Anyone else think it was boring?

There's a difference between slow burn and stone cold dead.

I thought the story might pick up pace at some point but it never did. Just went on and on...

Motivation for the protagonist was entirely absent. They even tacitly acknowledged it in some conversation options.

I don't know what they were thinking with this one. It seemed they were intent on exactly copying Baldurs Gate, but you can't do that without stifling all creativity and it shows. Like the shot for shot psycho remake.

The plot was really poor. No driving force. I read Avellone argued strongly for more player agency in this one, and I'm not surprised. It is dull. I am surprised they didn't go back to the drawing board and substantially revise it, while keeping the assets. It implies the leadership were unaware of it being a problem.

Some people seem to get quite offended over criticism of this game, but surely there are others who agree..

Anyway, perhaps it doesn't matter so much. It was paid for by the fans and perhaps Obsidian had a lot to lose by alienating them.

Yes, the game was basically a tech demo for their engine... sold as a full game.

Everything about this game was made as boring and dull as possible. You couldn't even kill the dragon without cheesing it. After spending hours and hours going through that big dungeon only to find a unkillable dragon boss, wow what a let down.

The story, dialogues, characters and NPCs were dull. I'm shocked over how many people gave it 5 star reviews. Just shows how much was the community deprived of good RPG to give POE 5 stars.

Tyranny was much more fun game and I really hope they learned from this fiasco and will make POE2 more fun.

I agree, and I wish I'd stopped playing it, but the pedigree was there and I thought surely it must improve.

The encounter design was the worst of it. Just abysmal.

I remember in BG2 these great party on party mage battles. There were bugger all of these, and when they occurred they were a pushover. Walk half a screen across the map and theres a difficult fight against 10 friggen trolls or whatever.

Just lazy, uninspired, design that is so safe the project lost any sense of creativity. This was Sawyers baby, so he can wear that.

He needs to spend less time worrying about the intricacies of mechanics and far more about considering what makes a game fun and engaging.

This game handled some things very badly. For one, the player's primary motivation is to subvert their Awakening because they feel it is a threat to their sanity/existence. . .Except. . .It never comes across as significant or even serious, just somewhat novel and mostly useless -except nightmares, which we never experience as a player and are simply informed occur. Worse, an early recruitable character is similarly afflicted and treats it more as a vague nuisance, even fellow party members merely joke about their condition. This, and other comparable elements, make this feel like a setting and story created through collaboration rather than vision since none of the internal logic is necessarily followed through on. The ending is particularly bad, falling apart in many respect if one tries to invest too much thought into it.

But yeah, while I rather enjoyed the White Marches, everything felt pretty flat. Totally agree that while the engine and the setting have potential, it went mostly unrealized.

As to the dragons. . .Get Scale Breaker. It is a game changer. At level sixteen, with a party of characters with builds entirely reliant upon passive abilities because I hate micromanaging, I was able to shut down all three dragons in combat that lasted perhaps thirty seconds in total. My primary was a Paladin wielding Steadfast, Eddar had Abydon's Hammer and was built with every feat directed at war hammers and two-handed combat with the Savage modal, Aloth with nothing special, Mother with Twin Strike and the retaliation ability (which means while in a Dragon's aura, it is constantly taking raw damage from her throughout the entire fight), the barbarian from White Marched equipped with the two-handed greatsword designed for dragon slaying you get from one of the early bounties also built completely around wrecking with that weapon, and then Sagani with the Storm Bow built to pump out as many arrows as possible as quickly as possible.

I had fun with the game, although it certainly wasn't as fun or engaging as Baldur's Gate 1 or 2, but I agree with this.

Kind of get the same impression while reading about Pillars II as well. So much huffing and puffing about mechanics and balance, both from the developers and normal users, that I worry much the same will happen. Maybe you can't build a totally shit character, but seriously, who gives a crap? This isn't meant to be a competitive multiplayer game. I'd rather have great story, interaction and gear than perfectly balanced (and hence boring) gameplay.

I felt that the story was lackluster. I just didn't care about the characters or what happens to them. There were some good moments but most of the writing was boring and uninteresting because i couldn't relate to it in any way. I forced myself to complete the game anyway so i can say that i played pillars of eternity. Tyranny had a lot better storytelling, i wish they use what they learned from that game.

I was bored by the game too. The game starts interessting but it becomes boring if I conquered the castle.
The other people of my party are not very interesting.
Imo is the main problem the amount of text.
Obsidians "Tyranny" was in my opion the better game because the story and the party members were more interessting.

