Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

 PlayStation 4
User Score
4.8

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 128 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 49 out of 128
  2. Mixed: 17 out of 128
  3. Negative: 62 out of 128
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  1. ZXSth
    Apr 15, 2020
    5
    While my impressions of this game were quite favourable at launch, my love for the game has soured as I've had time to watch it fall apart at the seams in comparison to other similar games in the genre. To provide an example: While recently playing Greedfall, I experienced infrequent, average load times of about 10 seconds when travelling large distances between areas, and not betweenWhile my impressions of this game were quite favourable at launch, my love for the game has soured as I've had time to watch it fall apart at the seams in comparison to other similar games in the genre. To provide an example: While recently playing Greedfall, I experienced infrequent, average load times of about 10 seconds when travelling large distances between areas, and not between individual areas within the same region. Whenever they were longer (i.e. between regions), I was greeted with an area where I could buy and sell gear, and speak with my companions. This was a fantastic breath of fresh air after what I had experienced with Deadfire.

    Deadfire has so much to enjoy - the incredible amount of power one has to create the fantasy-themed character(s) of their dreams, and to form and develop their characters however they wish. Unfortunately, what is worthy of high praise demands that you sit through loading screen after loading screen, and pray that your game doesn't crash at any given moment. While many of the patches have been ironed out, the lengthy load times have not been mitigated to my knowledge, and are unbearably frequent. They also feature a banal, uninteresting, prototypical screen featuring one of three backgrounds and several game tips.

    The most disappointing thing about this game is that it possesses immense replay value, solid and challenging gameplay, and a wonderful story - all reduced to mediocrity by the absurd amount of loading this game does. At this point, I may have spent a comparable amount of time waiting for the game to load than I have actually playing the game. Considering the semi-open world and isometric nature of the game, this feels worse than archaic - it is shameful. I have heard that the load times on PC are also rather rough, but I might be mistaken.

    If you are not an incredibly patient player who adores CRPGs, I'd give this a pass unless the price drops under $20. Otherwise, I feel the absurd amount of waiting cannot justify the wonderful game that you would likely enjoy past all that loading.    … Expand
  2. Lfz
    Jul 27, 2020
    7
    各方面實在不出色，但這類型遊戲稀少，喜歡這類型遊戲所以給出及格分數。
  3. Kai82
    Feb 2, 2022
    5
    A great game but the bugs and long loading times ruin the experience. Without the flaws I would rate this game in the 9-10/10 range. Following bugs did I encounter: While the first 10 hours were free of crashes those became frequent later on. In a place called “The Gullet” the exit icons vanished and did not return (Triangle button and manual search to solve this). I was trapped in placesA great game but the bugs and long loading times ruin the experience. Without the flaws I would rate this game in the 9-10/10 range. Following bugs did I encounter: While the first 10 hours were free of crashes those became frequent later on. In a place called “The Gullet” the exit icons vanished and did not return (Triangle button and manual search to solve this). I was trapped in places and had to reload to solve this and when I acquired the biggest ship I could not manage / change my crew anymore. There were slow downs which also became more frequent (maybe related to crashes). Then there are the long loading times I did thought were extinct on PS4. I stopped 1 minute and you have those every time even entering in smaller areas. Basically the longer I played the buggier it got. Lets go to the strengths of the game: The story, characters, factions and game mechanics were great. Even more I like the option to import decisions from the first game (If you do not have a save file you can chose a general setting from pure good to chaotic with variations). After the events of the first game you are receding in your fortress Caed Nua when a giant statue underground emerges which is the return of the god Eothas who was though dead. His awakening kills hundreds of people and rips out their souls into him. You character the Watcher is trapped between life and dead and is recruited by gods to hunt down Eothas and find out what is happening as even the gods were surprised. The voyage takes you to the Deadfire Archipelago which has many competing fractions. This is the set up. I like the stories in the game. There are countless factions and each one has their stories, goals and corpses in the closet. Also your party members have preferences and can clash with each other and your decisions. In this regard it is everything I wanted. Gameplay: There is a lot to do and the new setting aka worldbuilding is great. You explore the Archipelago on your ship. You have resource management, can upgrade your ship and hire a crew. On each mayor location you have tons of quests, things to do and explore. Like I said there are factions and those have agendas aka goals. You have a reputation system and you will struggle to please everyone. The battles and character development is familiar if you played the first game and is like D&D but far from being a rip off. I especially like that each skill has a value and helps in different situations. The mechanics are well interwoven and together with the story are the reason I want go give a 9-10/10. The graphics are beautiful. They go for a more hand drawn looking style which fully delivers. I disliked the art style of the decision sequences first but it has grown on me. The soundtrack is well done and especially the shanties on the ocean are great. Overall I hate to give a lower rating but the bugs made it hard for me to justify a higher rating. It is a masterpiece but flawed in this regard.… Expand
  4. enemy655
    Dec 14, 2020
    5
    The game itself is great! Great story, voice acting, characters, gives a lot of options - really a great RPG game! But compared to the PC version, it has painfully slow loading times, that can very from 30 sec, if you're entering a new room to 2 minuts visiting a new city. And this really takes a lot out of the game, because you don't wanna explore certain places because of the longThe game itself is great! Great story, voice acting, characters, gives a lot of options - really a great RPG game! But compared to the PC version, it has painfully slow loading times, that can very from 30 sec, if you're entering a new room to 2 minuts visiting a new city. And this really takes a lot out of the game, because you don't wanna explore certain places because of the long loading - there's also a lot of crashes, atleast every 2 hours, the whole game will crash, and you'll have to open it up again. I would recommond the game if you have the patiences for it - played it in 2020 june, so a patch might have come since then.… Expand
  5. Lord_Khey
    Feb 16, 2022
    6
    Bear with me, guys and gals.

