I feel like the only person that....

[Lust]

Isn't totally blinded by this game. I wanted to love is so bad but it's just an unfinished/rushed mess.

I crash once an hour every hour usually after a long speaking cutscene or when loading into the "world". I have an amazing PC so that isn't the issue.

While the world it's self is absolutely GORGEOUS the character models next to the fabulously drawn backgrounds look boxy and cheap. Elves are just small boxes, Anuma are giant boxes and humans are medium sized boxes, the midgets are tiny boxes. The character models look as though they're made of plastic and all the limbs are tiny attached to giant boxes. They stand out so badly next to such a carefully created world that to me they're more of an eyesore then anything. The character model animations are okay besides looking very stiff with extremely repetitive actions. The models themselves look just awful. They honestly need their quality upped and fine tuned before they look great next to all the lush world backgrounds. The skeletons of them needs to be shrunk or something when they wear armor cause otherwise they all have these tiny little heads that are walking around in what looks like cardboard boxes. They just do not look good at all.

Character creation also isn't great, races either have one pretty face and two hideous choices no one would pick or it's the exact same face with a slightly different eye colour. Hair choices for females range from angry lesbian to hipster "art" teacher to only two cute hairstyles that will actually get used by us players, none of which have any length to them what-so-ever which is majorly disappointing. You make a high pony tail (no bangs of course never can give bangs to a high ponytail) and stop it at the shoulders like the only other "long" hairstyle, why can't it go to the waist it wouldn't even glitch with cloaks since it would be out from the back seeing how it's supposed to be a pony tail. Besides you can turn capes off.

The only female voice that sounds decent for player characters has her constantly yelling "STAND TOGETHER" every thirty seconds in combat, the other choices either sound really old or extremely man-ish/grunty. You get one other decent voice option but the combat grunts/screams are so awful it makes that particular voice unusable with sound. The free cuticle role DLC I tried, all of the female voices are awful, obnoxious are borderline offensive with how bad they are and how the lines of dialog feels sooooo out of place from the game. Speaking of out of place voices by the way the Narrator and Xoti's voice actresses both should be fired, never work in voice acting again and have their spoken lines removed from the game and recast with totally different people. The narrator is literally the worse narration I have ever heard in any entertainment medium. It sounds as though the devs asked some random valley girl off the street to record these lines, recorded it and said "meh it's good enough" and put it into the game. She is entirely too young, sounds way too happy and DOES NOT have the right cadence for a game with such a dark and brooding tone/storyline. The narrator should've been a man, someone with a voice similar to either Paul Bettany or Samuel E. Wright literally any man with an accent of some kind would've done the job PERFECTLY.

As it stands now nearly every non-party NPC has some form of accent whether it's similar to Carribean, that ATROCIOUS southern accent they gave to Xoti (I'll get to her in a minute) or British or anything. Literally every NPC I've spoken to so far besides my own party members sound like they're from Jamaica which is cool as hell, but WHY is the narrator some boring american girl with no accent? She doesn't fit into the world at all. It's so jarring it takes me out of the world entirely. I find myself either muting my speakers to read the dialog when the narrator speaks or mashing the one button to skip it entirely because she's that awful. I hope they ask some guy to re-voice the narrator even if they charged 10$ for a male narrator with an accent DLC I'd buy it cause the girl is that terrible. If they don't put in a male narrator or give us an option to turn her off I will really be sad about it. NPCs also say all these random made-up language words constantly "ayyye milllaaard" "ecutme" "gilardre" or stuff like that. It's just off putting I understand they were going for a tropical island feel for this game but why bother using a made up language that sounds like a bad mixture of Spanish, English and African languages?

