Life (and death) comes at you fast in the Deadfire archipelago, the series of islands where this metaphysical adventure plays out. After that, my entire crew is cut down by a wave of apparently better-trained fighters. Things look like they're going well for about the first five seconds. The pirates lay planks across from their deck to mine, and my hearty band of adventurers prepares for battle, casting some spells to increase our defense and stats, and others to confuse or slow down the enemy. Ship-to-ship fighting becomes a tense series of menu choices. If you've played a D&D-inspired game like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, or any of the many others from the late '90s and early 2000s, this will be familiar territory. I have to imagine those things, because ship-to-ship combat in the new role-playing game Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire plays out through a series of illustrated multiple choice screens, almost like a classic choose-your-own-adventure book (or perhaps like an old-school pen-and-paper nautical strategy game).īut when our ships are within boarding distance, the game returns to much more familiar territory, a classic point-and-click RPG, viewed from an overhead isometric angle. I imagine the crashing waves and salt air as our ships hurtle towards each other. The distance between us closes from 500 meters to just dozens before I have a chance to order my skeleton crew to fire off more than a couple of rounds of cannonballs.

Despite this, my foe unfurls his pirate flag and makes right for me, full sail ahead. Only a single cannon emerges from the port side, compared to the powerful pair I'm turning to starboard to aim at them. The enemy ship is larger than mine, but through my spyglass I can tell its wooden hull is weak.

Pirates tides of fortune guide