I also wish there was hard experience for combat. Oh well, criticizing a masterpiece.

Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity are the only two games I've ever backed. Both were no-brainers as I loved their previous incarnations (Wasteland & BG1/2).

Wasteland 2 turned out to be a very, very disappointing experience based upon bad design, writing, and ... wow, just not much good to say about it. It's like a good outline of what would make a great game. I was truly disappointed in the whole experience, especially when progressing from the pretty decent setting on Arizona to the complete, incomplete, garbage that was Hollywood. UGH.

So, going into Pillars of Eternity, my hopes & expectations were incredibly low and I'd just figured that Kickstarter games could never reach that "classic" level. Amazingly for me, Pillars of Eternity had completely matched my greatest hopes. It's truck hack & slash that keeps me up 'til the wee hours, with really solid writing and design/development of the entire game from top to bottom.

It's far from perfect, but after revisiting BG1/2 in the past two years, I also found them to be far from the "perfection" that I had in my memories from when they first came out. They're still some of the best of the best of the best, but Pillars of Eternity certainly has no trouble holding its own at this point which is astounding.

I look forward to future patches, development, and releases. A great start to say the least!

Trying not to give out spoilers, but when replaying the opening tutorial area, I was surprised at how much was really there in the way of options. You respond one way before a fight and it affects you later on. You may get a choice to make later on, but only if the fight went a certain way earlier, and that choice may have consequences. A surprise I guess to see branching like this in two small maps from an introductory area.

The only question about experience for any rpg system is whether the characters level too fast, too slow, or generally ok. This game, as far as I'm concerned falls into the generally ok category. Why on earth does it matter what xp is awarded for?

One thing this system has going for it is that it outlaws grinding. So I suppose that if you are a grinding fan, then you would not like it? I really can't imagine why grinding would be desired, though. Level caps are another way to stop grinding.

No xp for killing things is far better. Bestiary experience makes sense even from role playing perspective. During first few encounters you learn how to dispatch that particular monster, it's weak points and all the characteristics regarding it's biology. After you've learned all there is, it's common sense that you won't get any more experience as there is no new insight.

One thing I always hated about Fallout 3 and New Vegas is critter experience and gaining insane amount of xp for hacking and lockpicking computers and locks respectively. To the point where you can gain several levels by farming experience this way. It was a glaring fault in my opinion, especially in New Vegas.

There are things that I am missing. One of the biggest ones is probably the lack of romances between your group members (Baldur's Gate had this and it was just great) and in general I would love to hear way more conversations among them. And what I dislike a lot is the current combat system – or better: not the system itself, but the fact that every fight that has more than 3 enemies tends to turn into a mess. Frankly I have no idea how this can be improved, but every now and then I actually have problems to click on the right character or to recognize who is who.

So I am not blown away by this game. However I am enjoying a solid, kind of old-school RPG, that offers many places to explore, a lot of text to read and overall satisfying quests. I probably will not play it over and over again, at least not during the next 12 months. But I will definetly start a new game at some point and I already know it will be a great 2nd run. And if there are some expansions available one day, yes, I will definetly play these too.

Bottom line: For fans of 'classic' RPGs like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale etc., Pillars of Eternity is a great experience.

Loved the freedom. Quite often I screwed up a quest even before I knew a quest existed, simply because I found the "solution" faster than the quest itself :3
Really liked how my character's race/background etc. have a small impact on conversations.

Really liked the companions. It's a pet peeve of mine when something advertised as "companion" in a game just turn out to be a "henchmen with a random backstory". For me having a group of friends with a mind and goals of their own around me is much more important than having a group of random meatshileds following me because of little to no reason.
Loved how they voiced their opinions in conversations, had random banters among each other, they generally felt like living people. Call me crazy, but for me the is one of the most (if not the most) important things in a party-based RPG.
Yes they could have been more deeper, but I was statisfied with them the way they were.

I really like that there is no EXP for killing. This way I'm not being penalized for being a "peace talker" instead of a "psycho killer". I've always talked my way out of combat whenever it was possible.

The only thing I really dislike is that the stronghold feels too shallow :( The whole stronghold system is basically just one interface. I know it's not a "stronghold management strategy game", but I was hoping for a bit more complex "stronghold management strategy" elements.

The other thing I dislike just comes from the fact that I'm not a native English speaker. The language they use in the game is not your usual "everyday conversation" English, and sometimes I'm having a vegy hard time understanding what is written :(
I stopped reading the souls of the backer NPCs because of this, because they just gave me a headache, nothing more....

I'm happy not getting 10-100 XP every time I kill something. Combat, for me, is always the least interesting part of an RPG. It's something to do , sometimes something that has to be done, but it's not why I play these things.

I was really pleasantly surprised at how well and full this game turned out. Using a kickstarter can't be an easy way to fund production since you must complete things first and then, if more money comes in, expand on that. Sometimes I'd think the first "quick and dirty" way to handle something may not start you on the road you'd like if you knew that later on you'd have more money to spend in development.

I'm too old to worry about relationships between the characters, but I do like the backstories for so many of the towns people. Instead of most games where there aren't so many, this lets Obsidian put lots of people in the towns and I like that. I'm usually disappointed when I reach my first inn because there are so few people, but when the people in there aren't all limited to five or six things to say, you can have many more.

Would buy again!

I prefer experience for every opponent because that favors my playstyle. I understand what Obsidian was trying to do, giving options and all that for roleplaying, but I will never take those options (outside of a dialogue choice) because I want to find out what would happen if I fought those opponents. Do they have good loot? Would there be a special dialogue option in that combat? What's in that room? If I don't fight those opponents, I won't know. I also like the combat.

Not having experience per opponent means there is one less thing that rewards that exploration and takes away a source for the sense of progression.

Edit: For example, the stronghold has random fights. Without experience, it feels like a real chore to engage in those fights. What is the point? Preventing my prestige meter from going down? I get absolutely no progression from doing that. If there was per opponent experience, I could at least feel there was some benefit to the fight. Same goes for stumbling upon random beasts in the wilderness - I don't care as much without experience.

I disagree with the lack of combat XP for the same reasons as the poster above me. Without any reward, the fights become more of a hassle. Not everyone enjoys playing the same way. I prefer exploration and dungeon diving, not questing, but progression is limited to a certain play style. IMHO a middle ground approach of a small XP award for each encounter instead of individual enemies would solve this. For those saying no XP makes sense because you've learned everything, the same argument can be applied to traps and quests.

I think that has more to do with a chnunk of stronghold mechanics just being badly designed than with not getting XP for beating the enemies. But yes, I suppose it makes sense from your point of view - I now know for a fact I'm trying to solo the game as a rogue. Might fail horribly, but I never got a chance to play Infinity Engine-like game in that way. Regardless, thank you for elaborating.

I also find stronghold fights useless.
Oddly, only ever got one and had them auto it.

I find most of the game to be awsome! :-)

It took me literaly hours to figure out I wasn't getting any exp for simply killing guards inside that fortress; when I did, I went from "WOOT i killed almost all and no bonus exp" to "oh well, this means I can probably talk myself out of things and still get the same exp, and yet by killing every single soldier I'm getting a lot more of gold".

romace between party members not only with our char. That would be great :3