It took a while for all this complexity to settle down, as Obsidian spent two years iterating upon it via post-release patches, but this smoothed out the rough edges and allowed the system to come into its own.

An Infinity Engine game veteran jumping into Pillars of Eternity will feel immediately at home. The sounds and visuals, complemented by Justin Bell's beautiful musical score, are just like they ought to be; the moment-to-moment feeling of commanding units is just right, and quests and dialogues behave exactly like they used to – or even better, thanks to quality-of-life improvements like mouseovers, a Fast-Forward function and a “loot all” button. Only after a few hours playing do the differences start to become apparent.

While Pillars of Eternity's combat is still of the RTwP variety, its original ruleset has more in common with 4th edition D&D than the old AD&D which powered the IE games. All character classes will acquire a broad selection of abilities selected on level-up, many of which will have per-rest or per-encounter uses.

Combat also features an engagement system, where melee combatants lock each other in position and can't move under the risk of taking an opportunistic attack. Unless you go out of your way to build a mobile party with mainly passive abilities, fights will be more static than in the Infinty Engine games, and you will pause more to fire off those per-encounter abilities. It's also much easier to hold a line or block enemy movement, and a good deal harder to run through enemy lines to get at their back-row casters.

Pillars is also markedly easier than Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale. Players enjoying a challenge are well advised to go straight to Hard or Path of the Damned difficulties, and avoid going into the White March expansion until the very end or risk out-levelling and out-gearing the second half of the game.