Last part about the voice acting.... XOTI IS AWFUL. What is with the PoE devs making every single recruitable Priest NPC in these games the most obnoxious, awful, annoying sacrifice them for a stat buff levels of terrible characters? Xoti's spoken dialog seems to be louder than every other NPC's voice and I absolutely ABHOR the voice they chose for her. Rogue from X-Men in the 90's cartoon's accent was adorable and charming this chick's is nails on a chalkboard levels of teeth gritting atrocious. I will never be taking Xoti again, I will use her long enough to finish her side quest and either sacrifice her for a stat buff if that's an option or stick her in the boat and take a created Priest, she is that awful. For PoE3 PLEASE DO NOT make the Priest annoying just ONCE give us a likable/enjoyable Priest.

Speaking of boats, I do not like the change from a keep to a boat. While I understand I'm still not far into the game so mine is still the starter boat and it's tiny, I just don't like it. There are too many slots to manage, too many matierals to keep track of and too many gear slots to fill up/use. Then the ship "combat" makes all of that entirely pointless because there is no actual ship combat it's just "text events" where you click "fire, run away or face head on" pretty much with the combat actually being on the boat decks. I think it's pretty awful for the devs to say there is ship combat when it's just written text with any combat being on the deck with your party, I genuinely feel lied to about the ship combat and the island explorations cause it's all just "text events". Other boats stalk you even if you by-pass them and hop onto an island they sit and wait for you to re-board to leave forcing you to camp out for hours until they get bored and go far enough away for you to leave. If you decide to fight the first boat that comes along while headed to the main port be prepared to fight like 25 NPCs with your team of 5-6.

The exploration aspect is nice in theory but poor in execution you're essentially a moving dot on the map whether in a boat or on land and you move your dot to other dots/places to "explore" around the "world". It effectively cuts the game world in half because there really is no form of exploration besides the predetermined towns/dungeons you have to go to anyways. All exploration whether it's on ship or land it's all just reading and clicking text.

This game actually feels 2x smaller than PoE1 to me because there is zero actual exploration besides moving a dot around on the map and clicking text. Why weren't these "explorable islands" set up to be procedurally generated maps you can ACTUALLY explore. That would actually give the game a fair amount of replayability because each island would be different ever time you play. If Blizzard could do it in the 90's with Diablo 1&2 there should be zero excuse as to why Obsidian could not do something similar in this game map "exploration" wise. I am SO disappointed that this game world feels so empty even though it's supposed to be a much larger map than the first game, it feels 2x smaller because there is nothing to explore besides the pre-determined towns and dungeons you have to go to anyways. The world really really needs a lot of fleshing out/meat to even make it feel as full and amazing as the first game. As it stands now this game just feels like it was rushed out 6-12 months early because a lot of the world building needs some serious work. It really feels like "exploration" and those islands were an afterthought it's pretty clear they were considering it's all just lame text events rather than actually make them a fun and exiting part of the game.

"Oh neat I found this area I need to go through to reach the first dungeon and fourth companion lemme just click these 'search area, disarm trap, fail, some baddies spawn or keep going'. The only time any of these little side areas are explorable is if you purposely eff up something to have monsters to fight spawn (dat bestiary entry tho) but if you're trying to stay level one until you recruit the fourth companion this fight is impossible because it's three of your level 1s vs about 7 1-2 levels or something higher baddies. The wizards on the other side target my main and insta ko. Can't do at lvl 1 and even if you could it would get you to level 2 much like fighting the 3 panthers in front of the cage. The first game allowed you to rush past a bunch of stuff at level 1 in order to recruit most of the companions before really starting the game. That is sorely missing here because there are a couple fights you really cannot skip, no matter what I've tried I cannot get to Aloth's location at level one without taking Xoti in order to kill those stupid panthers in front of the door, even then every time I beat them I level up to lvl 2 it's just extremely annoying cause Aloth always takes that stupid shield spell and wastes it the opening of every single fight forcing me to spend 250 gold just to respec him to get rid of that totally useless spell.


