Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire
analyzed 2026-10-04 · sample of 594 English reviews across the whole review history
Across 594 sampled reviews, the aspects players raise most are story and combat, each appearing in roughly three in ten reviews. Both lean positive, though combat draws more mixed comment than story. World, characters, and gameplay follow, and each is praised far more often than criticized. Graphics, voice acting, art style, and music draw mostly favorable mention, with music and art style almost entirely positive. Players describe "the beautiful world of Eora" and "excellent voice acting across the board". Criticism clusters around performance, bugs, and stability, where negative mentions outnumber positive ones by wide margins. Balance, pacing, level design, and developer conduct also skew negative. Quest design splits opinion more evenly, and difficulty divides as well. Recurring themes players bring up include ship combat, romance, and ship management. Choice and build variety are frequently praised, with players noting "class and multiclass options" and decisions that "will effect your future and relationships". Replayability, customization, and content amount also read positively. DLC and updates get favorable notice. The picture is a game whose world, writing, and systems land well for many, while technical problems and uneven pacing weigh on others.
numbers checked against this report's stored data · quotes copied verbatim from reviews · plain text is the language model's own wording
Aspects
share of sample, axis to 30% · ± is the sampling uncertainty around each share
- positive
- mixed / neutral
- negative
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story
122 positive · 39 negative · 14 mixed · 2 neutral
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I enjoyed the story. I found it well written and the combat, while challenging at times, is fair.
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This game can be overwhelming, but the storyline & customization make it undoubtedly worth the time spent.
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Highly addictive story line and characters.
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combat
107 positive · 34 negative · 29 mixed · 2 neutral
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I found it well written and the combat, while challenging at times, is fair.
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Thankfully, great difficulty settings and a fully working turnbased system greatly lowers the learning curve as you explore and discover the rich lore and engaging story of PoE2.
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The combat was better than in its predecessor with that godawful Endurance/Health thing, but the overall game unfortunately never built up steam for me.
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characters
65 positive · 17 negative · 4 mixed · 1 neutral
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Highly addictive story line and characters.
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Of course, there are a number of companions to accompany you on your adventures, each of them with their own personality and attitude.
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I get to meet some old friends and make new ones.
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world
72 positive · 11 negative · 3 mixed · 0 neutral
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I also thought the world-building was spectacular.
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PoE 2 takes place in the beautiful world of Eora, specifically on the Deadfire islands (hence the name).
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but ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the optimization is like ♥♥♥♥ fps drop everywhere the world looks beautiful but at least make it optimize.
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gameplay
55 positive · 11 negative · 2 mixed · 1 neutral
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It's excellent, complicated and in-depth. Its one of the few long lost RPG games made recently that we all love but no company wants to make due to difficulty and cost of making them.
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Not only a rich story but a wonderful and enjoyable gameplay!
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Magnificent- Witcher 3 quality gameplay.
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writing
42 positive · 16 negative · 5 mixed · 0 neutral
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I found it well written and the combat, while challenging at times, is fair.
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I too prefer to read a book than reading walls of text in a videogame but both games have the ideal amount of text for a RPG (Pillars I has more).
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Amending to add that the writing is top-notch, novel quality.
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quest design
28 positive · 26 negative · 4 mixed · 0 neutral
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Side quest are great other then plucked fruit, sailing annoying but thats ok haha.
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In terms of story, this game offers one of the most epic storylines that will tickle the imagination of every fantasy fan - along with numerous well-designed sidequests.
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Good game worth every penny so many quest giving you funny and sad stories.
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graphics
49 positive · 4 negative · 0 mixed · 1 neutral
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This game is an improvement over Pillars of Eternity, with an added level of polish in almost every area.
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Have a Ryzen 5 3350 with only onboard gpu, and it looks great.
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The story setting is not as compelling as the original game, but many other aspects have been substantially improved from special effects to class and multiclass options and some quality of life improvements.
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voice acting
48 positive · 5 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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Every NPC has its own unique portrait and every line of text is voice-acted.
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Top it off with excellent voice acting across the board and this is a winner.
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this is a beautifully executed RPG and is hitting that spot in my soul-belly for a story-driven, choices matter, thoughtful, gamer-centric, well voice-acted labor o' love.
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performance
6 positive · 45 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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The Game looks bad for when it came out and runs terribly on everything.
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but ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the optimization is like ♥♥♥♥ fps drop everywhere the world looks beautiful but at least make it optimize.
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The game itself is excellent successor to Baldur's Gate etc but unfortunately there's occasional stuttering and long loading times.
