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STAFF REVIEW of Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition (Xbox One)


Saturday, October 7, 2017.
by Brent Roberts

Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition Box art Over the years I've had the opportunity to observe the history of the Kickstarter platform as it pertains to gaming. While it is rare for a game to not reach its funding goal and be released, it is far rarer to find a Kickstarter game that delivers an experience so incredible that you become lost in a webbing of wonderment and enchantment. Rewind quickly to 2015, Obsidian Entertainment (who are known for titles such as Fallout: New Vegas, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, South Park Stick of Truth, and many more) set out to raise funding through Kickstarter for a game they wanted to make called Project Eternity, which became the Pillars of Eternity game we have today.

They set themselves some lofty ideas and financial goals ($1.1 million); however, they never expected what would happen next. On October 16, 2012, just shy of 74,000 backers donated a whopping $3.98 million dollars and now the quest was on to deliver a truly incredible RPG experience, and in our opinion at XboxAddict they succeeded. Back in March 2015 Pillars of Eternity was launched, and since then additional content has been released on Windows, OS X, and Linux. Finally, Pillars of Eternity has recently been released on the Xbox One platform as a full retail game for a price of $49.99. So is it worth paying $10 less than full retail for game that is now about 2 1/2 years old?

If you're a fan of RPG games, then this title is worth its weight in gold. Games like this traditionally excel in the realm of mouse and keyboard control, and one of the biggest challenges is to figure out a graphical user interface that is both streamlined for efficiency and useful at the same time. In order to do attain this goal, the majority of the commands in Pillars of Eternity are spread amongst your LT and RT buttons. For instance, if you hold down the LT you can access your character leveling sections, inventory, any sort of quests you may have acquired along the way, and so much more. The inventory is setup so that each character has their own individual inventory system, but before you start thinking of making your teammates loot donkeys, you should know that if the person leaves your party for whatever reason, all the gear that is not only equipped on them, but also in their inventory, is now lost to you.


Pillars of Eternity is big on teamwork so when you have a group together you can use your LB and RB buttons to switch between characters, or you can press LB+RB together to select everyone in the group. Even though the game's mechanics transfer well to the console, Pillars of Eternity doesn't hold your hand. In fact, it provides very little guidance so you will spend a majority of the early parts of the game just getting familiar with the controls of both movement, character management, and combat.

When you find yourself in combat, which will happen a lot, you'll be thankful for the X button because it lets you pause the game at any time and issue individual orders, then once everything is worked out you can press the X button again to resume and watch the action unfold. In terms of character development, you get the same type of layout as seen before where new levels grant you brand new abilities to choose from and new powers to unlock. This is where you'll also spend your character points on various traits and doing so will also unlock new conversation options.

Given that you will now have access to new conversation options, this means you will also start to manage your reputation, as it will be affected by how you choose to handle situations. Even though this may seem a bit overwhelming at first, after the first few character levels you should start to get a feel for how the different areas of your character play off each other. Sadly though, this is an imperfect system as the sensitivity for what items you may be near may not be as responsive as other games. There were numerous times where I had to circle around just trying to loot one item. Despite the setbacks though, the control system is incredible.


Speaking of incredible, the attention to detail in terms of the story in the game amazing and masterfully written. Done in a classic text box, choose your own adventure, style of delivery, Pillars of Eternity sets you in the world of Eora and it's here that you will explore the wonders of the world. To compliment the well-developed story, Pillars of Eternity has a musical score that should not be ignored. A sonic needle in a noisy haystack of mediocrity, I found my ears becoming lost amidst the chords as I went through the various areas. While some tunes will serenade you with melodies of beautiful instruments, others will invoke a wide range of emotions such as fear, excitement, anxiety and more. Sure the voice acting can be quite good at times, but the musical score blanketed my ears with one sonic masterpiece after another.

The world of Eora is setup into varying stages of an over world map that allows you to select which region you're going to travel to. Sometimes you will have to take note of where you are in relation to your own surroundings so you remember what way to go for your objective. As you begin your adventure you will have to select from one of 11 classes, which range from barbarians and wizards to druids and ciphers. Each one of these bring with them their own strengths and weaknesses, so it goes without saying that finding the right corresponding accompanying characters can really make the difference between winning and losing.

After you go through your character development you'll have the choice to select abilities or spells which you can use right away. Take notice though, because some skills allow you to use them "x" amount of times during combat (meaning that after you are out of combat your skill amounts become refreshed) or you will only be able to use them "x" amount of times in between rests at campsites or inns. Planning on this should be high on your priority list so your party is fairly balanced.

The reason for the importance of the planning is because Pillars doesn't quite restrict you into realms you shouldn't go into. Nope, instead it lets you wander in like a lost child and in the process getting turned into paste. For instance, I was wandering around and I discovered a cave, nothing appeared out of the ordinary so I proceeded inside. I found some bodies lying around and as I went to loot them, a massive bear started charging out of nowhere and obliterated me in one shot. That's when I decided to gain some more levels before setting foot back in that cave.


If you die, like I did by that bear, on normal difficulty you get reset to the last auto save point, on the hardest difficulty your game is over completely. Now, had I'd known beforehand that death greeted me when I entered I wouldn't have ventured forth, but that is what Pillars of Eternity will do to you. It will present you with options, but it's up to you to decid what to do with said options.

There is however, one huge elephant in the room that needs to be addressed. Sadly, while all of this sounds fantastic, there's one overwhelmingly large negative that is going to be the bane of your existence, the loading times. On the console version I played the load times started out rather short; however, as I progressed and the game opened up, it was clear the game had problems trying to load everything as fast as possible. Loading times kept getting longer and longer and they were unavoidable at times, and in some cases they tripled the time it took to complete quests. Let me give you an example. Let's say you call up your map and select a town you want to travel to. Cue load times are around 45 seconds. Once completed it unveils a town of average size of which you can walk around. Now, let's say you find a building within the town that you want to enter. Cue another 45 second load screen. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this because eventually you'll have to leave the building and then travel to another area, and as you're aware, you're going to spend quite a lot of time loading. This can become quite painful when you take into account the number of actual areas you will be entering and exiting throughout the entire game and then tacking on the additional time per area.

Despite some bumps along the pathway, Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition is one of the deepest RPG games you can find now on the Xbox One platform. Strong character development mixes with a wonderful user interface to take you through an incredible story that, even though challenging at times, is absolutely fantastic. If you're a fan of RPG games then Pillars of Eternity has got to be on your must have list, and when you take into account the fact that you not only get the game itself, but also the two massive expansions, then you will easily draw out over 100 hours of gameplay for your $49.99, which makes Pillars of Eternity worth every penny. It truly is amazing what can happen when companies like Obsidian and the general public connect through a crowd funding portal like Kickstarter how a dev-team can produce a game that is nothing short of brilliant.





Overall: 8.5 / 10
Gameplay: 8.5 / 10
Visuals: 8.0 / 10
Sound: 9.0 / 10

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