YMMV / Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Eothas, constantly, in-universe and by players alike. There are many ways to interpret his actions. The first is to take what he says at face value and assume that he is being completely rational and honest. Another option is that he's having a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum, since destroying the cycle of reincarnation and dooming the world in a few generations seems like a bit of an overreaction, and planting even a small amount of negativity in his mind leads to him killing the world. Another is that he just couldn't handle being killed as Waidwen and was broken in mind as well as body, which would explain his seemingly erratic behavior as while his goal makes sense, the method by which he tries to achieve it seem pretty bizarre given the information the players have. A ''fourth'' interpretation is that he's just so depressed that he's not being reasonable and is going to extreme measures, since he's being described as being more regretful than any mortal could ever be and the only way you can defeat him in any sense it to make him even more depressed. To the credit of the developers, your character is able to act as if they believe any of these interpretations.
• Anticlimax Boss:
  • After you've defeated Neriscyrlas in Beast of Winter (which is an extremely tough fight), you run into the titular Beast of Winter, Rymrgand's avatar. Oh crap. Depending on your build/party, the big ox can turn out to be an utter pushover compared to the battle with Neriscyrlas, going down in moments.
  • The final fight of the entire game. The Guardian of Ukaizo is as tough as it looks and is a fitting final opponent, mechanically speaking. After shutting off the machine, though, one of the four factions sends a final battle your way. This fight is a cakewalk, and it doesn't help that in many situations it doesn't even make sense that they would fight you. The Queen of the Huana can show up to fight you to the death even if you're at maximum positive reputation with the Huana and have all but destroyed all of their rivals, for example.
• Awesome Music: The various sea shanties are pure joy to listen to. "Haul Away And Go", especially, as it has a verse commemorating the Battle of Yenwood Field, showing that the Watcher has undeniably made their own mark on the world:
  Young Gathbin sought the Yenwood's crown,
  long past the revolution.
  Way haul away,
  We'll haul away and go.
  
  The Watcher met him on the field,
  He/She gave him execution.
  Way haul away,
  We'll haul away and go.
  • When you choose to board a ship for combat, you get "Close to Board," which really gets you in the mood to send some swabbies back to their next turn on the Wheel.
  • When you choose to go against some of the toughest enemies in the game, instead of randomly picking one of the normal battle themes, the game greets you with "The Watcher Prevails", which is pretty how it tells you it's not pulling its punches anymore. Of note is that all Mega Bosses have this as their battle track by default, which is sure to get any Watcher's blood pumping when they square off with the toughest fights in the game.
• Bizarro Episode: The Lost Sanctum DLC is very, very strange. You enter a library full of literally faceless librarians that is being taken over by a fungus that thinks it is an archmage, and it only manages to get stranger from there. Fans absolutely loved it.
• Bonus Feature Failure: The ship mechanics were met with overwhelmingly negative reviews, to the point where the lead developer said he wished he hadn't included it at all. The team had actually decided to axe the combat minigame because it was, in their words, a "quicksand" feature that ended up taking more time and money than any other system in the game. The team actually decided to remove it, but Executive Meddling forced them to put it back so they could make it a Kickstarter milestone feature.
• Cheese Strategy: Troubador and Beckoner Chanters can summon such a huge amount of minions that enemies will be tied up forever, and plink away at enemies from range. The basic double ogre summon is good enough, but things get pretty wild at higher levels or with more chanters. A party of five Troubadors can generate almost two skeleton allies per second, and a party of five Beckoners can have ten dragons or forty animate weapons on their team at all times.
• Creepy Awesome: Rymrgand. The other gods (save Berath) slink away whenever he shows up in the divine chats, and yet (despite making it clear he'd quite like to kill the Watcher) he's oddly polite compared to the other divinities. He's also the first to figure out Eothas' goal, cryptically hinting at it as early as Nekataka and ironically echoing Eothas' own words.
  You might prepare yourself, Watcher, for something wondrous is on the horizon. Eothas will usher in an age glorious in its brevity.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • While the game generally gets easier the later it gets, some free DLC added long after release adds Mega Bosses. These are orders of magnitude more powerful than anything else in the game, and on Path of the Damned difficulty they absolutely require intense party optimization or exploiting loopholes in the combat system. The main final boss has a deflection of 44, while the final mega boss has a deflection of 132 and so much health it can take literal hours to defeat it.
