Pillars Of Eternity II : Deadfire

Pillars Of Eternity II : Deadfire

Ah! She is very good this one: I throw myself on Pillars Of Eternity II: Deadfire like a death of hunger, even as I have abundantly vomited on his big brother. I did have a fierce slab of cRPG, and not much to put on my hands. So I approached this second album with a lot of questions in mind. Did they incorporate tasteless texts on a purple background? Are the battles always so empty of tactical sense? Have I been able to play without an ugly bug come part of 90 hours? Does this game have (finally) a soul? Well, that's what we'll see together. Let's go !

We start the game by being dead, which is not commonplace, but Berath, the god of death, offers us the opportunity to make a little tour in the wheel of reincarnations. This is then the opportunity to possibly import the backup of our part of the first game. Well, no luck, for me, it did not work. Otherwise, I was asked to choose a generic archetype of character, which will induce the choices we made, without access to details. It makes me think that shortly before the game was released, Obsidian had released a survey to recall the choices we had made, and after completing it, I could only realize that I had zapped from my memory almost all that I had done there. However, it does not go back so far, that is to say, more or less a year, and that I made two runs for a total of 180 hours. As you can see, it has left a deep impression on me and changed my view of the media. Ahem.

Anyway, so I recreated a character, and even if you re-import it, it would come back to life at level 1; we can say that we have avoided the syndrome of the amnesic avatar, but the purpose remains the same. We leave Berath after making a deal, which is more or less to stop another god, Eothas, who reincarnated in the statue of Adra located in the castle of Caed Nua. The joker has had the presumption to destroy the castle and kill all the people around. When we return to life, we find ourselves in the cabin of a junk, while Eder seems to watch over our body. We find indeed Eder, the warrior companion of the first opus. As an individual, although he remains an effective character, I have absolutely no affinity with him. The latter, however, does not have time to recover from the emotion that the junk seems to undergo a pirate attack.

At the end of events all more annoying than the others, we find ourselves stranded on an island and then we will have only the purpose of repairing the boat to chase Eothas. As luck would have it, the island in question is not deserted, since it is home to a small port city, but also a sanctuary containing a pillar of Adra where the reincarnated god seems to have made a passage. It will also be the opportunity to find another companion from the first opus: Aloth, the mage obsessed with the Key Lead. Leaving to talk about the reunion, there will also be the paladin with piaf head (Pallegina), and ... and that's all, since all the other characters are new: a human priestess of slightly fanatical Eothas (Xoti), a pirate blue orlan a teasing haired with powers of clairvoyant (Serafen), a divine sea with an anemone head (Tekēhu), and a ranger with a piaf who is also an acquaintance of Kana (Maia Rua). Besides this, there are also four minor companions, that is to say with a background much less excavated.

Relationships will be formed with all these companions over the adventure, both with our avatar and with others. All this will evolve according to what everyone believes / likes / dislikes and we can find all this information in the reputations screen. To be clear, let's say that if you leave the priestess and a blasphemer in the same group, there may be water in the gas. If we allow the animosity to persist, then there is a good chance that we will come to an ultimatum, where we will have to choose between the two. During my part, it never happened, but the banters between characters are always appreciable, giving them a personality. Note that when we add one of them in the group, we will be asked to choose his class from two possible, and possibly make a multi-class character with these two same classes.

Kezako? Well it's a concept that will be familiar to those who have already tapped Baldur's Gate 2: the character has two classes of characters, allowing him to be more versatile at the expense of access to high-level powers. Not particularly disillusioning the development of my group, it is a feature that I have not tried, since I have chosen only mono-class among the five members of my group. Beyond the relationships between characters, there is also a system of factions. Basically, we can say that there are two competing commercial factions, two pirates factions in conflict, two factions of natives in full rivalry of sovereignty, two factions of nobliaux, etc ... You see it coming big as a house: you you will have to choose between the two each time.

Given the multiplicity of factions, we can say that this game is still chiadé but he unfortunately did not resist the crash test of the otter. Typically, the conflict between the nobliaux, I settled it by doing a double-game: I associated myself with a family, then I betrayed it by passing them all life to death. Nevertheless, since I had initiated the quest for association to peacefully resolve the conflict, I first validated the quest for treason, then I validated the quest for association, and there, miracle: the trepanned have come back to life to sign an armistice. Yeah ... Over the course of the adventure, each faction will offer us to play the bounty hunter, on targets belonging to an opposing faction. So I ate at all racks, like a vulgar mercenary, and I killed everyone, and more if affinities. What were the consequences on the reputation system of the factions? Any. Yes, you read correctly, there is no consequence. There was even a moment when I sank the boat of a hero of the Huana nation, to be better covered with flowers by their sovereign on another subject without any mention of this event.

By the way, I was able to read on player comments that Pillars Of Eternity II: Deadfire would be a feminist game. So, OK, indeed, the majority of the faction leaders are women, but does that make the feminist game about it? Well, before reading those comments, it did not touch my mind at all. After reading them, I just found the analysis ridiculous because at no time did I read ingame a line about women's place in this universe. If it were enough to be feminist simply by playing important roles for female characters, that would be known. Anyway, between us, I want to say that we have nothing to wank that the boss of a faction is a guy or a chick; if he or she makes stupid decisions, it will only make one or one con. For once, I find that Obsidian just put the right mix: no particular mention, since it is seen as a normal situation, with no consideration for sex.

