Pathfinder vs Pillars ?

[gandalf]

How is this game holding up vs Pillars ? I see it seems like it is using same engine. But how is the rest of the gameplay ?

[CelestialSlayer]

So many QoL features in poe2. Graphics blow pathfinder away, which in my opinion looks very WoW like. Yes the builds can be varied. But if the rest of the game doesn’t hold together I’m not sure where you are supposed to get your enjoyment from. The fact that they couldn’t add in fast forward and combat speed says that they didn’t really think about how people play computer games and got obsessed with being as faithful to the source material as possible. In the end if you lose hours watching people walk, rest and the combat ai is so bad whilst not being able to control the combat speed. Why would you bother? I will come back to this when I have exhausted all my current CRPG in my library.

[EvilDonut]

Bugs aside, this is far better than pillars.
The graphics are better. The story is better. Companions, not so much. Setting is arguable (i do prefer dnd to poe, so i like this more). The gameplay is kind of better, if we put the balancing aside.

This game is a slow game, exactly like PoE, though.

[EvilDonut]

Ah, and animations are far better in pathfinder than poe....when you receive your title, the sequence with Jamandi who puts her sword on your shoulder is very good. Nothing like that on poe.

[CelestialSlayer]

Originally posted by Lettus:

I don't even understand why some of you troll around here, if you don't like the game because its so bad, why aren't you on the boards of your favorite games? I don't spend my time talking about games I dont like, because I like spending my time playing the game or talking about the game I do like. You see how that works? Crazy thing this thing called sanity.

. Because I bought the game and I’m entitled to read the message boards and see how it’s being salvaged. Quite frankly I’m not alone in being slightly disappointed in its release state. It’s not like I haven bought it and I’m trolling people like how you are anyone who doesn’t agree with you.

[Iridescence]

Pathfinder is more fun to build a character in since it is based on an actual tabletop system so has better mechanics on the whole. Pillars they tried to make up something themselves and it was hit or miss in a lot of ways. Both games try to give you that tabletop feel in a computer game but Kingmaker is decidedly more "hardcore" about it, a plus for many as long as you are into tabletop gaming. Pillars came out years ago so is obviously far more polished and less buggy right now. I'd say Pillars is better story wise although neither game really have great stories, but a lot of the NPCs in Kingmaker feel like a 13 year old's first attempt at creating fantasy characters.

I think both are well worth playing but I'd give the edge to Kingmaker since the character building and tactical aspects it excels in are what really draw me to RPGs

[Balzaphon]

Originally posted by Lettus:

I don't even understand why some of you troll around here, if you don't like the game because its so bad, why aren't you on the boards of your favorite games? I don't spend my time talking about games I dont like, because I like spending my time playing the game or talking about the game I do like. You see how that works? Crazy thing this thing called sanity.

And this is why we can't even see the hotdog when you talk about this game and diss Obsidian, its all the way in

You call people that care enough to research and question trolls? Are you by chance a games journalist? Why would these people be here if they didn't care about the game and its betterment

Differing opinion =/= troll people

[Murderface]

Originally posted by Gogopher:

imho this game is heads and tails better than either poe 1/2 or dos 1/2...those games are easy mode and much smaller than compared to this one...and have limited replayability compared to this game

this game is a bit buggier than either of them and is not as flashy...but to me it is hands down more fun

Whoa whoa dont bash my DOS 1/2 please. Those games were amazing, and pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ difficult on Tactician mode.

[Burninator]

This thread is incredibly goofy because half the people are talking about POE1 and the other half about 2.

Pathfinder is leaps and bounds ahead of POE1 for many of the reasons mentioned here. It is, however, WAY behind POE2 which is 100% better in every conceivable way to POE1. They are like a different game practically. POE1 I couldn't even finish. POE2 I couldn't put down at all.

[mreed2]

My two cents (all in my opinion, obviously)

POE 1 mechanically is inferior to this game -- my impression (based on developer comments as the game was designed and developed -- I was a backer) is that the Obsidian team really didn't want to make a D&D type game, but were obliged to pretend to do so because, well, that's what everyone expected. The result was (in my opinion) an ugly mix of typical modern WRPG mechanics such as aggro management abilities, avoiding per rest abilities, and, more than anything else, "balance" (I hate that word when it comes to single player RPGs). Add in the post-release swinging of the balance bat at anything that even hinted that spellcasters were superior to non-spellcasterse at any level and... I was rather disappointed.

This game is much more mechanically sound than POE (1 or 2) -- it plays like and feels like BG 3. But... The developers went crazy (that's the only conclusion that I can come to) and decided that the attack bonuses, AC, and feats of the standard monster's in Pathfinder were far too low to be a proper challenge, so they boosted them across the board. This completely ruins the flow of the game -- and means that this game is likely to be a commerical failure (you only get one chance to make a first impression, and the developers still don't seem to really grasp the problem).

