Yeh I'm coming up to 50hrs, and am really enjoying every except the ship combat. Generally just completely ignoring it.

There's also options C,D and E bit later on.

You should give it a second go. I just enjoy the world more. At least it's trying to do something original.

Depends what you like. That's the problem with RPGs, there are many different groups of players who have different ideas on what is good in an RPG. Personally I'm perfectly happy with a linear story, in which whatever decisions I make in side quests along the way have immediate and fairly minor consequences (like I get some piece of loot, or people get pissed off and show up to try to kill me, or whatever) and the story varies a bit based on who I have in my party. I'm probably never replaying the game anyway, so who cares if the story is substantially the same every time? And I'm happy with a traditional D&D type setting, it doesn't have to be original as long as it's a good story. Gameplay wise I just want interesting combat and cool loot.

Tyranny annoyed me by prioritising ROLE PLAYING and OMG YOU CAN MAKE CHOICES over good storytelling, just throwing exposition in my face and telling me to make decisions. I don't care, just tell me the story.

It seems to me like you just don't like the cRPG genre and would be better suited in a Skyrim style RPG. And I don't mean that in a negative sense.

I like party-based combat though. I'm a micromanager. Spacebar gets a workout.

Off topic but I wish someone would do a big budget RPG, that was modular (DLC) on level and in which you were just an adventurer not a world saving hero.

This would give me some pen and paper nostalgia.

Holy ****, the game just lost all its difficulty (level 13 POTD+level scaling only up). Wait for a patch, geez.

First it got a bit easier, I kept winning everything. Now I'm just running on fastest without controlling anyone.

I think one of the criticisms I read in a review was that the game is very easy, and it certainly feels that way. I don't really mind, since combat is weak part of the game, but it would be nice if at least some boss fights would be challenging.

My party is at level 14 and the party basically annihilates everything with no input from me, whatsoever. I thought the combat was really fun, but it has gotten to be really pointless.

Not sure if modding is officially supported, but just saw this article tonight about modding the level scaling.

https://www.pcgamer.com/this-pillars...level-scaling/

The June patch is going to significantly rework Veteran and PotD.

I think PoE1's combat is better than it may appear, but there are several problems:

• Lack of variety in enemy mobs in difficulties below PotD.
• Almost all encounters are straight-up fights against a mob. There are few instances where the environment is used to create tactical complications.
• Too many fights that give you no reward, this was a particular issue in the White March expansions.
• The game throws way too much XP at you. It was designed so that you could hit max level just by following the critical path, but that meant if you did some side-quests you could hit the cap long before the game ended. The result was you could steamroll a lot of the content. I did a PotD playthrough with a mod that increases the amount of XP needed to level up and it made combat a lot more interesting, forcing me to use approach combat in different ways and use more resources.

I've bought Deadfire and trying to play on Veteran and holy ****, getting my ass kicked. I'm a wizard and my party at the moment is me, Eder, and that priest, whatever her name is. The fight that I've tried like 15 times and cannot win is just before I release those people from the cage at the dig site (I know this because I started the game as a Cipher in Normal and hated it so I restarted).

The fight is like 4 Young Panthers or something, a Young Drake and two Wyrms. The problem is, I need to kill the Young Drake before he burns everyone alive, but in the meantime the Young Panthers plus the Wyrms sniping from the back are owning my tank. I used to rely on Slicken to keep heat off my tank, but it seems to have been nerfed (fair enough, it was overpowered). I guess I need to put my tank in heavier armor? IDK, any hints on how to not die appreciated. Normal was too easy but this is insane.

Have you tried to lure the enemies away from each other?

No, not really a strat I've tried. I did nail that fight eventually though. The combat seems improved. It's not just tank and spank like in the first one, you have to switch up your strats.

Yeh they definitely mix up who they attack now, with a lot targeting weaker party members.

I still need complete it, but reached a point where I could faceroll everything with just auto-combat. Excepy fampyr fights...screw fampyr fights.

Think I'll probably come back and finish the main story when the dlc comes out.

How did you find the 'open world-ness' of it? I'm still kind of torn. I liked the idea, and that they were trying something different, but as a bit of a completionist, I kept feeling like I was missing things.

Also, the travelling around was kinda dull, although the odd interactions with the crew mates was fun, but the ship combat was dire imo.

I haven't done any ship combat yet. Neketaka has been pissing me off. Got there and wandered round looking for quests and kept getting sent from place to place with endless dialogue, dude I just want to kill things. Eventually got a quest out to some island and got there and it's too high level for my dudes, but there's no warning of that until I get in there and engage in combat. Frustrating, now I have to cruise back to Neketaka and start digging around for quests again.

OK, finished the game. Incredibly anticlimactic ending lol. No final battle. After a hard patch at the beginning the fights mostly became pretty easy. The Concelhaut one was kind of tough. Wizards are super broken at high levels. Wilting Wind is absurd, so is Concelhaut's Crushing Doom (which is unique to his grimoire).

Overall decent game but not any kind of classic, gripes:

- Ship combat is absolutely awful and there's no tutorial for it, but you can skip it by just always charging straight at the other ship and boarding it, then it's just a normal fight.