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see more
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player choice
38 positive · 9 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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this is a beautifully executed RPG and is hitting that spot in my soul-belly for a story-driven, choices matter, thoughtful, gamer-centric, well voice-acted labor o' love.
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A real RPG where your choices matter and you'll get mad at the ending, for good reasons.
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It's very non-linear, with lots of things you can do.
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progression
30 positive · 15 negative · 3 mixed · 1 neutral
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Massive skill trees, tons of customization options, and an intricate class system are what you’d expect from an Obsidian RPG.
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most coolest skills in a rpg and action packed.
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I also like that you can build a fleet of ships, upgrade their cannons/hulls/sails, and your sailors level up.
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bugs
5 positive · 35 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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Also the character models all have clipping issues with themselves and the hair looks worse than hair in ES4 Oblivion.
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Aside from a few minor bugs, PoE 2 is perfect.
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This game has a rather game breaking bug where its unable to load the next map and it effects all of your saves so you have to restart everything from scratch
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build variety
37 positive · 4 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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The story setting is not as compelling as the original game, but many other aspects have been substantially improved from special effects to class and multiclass options and some quality of life improvements.
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The good thing is that you can frequently avoid combat, stealth is a option and diplomacy also frequently works.
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Lot's of depth, a lot of ways to play.
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lore
30 positive · 5 negative · 1 mixed · 2 neutral
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Thankfully, great difficulty settings and a fully working turnbased system greatly lowers the learning curve as you explore and discover the rich lore and engaging story of PoE2.
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Of course dont forget the interesting lore and enjoyable combat.
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Nice setting, lore and gameplay.
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exploration
26 positive · 8 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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There's so much to explore, the story is very interesting, of course.
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Much of your exploration will be done via your ship, which serves as a much more personal base than the stronghold of Caed Nua did in Pillars of Eternity.
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The exploration reminds me of DA: Origins, and keeps a smile on my face the whole time
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pacing
7 positive · 21 negative · 7 mixed · 0 neutral
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This game is all about: Loading and walking, loading and walking, Loading and walking, loading and walking, fighting enemies, Loading and walking, loading and walking
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Tho it does sort of overstay its welcome, at least with added DLC.
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The combat was better than in its predecessor with that godawful Endurance/Health thing, but the overall game unfortunately never built up steam for me.
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content amount
24 positive · 7 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Super rich in all sorts of activities ranging from land quests, to island exploring, and sea faring, and cannot forget the sea warfare.
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Inventory is a PITA but not as bad with the bonus sorting tools; the range of items always has it's pluses.
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20+ HOURS IN and im still on the first island ! not even moved yet xD .
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balance
6 positive · 23 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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This is exacerbated by the very weak themes of the spell schools, which are not very specialized or balanced.
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The only thing I'd say (without spoilers) is that for me the ending was slightly weak, and the fights were much easier than the dlc I'd just done previously, despite having on a high difficulty with enemy scaling.
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The biggest bummer, in my opinion, is once you max out your ship, there's not much left to do sailing wise. You obliterate everyone in your path who comes at you.
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price value
16 positive · 6 negative · 7 mixed · 1 neutral
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Still worth the sale price!
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Great game, especially on discount.
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Good game worth every penny so many quest giving you funny and sad stories.
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dlc
20 positive · 5 negative · 2 mixed · 1 neutral
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I also just bought 2 of the DLC expansions :)
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The story is easier to digest, and the three DLCs are worth to get and play through.
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The 3 "story" DLCs are all solid.
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difficulty
12 positive · 10 negative · 1 mixed · 3 neutral
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Easier the the first, more polished and slightly worse story.
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+ They toned the difficulty way down and I'm a casual rat that has pretentions to playing with the big boys.
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And the difficulty will be patched soon and will offer quite a bit of challenge.
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replayability
22 positive · 3 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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I've had multiple runs of it and it's always a pleasure.
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There are few games in my library that, when i see them, i want to dive in and play again.
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This game has it's issues (pathing in turn-based mode, I'm looking at you) but it's deep and highly replayable.
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customization
19 positive · 2 negative · 2 mixed · 1 neutral
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This game can be overwhelming, but the storyline & customization make it undoubtedly worth the time spent.
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I'm still learning some of the basics but have been able to leverage the vast skill tree into some really custom game play mechanics and would recommend this game to anyone who likes adventure games like Diablo, but want more customization and a little bit more of a scrappy feel.
