A solid game, but does not meet expectations

Based upon the kickstarter support for this game you might expect that this game would be a genre defining epic role playing game, or at least be far superior to the now decades old titles upon which the genre was built. It is neither. What you get is a solid RPG experience which carries the same enjoyment of the typical game, unfortunately this includes both the positive such as an expansive world to explore and the negatives such as horrible pathfinding. The developers tried to generate a new game system with this game, paralleling the familiar D&D format but presumably different enough to distinguish itself. In my opinion the new system does not distinguish itself enough from the D&D format, and the aspects that are appreciably different tend to be broken. Has it been 15 years since the Baldur’s gate series was released? Those two games were the high water mark. Though it is unfair to compare directly, it is somewhat saddening that a decade and a half later we cannot match let alone exceed those games. The story writing is fairly good for PoE, but there is a clear emphais on using unusual words with strange letter combinations to give the impression of a different world rather than to define the allure in a more meaningful way. Gameplay is enjoyable but unremarkable. Visual effects and sounds do not appear to be far improved (if at all) from games like Neverwinter Nights or Baldurs Gate. Pathfinding is actually worse than other games. Some mechanics such as stealth are horribly broken, for instance a stealthed character is immediately visible if any other party member initiates conflict. One could argue that this is a deliberate decision by the developers but it seems unnatural. What makes this game most meaningful is perhaps not what you will get from playing it, but that the developers made a good case that computer RPGs are not dead. In that respect PoE is epic and will hopefully renew interest in developing games in the genre. In all other respects it is solid but lackluster.

TowerofJoy about Pillars of Eternity