I just finished Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. I’m a huge Obsidian fan and I loved the first game, but after rolling the credits on Deadfire, I'm left feeling a bit conflicted. It’s clear the devs put a ton of ambition and heart into this, but a few core issues dragged the experience down for me.

Honestly, none of the factions really clicked with me, so I decided to take the independent route. In the end, I chose to let Eothas break the Wheel. Given that the Engwithans created the gods themselves and caused absolute chaos, the whole system felt fundamentally broken. Breaking the Wheel and letting civilization start fresh felt like the only logical reset button.

The art style and presentation are 10/10. The game looks absolutely gorgeous, and the environment design is top-tier.

The AI automation system for combat was super buggy and constantly broke. On top of that, the memory leak issues were brutal throughout my playthrough.

About 90% of the game was an absolute walk in the park. But then, as you scale up, the optional/alternative bosses suddenly become absurdly overtuned. The gap between standard encounters and high-level bosses felt terribly balanced and frustrating.

I love Obsidian and I love the universe of PoE, but despite all the obvious effort that went into packing this game with content, the technical flaws and uneven difficulty balance keep it from being a masterpiece for me.

This is where Obsidian absolutely shines. The way they subtly and beautifully criticized religion and mirrored the flaws of our real world was incredible. These writers are absolute geniuses for how they handled that.

SCORE 7/10

I’m coming up on the ending of poe1 (absolutely phenomenal I’m still trying to process it), and I maybe got a little over excited and started dabbling in deadfire’s character creator.

I’m going to continue as a ranger, and I’ve decided not to multi class as it looks hard and nothing really calls to me.

I looked into the subclasses and I’m really tempted to do stalker. I like the idea that the events of poe1 traumatized me and Torak so much we now get separation anxiety. The problem is I mainly used a hunting bow (secondary rapier) and Torak is a wolf, so I feel like we’re just setting ourselves up for endless grief. Perhaps I could set my companions to fight on the frontlines though and have Torak standing by in case an enemy slips through and attacks me. Or I could start using the rapier more often so we can fight side by side easier.

The other one I’m eyeing is ghost heart which is much better for gameplay from what I understand. Maybe the destruction of Caed Nua killed Torak and Berath refused to revive him because I didn’t commit to him. But honestly the thought of it breaks my heart; I don’t know if can do it. I’ve grown used to the constant presence of my companion, and it would suck if he only appeared during combat.

I played all of poe1 on easy mode and I plan to do the same for 2. I’m also going real time with pause mode. With all that being said, which would you recommend?

I'm making my way through the DLC to Pillars of Eternity 2

I was fighting a Memory Hoarder

I cast "...And Evil Turned Away from the Sun" which supposedly gives immunity to Resolve afflictions.

Memory Hoarder cast "Release the Screams" and Terrified my entire party. Literally in the same round, so there's no way my immunity expired.

Any ideas what the fuck is going on?

Edit: Another instance of this fighting Shimmering Beast. "...And Evil Turned Away from the Sun" just seems to be broken and not actually doing anything for resolve afflictions.