    (or don't - TL;DR = buy this game, but do it on PC. The story and writing is PHENOMENAL. The execution on PS4 is excruciating.) PoE2 takes what was an excellent tale and adds about 5 layers to it. I dumped about 130 hrs into this bad boy, but that might be a little misleading (more on that in a bit). I have the Ultimate Edition, so I tried to complete    Bear with me, guys and gals.

    (or don't - TL;DR = buy this game, but do it on PC. The story and writing is PHENOMENAL. The execution on PS4 is excruciating.)

    PoE2 takes what was an excellent tale and adds about 5 layers to it. I dumped about 130 hrs into this bad boy, but that might be a little misleading (more on that in a bit). I have the Ultimate Edition, so I tried to complete as much of it as I could without driving myself bonkers, but the main story is a pleasure and gives you many choices of how the ending will play out and which of your companions stand with you at the end.

    The stakes in this game are as immense as could be made - the fate of the world, and the fate of any world to come - as your party sails across a chain of islands to stop a rogue god from destroying the Wheel of reincarnation. Gameplay cycles between: roaming through towns in search of clues, gear, companions, etc; sailing between and exploring several islands of varying difficulty; two modes of ship battles - one regular ol' melee, and the other, a strategy text-based game of trying to out-cannon the other; and the occasional text-based "choose your path" points that determine if you get the extra treasure, or if you're treated to a rash of injuries instead.

    You can buy different kinds of ships, from a voyager to a galleon, and outfit them with crew members with specific skills (cannoneer, cook, surgeon, boatswain, etc), and they gain experience in those roles the longer they stay there. You also have to provision your crew with more than just hardtack and water, or morale may fall and they'll mutiny against you.

    The voice acting is quite good. Many epic games have strong leads, but the supporting cast is meh or worse. PoE2 is pretty strong top to bottom. How good? Well, i bothered to read the credits this time, and I JUST found out after playing BOTH games and having BOTH Eder and Aloth in my party that they were voiced by the same guy and I HAD NO IDEA.

    Much to my dismay, the game appears to have been purposely designed that you can only arrange to have one of the various factions in the game join you at the end, and you will NOT be able to keep your full compliment of companions no matter how you try to finagle it, but I suppose that's only right.

    Now to my complaints. If you've read many of the negative reviews, you see that common thread that load times between screens are -lengthy-. Roughly one minute every time you enter a store, then leave the store, then enter another store just next door. When you travel to the next section of town, leave the town, enter a cave, leave the cave...you get what I'm saying. This is why I wonder if I actually played 130 hours, or if it was really only, like 100, and the other 30 were loading screens.

    The game would also crash with a frequency that far outpaces when other PS4 games glitch out on me. And apparently, there is no user support coming for the console editions.

    A couple of consistent bugs would rear their ugly heads from time to time. Most notably, the "Manage Party" function. You can only carry four companions (plus yourself) at a time. So, if you want to change your "starting 5," you have to do so at a Port or an Inn. And when you drop one character, then select another, sometimes, the character you dropped still appears on your screen, but you cannot control them. So, you have 6 people on the screen. If you enter a store/go to another level (load screen), that "dropped" party member follows you. So, again, you kind of have to finagle a bit to ensure that the dropped character doesn't follow you. Why is this important? Well, if you're in a battle and that "ghost" character dies, they DIE. No injuries, they're gone for the duration of the game (thank goodness for multiple save and auto-save files).

