PIllars of Eternity is a downloadable epic fantasy CRPG that comes from the developers over at Obsidian Entertainment, the same team behind Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, Neverwinter Nights 2, and even Fallout: New Vegas. Released on PC on the 26th March 2015 and later released on the Xbox One and PS4, the game was designed as a spiritual successor to the Baldur’s Gate franchise and even Icewind Dale, hence the clear inspiration from the CRPG genre.
How to Download Pillars of Eternity
You can download Pillars of Eternity from GOG in either Hero Edition or Definitive Edition, The latter has additional collector’s content such as a map, soundtrack, wallpapers, guide, a novella, almanac, or concept art. Last, but not least the Definitive Edition has The White March Part I and II DLCs and Deadfire Pack which relates to the game’s sequel Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire. The pack has additional in-game items.
If you like the original, you should also download this game and its subsequent DLC The Beast of Winter.
The Game Review
In a fantasy world known only as Eora, there are a great many people, some of which have been considered “Awakened” and can experience the memories of their previous lives. As the player character, you become one of these Awakened and a Watcher, someone who can read other’s souls, but as time goes on, being imbued with these “curses” can cause the individual to become insane. With this in mind, your ultimate quest is to travel across these lands, all in the search of reversing this curse before it fully takes over your character’s mind and body.
At the start of the game, you’re expected to choose between a male or female avatar, from one of six different potential races, and several different classes that each play completely differently from one another to make things interesting. In that main aspect of gameplay that is the combat, you take it in turns to move around your units, making attacks, and using certain skills and abilities against them until one side wins. Through different battles and quests, you can acquire new loot and items to equip onto your party of companions to make all of you stronger. In the game, there are a number of different recruitable companions for you to pick and choose from, allowing for plenty of variety in the party selection.
A big part of classic RPG’s is the conversation system and with Pillars of Eternity, that’s definitely a big part of the overall game. With many of the NPC’s you come into contact with, you can talk to them about a myriad of different topics to gain some new information or to potentially acquire some new quests to accomplish. In a lot of the conversations, there’s going to be a few stat-checks that require you to have a high enough level with certain statistics to progress in the conversation in specific ways, but it will provide the player with pieces of information that they wouldn’t have gained any other way.
In terms of comparisons, the developers clearly took a lot of inspiration from some of their previous games and games like Baldur’s Gate and other CRPG’s that many people consider classics. All the while improving on many aspects that these classic titles didn’t quite get right the first time around or because of how dated they are at this point.
Anyone that’s on the lookout for a party-based CRPG that is effectively a spiritual successor for Baldur’s Gate, there’s a lot to see and enjoy in this game, without being quite as difficult as CRPG’s tend to be.
