I love the turn based combat.

I'm writing this just after finally deciding to quit and uninstall this game for good. I was over 50 hours deep in a playthrough when I decided it wasn't worth it anymore and I'm not happy about it tbh. I don't recommend buying this game, maybe try it on gamepass instead if anyone is considering.

I guess I'm in the minority on the internet with this, most people I see online say this game is better than the first one. I guess I have completely different preferences and priorities about what I want in a CRPG, because I genuinely think this game is terrible. I strongly believe POE1 blows this game away, especially with the White March expansion. I'll go down my long list of complaints while it's fresh on my mind.

First off, the combat is painfully slow compared to the faster gameplay of the first game and the enemies are damage sponges. The first game's flow actually felt like Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights 2 or Dragon Age. There's a lack of combat in general in the game, so they can focus more on telling their story, but the story and voice acting is extremely bland. What makes it worse is everyone in the game has these thick fake accents and everyone uses random words from their fake language that you have to mouse over to know what the word means. I think 90 percent of the dialog in this game put me to sleep and some of the voice acting was so bad I had to turn it off. Apparently the cast of Critical Role is in this?? Cool, I've never seen Critical Role and I don't care. Xoti's accent is garbage.

Most of your companions from the first game have been replaced by a cast of characters that's way more boring than the first game's cast. And on top of that, most of the companions aren't even real companions, they're mostly called "side kicks." These half step characters that are somewhere in between a real companion and a hired merc. Idk who thought that was a good idea, it's horrible. If it's not a real fleshed out companion, why on earth would I ever use it when I can just make my own party?

So I decide to mostly just make my own party like it's Icewind Dale, but none of the quests are very interesting or cool or fun. They tried to do a faction thing kinda like Fallout New Vegas but the factions are completely uninteresting to me, and so is the entire setting of the Deadfire ocean or whatever. The animancy problem in the Dyrwood was way more interesting. The main quest is also super weak in this.

The ship sailing is a resource management mini game and I had no idea what was going on in it. Your crew may just commit mutiny against you if you don't have enough food in your inventory. And like everyone has said, the ship combat itself is a disaster. The resting mechanics made no sense to me compared to the first game because it requires food to rest instead of the simple camping set mechanic before. If it was such a problem before, just let us rest without requiring any items, period.

I also disliked leveling up in this game, hard to explain why though. I didn't like the skill tree, repetitive music everytime I level, multiclassing is cool I guess, but it's all just kinda bad. And speaking of repetitive music, this game plays the same exact songs again and again on almost every island you go to and it's mostly this one slow song that's reused from the first game. I swear, this game is just so soulless and sleep inducing in the worst way. It might be the worst CRPG I've played, and the nicest thing I can say about it is that it inspired me to play Planescape Torment instead. If I wanted a complete story over gameplay style game, I would play that. And I even prefer Planescape's combat over this tbh.

The representation of the gods of POE is completely shallow here compared to the first game. The mystery of the gods is gone and they appear to resemble the Daedra from Elder Scrolls more now in this game, compared to their more esoteric and symbolic presentation in the first game. The first game was definitely a commentary on the "God shaped hole in our hearts" thing from Saint Augustine and the psychology of religion. I found this concept to be one of the most fascinating things about POE1 and one of the reasons why I hold it up with Dragon Age Origins as best modern CRPG... But all of that feels gone here or just uninteresting now. Eothas is just running around wrecking ♥♥♥♥ and the gods are yelling at you about it and it's just disappointing. Then I finally decided to just youtube the ending and was even more disappointed with what I saw. Huge, huge plot hole that literally had to be patched with new dialog to fix their own plot hole, Mass Effect 3 all over again. I haven't played Outer Worlds yet, but Obsidian's writing is definitely different from what it was. A lot of writers left after POE1 and Tyranny and South Park, and I think it shows here in this game specifically.

So yeah, I could go on, but that's enough. This game just kinda blows for me. And it's crazy that it was even worse at launch, with how much they've patched it. I hope I like Avowed better.

One of my favorite games of all time! Personally, I think PoE II: Deadfire is every bit as good as Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity Original Sin 2. If you enjoy CRPGs you will love this game once you become familiar with its mechanics and gameplay. If you're on the fence about it then go for it, you won't be disappointed. Obsidian is one of the best studios out there right now and you should support their work.