However, the great novelty of this opus is the implementation of navigation on a boat with a crew. As captain, we will have the opportunity to recruit crew members in the various ports, each with a specialization on a particular post, which will obviously make it more effective on this function. Nevertheless, nothing prevents us from assigning a sailor to a role to which nothing destined him. Each member will be able to win ranks and levels, and evolve. Note that they will all have character traits that can potentially surface with certain events. On this boat, we can also improve certain elements, including the sails, the hull, a bar to maneuver, lamps, an anchor, luxury quarters for your apple and a sort of menagerie where will be piled up all the lost creatures that the we can collect (mainly cats and dogs, but not only).

The management of the crew is not limited to this, since we will have to manage the levels of morale, injury, hunger and thirst. So we will have to be careful that there is always food and drink available, otherwise morale will drop dangerously, potentially exposing you to a mutiny (the same is true if we are not able to pay them). And be careful, do not expect to improve the morale of your troop by spinning rotten cookies or ... water. Indeed, each type of food or drink will affect the characteristics of the crew and its morale; if you spin them grog, they will be happy but much less agile, while if you give them pieces of corpses to eat (cooked, I'm not a monster!), well they will be sick while mouthing. Moreover, if you have injuries, morale will decline inexorably. In the end, it is a system that I found quite uncomfortable, because we have quite fast cash in bulk.

As we navigate, sometimes random events occur. At first, there will be quite a few, because the trips are quite short because of the exploration of the islands around, as much towards the middle of the game when the trips are longer there are more frequently. A good idea, but ... mess, it would have needed variety! I could not stand seeing the same two back again and again! The first concerns crew members who are throwing a knife at a target, and the second is a questionable fish fishery. If you knew the number of times I had these events all along a game that lasted 75 hours to absolutely return everything, you would understand why I can not ignore them anymore. Yet, these are events presented in a textual way, so ... why a fucking loop on these two ?!

On board our boat, we will also have the opportunity to play touch-flowing, or by default to "I approach you and I kill everyone". Yeah, submitting an opponent is not a possibility. Be that as it may, there are several boats that sail the seas and most of them are either merchants or bonus targets belonging to a specific faction. Well know that I absolutely sunk everyone, except for a boat merchants history that there is still something moving on the map. What were the consequences? Once again: none. Pity ? Yeah. However, were the naval battles interesting? After the discovery stage, I really want to say: not really. When we start, we play it fine, we do our best to position ourselves, spare our crew, and sink the other ship. On the end, I spurred like a big nag, just to launch the collision and kill all enemies in two-two with a meteor shower. To tell the truth, it could have been nice if there was more variety in the clashes.

Beyond spurring everything that moves, Pillars Of Eternity II: Deadfire gives pride to exploration, since we will have the opportunity to play amateur cartographer; from the moment an island is not enumerated and we have visited it in its entirety, we will be able to give it a name. Feature that might seem anecdotal but that's finally pretty cool; you are free to name them according to the mood of the moment. For my apple, I opted for a mnemonic system that allowed me to immediately recall the contents of the said island: the island of the boring temple, the island of dead cannibals, the island of the skeletons (re) dead , etc. ... The name then inscribes on the island. Simple, basic, but roughly effective. By cons, I have not found any possibility to add other custom markers on the map, which is a shame, because there are some places that we rush on the end of the game and which we must think not to zap them.

To finish quickly on the part of the boats, know that we will have the possibility to buy others, allowing to embark more sailors, guns, equipment of repair, medicinal herbs and cannon balls. There are in all and for all six different ships, and we can switch from one to the other to the desire, if there are enough crew members. Nevertheless ... What's the point of having a whole fleet of boats, if you can only use one? I was able to equip each boat with all the necessary gear so that they were all functional but only one could actually split the waters. As a result, it would have been obvious to have the opportunity to sell the old ships. Well no, it is not possible; we are determined to collect them. Pity ? Yeah ... As the other would say, it's only snake powder!

With all this, I have not really talked about fighting, although the whole is still very similar to his big brother. However, the game managed to make illusion early in the game; I started my game in "difficult" and "expert", and it was pretty tactical overall. Entering the bacon was excluded on pain of imminent death. Nevertheless, the more we advance in the game, the more our characters are equipped with the stuff of furious bitch, and their powers send heavy. As a result, from the middle of the game, I fell back in the same way as with the first opus: I select everyone, I click on an enemy, and everyone goes in the heap in a bloody orgy. It was so uninteresting that I finally decided to shorten my suffering by activating AI for all the characters (including mine), and I finally became more of a spectator. Only a few fights have given me a hard time, but I have enough hands to count them all. For the rest, we are still facing a pyrotechnic festival making the whole rather unreadable.

Fortunately, I found that Obsidian has caught up more on the narrative part, with a writing much less burst, without any tasteless presence of texts of backers. I read everything, and I enjoyed it, which was frankly not won originally. It must be said that this game has for him a setting making it immediately more attractive to me: pirates, coconut trees and hot sand. For comparison, it has the same effect as Assassin's Creed - Black Flag; I could never blame the gameplay and structure of Assassin's Creed, but this opus was a real guilty pleasure. It's the same with this Pillars Of Eternity, which I ran in abnegation mode vis-à-vis its faults to just enjoy this aspect. I sincerely think that if the setting had been identical to the first opus, I would not even have approached it. The topics discussed are quite varied and interesting too, ranging from slavery to the relationship of mortals with religion and its gods, the latter point being the central focus of this title.

Graphically, in addition to struggles vaguely resembling a July 14, the whole is quite pleasing to the eye. Nothing else special to say about that. Ditto for the audio part, since as usual, I mostly played without sound. However, I still took the time to listen to a little history of enjoying full quality dubbing, which undeniably adds cachet to the title. As for music, I do not remember it anymore. Ahem.