Pathfinder vs Pillars of Eternity?

[Frozen_Heart]

Before buy just wanna ask a few questions for you guys who more or less experience in this game. So is this game at least similar to Pillars of Eternity in terms of dialog options and roleplaying? I mean will my stats/race/etc influence to dialogs? And how this dialogs/main story and side quests in general?
And your thoughts which is better? Pathfinder or Pillars of Eternity?

[Dixon Sider]

This game is very similar to POE. I played both a lot, and P:K could very well be a sequel to POE. But the great thing about this game is that it is an upgrade from POE in every way. I even loved POE to death, and found this game just infinitely better. Check out my playtime in both games. My profile info is public

[Mork]

For the dialogue, yes and no... race/class will influence slightly dialogue. Alignment is what really influence it. Its well written but not much of it is voiced and main/side quests are quite good.

I like both of them but P;K is better in my opinion(DnD* rule set). PoE is more friendly and easier to learn.

[jsaving]

PoE uses a thinly disguised version of 4th edition D&D while PK's ruleset harkens back to 3rd edition D&D, so that's one key difference. Another is that the PoE team put a very high emphasis on ensuring game balance in all respects, even at the risk of draining flavor from the game, whereas the PK team was more willing to put tabletop options in the game even when doing so created some OP combinations. A third difference (though related to the first two) is that you can flexibly multiclass in PK like you could in NWN/IWD2 whereas PoE doesn't allow you to do that.

Both games offer a fair amount of role playing and both have some depth to their campaign settings. There are not a lot of cases in either game where stats/race/class matter for dialogue options but in PK there are a fair number where your skills matter. PK is also better about enforcing alignment shifts when you take actions clearly at odds with the alignment listed on your character sheet, though the consequences of changing alignment usually aren't especially severe.

Both PoE and PK are mixed as far as the main quest/plotline is concerned. In PoE the devs do a very poor job giving your character a reason to advance the main storyline (something the dev-team head has said is among his biggest regrets), to the point where many players don't even know what the main quest is let alone why they should care about it. PK is much clearer about what the main quest is (get and keep a kingdom while identifying and defeating the enemy who tries to thwart you at every turn) but suffers from fairly strict and sometimes arbitrary time limits that can suddenly end your game. PK is better about this than it used to be in earlier builds (you can now not only track timers in your journal but you generally receive warnings on the kingdom management screen when you are close to a game-ending fail) but it is still possible for novice players to suddenly find their game over for reasons they do not fully understand.

I think PK is the better game overall but both are solid and you would not go wrong with either of them.

[Gregorovitch]

As a big fan of PoE1 I have to say P:K exceeds it in every department by some margin. At the risk of being put to the rack and thence dragged to the stake, I'd say it even surpasses Baldur's Gate 2.

Originally posted by Frozen_Heart:

So is this game at least similar to Pillars of Eternity in terms of dialog options and roleplaying?

Yes, except the choices run deeper and the consequences have more impact generally.

Originally posted by Frozen_Heart:

And how this dialogs/main story and side quests in general?

This is not an easy question to answer quickly. The simple answer is it is exceptional from a narrative perspective mainly because:

* Chris Avellone has excelled himself in the writing department. It's not flowery, purple etc, it's just damn good.

* the unique feature of this cRPG, kingdom management, completely changes the way the narrative works in the game compared to other cRPGs like PoE or BG.

This second one is hard to explain.

BG2 for example has a dead simple plot summarised by a) rescue Imoen, b) chase down Irenicus. Everything else is mostly incidental to that, not directly related (other than you may have to get through it to get where you need to go, the Underdark for example).

In P:K the main plot quests all relate to somebody or other who doesn't like that you've set yourself up as a ruler and are building a Kingdom. But they are all different people and have very different reasons. The effect is a multi-faceted, rich and varied set of plot lines, rather than the single focus of Pillars and BG, that are all nevertheless firmly connected directly to the main objective - building your kingdom.

Another analogy would be PoE plays like a good TV show that comprises individual stories in 1 hour shows that have no connection to each other other than the main characters whereas P:K plays like a good Netflix binge watch like a House of Cards or Peaky Blinders season. More meat, more depth, more flavour.

[Dixon Sider]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

At the risk of being put to the rack and thence dragged to the stake, I'd say it even surpasses Baldur's Gate 2.

I agree with this as well. Its the true sequel to BG2 that we always needed. Upgraded in almost every way

[Pink Eye]

Pillars of Eternity has more class/race reactivity. Pathfinder does not have any class/race reactivity. However, Pathfinder does have alignment replayability. Most of the choices you make in Pathfinder are based on your alignment and can have severe implications on the game. For example, if you are a evil character and make evil choices you will experience the game differently from someone who plays as a good character. This is also ignoring Lawful/Chaotic/Neutral.

Pillars of Eternity is based on a custom original rule set that was developed by Obsidian. It lacks almost all of the good stuff and creativity that made DnD 3.5 and AD&D so good. The rule set is bland and pretty overtly balanced. Pathfinder on the other hand is based on an established rule set that is pretty popular, and rightfully so, because it's a good system. DnD 3.5 is a stupidly fun system to play and the fact that Pathfinder is a shoot off of that system, it's great.

