Renzatic on 8/6/2018 at 06:22
I'm probably gonna wait for a couple more patches, just in case. It's not like the wait will hurt me much. I've got plenty of games to play in the meantime, and a big ass high quality Obsidian RPG is really more a game best played during those cold winter months.
icemann on 8/6/2018 at 07:17
Well depending on what classes you want to go, you may want to wait a bit.
[video=youtube;x_2glRyXXhw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_2glRyXXhw&feature=youtu.be[/video]
Video above outlines what comes with the patch released today + what will come in the next patch.
icemann on 8/6/2018 at 16:26
So I finally finished the game. Thoughts:
This game is excellent. Every bit as good as the first one, though in different ways. The first one had some really damn hard bosses a great story, good combat system, good class choices, good story development and an interesting bad guy.
In this one you get multi-class characters for the first time, stealth and lock picking are handled a bit better, graphics are nicer, story is very good with some good character development. Quite a ton of side stuff to do. I found just traveling around in the boat exploring added a nice "Civilization" like exploration vibe to it. Was great just going to random islands, exploring tombs etc. The ship battles are quite fun too. The game now has quite a few "Fighting Fantasy / Choose Your Own Adventure" bits complete with a book like presentation with you being introduced via text only to a situation and give a bunch of choices on how to handle it, which effect the outcome (much like in gamebooks). This is an approach in RPGs (beside text adventures and interactive fiction games on Steam) that I've not seen done before. Quite enjoyed these.
There is far more choice in this game than in the previous one, with you getting to pick which faction if any to go with to the final area and you have complete choice on what to do when you reach the end. All I'll say is that this is one of those rare games where I was in 100% agreement with the "bad guy" to the point that he wasn't a bad guy to me. Hell he had good intentions overall really. So on getting to him I was like meh go for it, the world would be a better place without the machine and the gods influence. I like games that give you that level of choice. Most just force you along a path. Not this game :).
Annoyances:
* The party members would have the same conversations between themselves and often say they need to talk to you about something, which turns out to be a topic they'd already spoken to you about (apparently fixed in the patch that went out today).
* The music in some areas got annoying after a while
* As mentioned earlier the water color portraits to me look horrible. Amateur. Luckily you can get rid of them via going into the portraits folder and deleting them, which forces the game to use the much better looking ones. You can't do this for NPCs though.
Those are all minor gripes though.
Oh and one plot hole:
* One particular key figure of a faction who I'd killed alongside everyone else in his faction in an area of Nekataka in-explicitly returned from the dead (with no in-game reason given as to how he was alive again) to take me on in the final battle I did. Maybe I'm remembering wrong. Was a sea of enemies when I'd done the big wipe in his base of operations.
Now is this better than the first one? I dunno. In the first one you had Caed Nua, and that place had the deep dungeon that you'd return to over the course of the game as you got better. And you could upgrade the place. I really liked that. Plus you'd get the rare herbs and regents for upgrades that way. No such luck in this one. But then you have the ship(s) now, which are good too. Overall I'd say this is the better game overall, but the first one had a better difficulty curve. For most of POE1 most areas were a challenge until about 3/4 way, and especially after taking on the DLC/expansion. For POE2 I've taken on the game far sooner than I did for the first one so don't have that advantage. That said, from about halfway through the game I was able to bowl over most enemies I'd taken on. Aloth gets some really damn badass spells this time around. That makes a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE. I got this spell for him late in the game which would clean out nearly anything that was in it's radius. Though you'd only get to use that once per battle, but dayam is that a good spell.
In the first game I'd rely on conjured helper npcs via both spells and items, where as in this one I didn't use them that much and when I did it was just via 1 that Xoti could summon. Their still useful, but just needed as much.
So overall this is better than POE1 on the overall whole. I guess it just comes down to what you want as a final boss. One that is EVIL, or one that leaves you with the moral choice to make. Also factors in of how important religion is to you. For me it doesn't but I can see the hope it gives to people in real life, but then it also is used by people for acts of evil. So overall it being taken away I see as a good thing. Your opinions will likely vary, thus bringing on different outcomes.
Me likes Fallout style endings too. This game has that. Best way to end RPGs in my opinion. See the impacts of your choices. I look forward to POE3.
Best battles (all of which you only encounter via side quests):
Ordered in difficulty:
* Dragon boss, which turns out to be an imp using an amulet to make himself turn into the dragon. The hard bit there is that you need to take out the dragon without killing a particular mage under his mind control. Attemps - 3
* Huge plant boss in a dungeon underneath Nekataka - Attempts - 2
* Vampyre leader of undead legion, located to the extreme south east of the map - Attempts 2
* An undead mage back from the dead at an ancient libray - Attempts - 1
Hardest dungeon:
A particular dungeon underneath a holy temple in Nekataka. Filled with high level undead. I had trouble all throughout this one as my party was very low level at this point.
Tip for those going into this game - Have at least 1 party member with a high perception stat. 18 base perception should be fine as you'll get a couple of items that raise it. This game unlike the first one does not hand out +perception gear that often though. Even via equipment upgrades. So if you want to be able to detect all traps without needing to use +perception items then this is a NEED. There is a few dungeons that will completely slaughter you if you don't have this. I did not, and had to use items which even then did not allow me to find a couple of traps. Found most though. One particular dungeon was cheeky enough to have some traps at the very beginning of it (as soon as the map loads).
Jason Moyer on 8/6/2018 at 18:09
Quote Posted by icemann
This is an approach in RPGs (beside text adventures and interactive fiction games on Steam) that I've not seen done before.
Since PoE 1?
icemann on 9/6/2018 at 05:11
Was that in POE1? I forget as it was a while ago when I last played it.
icemann on 9/6/2018 at 12:00
Fair enough, I stand corrected.
icemann on 24/6/2018 at 04:03
The one I'm awaiting is the first bit of singleplayer content DLC which is set for release in July.