwieldly, clunky and often imprecise. I didn't like it.

Combat is all real time, you get a party of six characters to use at any one time with some AI settings telling them how to fight on auto and what type of abilities to use. At any time you can tell a character to use a particular skill or attack an enemy, or move to a particular location if you wish. Time can be paused at any moment to relay these orders if you want before carrying on with combat. It essentially involves a lot of micromanaging and against certain enemies like the dragons you will need to just to keep your party alive making them use potions, scrolls and abilities. How you equip your characters and which characters you bring along also make a large amount of difference and the game has a massive amount of loot and equipment and crafting etc. etc. to take advantage of.

The music is really good though there are times it seemingly should be playing but isn't which was weird but when it does it's pretty memorable orchestral type scores. Also on the audio side is the voice acting which considering this was a budget crowd funded game is both fantastic and has some pretty well known names in the industry doing the work, absolutely top notch, no complaints there.

So with all my praise and clear enjoyment of the game why only four stars? I had a few technical issues especially towards the end half of my time with the game. I used a character that comes with an animal companion that after battle would sometimes freeze keeping me locked in combat despite the fight being over. This stopped me from doing anything including leaving the area, searching etc forcing me to reload from my last save losing progress (you can save almost anywhere though) and this happened about 12 times. Added to that at times moving from area to area the game would hard crash or equipping items wouldn't work for some reason. It has quite a few bugs.

Added to that are the insanely long load times and the frequency of them. Moving from area to area, entering buildings etc. all have a load screen. This in itself would be fine but some of these areas are tiny and while I quite like the visuals they are hardly pushing any boundaries and there is simply no reason the loading should be this awful.

This all said I loved my time with the game. The writing is great, exploring is fun, the combat can be pretty challenging and there are a ton of things to see and do and very little of it feels like filler. It's an excellent take on a retro RPG genre and i'm very much looking forward to the sequel.

Recommended.

+ Good writing, characters and lore throughout.
+ Combat can be pretty tactical with a lot of options.
+ Great music and voice acting.
+ Decent value for money with a ton to see and do.

- Technical issues with crashing and bugs.
- Load times are ridiculous and frequent.
- Controls are a little awkward.

The game's got its fair share of problems, such as lots of bugs (at least on Xbox), some even locking me out of quests, some missed potential with the Stronghold mechanic and a lack of things to spend money on.

All of those faults, though, are buried by how good this game is. Eora is one of the most interesting fantasy worlds I've ever seen, and that's not because of its sheer size and scope, like many other world-building rely so much on. Instead, Obsidian created a cohesive and alive lore, that knows what it is and what themes it encompasses, while also leaving room for questions and subjectivity.

The strengths of Pillars of Eternity's lore peak with the White March expansions, imo, as it seems that since Eora was already established by the base game, all that was left for them to do was to explore and build upon the strong world-building, addressing interesting themes and having story beats only made possible by how cohesive the lore foundation is.

Because of that, I'm very excited to play Pillars II, which will probably solidify even more just how awesome this Obsidian's world is for me, and after that Avowed.

This is the second CRPG I've ever played, the only other one was Dragon Age: Origins a couple of years ago, and I didn't think I would ever love another one as much DA. Glad to see I was wrong, because, even though I still think Dragon Age is a slightly better game, Pillars of Eternity charmed me so much that its world is one of my gaming favorites now.