A great game ruined by pacing of 3rd act

[YellouBee]

Finally "finished" this game and boy am I conflicted. I had played to the beginning of act 3 when the game came out but I wasn't happy with the character I was playing so I put the game down and was quickly distracted by other games.

Then Pillars 2 came out and I decided to try it despite not being able to get past act 1 in the first game on a few scattered attempts since my first. The story in Pillars 2 really grabbed me and I decided I really have to come back and play through 1...

Obviously some SPOILERS:

So I made the character I'd made for Pillars 2 and started playing on hard and I loved it. Knowing the beginning of Pillars 2 and that my choises would reflect on the second game really gave me drive. I was really focused on the story and that is what really bit me on the ♥♥♥ in act 3.

Now, act 3 started well. Although the story in act 3 has urgency, there is enough of a lull to return to Caed Nua and start working through the endless paths, which I was finally powerful enough to deal with. I did a few levels of the paths until I recieved a letter that I was summoned to First Fires because someone challenged my ownership of Caed Nua. I went to the city to find it still burning and locked up. I figured I have to follow the main quest a little more to re-open the city. So i started making my way toward Twin Elms. And boy does this games pacing unravel at this point...

When you go to Twin Elms the game is basicly over. There is absolutely no justification story-wise to turn around and return to the rest of the content. Just a straight line through a couple of quests to the final battle which turned out to be totally impossible for my party of level 8-9. A party that I was able to handle everything in the final dungeon with relative ease. But the final boss battle basicly wiped out my entire party within a minute of it starting. I tried a dozen times untill I just said ♥♥♥♥ it, turned the difficulty to easiest and finished the fight. And the game ends. It ♥♥♥♥ing ends. I had probably at least two fifths of the games content untouched including all the content from the expansion which turns out to be a "sidespansion" I should have somehow known to play before the main story...

A huge disappointment. I love the story and the writing and the characters and the combat and everything but the pacing just totally ♥♥♥♥s up. All I can do now is load a game earlier in the third act and go unlock Defiance Bay by going to this far off excluded area where my character knows exactly where he needs to go to confront the bad guy and pretend that he just doesn't feel like it right now and ♥♥♥♥ off back to civilization to finish off the other stuff...

Sigh.

I love Obsidian and their pedigree in crpg's is unmatched in my opinion so it's really hard to understand how they could ♥♥♥♥ up this badly... I hope venting here will get some of the bad taste out of my mouth so I can munch the rest of this games content and be happy with my starting point for Pillars 2.

Cheers.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Some oddities in your comments.

First, you've got the Caed Nua ownership challenge wrong. Normally, you would get it much earlier, such as in Chapter 2 already. In no way it is tied to Chapter 3:
--> https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/A_Call_to_Court

Second, most players do understand that the base game is capped at level 12, so if you choose "Hard" difficulty and start the final act with a level 8-9 party, you've ignored quite some content.

Third, you learn about the expansion areas around level 4-5 at the end of the Temple of Woedica quest in Defiance Bay. It remains unclear why you've ignored the letter that has been sent to you. If you had returned to the stewart of Caed Nua, you would have learned about the challenge from Lord Gathbin at the same time.

[YellouBee]

Thank you for your nitpics. :)

I got the letter about the challenge after Defiance Bay was already closed. Reading that link suggests that I never went back to Caed Nua between first entering Defiance Bay and the riots erupting there. This is not surprising seeing as the main quest line in Defiance Bay is fairly continuous and the story does not require you to visit your stronghold.

I was not aware of the level cap at any point. I doubt many players are hyper aware of such mechanical facts on their first playthrough if ever. But that is beside the point. I was very aware I was skipping some content and this is at the heart of my "complaint". The pacing is off in a roleplaying game if there is side content but the story momentum doesn't have natural lulls for pursuing that content.

I read the letter as soon as I returned to Caed Nua. At the beginning of Act 3. When the natural story progression had an appropriate lull for me to return there and start pursuing the side content.

My whole post is about pacing. The flow of the main story and how it ties in with the side content. I suppose I should extend the complaint to act 2 in addition to act 3 although the most grievious thing to me is keeping Defiance Bay locked until you reach the final areas in the game where it works against the current of the story to turn back.

It is not an easy task to create good pacing in an open ended rpg, but this was written by some of the same people who made the original Fallot games for an example and those games have great pacing pretty much all throughout.