Ima be real with you, I love Pillars of Eternity I to death. It's very rare for an rpg to (I'll be vague here) reveal a twist on your character's backstory and still give you the choices to flesh it out further. That being said, this game kind of blows. I was so incredibly excited for the launch and the expanded systems/classes, but imagine my surprise when I was utterly invested in stopping that giant jade loser. So when a choice arrived that felt relatively early, I decided I would do what appeared to be the hardest choice. Going alone, but imagine my surprise when that's actually the fastest way to beat the game. So I learned, the factions bring a monumental amount of content to your story that you should absolutely pursue. But that alone isn't the reason for the negative review, and again to be vague my issue is with the endings. There is a distinct choice you can make at the end that seems pretty normal, you wanna stop the bad. Yet nothing comes of it, even though in the literal game before this one, the bad in question had the taste slapped out of its mouth. Somehow the writers just let it slip through that someone getting magically Oppenheimer'd would come back apparently invulnerable. It's especially poignant as the plot repeatedly hammers home stop the bad when in hindsight you very much can mitigate the bad at best. I know someone might argue "saving the day" doesn't always work that way but I'd just like to point back to Pillars of Eternity I, they sure as ♥♥♥♥ stopped it then. They had a new setting, a motley cast of new/old crew, new mechanics, new classes, and then made the meat of the story skippable. The story that's left is just contrived nonsense that basically gave I assume someone's favorite ash smear a do over. Idk, just probably get it cheap if you can.