I didn't mind the amount of text, and I found the story wasn't too bad. But that combat - ye gods, I hated the combat and I there were so many trash encounters.

Just the intro was enough to make me uninstall.... first task is to grab some fucking berries, walk back, everyone dead. Everything feels bland and uninspired

"No fun allowed" is Obsidian's new motto.

I liked the game for what it was, but I replay value...its not worth it. Game is too long with those trash encounters. I liked the white march. Much better than vanilla.

That watcher's awakening is lost opportunity. I mean, we got told that mc goes insane thx past life memories, which sounds good but nothing happens. Game is really like "you need got you memories in order or you go insane", but there is no rush or anything. Its like you can go hiking to north pole and after that resume your quest of not going insane.

NWN2 motb expansion handled your mc curse so much better with actual gameplay mechanic. If you don't put any thought in it, you die.

Or... maybe some of us actually played through the entire thing (well, I haven't played the White March content yet) and found it just wasn't really all that good. Sure, it was good enough for me to finish it so I could see how the story played out. But I really didn't like the combat mechanics. And I sure as hell thought there were way too many trash encounters. And this was what Obsidian said they wanted to avoid in their kickstarter pitch.

So yeah, tastes differ, and even those that didn't complete it have a valid opinion. Why would they play all the way through something they're hating?

Or maybe some people keep a critical mind and don't fall in blind fanboyism? I played around 88 hours of that game, finishing nearly to 100% (I haven't bothered with all the companions quests, nor with all the quests of the last city) yet in the absolute, I had to force myself finishing it. While I like the fact that the plot isn't "a bad guy want to destroy the world", it wasn't made in an engaging way. It is nice to have philosophical and theological questions, but better to make them engaging and interesting to the players, otherwise all the good things of it are lost.

There is way too much combat, and so little alternatives to it, and so little roleplay. A good RPG isn't about combat and dungeons, a good rpg is about roleplay, a good rpg has combat as a choice among many others. That's why Baldurs Gate series and Icewind Dale series and Pillars of Eternity are poor RPG's, they revolve way too much around combat and dungeons, making them class-playing game, rather than role-playing game.

Actual/good RPG's are : Fallout 1, 2 and to some extent New Vegas, Planescape Torment, The Age of Decadence, and probably some others I don't know or haven't played, because in them, you have actual roleplay, choices and consequences, and combat can be an avoidable option.

Agree with the OP.

The story is boring.
Overall gameplay is generally boring.
Combat, in the best moments, is essentially a nuisance, distracting from enjoying the little the story can offer.
The RPG system in the background quite uninteresting and shallow.

I kind of agree with the OP as well. It is kind of difficult to pinpoint where it went wrong for me, but having a game with so much text only to basically skip over most of it because I barely care about the details of what is going on or most of the characters I travel around with is not the best sign. While there were some quests I liked doing and generally appreciate having lots of options to solve the minor ones, including non-lethal, the plot is rarely what kept me going and goes into a lot of detail but continually fails to grab my attention. I am in the final strokes to finish my second playthrough (first time with WM) and especially the combat feels very uneven.
What bothers me the most is the insane amount of different crowd-control thrown your way that has people stunned, stuck, knocked down, paralysed,... If you know what specific one to expect you can kind of deal with it, though I fail to see why you cannot cast most protective spells before the battle, only to have people affected before your cleric can cast the initial spell (bonus if the cleric got interrupted!). I know pre-combat buffing is a really boring and controversial aspect of i.e. D&D, but the implementation feels super artificial. If my group is clearing out a lair that has already shown annoying enemies like fampyrs already, surely they would get the idea to protect themselves before going around the next corner. The system has some interesting ideas like high damage, extreme reload weapons, but lots of things feel cheesy when you go and minmax them.
Comparing it with Tyranny, that I liked a lot despite having similar issues with its combat system, I feel like PoE is kind of overstaying its welcome and throws way too many enemies your way that you have little issue with aside from them being in your way while you explore a map. The maps are done well enough, but at some point the enemies are just annoying because they distract from what you would rather be doing more than they provide a challenge to overcome.
While I proably have more combat per hour in Tyranny, the motivation was clear depending on which side I found myself on and kind of felt okay for killing who I ended up killing. Sure I could have avoided combat somethimes by sneaking around possible opposition, but again, the option for doing that while still roaming around with a full group was mostly limited to a bunch of sidequests.
I will probably still do a third playthrough to explore my options in a solo run, but while the game has been enjoyable overall, it could have been more interesting in many ways.