Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire - The Beast of Winter

Beast of Winter is the first of 3 planned DLCs for Deadfire. The most amazing thing to me is how fast they're coming out, to be honest, but Beast of Winter doesn't feel rushed or anything, so I'm not complaining. The DLC itself is good-not-great. I'd give it 7/10. It's a fairly short, completely self-contained little adventure that explores some of the game's lore a little with some nice backgrounds and some okay combat. The Good: - The art is gorgeous! - We get a better look at one of the more mysterious cultures of Eora, the Pale Elves - though not a close enough look to remove all their mystery. Plus, what new things we see are in-line with what we've seen before, which is always nice (or, rather, it's really annoying when it doesn't happen). - A better look at a few other past events, including some of the motivations behind St Waidwen and the invasion of the Dyrwood. - You get to fight a dragon! (or not fight it, as you prefer) - The new sidekick, Vatnir, is mildly amusing - We get more Ydwin, the fan-favorite character (who was specifically designed to be a fan favorite - vampire snow elf atheist scientist? C'mon, people)! The new depth is welcome and makes me regret all the more that she's not a full companion ;_; - New items, including a pretty neat soulbound armor. The Bad: - It's pretty short (I'd say maybe 5 hours, which is disappointing for $10) - A couple cool "puzzle"-type mechanics are make a grating chore by long load times (the one I'm thinking of mostly lets you change the time you're at and see an event at multiple points, but it reloads the map every time, leading to jarring pauses, especially since the level involves hunting items). - The combat encounters are meh (hard, but I didn't find them super interesting). Verdict: buy it on sale.

Really good story, with a lot of good dialogues :,) But I expected a little more dialogues/interactions from the new "companion" tho :o Anyway, bring Edèr and Tekehu, they have a lot of things to say :) (And Ydwin but I didn't try)

Pillar of Eternity and PoE II Deadfire can be played as walk and talk computer RPG. I like this very much. The Beast of Winter DLC offers only a combat and puzzle way. This smaller freedom of choice is very well executed. If you prefer combat in RPG you can add a point to my rating. The hardware requirements are the same as for Deadfire. You need 8GByte of RAM.

Though not a full blown expansion, the Beast of Winter adds a really interesting encounters and sheds some light on the events from the past. This adds a lot to the world building and ties the story of the fisrt game with the sequel. Really interesting story line, I wish it was longer.