Recent reviews by Mikefield Salviae

It is a nice game and as such, it carries a lot of potential. Unfortunately, it lacks depth in terms of complexity of character development, crafting, itemisation and combat. People saying it surpasses DA:I (which by no means was even a great game) are simply delusional - it lacks even a semi-decent stat system and the crafting upgrades are incredibly straight-forward and dumbed down.

The overall number of actions your character can perform in combat is simply underwhelming. Combat itself gets very stale and repetitive very quickly and is honestly another huge issue the game has. In your travels you will meet bosses but they are honestly extremely easy to defeat - I didn't go beyond two attempts on extreme difficulty. The most "difficult" fights are those against massive numbers of opponents who just overwhelm you in numbers. Winning those encounters is not too satisfying honestly, as you just run around and get attakced by six to eight enemies at the same time. On top of all that, your companions are pretty worthless on extreme as even in high-end gear they tend to run in and insta-die to the huge number of monsters, leaving you alone (sure, resurrection powder is a thing but damn it, I wish they would live through the simple trash mob fights every now and then).

The movement in and outside of combat is extremely clunky (dodging is just so weird and inconsistent) and learning how to walk was a pretty excruciating experience for me. Opening the doors is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrifying after a while as well.

The game is a 6/10; it simply does not live up to the contemporary standards and still carries an AAA price label nonetheless.

The DLC is excellent! The story is gripping, the visuals are stunning and the new items are superb. I'm not a fan of the snowy settings but this one goes far beyond that. It also fills in a lot of lore details, especialy about the previous Eothas' appearance in Dyrwood.

I have never been into JRPGs but this game is just excellent, very well-written, gorgeous in terms of graphics and effects, superbly intricate and just generally very very solid. If you have ever enjoyed turn-based games, be it Divinity:OS, Dofus, Wakfu, FF: Tactics or X-Com, this title is a must-play. It's fresh, well-thought out and just impressive in terms of the amount and the quality of content.

Pillars of Eternity 2 have set the new standards for party-based RPGs, and those standards are going to be very hard to match now. The game does well on basically every level: the plot is extremely well-written and engaging, the writing is sharp and just dazzling at times, graphically, the game goes beyond expectations. Combat and character progression are smooth, balanced, transparent and extremely satisfying. The music is just pure gold; the only thing the game is missing are longer dungeons - the void that is filled by the DLCs but it seems to be a fairly serious oversight nontheless.

EDIT: The DLCs have added a huge amount of depth and challenges, the devs also created four endgame megabosses which are a huge combat challenge. What an excellent game!

9/10

It is a very solid D&D based RPG, very much in the spirit of the old RPGs such as Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale. The gameplay is very close to Neverwinter Nights 2 but is not as clunky.

I have to say that I enjoyed the D&D games very much (especially NWN2) and it is a great throwback for me but I can't imagine how frustrating this game is to play for the people who are not faimiliar with D&D. The system itself is very archaic for a digital setting and doesn't feel as smooth when you have Pillars of Eternity 2 to compare it to. Overall, it's very pleasant to play as a veteran of the similar games anyway.

Now, to the issues I have with the game and later to the things I like:

Loading screens take way too long, especially when you get to manage your kingdom. I have an SSD and still end up alt-tabbing and losing the focus because of how many loading screens making a single action takes. It is a huge QoL oversight. Might be game-breaking for the people without SSDs to be honest, I can't imagine how horrible it has to be.

The weakest point of the game is the writing. The dialogues are bland and uninteresting; in the new Torment, Tyranny and PoE I'd read every single bit of dialogue, here it feels like clicking "next" is the best way of dealing with the thing. The story is very poor, extremely cliche and uninspiring. I don't care it is an original D&D campaign, it just does not have any epic feeling to it, has to be the most generic adventure I have ever played. It is not engaging. Companions are horribly written and plain boring, they have no personality whatsoever, just boring bland potatoes with quests arbitrarily attached to them (the quests are also very poorly presented). It is a huge gripe I have with the game.

Music is OK but again, does not compare to the soundtracks of other contemporary RPGs such as the DOS 1/2, PoE 1/2 and even the likes of Dragon Age 3 or the Witcher 3. Once again, a very generic experience here with nothing really memorable.

Graphically, the game looks very good, it is very transparent. So, good job there.

Difficulty-wise, it's extremely rough at the beginning and then smooths out by the end of Act 1. Feels like a huge oversight on the part of the devs, level 1/2 characters in D&D are just plain awful and the adventure should probably start at level 3 (just like both NWN games) to alleviate that.

It's very nice to have all the options to scale the difficulty up as you find the fights progressively easier. A nice touch.

The kingdom management part is nice but does not feel too impactful (very little reward for a lot of effort/planning), a lot is very much RNG-based too which is not that great.