Story-wise, POE 1 again suffered for being a Kickstarter backer -- it had to recreate the BG 1 experince (wilderness exploration), BG 2 (large hub cities stuffed with quests and companion interactions), the PST experince (a "game with a message" -- philosphy stuff, basically), and the IWD experince (the Endless Paths, which is just "dungeoneering without all that silly quest stuff"). As a result it lacked focus overall, but actually did a reasonably good job at what it did.

Story-wise, this game is much less ambitious -- it is trying to put its own spin on the NWN 2 orginal campaign (e.g. PC becomes a noble and rules a land) but... Well, the concept is interesting, but the implenetation is poor (see all the people complaining about losing without understanding why). Beyond the mechanical problems, the story seems to get fuzzy after defeating the trolls. I haven't finished the game, but never a good thing when you look at the quest log and go "Huh, it seems like I really don't have anything to do except explore or go into areas that I'm really not ready for yet". And yes, I'm aware that Kingmaker is a set of modules in the Pathfinder universe -- but for someone who hasn't experienced these modules, it certainly feels like an attempt to recreate NWN 2.

Companion-wise, POE 1 failed rather badly in my opnion. The companions are used primarily as exposition devices (pages and pages of dialog about where they came from and the like) and have rather skeletal personalities outside of that -- they felt like "archtypes" rather than people. As far as recreating the BG 2 companion experience, they largely failed.

Companion-wise, this game is definately a mixed bag. As far as story goes, they feel like "people" to me, and their dialog and quests are interesting. However, the extreme difficulty of the game means that the companions despertely need to pull their weight mechanically, and... Well, again, look at all the threads of people refusing to play with the provided companions (preferring mute mercernies instead) and you can see the problem.

Overall, I feel that POE 1 is (sigh) slightly superior to this game -- and it will definately be a much bigger commerical success. I hope this game manages to earn enough money to turn a profit for the developers -- I'd be very interested in further Pathfinder games by this company, as their heart is in the same place as mine. Fingers crossed... :)

And to anticipate complaints of "get gud / turn down the difficulty": I'm playing on slightly modified Normal, and managed, with difficulty, to get through Act 1 prior to the 1.0.2 hotfix (which turned down the difficulty of the starting areas slightly). That doesn't mean that I enjoyed the experience, and the difficulty sliders can't fix the root of the problem -- namely, it is far to easy for foes to hit you (high BAB) and far too hard for you to hit the foes (high AC). The best you can do with the difficulty sliders is make it so that it hurts less when they hit you, producing the net effect of "You die slower" rather than "You win". Combine that with introducing the swarm mechanic in what is likely to be the first non-tutorial quest that the player experiences, stripping the player of two companions, and adding a time limit too boot... Seriously, wait to make the game hard untilt the players are invested in it, not right out of the gate.

For the record, POE 2 is better than POE 1 in almost all respects, and is clearly superior to this game (again, IMO). The only really bad thing about POE 2 is the very poor ship combat mechanics.

[Tintler]

Ask this on Pillars of Eternity forum peoples are going to say Pillars of Eternity is better.
Ask this on Pathfinder forum peoples are going say Pathfinder is better.

I couldn't play Pillars of Eternity 2 more than 5 hours. I bored.
I've got butterflies in my stomach when playing Pathfinder I don't know why I like this game so much.

[G4meaddict]

"I don't spend my time talking about games I dont like, because I like spending my time playing the game or talking about the game I do like."

Originally posted by Lettus:

Pathfinder, i know the brand, it's better than the competition. I seriously dont see the comparison, i barely stomach to play pillars past the first 4 or 5 hours. left it on in idle for a good time inbetween missions. The story was boring as cardboard, the only enjoyable thing about it was the ship shanties. Combat was a guessing game half the time, encounters were even more of a gamble. Ship Combat literally bowls down to a text adventure, and I've seen better text games.

Owlcat has literally given people the biggest ruleset to do potentially the craziest stuff NO RPG i nthe last 20 years has even come close to allowing you to do, and people still cry for something as BAD as Pillars? Pillars launched with several game breaking bugs and ITS STILL PLAYS like trash right now, slow as molasses and it doesn't even have the same crutch this game to fall back on in the sense that you spend a lot of time loading, their game is actually SLOW from just being SLOW.

This game blows Pillars of Eternity out of the water, unfortunately, This game had more keyboard jockies who'd happily get it up the tailpipe by Obsidian and their half baked sequel, and still after 4 months not fully functional game, but a new studio churns out a game that had far less issues than pillars did except for it NOT being as easy, and oh no it most be the worst game. Here's a novel idea, play the game on whatever difficulty you can actually play on (everyone's skills are different, no participation rewards here.) and enjoy a cool less expensive game.