While I seem to be one of the only people to feel this way I genuinely feel disappointed, lied to, taking advantage of and deceived by statements that the game has certain elements (island exploration/ship combat) when neither of those things are actually present in the game. I feel like I paid 80$ for a half finished game and sadly I've played it too long to get my money back. I am so disappointed in this game that I don't really even want to continue playing it because it's so disappointing to look at the cheap character models and have literally NOTHING to explore besides pre-determined locations. Flavoured text choices ARE NOT exploring nor are text choices any form of "ship combat". I think it was SO dirty of them to lie about these two things specifically because they're not in the game what-so-ever.

I really just don't understand the blind praise for this game when it's half finished and lacking a lot of polish the first game and tyranny had. Say what you want about those game but they are both extremely polished, fully fleshed out/not cheap looking FULL games. This one just feels like a rushed afterthought in comparison and I have no idea why I seem to be one of the only people truly disappointed. Why are so many people blindly praising this game when there really is so much missing/wrong with it? You're enabling Obsidian to rush out half finished games! I mean seriously scroll out in game, you honestly feel like those cheap plastic looking character models seriously look decent next to all those amazing backgrounds? They look absolutely terrible in comparison.

Please tell me some of you actually agree with me and see the game how I do, don't tell me I'm the only one that feels like this game is 50% finished and lacking so much polish when it comes to voice actors/character models/the empty "world".

[IronMana]

"Hair choices for females range from angry lesbian to hipster "art" teacher to only two cute hairstyles that will actually get used by us players"

Which ones are those because I can tell you when I am picking hair for female characters, I don't think "wow that's angry lesbian hair" or "that's hipster hair". I bet I'm not using one of those "only two" cute ones.

I also didn't think "homosexuality thrown in my face", especially when I'm a male Watcher and the first character to flirt with me is a female (Maia). "The Defiant" can mean lots of things, not all of them revolving around sexuality.

As far as tthe game, it needs some polishing. I'm early in the game and already ran into a quest bug where I can't complete it the way I'd hope because the dialogue chain is bugged.

Xoti - I'm neutral on her. I don't think she's the greatest thing ever but she's not nails on a chalkboard bad for me so far. I don't mind having her around, and I've definitely endured characters I thought were more annoying.

People have said and were disappointed that you can romance her quickly - hasn't happened for me. Maia's the one after me apparently.

Character models - improve them yes but I'm not as down on them as you are, OP. Probably averagish.

I was disappointed ship combat was just text based. It also seems very prone to RNG, at least early on. The ship exploration system - I guess it gets more manageable later when you have coin to spoil your crew with buffets and fine liquor every day, but early on, at least for me, it's hard to keep morale up.

The injured crew stat seems to act weird too. After one ship battle, I was losing 2 morale per day due to injury, but the stat said 0 injured crew. When I went into the ship menu, I saw my cook was hurt and then the stat became 1 when I per her in rest. Before, when I had an injury, it said 1 with no one in the resting quarters. That confused me.

The game needs polishing for sure and hopefully it will come. I've had one freeze/crash with the game so far. Not ideal, but nothing I'm going to get upset over.

I'm not "blinded" by it. I really enjoyed the first game and so far I am enjoying PoE2. Doesn't mean I think it's "perfect", but I do think it's enjoyable, fun, and overall well-crafted. Just needs polishing and some more refinement.

[Forumz]

Why can't people just enjoy video games anymore? Maybe its time for you to do something else with your life if a game irks you this much.......

[Lust]

I didn't mention anything about the gay stuff, that I don't really mind if people want it, it's there. If they don't want it they don't have to take part. Honestly I really enjoy the gay options in games because it teaches people to be all inclusive even if I personally don't take part in them.

Solid points mostly everywhere else.

[Lust]

@Forumz Why can't people have valid criticisms about a game and not just lap up a half finished unpolished product?

[Aliceskysareblue]

Originally posted by Lust and Lace:

@Forumz Why can't people have valid criticisms about a game and not just lap up a half finished unpolished product?

because your not the only one critcising the game. maybe if you shortened your opening post and explained what you do like it would be a much fairer view.

as it is its six paragraphs of you complaining about things that are frankly personal views.