I would say overall it is a pleasant experience but it does not match the other contemporary RPG productions that have hit the market over the past few years. I'd say 7 but despite all the major flaws I'm enjoying the game too much to go below 8.

8/10.

The game looks nice. The basic mechanics are fine. The economy is OK. That's about it, sadly.

Three simple units per race just does not cut it. When I say simple I mean they only autoattack and do not have any special skills. The game's economical aspect is way too poor to be enough and the military customisation just isn't there at all.

The idea itself is pretty cool - majesty with floating islands - but the game feels just empty and shallow. It needs way more content to be worth playing. Hopefully the devs can grow the game from here but it looks like there is a ton of work ahead of them.

It is a fun, though a bit simplistic. Excellent casual game.

The game is extremely fun and challenging (in the Tactician mode anyway). It holds up to my expectations.

The world of Divinity is huge. The very first act took me about 20h to complete, and allegedly this comprises about 20% of the full game. As you walk around, you encounter countless caverns, events, NPCs and scripted fights. No fight feels generic (as they often did in DOS1); every enemy has a purpose, every encoutner requires good strategy to beat.

As far as the options and the freedom DOS2 gives to players, it's actually very impressive, especially for a party-based RPG. You can teleport your characters through locked doors, access areas you's 'not supposed to be accessing' by flying down the cliffs etc. None of this is an exploit, it's all planned and accounted for. So my tip: take Aerotheurge to level 1 as soon as possible on at least two characters and teleport your team around the map. You will be surprised with the sheer amount of possibilities Larian have given un.

Tactician mode itself makes the game's very beginning (up to lvl 5) insanely difficult. You just don't match the enemies' damage or abilities or defences in any way and you need to cheese a lot. Again, teleport helps out as you can teleport that very annoying enemy down the cliff or to a locked room and deal with their companions. When you get some decent gear and scale up with levels, the fights are mostly winnable without reloading though (so the other two modes are most likely going to feel too easy).


The bugs (savegame loading times/crashes and Fort Joy market crashes) in the game itself have been fixed within 2 days of the release, over the weekend (kudos to Larian for that) so I have nothing to complain about anymore. The game is great and worth the coin!

Extremely smooth, quick, rewarding and entertaining.

I was very excited to play Stormguard but my first hour of gameplay made me regret the purchase, leading to a refund.

Here is the TL;DR of the review, pinpointing my main issues with the game:
- Clunky interfaces (ugly and slow city screen, plain and boring dungeon map screen)
- Buggy, easily explotable AI which tends to make unacceptable decisions for a 20$ game
- Slow, plain, unrewarding combat with very little variety and no flavour
- Almost non-existent itemization: no loot, bad design of items
- Horrible stat system which removes anticipation from evolving your characters and unlocking new gear (what gear?)
- Hideous visuals; the game should have been done in 2D as 3D just makes the overall experience even worse

Storm Guard welcomes you with a very clunky and unfinished interface; everything feels slow and delayed (and I played the game on a high-end rig). Just pressing the buttons makes you feel like the game is an unfinished early access product. And it gets worse.

The city screen welcomes you with a few customisation options and unveils that the game is a Darkest Dungeon clone with some key features taken out (item-based character customisation reduced to oversimplified upgrades purchased at the forge, poor spell leveling system and a lot more of clunkyness accompanying whatever you do). Since the game has nothing to offer but combat, it was quite a bummer to find out that the loot is basically non-existent and was replaced with some basic character-bound (and locked) items which do not add any additional depth to the game.

Then you get to combat part and this is where it gets VERY disappointing. Fights are buggy and very basic to say the least. The bugs are numerous: monsters just pass their turn for no particular reason, freeze and do nothing for 20s and then pass their turn, walk around and do nothing etc. while the game sometimes fails to remove AP from the player after they use abilities and autoattacks in quick succession. Starting positions never vary, AI is poor and easily tricked on the hardest difficulty while the monsters feel like they're just not balanced well enough. You would expect some depth in combat, some interesting ability combinations you can utilize, complexity introduced by the terrain, anything really but it's just not there. Animations are slow and clunky once again, even on the 'fastest' combat speed the game just feels extremely 'off'.The stat system is poorly designed, leaving much more than to be desired to RNG and since combat is much slower-paced than Darkest Dungeon it is not that favourable to leave everything to blind luck. The player is left with very few informed choices and quite a lot of luck to rely on. When the fights finish the rewards are very little for the effort and time spent in combat (also there is no real loot due to horrible itemization).

Then you just realize that this is everything the game has to offer: horrible, unresponsive UI and plain, buggy boring combat which feels like a chore. This game is nothing like Darkest Dungeon, it is not thrilling, it's poorly designed and just really underdeveloped for a 20$ product.