- There's way too much travelling around the map. Sailing places takes forever, plus a lot of the time you're on like the third floor of a building in Neketaka and to get to your ship and leave it's like run down a level, run down another level, leave building, go to exit before you can choose to leave the city. The load times on scene transitions are like 10-15 secs on my computer (which is pretty powerful), just let me leave the city from anywhere ffs, it's so tedious.

- Needed more hard fights. There were two dragons but they were polite to me so I let them go. It was later revealed that one of them had been a dick and I wanted to kill it then, but too late.

I have others, there were a bunch of things that annoyed me but that's all that comes to mind. Like I said, pretty good, scratched the itch, far from great though.

Who wins in a POE2 v DOS2 heads up?

Never played either DOS, can't comment.

I think POE2 > POE despite the annoying stuff about POE2. Combat is somewhat better and roaming around the islands is pretty fun. Oh, one other gripe I forgot to mention is the zoom-out limit when you're on the sea. It would be nice to zoom way out and see more of the map, it's hard to see where you're going.

Which had the better story?

Doesnt sound like combat improved much from the original so if i play it would probablybe on easy to see the world and plot.

I barely remember the plot of POE1 but don't remember finding it particularly compelling. Actually, in character setup for POE2, they ask you what the major decision you made at the end of POE1 and I was like "dude, no idea".

POE2's story was more worldbuilding than anything. There's a main quest which is actually really short if you were to just play that, involving a god who has gone rogue. The rest of it centers around a 4-way factional struggle for influence in the Archipelago. It's serviceable for something to hang the game on but probably not that interesting in its own right. The worldbuilding is decent, the game looks nice. I guess it's nice that they tried to do something that wasnt "you gotta stop the bad guy!" (the god who has gone rogue isn't really a bad guy) but frankly I'd have liked a bad guy.

Oh one other gripe, but this applies to most (all?) games of this kind: I hate it when there are dialogue options, I pick one, and the response I get is obviously what the response was going to be no matter what I picked. Find it kind of annoying going through that charade. I'd rather have cutscenes for exposition and actually meaningful dialogue choices.

Cool thanks a lot

I cant remember the choice at the end of poe1 either lol. Pretty torn about whether to try it.

I'd say no. Gotta be better ways to spend your time. Put it this way, I turboskipped through most of the text, I barely even skimmed the stuff at the end telling me how it ended.

That is a shame. Ill give it a pass then, thanks for saving me some time.

A tough one.

Story points

DOS2 has more interesting characters.
POE2 has better lore.
Both have more or less a bad/uninteresting plot.
The moral decisions in POE2 tend to be are childish.

This one goes personally for DOS2 since the companions are far more interesting and less one dimensional. Lore is nice but if you don't do **** with it, it's pretty meh in the long run.

Character creation and customization

POE2 offers better characters and effectively more skills + better party composition. Leveling especially early is really fun. The only minus is the talent system (like lore/stealing etc.) that feels incredibly stupid and limits the party compositions without offering anything really cool.

In DOS2 leveling after early game means running to merchant to buy new stuff since all the items that you had are now worthless. It's okay otherwise.

POE2 hands down.

Itemization

DOS2 throws a **** load stuff that you really don't want (but need for recipes/monetary value) into inventory system that just can't handle it at all. Their random generated stuff is really uninteresting in the long run. Also too many damn barrels etc. to open.

POE2 has cool stuff for almost any kind of character. It also gives out crap but handles it much better and smaller quantities.

POE2 by a mile.

Technical performance and graphics

Both suck in their own ways. DOS2 seems to leak memory or something and will get slower and slower closer you get to the end. POE2 maps were designed beautifully but don't support the engine meaning a loading screen every time you enter a small hut.

POE2 graphic design is really impressive whereas DOS2 seem to look more like a copy/paste world made out of same toolbox. Also thematically DOS2 maps would have needed a heavy editing imo. They crammed way too much into one area.

DOS2 wins the technical performance slightly, POE2 graphics easily. POE2 would take both if they just designed around Unity Engines technical limitations.

Combat

DOS2 does turn based combat which is less frantic than POE2 real time combat. However DOS2 uses absolutely idiotic combat armor system which ruins party compositions and makes the combat more similar than it needs to be.

POE2 combat will eventually turn into a mess with all the skills but it's still fun and diverse. It currently turns piss easy at one point making difficulty to spike at the beginning and combat being trivial later. The fun combat ends and you watch the party obliterate everything.

DOS2 edges here since they try something new and there are strategic decision that can be made in most fights. It's not perfect and it eventually becomes a chore but that's like 30-40+ hours in so well done.

Other things to do

DOS2 has better puzzles, POE2 mostly has skill checks.

DOS2.

Sounds

I can't remember much about DOS2, pretty good I guess.

POE2 music is too generic fantasy trope for my taste. It lacks soul or any kind of trademark. When you hear something like Skyrim or Fallout or even earlier mentioned Tyranny, you immediately feel like it's part of the world.

Sounds and voice acting is fine.

DOS2 but it might be personal bias.

Conclusion

If you haven't played DOS1, DOS2. The combat system is nice and refreshing. If you have played DOS1 and don't mind another a bit generic fantasy RPG, POE2.