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The deadfire is a beautifully handcrafted and lore-rich world to explore, and you can explore much more freely now compared to the first game, not only by travelling on foot, but also with your own, fully equippable and customizable ship and ship-to-ship combat.
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level design
6 positive · 14 negative · 3 mixed · 0 neutral
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took me 3 hours to figure out this was a super linear pile of garbage.
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everything to the mess that is story, to the writing that, AGAIN, lacks an editor to the encounter design to the memory leak and laughable state when installed .
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[*] Quality of locations. Vast majority of locations (over 80%) are just either text encounters that give you random loot, or one of 5 maps with one group of enemies, or a short text encounter that you can either pass through attribute check or end in a fight with just regular enemies.
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stability
4 positive · 19 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Generally, it's technically glitchy, I had it crash a half dozen times, but at least it autosaves constantly so I didn't lose progress.
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I started to play PoE2 and from the start it constantly crashes where my Computer is forced to reboot, because it realizes that the screen went black.
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Crash at game launch.
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learning curve
6 positive · 10 negative · 1 mixed · 5 neutral
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This game can be overwhelming, but the storyline & customization make it undoubtedly worth the time spent.
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when i first start the game its quite hard to understand,
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I shouldn't have to look up what to do at the beginning of the game. Bug or not.
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game length
6 positive · 8 negative · 2 mixed · 4 neutral
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I tried for weeks to convince myself to continue playing, but I realized I sit here not playing games I want to just to try and get to the ending of this game, and that ending is soooooooo far away
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20 minutes and the game ended.
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I wish it was longer
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art style
18 positive · 1 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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It stands out from other RPG’s, both in its gorgeous art style and variety of locales, and in how the nature of playing on an island chain influences the gameplay.
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I love the writing, characters, and overall aesthetics.
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The combat has been perfected, the graphical presentation clad in new, shiny and polished sceneries, atmospheric lighting, high definition textures: A much needed fresh paint to improve upon the already gorgeous first game.
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music
18 positive · 0 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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Good story, excellent combat & better than average music.
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Listening to the soundtrack creates a great atmosphere, many bangers are to be heard.
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Great game so far - great VA, like the system, very relaxing atmosphere graphics/music-wise
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ai behavior
7 positive · 9 negative · 1 mixed · 0 neutral
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This game has it's issues (pathing in turn-based mode, I'm looking at you) but it's deep and highly replayable.
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On top of that, the default AI in this game might as well not exist, and if you want the AI to perform at an even slightly useful level, you need to spend an uncomfortable amount of time …
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Also I like that ship crew will fight with you in battles, but I wish you could control them, and that you could equip them with better weapons/armor.
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ui
6 positive · 9 negative · 2 mixed · 0 neutral
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Inventory is a PITA but not as bad with the bonus sorting tools; the range of items always has it's pluses.
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It blows my computer screen up to where I cant access the settings to fit it to my screen
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old-ish interface but good game overall
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updates
12 positive · 2 negative · 1 mixed · 1 neutral
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Amazing game and they are always updating and adding new free content.
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Already great now (I apparantly got very lucky and didn't run into any major bugs on my playthrough), but future patches and DLC will bring a lot of goodness!
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After many patches and content updates, the game has only gotten better. 11/10
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atmosphere
10 positive · 0 negative · 2 mixed · 1 neutral
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I liked the first Pillars, this one so far looks more polished and immersive.
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Atmosphere: Overall just as what you expected from any kind of fantasy rpg : 8 (very mysterious and godly omg)
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Great game so far - great VA, like the system, very relaxing atmosphere graphics/music-wise
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addictiveness
11 positive · 0 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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Every time I go to play i'm actually looking forward to whats coming next.
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You just can't help but get sucked in!
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Addictive.
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developer conduct
1 positive · 10 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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If we are lucky they go bankrupt for constantly ripping off their customers and never fixing issues with their games.
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PoE2 was not only a huge let down, it had a scummy marketing.
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It felt that often there were too many motivations for developers other than just making a great game.
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sound design
5 positive · 2 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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This sound design is incredible: https://www.
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The sound design was already magnificent in PoE1 and here they managed to top that one with a whole voice cast.
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Small details like Xoti's lantern cast dancing shadows all around, and noises echo all around you.
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animation
4 positive · 1 negative · 0 mixed · 0 neutral
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The combat is more engaging, animations are better, and voice acting is present in 90% of conversations.
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I was swimming through water and saw they actually have an animation for the animal followers in your party.
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+ Eder has a passive animation where he smokes a pipe!
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Emergent themes unvalidated
topics reviewers bring up that are not on the validated list; raw counts only, no error bars
- ship combat 12
- romance 6
- ship 5
- ship management 5
Review timeline
monthly peak 1,641 reviews · all languages
monthly share rated positive · 50% reference · months with <5 reviews faded
the timeline as a table
| month | reviews | up | down | positive | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 2018 | 1,641 | 1,351 | 290 | 82% | |
| Jun 2018 | 334 | 270 | 64 | 81% | |
| Jul 2018 | 162 | 136 | 26 | 84% | |
| Aug 2018 | 159 | 130 | 29 | 82% | |
| Sep 2018 | 87 | 68 | 19 | 78% | |
| Oct 2018 | 85 | 62 | 23 | 73% | |
| Nov 2018 | 328 | 311 | 17 | 95% | |
| Dec 2018 | 117 | 88 | 29 | 75% | |
| Jan 2019 | 127 | 98 | 29 | 77% | |
| Feb 2019 | 119 | 102 | 17 | 86% | |
| Mar 2019 | 73 | 59 | 14 | 81% | |
| Apr 2019 | 42 | 33 | 9 | 79% | |
| May 2019 | 91 | 82 | 9 | 90% | |
| Jun 2019 | 227 | 204 | 23 | 90% | |
| Jul 2019 | 278 | 250 | 28 | 90% | |
| Aug 2019 | 102 | 75 | 27 | 74% | |
| Sep 2019 | 64 | 47 | 17 | 73% | |
| Oct 2019 | 90 | 71 | 19 | 79% | |
| Nov 2019 | 311 | 292 | 19 | 94% | |
| Dec 2019 | 349 | 312 | 37 | 89% | |
| Jan 2020 | 275 | 248 | 27 | 90% | |
| Feb 2020 | 293 | 263 | 30 | 90% | |
| Mar 2020 | 270 | 241 | 29 | 89% | |
| Apr 2020 | 259 | 237 | 22 | 92% | |
| May 2020 | 324 | 284 | 40 | 88% | |
| Jun 2020 | 234 | 212 | 22 | 91% | |
| Jul 2020 | 282 | 241 | 41 | 85% | |
| Aug 2020 | 222 | 201 | 21 | 91% | |
| Sep 2020 | 197 | 175 | 22 | 89% | |
| Oct 2020 | 258 | 232 | 26 | 90% | |
| Nov 2020 | 187 | 165 | 22 | 88% | |
| Dec 2020 | 188 | 174 | 14 | 93% | |
| Jan 2021 | 231 | 216 | 15 | 94% | |
| Feb 2021 | 146 | 121 | 25 | 83% | |
| Mar 2021 | 141 | 129 | 12 | 91% | |
| Apr 2021 | 115 | 106 | 9 | 92% | |
| May 2021 | 235 | 197 | 38 | 84% | |
| Jun 2021 | 173 | 146 | 27 | 84% | |
| Jul 2021 | 163 | 139 | 24 | 85% | |
| Aug 2021 | 167 | 142 | 25 | 85% | |
| Sep 2021 | 155 | 134 | 21 | 86% | |
| Oct 2021 | 130 | 113 | 17 | 87% | |
| Nov 2021 | 150 | 129 | 21 | 86% | |
| Dec 2021 | 164 | 142 | 22 | 87% | |
| Jan 2022 | 197 | 168 | 29 | 85% | |
| Feb 2022 | 110 | 100 | 10 | 91% | |
| Mar 2022 | 97 | 84 | 13 | 87% | |
| Apr 2022 | 108 | 92 | 16 | 85% | |
| May 2022 | 139 | 126 | 13 | 91% | |
| Jun 2022 | 123 | 110 | 13 | 89% | |
| Jul 2022 | 163 | 142 | 21 | 87% | |
| Aug 2022 | 135 | 125 | 10 | 93% | |
| Sep 2022 | 141 | 119 | 22 | 84% | |
| Oct 2022 | 104 | 86 | 18 | 83% | |
| Nov 2022 | 107 | 95 | 12 | 89% | |
| Dec 2022 | 129 | 112 | 17 | 87% | |
| Jan 2023 | 167 | 148 | 19 | 89% | |
| Feb 2023 | 124 | 110 | 14 | 89% | |
| Mar 2023 | 113 | 103 | 10 | 91% | |
| Apr 2023 | 117 | 105 | 12 | 90% | |
| May 2023 | 85 | 75 | 10 | 88% | |
| Jun 2023 | 125 | 104 | 21 | 83% | |
| Jul 2023 | 142 | 120 | 22 | 85% | |
| Aug 2023 | 107 | 86 | 21 | 80% | |
| Sep 2023 | 101 | 84 | 17 | 83% | |
| Oct 2023 | 76 | 65 | 11 | 86% | |
| Nov 2023 | 111 | 102 | 9 | 92% | |
| Dec 2023 | 76 | 69 | 7 | 91% | |
| Jan 2024 | 114 | 95 | 19 | 83% | |
| Feb 2024 | 86 | 77 | 9 | 90% | |
