PC Critic Reviews

It took me only fifteen hours to get into the third act of the game’s main quest, less than the some 20-25 hours to play through all the DLC. While these new quests fail because they’re so battle-heavy, the stories in Beasts and The Forgotten Sanctum are still complex and engrossing.

Beast of Winter has a lot of beautiful locations alongisde great artwork, and expands on interesting lore threads that had previously been relegated to text dumps and exposition, as well as a couple interesting boss encounters -- It's a solid afternoon's worth of more Deadfire, but it feels piecemeal and diversionary.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire “Beast of Winter” gives fans more of a good thing, and presents a handful of interesting ideas and story beats. That said, anybody expecting this Pillars of Eternity II expansion to be anywhere near as vast, vibrant, and varied as the core game are likely to be left cold.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire's first DLC is mainly focused on dungeon crawling, rather than the things that made the core game so awesome, and yet Beast of Winter is far from a boring addition, especially for those who see themselves as scholars of Eora's lore.

Fans who are starving for more Pillars of Eternity II will not be disappointed, either by the gameplay or by this mini story’s dive into some of the universe’s more interesting lore. On the other hand, if you have sunk 150 hours into the series through two full games and two previous DLCs, then you may be tiring of its formula, its routine, and its combat. It probably feels even more tiresome if you love the series for its open ended exploration, since the mostly linear DLC offers very little of this. How much you will enjoy Beast of Winter ultimately depends upon how important each of these elements are to you.

Beast Of Winter is a fantastic slice of everything that Pillars of Eternity does well. The world building and the writing are so good it can make you interested, even if you have fallen out of love with it before.