Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

Two combat systems, a ship you upgrade like a character sheet, and seven companions to draw a party from. Here is what you are choosing between, and what the add-ons add on top.

You pick a combat system, and it is final

Deadfire gives you two ways to fight. One is classic real-time with pause, where you slow the fight down and issue orders; the other is turn-based, added after launch as a free update and finished out of beta with Patch 5.0. You choose between them when you start a new campaign, and there is no changing the mode once you have begun. If you want to see both, that is two campaigns rather than two settings.

That makes the choice worth thinking about for thirty seconds rather than clicking through. Turn-based suits players who would rather read a fight one step at a time and plan a whole round; real-time with pause suits players who want the same tactical options delivered continuously. Everything else in the game, including the party you build, sits on top of whichever you pick.

The ship is both transport and base

You captain your own ship, and it is a way of getting between quest markers as well as your stronghold on the seas. You upgrade the ship and the crew and choose which skills to improve so you can survive the dangerous encounters on the way, so the ship is where a lot of the planning for a voyage happens.

Ports are where the campaign branches. You plot your own course across the archipelago, discover islands, meet the people living there and take on quests at the docks, which means the order you do things in is yours rather than a chapter list's. The Deadfire is also where the world changes: this is an island setting rather than the forests and castles the first game traded in, and the difference runs through the quests as well as the scenery.

A roster of seven, four in the party at a time

The party is the other place your choices compound. There are seven companions to recruit, and each one offers a choice of class options with deeper abilities rather than a single fixed build, so the same person can be pointed in a different direction on a second run. You do not field all seven at once: the party you take with you is five, your Watcher and four companions. The companion system also carries personal relationships and interactions, so how you treat someone is a decision with a result attached.

With four companions in the party and a choice of class options for each of them, who covers what when a fight turns matters more than filling every slot, and that is true in both combat systems.

What the add-ons add

Three post-launch expansions are sold as an Expansion Pass, and they are also bundled into the Obsidian Edition alongside the base game, a soundtrack, a digital pen-and-paper rules set, a high-resolution map and a guidebook. Beast of Winter takes the party into the Beyond after an ancient feud between eldritch powers; Seeker, Slayer, Survivor is the combat-focused one, built around an arena on a new island; The Forgotten Sanctum is an endgame chase into a dungeon and a set of wizards with plans of their own.

Patch 5.0 also added The Ultimate, a challenge run that stacks the game's God Challenges, Trial of Iron, Path of the Damned and Solo mode into one campaign.

Should you play it

Yes, if you want a party role-playing game where the world is a set of routes you chose rather than a map you cleared, and where a companion is worth a second look before you commit them to a role. The combat choice at the start is the one decision that cannot be revisited, so make it deliberately, and consider turn-based if you have bounced off pausable real-time before.

Two things to know before you buy. This review covers the release sold on Steam, which is the PC version for Windows, Mac and Linux; console copies are packaged differently, so the add-on question depends on where you are buying. And the expansions are not part of the base game, so if you want all three, the Expansion Pass or the Obsidian Edition brings them together in one purchase.