"Baldur's Meh.."
Would give it 3,5 stars if I could. Decent effort and I'm glad to see the genre have a bit of a revival, but the story was flat and the "deep" themes on offer I've chewed through a long time ago in my own life so it didn't really resonate.
For context: I loved BG II, NWN II: MoTB and KOTOR II (with fan-restored content). They had characters and plots that got me involved on some emotional level. I actually don't care that much about the combat system, which is just as well as none of these had a spectacular one and PoE holds that line competently. It didn't get in the way of my enjoyment. I was slightly disappointed with how generically D&D it felt despite supposedly having a clean slate, but I guess that's them respecting the infinity engine roots.
PoE had a generic so-so story and while there were faction relations and "consequences" for my actions, it just never immersed me or made me care what I did to whom, except in the sense of "how will this limit my choices for the rest of the game"? It's ironic that many characters asked me why exactly I was hunting the main antagonist - was it for answers, for retaliation, for help with my own predicament or to bring him to justice - and every time my honest answer would have been "To see if something interesting actually happens when I finally confront him."
And sadly, nothing much really did.
The thing I liked most about the story was that there were several choices where the morality was ambivalent, with two sides making ostensibly ethical arguments for killing the other. Sadly they still failed to evoke much emotion.
No game-breaking bugs for me, though. So that's a plus.
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