Started on the Pillars of Eternity II: DLC Chapters, accidentally did the 2nd one first since there's no indicator of the order.
Seeker, Slayer, Survivor - I can see why this got critically panned since it's an entire DLC storyline wrapped around a bunch of arena battle fights. Also the inn is like a minute walk from the arena so you can't even just jump one battle to the next if you want to heal up between.
Not having played Pillars II since beating it at launch where I was playing on Veteran and it was way too easy, I don't remember jack shit about how to play the combat or the best spells/buffs, etc... and that + whatever combat balancing they've done through patches meant that I was getting my ass whooped like 3 battles in and had to basically drop down to easy to get through the DLC while slowly re-learning the combat.
Also when I loaded my PRE-ENDGAME save to go do these, within like 5 seconds one of my main party members permanently left the party because of my endgame choices, so whatever strategies/team build I was using a year ago isn't even gonna work since I lost my tank/healer.
Anyhow, despite the repetitive gameplay loop, the story was pretty interesting. Nobody writes like Obsidian and playing these DLCs now is kinda melancholy knowing these are the last Pillars stories and most likely the last old-school infinity engine style game from Obsidian now that MS bought them. The world and lore of Pillars is probably the videogame world closest to Game of Thrones/Song of Ice & Fire (and you can tell a bunch is sorta lifted from that series), and the concept of the gods and execution of them in Pillars is very original and interesting. I love how all the stories play with the gods and their involvement as well as smaller scale human politics. So much grey-area which is partly why it reminds me of SOIAF. Definitely going to miss it. Even in the endings for Seeker, Slayer, Survivor, there were a lot of options for a short tale and none of them were really a "good" ending, it's just what you want to do because it's very grey morality.
It's definitely a very story/combat focused DLC expansion. There's almost no sidequests or locations besides the arena. Now that I've got this one down, I'm looking forward to going into the more lore/exploration/dungeon-crawling expansions of The Beast of Winter and The Forgotten Sanctum.
One thing I do think if fucking lame, though I understand it was a budget issue, is that unlike Pillars I's White March 1 & 2 which increased the level cap by 2 levels each expansion an added a new level of abilities/skills for all jobs, Pillars II expansions do not raise level cap and do not add any new abilties. So since I've beat the game at max level 20, for all 3 DLC expansions there's no xp or anything, so they're literally just story crawls which is why I'm kinda ok keeping the difficulty down a bit just to blow through the combat since what's the point. Turned it back up to normal/classic once I got the hang of it by the end of the expansion and I'll probably just keep it there for the other 2 expansions.
There's a mod that uncaps the level cap and although it doesn't add new abilities, lets you level up to 33 and buy more abilities. I think I'll use that for the next 2 DLCs just because it's annoying playing an rpg with no xp despite lots of combat and some questing.
Also the other budget thing about the 3 DLC expansions for Pillars II is unlike White March which added 3 fully fleshed out companions to use throughout the game, Pillars II DLC doesn't really add a single companion. Just adds some "sidekicks" who have a voiced dialogue tree and comment on their expansion island if you have them in the party but otherwise don't have their own personal sidequest and don't interact in the rest of the game. It's not terrible, and I used the one guy Konstanten who went with the Seeker, Slayer, Survivor island DLC and I felt he added enough dialogue throughout to be worthwhile, but it is kinda lame they didn't just make these sidekicks into full companions. How hard is it to write 1 quest for each character?