40 game with more content than a full price 60 game. Gee, i wonder which one will keep me entertained longer.

Originally posted by Lettus:

Originally posted by Roadie:

It's a different engine, just a similar visual style.

I wouldn't even call it that, have you looked at POE 1 or 2, it looks like faded, and grungy, like they still wanted it to look like Baldurs Gate despite it being 2018 and graphical fidelity has improved 100x since back the. Their both isometric but thats just about the only comparison.

Originally posted by Lettus:

Go look at the news release for Pillars of Eternity 2, scroll down that long list of updates, the game is a hot pile of you know what, and they will keep working on fixing that piece of garbage until they are ready to release the sequel, and a lot of those people who praise that game while trying to bash this by far way better game, will keep feeding Obsidians garbage dump by buying their also broken and will need to be patched just like all the other releases they've done DLC.

I stopped supporting Obsidian because I got tired of seeing the same drivel they shovel out time and again, but legions of fans continue to gobble up without end, yet can't take it when someone else better comes around does a better over all job, for less mind than a bigger studio with a bigger budget and no real anchor IP to "Hold them Back".

If I make a BS fantasy world and just say this is this for this reason, it doesn't make my world better than Tolkens by comparison, but that is what you'll here people saying here. POE is better because X Y Z, than Pathdinder.. it doesn't work as well. The majority of the problems this game has had all boil down to TWO Things. One of which I was also guilty of for a time.

1.) Armchair GM's... Everyone wants to be the GM. Everyone knows the answers. I admit this was my original problem to, I took everything at face value without bothering to look further on in or deeper. I used to complain that my favorite class was missing key featurs, turns out i just had to be patient and boom, i discovered they were there all along. Did they change things from the core rule set, yes but if you step back and look at it as a whole, it makes sense and was pointed out right from the start. There is no grid, so obviously it wasn't going to be turn based, we say people freely moving in combat, we saw beta test videos of combat, why would ASK "Why didn't they make it turned based, it would have been better turned based." IF you already saw the game and should have realized what they were going for. Dragon Age used the same system in Origins, people kissed their ass because ofit. Pillars does the same thing but worse because you can't even tell when a round is ended for them its just cooldown and hope you get another resource point some how to spam it again.

2.) It's hard if you make it hard, and people think they are all game masters who can never lose, and the moment they do, they turn into that german kid who lost at his favorite MOBA or whatever it was that became a popular meme. Did people read the option that said that enemies would hit harder that the game would be harder? Maybe don't play it on that level at 1st level? Maybe I don't know wait until you are stronger? game seems to let you change settings and difficulties whenever you want, unlike Pillars *cough*

Sorry but i have no love or chill for people who whine about a cool game thats only been out for 5 days but the dev team has already worked with the community to make the game that much better. It's Massive game bigger than the original pillars, and the sequel pre-paid DLC, and they've fixed the major issues with their game in a fraction of the time that Pillars has and they still haven't addressed some of its major issues, check their boards for the same tired complaints.

Sure buddy ;)

[Kshahdoo]

Pillars of Eternity 2 with turn-based mode looks pretty nice to me, but Pathfinder is still way better. Way more diversity, I'd say, and D20 system is just 100 times better, than that crap Obsidian invented (they should use OGL, which is free, and make a D20 RPG). Roleplaying system in use is probably the most difference maker. But implementing the system is still very important, and Owlcat has done it well enough to get a very good game. I just wish, it were a turn-based game, then it would be not just very good, but great.

[maverick]

Originally posted by Kshahdoo:

and D20 system is just 100 times better, than that crap Obsidian invented (they should use OGL, which is free, and make a D20 RPG)

Why do you think D20 much beter than Obsidian system? IMHO PoE contain less annoying save-load stuff.

[Kshahdoo]

Originally posted by oh noes:

Originally posted by Kshahdoo:

and D20 system is just 100 times better, than that crap Obsidian invented (they should use OGL, which is free, and make a D20 RPG)

Why do you think D20 much beter than Obsidian system? IMHO PoE contain less annoying save-load stuff.

Do you really think, a range attack can't be used further, than 12 meters? And I bet, there are more wizard/sorcerer spells in Kingmaker, than spells overall in PoE2.

[maverick]

Originally posted by Kshahdoo:

Do you really think, a range attack can't be used further, than 12 meters?

Yep, i really think so. Range weapons for wussies. And the quantity of spells doesn't make one better than another.
I like both games but sometimes, Pathfinder on high difficulty modes is a sevescum simulator all the way.