Excellent story and worldbuilding
Mentioned in ~1 in 2 positive reviews
“The world of Eora is rich, believable, and full of memorable lore.”
Steam review · 2117.2 h played ↗
Pillars of Eternity
Worth buying? What 300 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 300 Steam reviews actually say.
Very Positive · 88%Very Positive · 88%Obsidian Entertainment2015CRPG · Party-Based RPG · RPG
The verdict
A dense, lore-heavy Infinity Engine-style CRPG with excellent writing, companions and a new turn-based mode. Skip it if walls of text, trash fights and slow pacing put you off.
Great for
Fans of Baldur's Gate-style CRPGs who enjoy heavy reading, lore and party tactics
Main risk
Walls of text and repetitive trash fights can make it a boring slog
What players love
Turn-based mode makes combat approachable
Mentioned in ~1 in 4 positive reviews
“In turn-based mode, you actually can understand who’s hitting who and why.”
Steam review · 147.9 h played ↗
Worthy successor to Baldur's Gate era CRPGs
Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews
“It's exactly the same old school experience on a modern engine.”
Steam review · 111.9 h played ↗
Memorable companions
Mentioned in ~1 in 6 positive reviews
“my favorite companion, Eder. He's a simple farmer turned soldier, with his easy humor and down-to-earth wisdom.”
Steam review · 58.8 h played ↗
Deep tactical combat and character building
Mentioned in ~1 in 7 positive reviews
“Combat rewards planning rather than button mashing, and character creation is among the best in the genre.”
Steam review · 2117.2 h played ↗
Beautiful art and music
Mentioned in ~1 in 9 positive reviews
“Beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds”
Steam review · 222.6 h played ↗
What players complain about
Boring, slow pacing; hard to stay engaged
Mentioned in ~2 in 5 negative reviews
“I'm in it for 8 hours - that's 4 attempts at a couple of hours each to get into the game over a period of months, years.”
Steam review · 7.8 h played ↗
Overly wordy, dry writing and lore dumps
Mentioned in ~1 in 4 negative reviews
“Wall of text after wall of text, millions of words saying absolutely nothing”
Steam review · 29.1 h played ↗
Repetitive trash fights and tedious combat
Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews
“artificially padded with actually 20 combat encounters just to force you to waste time playing fights against the same enemies”
Steam review · 190.6 h played ↗
Unfair difficulty spikes and crowd control
Mentioned in ~1 in 9 negative reviews
“I've never played a game like this where my entire party was completely disabled then just slowly pecked to death over the course of two minutes.”
Steam review · 55.9 h played ↗
Turn-based mode is buggy and poorly balanced
Mentioned in ~1 in 17 negative reviews
“Bugs out from the first fight on, cannot end turn, cannot attack, game permanently on pause”
Steam review · 9.5 h played ↗
Combat gives little XP, quests locked out
Mentioned in ~1 in 21 negative reviews
“you only get xp for the first few mobs of a given type, and then nothing after that.”
Steam review · 35.5 h played ↗
System requirements
From the Steam store page
Steam Deck: Playable14 GB
Minimum
OSWindows Vista 64-bit or newer
ProcessorIntel Core i3-2100T @ 2.50 GHz / AMD Phenom II X3 B73
Memory4 GB RAM
GraphicsATI Radeon HD 4850 or NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Storage14 GB available space
Recommended
OSWindows Vista 64-bit or newer
ProcessorIntel Core i5-2400 @ 3.10 GHz / AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
Memory8 GB RAM
GraphicsRadeon HD 7700 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570
Storage14 GB available space
OSWindows Vista 64-bit or newer
ProcessorIntel Core i3-2100T @ 2.50 GHz / AMD Phenom II X3 B73
Memory4 GB RAM
GraphicsATI Radeon HD 4850 or NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Storage14 GB available space
More games to check
Other games we’ve read the reviews for
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
Very Positive · 93%+ Genre-defining classic that still holds up
− Dated, archaic and hard to get into
analyzed 24 min ago
Pathfinder: Kingmaker — Enhanced Plus Edition
Mostly Positive · 78%+ Great writing, story and companions
− Brutal, unfair difficulty and RNG
analyzed 16 h ago
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition
Very Positive · 83%+ Great story, writing and companions
− Tedious, padded combat and mandatory prebuffing
analyzed 16 h ago
Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game
Overwhelmingly Positive+ Aged well; a gaming classic
− Crashes, corrupted saves and bugs
analyzed 1 d ago
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