Pillars of Eternity: The White March - Part 2

Worth your money a couple of times over, and at least as many playthroughs, TWM2 is a vast improvement in quality to the base game, in every aspect. I even enjoyed it more than TWM which was already very, very good. One way you can tell you are playing a quality game is when you see the developers being "generous" with content - giving you custom-made mechanics and content to play around with, which can't be easily reused somewhere else. In my book, this is always a good sign for the attention to detail and the resources a development team was able to spare. The most prominent example of this is how, early in TWM2, depending on the way you handle a certain quest, you may get the ability to call long-range artillery on targets, and potentially make your life easier later on. I think it was great how this was woven into the main quest and the ability was not simply thrown at the player with some "magic" explanation, but also the fact that it was optional. Another improvement in TWM2 is the increased amount of meaningful reactivity, which provides a lot of opportunities for role-playing, for playing out both minor and major quests differently, and adds replay value. Even quests that are part of the main TWM2 story can be solved in radically different ways, depending on player choice. This is a huge thing for me, as influencing the main plot is something rarely seen in RPGs in general, so I really appreciated being given multiple approaches to solving problems which affected the story, even if just on the TWM2 level. And it's not just the main quest either - the player can influence the outcome and resolution of smaller quests - what's the future of Stalwart's economy going to be, it's trade relationship with Defiance Bay, the fate of a miner accused of murder, there are too many such things to list everything. If reactivity is one thing that stands out when describing TWM2, I think "variance" and "hand-crafted" are the other major descriptors. On every level, the game left me with the feeling I'm playing the kind of hand-crafted adventure, which I hoped PoE would have been at release. Nothing feels arbitrary, nothing feels like "filler". There is meaning to pretty much every combat encounter, and you can see someone made a deliberate decision how many enemies to put there, what type, what class, etc. Talking about "hand-crafted", the number of scripted interactions, and their complexity have both been increased, and they feel better than ever. The designers seem to have sensed one of the complaints I personally had regarding scripted encounters, and the text now gives the player hints of what skill/attribute will be tested before he or she has to choose a character to preform an action. The same feeling of increased developer attention to detail that is evident in the quest and encounter design, is prevalent in the area design as well. I found it a nice change that, in contrast to the base game, it was fairly difficult to predict the layout of any area without actually exploring it - designing more unpredictable areas is a lesson that the PoE team has apparently mastered by now, and to see what I mean it's enough to compare any of the new dungeons to something seen in the base game, like the temple of Eothas or the Sanitarium for example. And once again - area design keeps offering the player multiple approaches towards the quest objective, and this principle meshes perfectly with the overall increase in interactivity to quests and main plot. The final thing that left me positively impressed, and which totally won me over, was the plot and story, which makes sense because you can't experience them fully before you complete the expansion. Even early in TWM2 I spotted what I thought were improvements to the quality of writing, small things like for example a letter the player could find amid an enemy camp, which gives details on the everyday life and concerns of characters and provokes the player to see the other side as more than just "enemies". TWM2's plot presents a healthy chunk of lore to the player, but in total contrast to the loredumps of the base game, this time new information is presented much more subtly, much more painless and through varied ("variance" again) channels - dialogue, reading of journals/notes, overheard dialogues between other characters, and even some riddle solving. The plot managed to surprise me, which felt great, and for a player invested in the setting of PoE and the history of its world, touched on questions which will feel larger than the plot and the game itself. And again, it offered interactivity and consequences up to the very end. I guess that if you've gone far enough in PoE and TWM to consider buying TWM2, you are already at least ok with PoE's gameplay, and want to know if TWM2 is worth it. My conclusion is that TWM2 offers the best parts of PoE content and will easily exceed your expectations P.S. I invite you to also check out my TWM and PoE reviews :)

DON'T BELIEVE USER SCORE !!! Pillars Of Eternity [including two expansions] is excellent game, one of the best cRPGs of all time.Obsidian please don't stop, you are my saviours, because i play only this type of **** White March part II brings new companion [Barbarian], new fantastic locations, good story and atmosphere and more great improvements with latest 3.0 update. BUY THIS GAME !!!

White March Part 2 is excellent, simply put. The story/atmosphere are really on point for this one. The only criticisms that can be leveled against it are length and linearity, it's a bit short (and by that I mean still longer than a modern AAA shooter's main campaign) and it's a bit less about exploring open maps. By the way, what another reviewer pointed out is correct, the user score was sitting pretty at 9.5+ consistently then over night dropped to around where it is now. Very suspicious, no? Play this expansion for yourself, and see if it deserves a red review, let alone 24 of them...

Don't get me wrong, this is very good expansion, but considering that developers splited it up in 2 parts and sold both at full price I have to give it a lower score.

The game itself was fine, and is the second best of it's ilk to come along since all those old Infinity Engine games. Visually I liked it, sound was fine and the party system was fine. Quests and story? Fine. What's wrong with it? Minus a few points for very poor encounter design & planning in certain locations. Minus a zillion points for there *still* being serious bugs (e.g. entire character inventory disappears).