Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition Review for Nintendo Switch

Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition, by independent games publisher Versus Evil in partnership with Obsidian Entertainment, is a cRPG. In it, you play as a newly awakened Watcher, a person capable of seeing the souls of the dead and the past lives of the living. You soon learn that there is a dangerous consequence to being a Watcher, and so you set out to remove your new abilities before it is too late.

When starting the game, you can choose your character’s race, class, and background. While class seems to only affect your character’s role in combat, race and background can affect how certain characters respond to you. Sometimes it will open up new options in conversations and events that aren’t accessible to other races/backgrounds and sometimes it will be a hindrance where other races and backgrounds could get by without a problem. Most of the time though, it seems like it just adds a few extra conversation options or slightly alters some of the dialogue you hear.

The game has moments that resemble a text-based game during what would be an action sequence in another game. During these sequences, you can make choices which will usually result in gaining an item, gaining access to a new area, occasionally saving/ending the life of a character, or absolutely nothing at all (this last one usually only happened during a sequence that involved a puzzle). The more beneficial options have either a stat or item requirement to use them. For example, an option requiring a feat of strength can only be chosen if you or someone in your party has a high enough might stat, while an option requiring a grappling hook can only be chosen if you actually have a grappling hook in your inventory.

Like many RPGs before it, Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition allows you to pause and issue out orders to party members mid battle. And if you are playing at any difficulty above easy, it is highly recommended that you do this.

While the difficulty settings are listed as easy, normal, hard, etc, don’t be fooled. Unless you are very used to micro-managing your entire party during combat, you should stick to easy (lest you go insane from how many times you get a game-over before you finally find a way to proceed). Trying to control only your own character on any difficulty above easy is a quick way to get killed.

The hp stat for characters is called ‘endurance.’ Once combat finishes, knocked out characters will get back up and all characters will refill their endurance from a point pool called ‘health.’ If a character’s remaining health is less than their total endurance value, then the character’s endurance will only fill up until its value equals the remaining health, rather than filling up all the way. This can eventually result in characters that get knocked out after taking 1 point of damage. To refill the health value of your characters, you need to rest, either by using camping supplies or buying a room at an inn. Resting can also restore the number of uses for combat abilities.

In place of a magic or stamina meter, abilities have a limited number of times they can be used. While some of these are once per battle, others don’t regain used charges until after you rest. While this would be fine if these per-rest abilities were powerful or had multiple uses, this simply isn’t the case. For example, in the beginning of the game, the wizard’s fireball spell can only be used 2 times after resting. This means that if you have 3 or more battles, you can’t use the fireball spell. And the spell isn’t even that strong! While I understand that some people prefer this system, I just found it annoying.

Another thing I found annoying is that, unlike most RPGs, you don’t get a tank-like character within the first few hours. This makes playing any character that can’t take more than a few hits incredibly frustrating. Luckily, at taverns and inns you have the option of hiring adventurers to accompany you—something I highly recommend doing if your character isn’t a tank. When you hire an adventurer, you can customize them just like you can your own character, including their race, class, and name. However, these adventurers are nothing more than hired muscle to aid in combat. Their presence (or lack thereof) has no effect on the story.

Overall, I found Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition very frustrating, although that might just be because I died so many times while playing it. As such, I think a fair rating for it would be 7/10.

Check Out the Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition trailer: