Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire - Ultimate Edition

The game and story are wonderful. They fixed most of the issues that other reviewers highlighted. Two reasons its not 5 star for me. First, while the game breaking bugs have been fixed, there are still a few annoying bugs. Specifically, one that puts random crew members on the map when they are not assigned to the active party. This bug doesn't become an issue until you have more than 5 crew members, but it becomes very aggravating as the game progresses. Especially since a lot of quests are tied to these charecters and they can die when theyshould'nt even be there. The second reason for 4 stars is the abundance of load screens. They move fast, so this was less of an issue for me, but still would rather there weren't so many. That all said, I still love this game and the first one was great too.

You can play it real-time with pause or turn based. You do NOT spend 30% of your time messing with encumbrance/weight. You're companions have personalities. You're party can have it's battle AI modified for real-time. You're decisions affect your companions and the story. The character customization is very deep, along with deciding to multi-class or not. The tooltip on any screen to get more details on stats is top notch. This game avoids the absurd time sinks of too many rpgs. No encumbrance, all abilities are PER encounter(no daily nonsense that cripples the rest of the adventure), and it still retains a challenge. It's not perfect, but removing the tedium makes it more fun.

Its a fun game it really is once you get your crew and party together and start exploring but ive got a damn bug where alioth is always randomly on the field someplace, can help fight with basic attacks, but will make the skills not work if you try to use his. he also gets in the way cause he can die when injured enough, thing is the party is full, HES NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THERE, this is almost game breaking but unlikely to get fixed smh.

I thought I wouldn't like the pirate theme but I actually enjoy the way it's done. It's nice to play something different. I'm enjoying this IP and am really looking forward to Avowed! Playing this on my Series S pretty much eliminates load screen times that others report. My One X however takes significantly longer to load. I absolutely recommend picking this up for fans of the genre. Even though I have game pass I purchased this to own! Edit: After playing for some time this has actually become one of my top 10 favorite games of all time. I hope we will get a 3rd installment in the PoE franchise. The world is expansive and the lore is top notch. There are a few minor bugs that can be a bit annoying, but overall this game is fantastic and will provide hundreds of hours of gameplay. I highly recommend if you have a Series X|S.

Plays great on Series X. Good load times and stable. One of my favorite RPGs! Worth the investment.