  • Generally, as long as there aren't any skulls next to a quest in your quest log, you can clear it without taxing yourself too much, especially on normal difficulty and below. The Beast of Winter DLC however is no such walk in the park. Even when your quest log tells you that you are not underleveled for the DLC, you will still constantly be facing enemies that are higher level than you, and most fights can and will be taxing. And the Big Bad of the DLC is easily one of the strongest enemies in the entire game so far. You really have to bring your A game if you want to overcome Rymrgand's realm.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Ydwin, the pale elf, Mad Scientist animancer who was popular enough after her reveal as a sidekick, that Obsidian decided her becoming an eighth companion would be their final stretch goal. Unfortunately, they fell short, so Ydwin remains a sidekick, but due to her unique plot hooks and fan requests, she has an increased role in the "Beast of Winter" DLC.
  • Rekke. Once he learns Aedyran, he gets a Dialogue Tree that — while more static than that of full companions — is well fleshed-out and includes both a lot of fascinating Cryptic Background References and a number of excellent quips. Meanwhile, he conveniently doesn't have a stake in the politics of the Deadfire — he's cool with whatever the Watcher does and won't chew them out, lecture them, or want to leave like other companions potentially can.
• Narm: Whenever you have a meeting with the Gods. Being in their presence is supposed to be awe-inspiring and otherworldly but the regularity of its occurrence, the sheer length of their pointless conversations and the fact that the game floors the brakes whenever it occurs robs it of its impact. Players have likened it to listening to a conference call.
• Nightmare Fuel: Scyorielaphas' escape has got to be this from the perspective of the people who witnessed it. Imagine going about your business, and then, suddenly, the ground erupts and before you can get your bearings, a dragon comes out of the hole and makes a beeline for the sea, not caring for anything in his way.
• Obvious Beta: As is custom for Obsidian, the game was a tad buggy at launch. Notably the game failed to recognize certain outcomes when importing a save or world state from first game (In particular the Orlan baby and Edér becoming mayor). Certain quests are bugged. It's possible to get both endings to Edér's quest, one after the other. "Bekarna's Folly" is impossible to complete if you do it out of order, visiting the Observatory before doing the heist at Arkemyr causes him to never be there to give this quest once he sends you the invitation. The game would also cause strange waits and delays while being installed on Steam. Obsidian was quickly made aware of many of those issues and addressed a few of them in the first patch about a week after release. Even after the final 5.0 patch, there are still a decent amount of bugs going around.
• Player Punch:
  • If you put a lot of effort into its restoration, the destruction of Caed Nua that kickstarts the game can be seen as this.
  • When you reach the end game, you will fight whichever faction is the second strongest in the archipelago. This includes factions you may have a maximum positive relationship with, and likely includes one of your playable companions.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The fact that some party members will leave you depending on the faction you choose. While the reasoning for it is understandable, it’s a huge pain in the ass that usually leads to you losing a massively valuable party member who you probably got very attached to (especially if you romanced them) over politics, while also abruptly cutting off any plotlines involving them. And it happens without any sort of warning, meaning you can potentially lose a companion by clicking the wrong dialogue choice at the wrong time. You can avoid it if you refuse to choose any factions, but the ending that results from that leaves the region in turmoil for years in the epilogue. Otherwise the only way to avoid it is exploiting loopholes and glitches.
  • On higher difficulties, the armor penetration mechanic becomes this. Almost all enemies are given a bonus to armor and penetration as if they had gear of Legendary quality, so you'll regularly be doing 50% or even 25% damage to everything until you build your party up with piercing buffs and armor debuffs. How well you can pierce enemy armor becomes the deciding factor in combat since three points can equal quadrupled (or quartered) damage.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Several.
  • Trial of Iron returns, granting the player a single, persistent save slot that is deleted upon the Watcher's death.
  • Players may optionally use Level Scaling...including only allowing things to scale up.
  • Four Mega Bosses were added as free DLC, intended to be the ultimate challenge to high level parties. They drop equipment of Mythic quality, a step above the normal maximum of Legendary.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: You can get so caught up in collecting bounties and discovering new islands that the hunt for Eothas can take a distant second priority. When the Watcher gives their first Rousing Speech to your crew, they don't even have to mention finding Eothas at all, instead saying that the Defiant's mission is to collect Pirate Booty.
