Summary: The White March is worth buying. Expect tougher, more varied encounters with better enemy positioning and AI that makes use of its abilities and switches targets in during battle, more imaginative and intricate dungeon areas, a more lively and convincing base settlement (the village of Stalwart), and two new companions, which I utterly disliked, but that's just me. Both the newSummary: The White March is worth buying. Expect tougher, more varied encounters with better enemy positioning and AI that makes use of its abilities and switches targets in during battle, more imaginative and intricate dungeon areas, a more lively and convincing base settlement (the village of Stalwart), and two new companions, which I utterly disliked, but that's just me. Both the new areas and new enemies clearly benefit from the experience the PoE team at Obsidian has amassed while working on the base game.
First off, I should say that I was on the whole disappointed by Pillars of Eternity, whenever I've considered its 26 March 2015 release build as the complete game, which I am now convinced it was not meant to be. Patch 2.0 which comes at the same date as The White March, but for free of course, makes some much-needed improvements to enemy and party AI, the user interface, and Class and Base Attributes balance.
The "2.0" version of PoE contains one major change to base attributes and that is the changing of the Perception bonus from boosting Deflection to boosting Accuracy. While I believe this to be a needed step in the right direction, I think it's too little to make a difference for me.
The addition of enemies with immunities to certain damage types and afflictions will force the player to adapt weapons and tactics to the particular encounter, something which was rarely needed in the base Pillars of Eternity.
I started the expansion on Hard difficulty and Expert mode, with a level 9 party. I found it a nice surprise that Eder no longer felt invincible during combat, and that enemies would go for my weaker characters. Although I haven't felt a need to change the party's equipped items, or respec my character to reflect changes to the attribute system or AI, my impression is that combat difficulty has received a much needed boost.
I think the encounter design and difficulty deserve a few words of commendation. I've had my party wiped out multiple times by the same encounter, which hasn't happened to me in the base game, save for just a few fights, and I consider this to be good progress in the right direction. In the base game it felt as if the designers were too shy to make encounters hard. I was practically glad when my party got wiped out in the last battle in Stalwart Village - I had made it a house rule that I won't rest spam through the saving of the village.
It's no longer the same boring battle over and over, so there is improvement, thanks to the upgraded enemy AI and the addition of programmable behavior for party NPCs.
As a side effect of the change to the Perception bonus, your party's tanks are now more vulnerable. What this translates to, especially in combination with an updated AI which tends to disengage and pursue targets in your back lines, is that you actually need to manage your party's movement... somewhat. The amount of party micro needed is still far from the BG/IWD levels, but I'm happy with what little has been achieved. This comes in addition to the nerfing of the fighter "Wary Defender" talent.
Encounters seem more "hand-made" and less often look copy-pasted compared to those in the base game. I've been tracking this carefully as I played, and I can say there were enough (although not each and all) combat encounters where the following factors were present, which gave them character:
1. There was context to the creatures' group as it was composed - for example, a group of ogres gathered around the dead bodies of Lagufaeth.
2. There was conversation, either between the enemies, or between my party and the enemies.
3. The encounter was placed on terrain which offered some kind of tactical opportunities for both sides - a narrow pass, obstacles on the terrain which provided choke points or kept a character's back safe, a staircase with multiple turns which disallowed the party from deploying in an optimal combat order, etc.
In general, I could tell these were things that had been tested in advance, and encounters weren't just arbitrarily placed on flat ground. I welcome this effort on the developers' part.
As for the areas - the developers have kicked into full gear, and the areas are both bigger - on par with the IE games, and just as beautiful, or more so than, in the base game, with multiple entry points and hence multiple paths through dungeons, and varied combat environments which in the odd lucky case necessitate some tactical thought on the player's part. I'd even go far enough to claim that in most TWM dungeons the dungeon design is superior to what's usually seen throughout the IE games.
Unfortunately, the old tactic of blocking doorways with your tank is still easy to pull of in some areas, especially in Durgan's Battery.
Overall, I'd say the expansion is worth it, both in terms of size and in terms of improvements to gameplay.… Expand
Pillars of Eternity: The White March - Part 1Your Score0 out of 10User Score