Which is better? I liked Pathfinder a lot more than Pillars of Eternity. If you had to pick, both are good. Ignore Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, that game was a travesty.

[Pink Eye]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

As a big fan of PoE1 I have to say P:K exceeds it in every department by some margin. At the risk of being put to the rack and thence dragged to the stake, I'd say it even surpasses Baldur's Gate 2.

Originally posted by Frozen_Heart:

So is this game at least similar to Pillars of Eternity in terms of dialog options and roleplaying?

Yes, except the choices run deeper and the consequences have more impact generally.

Originally posted by Frozen_Heart:

And how this dialogs/main story and side quests in general?

This is not an easy question to answer quickly. The simple answer is it is exceptional from a narrative perspective mainly because:

* Chris Avellone has excelled himself in the writing department. It's not flowery, purple etc, it's just damn good.

* the unique feature of this cRPG, kingdom management, completely changes the way the narrative works in the game compared to other cRPGs like PoE or BG.

This second one is hard to explain.

BG2 for example has a dead simple plot summarised by a) rescue Imoen, b) chase down Irenicus. Everything else is mostly incidental to that, not directly related (other than you may have to get through it to get where you need to go, the Underdark for example).

In P:K the main plot quests all relate to somebody or other who doesn't like that you've set yourself up as a ruler and are building a Kingdom. But they are all different people and have very different reasons. The effect is a multi-faceted, rich and varied set of plot lines, rather than the single focus of Pillars and BG, that are all nevertheless firmly connected directly to the main objective - building your kingdom.

Another analogy would be PoE plays like a good TV show that comprises individual stories in 1 hour shows that have no connection to each other other than the main characters whereas P:K plays like a good Netflix binge watch like a House of Cards or Peaky Blinders season. More meat, more depth, more flavour.

>* Chris Avellone has excelled himself in the writing department. It's not flowery, purple etc, it's just damn good.
Don't think MCA was involved in the writing for the first game. He only wrote a few companions.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Pink Eye:

Don't think MCA was involved in the writing for the first game. He only wrote a few companions.

I thought MCA wrote most of P:K, are you sure?

[Pink Eye]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Originally posted by Pink Eye:

Don't think MCA was involved in the writing for the first game. He only wrote a few companions.

I thought MCA wrote most of P:K, are you sure?

What! I'm confused, are we talking about Pillars of Eternity? Also I don't know how much he wrote for THIS game.

Hmm, searching google lead me to this interview: https://owlcatgames.com/news/13.html

[Pink Eye]

Oh lol I need reread your comment. I quoted the wrong thing, I thought you were talking about Pillars of Etenity. Oops, my bad Gregorovitch...

This is embarrassing.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Pink Eye:

This is embarrassing.

No sweat. What you said is exactly correct about PoE1 - MCA wrote Durance and Grieving Mother, that's all.

[Du-Vu]

P:K has a pretty good, slightly generic plot, but adds enough twists to the old standards of D&D adventuring and does a solid job with its kingdom-building add-on. I'm going to guess Chris Avellone mostly wrote the main overarching villain (kind of a spoiler to say more), just based on how that dialogue sounds, and that is one of the better parts of the game. I was turned off by some of the clunkier writing early on, but there really are a lot of different ways to RP and quite a lot of alignment reactivity. It is more linear than Deadfire -- you can resolve them in a number of ways, certain events will change based on your choices, but each chapter is fairly self-contained. Basically there's more mechanical replayability here, it's a longer game in terms of dungeon-crawling and combat, but there isn't as much unique dialogue and any faction interactions are more on the level of the first Pillars than the second.

D&D 3.5 was always the most granular, tweaky version of that game, Pathfinder all the more so, and that's faithfully translated here, and it's really pretty impressive just how much they've actually implemented, particularly monsters that are barely even seen. Anyway, minmaxer's delight, but not really my thing. I'd like to get Deadfire's customizable AI in here, though, and this game's inventory management (having the best character cast scrolls onto the current target from within the inventory screen) into Deadfire. And DOS2, for that matter.

[dulany67]

Originally posted by Dixon Sider:

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

At the risk of being put to the rack and thence dragged to the stake, I'd say it even surpasses Baldur's Gate 2.

I agree with this as well. Its the true sequel to BG2 that we always needed. Upgraded in almost every way

Yes, P:K is better if for no other reason than it has some (more) modern QoL and much better graphics. That's taking nothing away from BG2, which was a revelation for RPG fans.

[Dixon Sider]

Originally posted by dulany67:

Yes, P:K is better if for no other reason than it has some (more) modern QoL and much better graphics. That's taking nothing away from BG2, which was a revelation for RPG fans.

Ya, its just a 2019 version of everything that BG2 was. P:K has a large tech advantage that they utilized. BG2 was a marvel even by todays standards. Im interested to see if BG3 can pull off the same style of improvements on the system, or if P:K will end up the true BG2 sequel

[dwarner]

The Poz gets laid on a little thick in Deadfire, while the superb writing here subtly subverts it.