I was inspired to play Pillars of Eternity (PoE) after listening to the Critical Role podcast and hearing them advertise Pillars of Eternity 2 as they had done voices for the game. Luckily, I snatched up a copy with Twitch Prime about a year ago. I’m roughly half way through the main quests with no intention of doing the White March campaign unless I accidentally get into it. My attention span is short enough with games these days and it’s a miracle to play more than a couple of hours.

I’m finding what keeps me playing is uncovering the fog of war in maps. I think it’s a habit/remnant from my Diablo II days where I’d clear out maps after maps in single player. There’s just something satisfying for me to uncovering the entire map.

Then, there are the little goals that are achievable in a little bit of time. Go here, talk to this person, sell off all of my loot, finish this battle, reach the next map. What tends to stop me in my tracks is deciding what to do next when I lose my flow. It hasn’t happened often (yet), but I always fall back to exploring an area I haven’t been to yet to get myself back into the groove of things.

What did stop me initially–and had me put the game down for a couple of months–was the battle system. Growing up, I was all about real-time battle. Secret of Mana? So much fun. As I’ve gotten older, I appreciate more the turn-based battles. I think it is the tactical aspect, which lets me position characters where I want them in order to be the most efficient with their skills.

So, after playing and enjoying Divinity: Original Sin (D:OS), PoE has been a bit of a teeth grind. I’m constantly hitting pause to issue new commands because I don’t trust the AI and it feels like it’s up to me to determine when to fire off spells. I’m up to four characters plus a pet in my party and while I’m learning little tricks about combat controls, I’m getting really annoyed with the micromanaging. Kill an enemy? Great, they’ll stand around until I tell them to target a new one. That said, it is pretty interesting when I manage to survive a fight with one or two characters left standing, especially when it’s not my monk character.

I should also mention I’m playing this on easy for the story and to just have fun, not for the challenge. Every now and then I’ll get the itch to play an epic RPG game but lose patience and interest to see it through to the end (e.g., Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and others) so actually being able to dive back in (similar to my experience with D:OS) says something about the game. Oh, and probably what also contributes to playing more? Being on PTO and it’s a rainy day. A hot mug of tea, the excellent ambient music of the game, and I’m set.

Will I finish? Maybe. Will I finish before my PTO is over? Most likely not. Will I replay it and roll a different class? Doubtful–only because there are more neglected games in my library I should get around to.