FWIW I am NOT a min-maxer, play with the characters whose personalities I like the most, and found only the final battle of Cragholdt particularly difficult (and like you I was coming back in cold, just now, after having not played the original for over a year). So no normal difficulty, at least, it doesn’t seem to go out of its way to be unfair, and the enemies are definitely not “broken” – I imagine they save that for Pillars of the Damned difficulty.

I liked the combat in both of these games a lot, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think a little flair is out of place in a fantasy game, nor is it detrimental to combat balance.

I forgot to ask before, but what did you think of the new quest to defend Caed Nua? While the keep is probably the weakest system in the game–especially disappointing compared to Obsidian’s own Neverwinter Nights 2–I really enjoyed prepping my defenses and calling in the allies I had accrued across my playthrough.

Also, sorry for pestering you with questions on a game you didn’t especially like. Pillars, flaws and all, really scratched an itch for me and I’ve spent a lot of time with it, but I don’t know anyone else who’s actually played it, so I’m a bit starved for meaningful discussion of it.

Soulbound weapons! I really liked those, and regretted that the expansion wasn’t really long enough to unlock their full potential. Again, it’s another element that seems like it’d be at its best slotted into the middle of the main campaign rather than at the end. If I’d been in the mood for some crunchy combat I might have gotten on with Cragholdt a little better, but coming back to a party that was a year old meant I was more than a little bit rusty at it.

And I’m looking forward to Tyranny. Nobody does bad guys quite like Obsidian; I’m really hoping they do something genuinely different it (judging from the fiction they’re taking some pages out of the Black Company books in their portrayal of an evil empire) rather than any of the cliched crap you can get up to in Bioware games.

I definitely agree that White March would be at its best slotted into the middle of the game rather than played at the end as I did – it would make far more sense in terms of pacing and narrative. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll ever replay Pillars and so won’t see the expansion at its best.

It’s a shame you didn’t play that quest. I’m fairly sure that the game got an across-the-board rebalance not too long ago, so it might not be so bad now, particularly since it was designed for end-game levels *before* the second-half of the expansion came out; I’ve never fully mastered the game’s combat and was able to beat the quest after finishing all of the White March (it’s not a long quest).

One thing that struck me about the expansion is that it seems to be trying to retroactively add impact to the twist at the end of the base campaign. In the White March you have to avert an apocalyptic event caused by the gods, and at the end of the base game you learn…well, that twist. It was underwhelming just because there wasn’t enough content related to the gods to get you invested in the twist one way or the other, but after going through all of the White March the player should have more developed opinions about the gods.

With the patch you can rest as soon as you arrive at stronghold, even outside.

You’re spot on about world being hostile lore-wise. I’ve started a new game for those two expansions and I still had problems remembering what happens and why am I supposed to care about all of those things. WM story is good though, especially the second part. It has a pacing problems (that mountain monastery existed for no reason).

What I liked the most about expansions was them bringing the combat system to its full potential. Especially with soulbound weapons I had to rethink party composition, constantly change equipment, respec all of my characters – some several times. Endgame – WM part 2 and Craighold questline – felt like the game I was supposed to be playing. Main campaign felt trivial even on maximum difficulty: min-max equipment, know where you’re supposed to go, heal characters and move weaklings away from enemy. I hope their next game, Tyranny, will try to capture this feel of numerous available tools to the main games so I not feel forever stuck in XCOM early game with ballistic weapons and grenades making choice between vest and scope.