• Spiritual Successor: With its more open world, lush and cosmopolitan hub city, and pirates, Deadfire is essentially the Shadows of Amn to Pillars' Baldur's Gate. The multi-faction pileup and murmurs of coming war, meanwhile, make it a follow-up to Obsidian's own Fallout: New Vegas.
  • Mechanically, the game moves away from this trope. The first Pillars of Eternity was explicitly a spiritual successor to the Infinity Engine games and their licensed Dungeons & Dragons rule sets. Deadfire pulls away from this significantly after complaints about the first game, adding multiclassing and a completely reworked combat resource system based around spreading powers through an encounter rather than a whole day. It even added a turn-based mode, since isometric RPGs have mostly abandoned real time with pause in the 20 years since they released.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Pillars of Eternity was explicitly made to invoke nostalgia for the Infinity Engine games, the oldest of which, Baldur's Gate was 15 years old on release. While the Infinity Engine games were groundbreaking in their day, many of their ideas had become standardized to western RPGs in the intervening years with the more cumbersome aspects shaved away. Pillars of Eternity kept these conventions, making it seem dated on release. Deadfire took these criticisms to heart and modernized the rules engine while also adding features that had become popular in the intervening years like faction meters and multiclassing.
• That One Boss: The Giant Cave Grub can be surprisingly hard for those who don't expect it, especially because of how easy it is for an underleveled party to get to it. It high health and defenses, does tons of splash damage, and periodically calls out Cave Grublings to help it out, which hit pretty hard for that stage of the game. Good luck beating with a level 6 party. It has two exploitable weaknesses: 1. it's vulnerable to Intellect afflictions (i.e. what would normally Confuse it instead Charms it) and a low Will stat and 2. it's immobile, which means a party with arquebuses can simply shoot it full of holes from outside its retaliation range while occasionally pulling back to clear out Grubling swarms. It's also an Optional Boss for its relevant quest, so a party can't be bothered can simply sneak past it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Ydwin is an animancer Mad Scientist who was considered as an eighth full companion, complete with reactions to the plot and integration into the inter-party relationship system. Unfortunately, the stretch goal to transition her from sidekick to party member fell short. She still has all the plot hooks when you recruit her, but as a sidekick she has very little to say after being recruited. Fortunately, she gets a proper character arc in the "Beast of Winter" DLC.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The Darcozzi Paladini feature heavily in the Principi questline, with both Furrante and Lucia Rivan being paladins of that order, and the faction's entire Act 3 quest revolves around Rivan, her ghost ship, and the special Darcozzi sword that she swore to protect. The sword is even activated by reciting the Darcozzi Paladini's oath. Despite this, there is basically no acknowledgement of the fact that the Watcher could also be a Darcozzi Paladin.
  • There were several opportunities that looked like they would let you stop Eothas. You can enlist the help of a god with a colossal body equal to that of Eothas, have the backing and favor of many other gods, ally with the largest naval power in the world, or even bring along the soul of one of his cherished companions to try talking him down. It looked as though you could assemble an alliance to make a difference, but Failure Is the Only Option.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: One of the players' primary complaints about the faction part of the plot is that they found all of the factions unlikable. They all have positive aspects, but there is much to dislike. The pirates are violent slavers, Rauatai is an authoritarian militaristic invader, the Vailian Trade Company is trying to get rich by strip mining rocks full of souls to use as a power source, and even the mostly sympathetic queen of the Huana forces the lowest caste in Neketaka to live in misery and die of starvation.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: A major criticism is that the conflict between factions takes such a big place in the story but is, in theory, a secondary concern to dealing with Eothas. The lead developer himself called the lack of interaction a significant mistake and apologized for the two separate plot points not complementing one another.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The game pushes the lighting system to new heights, as demonstrated by Xoti's lantern - shadows will shift when playing her Idle Animation, even casting a shadow of her free hand for a moment as the animation cycle completes.
  • The water, in particular, has been upgraded significantly from the original game, and great effort was put into making the view from very high areas look very impressive.

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