    So, again, this game is a 10 without the technical issues. The game from an software-execution standpoint is a 2. Hence my final score and my suggestion that you bite the bullet and get it on Steam. Make sure to play the first one, too. PoE2 plays a lot better if you have the background of PoE1.    … Expand
  6. marcusbrahma
    Feb 10, 2020
    5
    Очень хорошая игра и отвратительный порт на пс4. Если некоторую корявость интерфейса можно простить, все же порт с ПК, бесконечные вылеты и ошибки прощать как-то не хочется. К примеру происходит перманентый вылет при смене интеллекта ИИ в редакторе поведения.
    И все это на фоне чудовищно долгих загрузок, даже между небольшими локациями. Играть в это можно и даже возможно получать    Очень хорошая игра и отвратительный порт на пс4. Если некоторую корявость интерфейса можно простить, все же порт с ПК, бесконечные вылеты и ошибки прощать как-то не хочется. К примеру происходит перманентый вылет при смене интеллекта ИИ в редакторе поведения.
    И все это на фоне чудовищно долгих загрузок, даже между небольшими локациями. Играть в это можно и даже возможно получать удовольствие, игра в отрыве от технических проблем великолепна, но лучше либо ждать патчей, либо играть на ПК. Ну либо ждать хороших скидок, чтоб не было мучительно больно и жалко)))    … Expand
  7. RatchetClank111
    Apr 17, 2023
    7
    I played this game on next gen consoles so I didn't really have any of the performance issues that many have listed in other reviews. I forgot to write a review of this game, but basically what it comes down to is that the game has improvements over the first one (from making it less noticeable as a Kickstarter project , as the first game had all those character internal stories that II played this game on next gen consoles so I didn't really have any of the performance issues that many have listed in other reviews. I forgot to write a review of this game, but basically what it comes down to is that the game has improvements over the first one (from making it less noticeable as a Kickstarter project , as the first game had all those character internal stories that I didn't get what it added to the story until later finding out those were backers stories they came up with, which honestly was not needed and made it confusing if this was needed dialogue), to more voice acting and characters, and a more fluid combat system, and you get a more variety of items/weapons

    But the game takes steps back in regards to actually caring about most of the characters, as the factions in the game are all unlikable, they are all greedy and annoying, and oblivious in the errors in their ways. Like I remember reading that a poll/data the developers got, most people actually chose the ending/path to go it alone without help from one of the factions to finish the endgame. I think that's telling on how bad the factions are.

    Another issue was the ship combat was useless, it was just quicker to either flee or just ram and start the fight, not a very well implemented strategy minigame. Another issue was the random events that generally occurred while sailing, is that THEY REPEAT TOO OFTEN, it's like the developers only came up with a few roleplaying scenarios and thus it gets really annoying and noticeable once you get close to the end of the game that you really at the end game as there's not much to do and it starts to repeat. And what makes it even more annoying are the wait times/loading screens, so if you run into one of these on the main island you're just wasting time as travel takes awhile on the main island. And way too many loading sequences in general, so that gets annoying when you enter/leave areas or buildings. and they take a few seconds so you're going to be staring at those loading screens a lot........

    The game didn't really sell well at first, so I doubt they are going to make a third game of this series, it's a shame because there's a lot of good ideas, but better funding of these games would of led to better games, and perhaps a third game.

    Wait for a sale/play on gamepass//ps plus. Don't spend a lot of money on this game

    As for my score a 7/10 is fair    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

77
#77 Best PS4 Game of 2020
60
#60 Most Discussed PS4 Game of 2020
8
#8 Most Shared PS4 Game of 2020

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
77

Generally favorable reviews - based on 20 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 14 out of 20
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 20
  3. Negative: 0 out of 20
  1. PLAY! Zine
    Apr 8, 2020
    85
    Pillars of Eternity II arrives on consoles in it’s the best edition with all additional content, completely bringing all of it’s best aspects to console gaming. With its rich non-linear narrative, astonishing world and lore and interesting characters and both real-time and turn-based gameplay, it still is a great game, even with its bad optimisation and confusing control scheme for controllers.
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  2. DarkStation
    Mar 17, 2020
    50
    Porting a game made for PC to consoles can be an iffy situation. It’s absolutely something that should happen when possible, as I am all for everyone being to play everything if they are able, but some just flat out work better then others. It’s a shame that the largest and unavoidable knock against Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is something as silly as load times, but it is what it is. If you have a chance to play this game on PC, you should without question. If this is your only way to play this, just make sure you have something to do while you’re waiting.
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  3. Cubed3
    Mar 10, 2020
    50
    It is mired by a litany of hurdles, that perhaps a more patient player can deal with, but many will really wrestle with this - for them it is advised to seek out PoEII on a platform that it's design is more inherent. At very least, wait until a patch can fix some glitches, and the egregious loading times, in particular. Someone that can get beyond those inconveniences will discover there is a deep novel-esque adventure to be had. This adventure is full of loot, bounties, ship battles, and engaging fetch quests; all of the usual RPG fare that would keep aficionados happy. The island setting is memorable and full of lyrical, witty writing to be discovered which is great. When it works, it can be immersive and no doubt extensively replayable. It's just a shame that it didn't quite nail the port execution.
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