[puppet74]

This game doesnt feel unfinished at all. I've had 1 crash in 38 hours. Every side story even bounties have a story. It has voice acting in the entire game. Graphics are much improved over poe1, but it still keeps that old school crpg vibe. Keep in mind they are going for those old style isometric graphics style, so there is only so much one can do to keep that look.

As much as im loving the game, i wot shy away from saying there are afew things they could improve, fix. For example the preformance is much to be desired. I hope they can get it running at a solid 60fps at all times. Thats not to much to ask. Getting 30fps in some areas on a 1080ti is kinda embaressing. And ofc the difficutly for the game needs some fine tuning, along with afew class balance issues with some insaine build combos that are op, but hey those things are always a small issue in rpgs.

Im sure they will iron out alot of things moving on in the next few months. If you just look at poe 1 now compared to its release its preformance and balance is way better. So i have faith in that.

Each to there own , people come into games with differnt exspectations and when a game doesnt live up to those they will get disapointed. Best to not have expectations and just go in blind and roll with it, less chance to get disapointed.

Loving the game btw dispite afew issues here and there i think its the best crpg we have had in years. Its only going to get better with the nxt 3 dlcs as well.

[gypsy.davey]

I played PoE and White March Part 1, but found the game a bit too depressing and the god stuff a little confusing. By contrast, this game (26 hours in) is fun, the dialogue is sharp, the game is much more flexible (I've not yet moved on from the first major city because the quests are so interesting) and, well, if you are a true role-player, some people (and their voices) are just plain annoying. That's life! I'm a little concerned by you defining "Defiant" as homosexual (is that another word like "gay" lost to the language?), but then I saw you describe a character as a "lesbian", so it's clear you have a problem in that direction.

I'm playing on a late-2013 iMac and the game only crashed once on leaving character creation. Yes, the loading screens are still very irritating, but the rest of the game more than makes up for them. So I like PoE2 a lot - it also would appear to have immense replayability. Best fight: North centre of Old City with constantly spawning undead - outgunned at least 2:1, just managed to hang on.

[Lust]

We don't all have the same opinions I'm aware of that. My points still stand

[Yu Phat Phuc]

Plenty of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ going on here.
1. Having all the gay ♥♥♥♥ in the game is alright but legit playing as a male watcher and saying one nice thing to the pirate dwarf turns every chat with him into some ♥♥♥♥ erotica. Needs to be less of it in the dlcs/3rd game.
2. The ship combat is trash no way around it.
3. There are more options for female watchers to romance.
4. Saying his machine is ♥♥♥♥ cus the game crashes is a lie. The devs put up a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ post about there being crash problems when going into the world map. Crash after character creation aswell cool spending an hour on ♥♥♥♥♥♥ nothing.
5. The combat is laughtably easy.
6. The game is very much about that PC ♥♥♥♥. Real life politics in games nah man ♥♥♥♥ that.

OP my dude why do you even bother commenting on these forums they are just filled with fanboys and PC ♥♥♥♥.

[Lust]

Her* -_-

[Roger_Dabbit]

*Checks critic review scores*

*Checks Steam user review scores*

It would appear that, in reality, OP is the only one blinded. Seemingly, blinded by personal preferences and preconceived expectations coming into the game. Not that that's a terrible thing, but it certainly seems to have deteriorated what, by all critical and popular reviews indicate, is an excellent experience.

[puppet74]

I love how if you like a game now days your a " fan boy" interesting

[Lust]

I'm hardly blinded I'm expressing things I don't like about the game.

[djinnxy]

You asked if anyone shares your opinion and I have to tell ya, " __________ ." Sorry no
affirmation here.

[EvilDonut]

Originally posted by puppet74:

I love how if you like a game now days your a " fan boy" interesting

Nope, it's defending the undefendable that makes you a fanboy, pal