| Mar 2024 | 47 | 44 | 3 | 94% | |
| Apr 2024 | 75 | 61 | 14 | 81% | |
| May 2024 | 80 | 74 | 6 | 92% | |
| Jun 2024 | 76 | 68 | 8 | 89% | |
| Jul 2024 | 92 | 82 | 10 | 89% | |
| Aug 2024 | 78 | 63 | 15 | 81% | |
| Sep 2024 | 78 | 67 | 11 | 86% | |
| Oct 2024 | 62 | 54 | 8 | 87% | |
| Nov 2024 | 109 | 96 | 13 | 88% | |
| Dec 2024 | 94 | 81 | 13 | 86% | |
| Jan 2025 | 101 | 84 | 17 | 83% | |
| Feb 2025 | 114 | 102 | 12 | 89% | |
| Mar 2025 | 117 | 107 | 10 | 91% | |
| Apr 2025 | 82 | 73 | 9 | 89% | |
| May 2025 | 60 | 51 | 9 | 85% | |
| Jun 2025 | 87 | 75 | 12 | 86% | |
| Jul 2025 | 79 | 66 | 13 | 84% | |
| Aug 2025 | 57 | 44 | 13 | 77% | |
| Sep 2025 | 47 | 40 | 7 | 85% | |
| Oct 2025 | 53 | 43 | 10 | 81% | |
| Nov 2025 | 45 | 39 | 6 | 87% | |
| Dec 2025 | 74 | 67 | 7 | 91% | |
| Jan 2026 | 71 | 60 | 11 | 85% | |
| Feb 2026 | 65 | 50 | 15 | 77% | |
| Mar 2026 | 44 | 38 | 6 | 86% | |
| Apr 2026 | 64 | 49 | 15 | 77% | |
| May 2026 | 60 | 53 | 7 | 88% | |
| Jun 2026 | 59 | 53 | 6 | 90% | |
| Jul 2026 | 62 | 57 | 5 | 92% | |
| Aug 2026 | 60 | 50 | 10 | 83% | |
| Sep 2026 | 50 | 42 | 8 | 84% | |
| Oct 2026 | 9 | 8 | 1 | 89% |
How this report was made
- Population
- all Steam reviews of the game (every language, purchase type, and verdict), walked newest-first per window; only English-language reviews are analyzed
- Sample
- 594 English reviews, time-proportional draw over 102 windows (newest-first within each), taken from an all-language walk and kept English-only — where English is a minority the sample runs smaller than the draw, and every margin of error is computed at 594
- Aspect yield
- 420 of 594 analyzed reviews carry at least one aspect (70.7%); every share on this page divides by all 594
- Interval regime
- calm: standard margins of error for a share of a sample (Wilson interval), no widening needed
- Fetch paths
- 102 time windows fetched directly (windowed)
- Language mix
- 1,000 fetched: english 595 · schinese 123 · russian 60 · 21 more
- Steam-marked windows
- none flagged by Steam (Valve's off-topic flagging began March 2019)
- Marked share
- 0.0% of sample inside marked windows, under the 2% floor
- Narrative
- passed the grounding gate first try
- Evidence floor
- aspects and emergent themes appear only with 5+ supporting reviews; smaller counts sit at the classifier's false-positive floor
- Instrument readings
- measured once on the study corpus for this model and prompt: frozen calibration, not properties of this run
- · aspect tagging vs. human labels
- 0.801 [0.752–0.844] (F1 against a human-labeled test set; 1.0 is best)
- · quotes filed under the wrong aspect
- 11.6% [6.6–19.6] of quotes, measured by hand on a sample; lower is better — measured on the prior model (2026-08-05); re-measurement pending
- · independent model vs. production labels
- 0.791 [0.772–0.810] (F1 of the production labeler against an independent judge model) — measured on the prior model (2026-07-25); re-measurement pending
- Versions
- deepseek-flash · prompt classify-v1 · ontology v2
- Run
- serve-20261004T215624Z-c9b9ffcc · code 798e06c
full methodology in the milestone write-ups