➤ Postcards from Bianca Marca 🎮

We were all hung up with the ending of Part One of The White March thanks to a clever cliffhanger built by Obsidian Entertainment and, after a much longer than expected wait, the time has finally come to return to the White Brand to find out how it ended with the village of Stalwart, with the White Forge and with an impending threat that disturbs the dreams of our protagonist. With this last narrative stratagem the second part of the full-bodied expansion of Pillars of Eternity opens, never too much praised classic role-playing game that has brought back to its ancient splendor the epic tradition of the various Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale , just to mention the first ones that came to mind. Taking into consideration that those who are reading these lines will know Obsidian's work perfectly and have probably already completed the first episode of The White March, we will immediately focus on the gameplay news and on the evaluation of additional content. One last information before proceeding, Part 2 is sold at the same price as the previous one, € 14,99 but it is possible to buy a sort of Season Pass containing the entire add-on for € 23,99.

The White March epic ends without too many jolts. In a positive but also negative sense

For everyone

As also happened on the occasion of the first part of The White March, this second piece of the add-on arrives with a long series of gameplay improvements that will be made available for free to all owners of the original game through the 3.0 patch, which will be released simultaneously. The stronghold has undergone yet another tweak aimed at improving its integration with the rest of the game.

Now the random missions that we can assign to our retired followers will have better described plots, richer in loot and much more adherent to the history of Pillars, but we will also be able to receive the request for an audience from a series of characters that we can help, condemn or just listen. Some of these encounters will also lead us to travel through Eora to follow an unedited narrative line that will jeopardize our possession of Caed Nua. Then there are some decidedly minor changes such as the addition of the new game mode Tale, which effectively eliminates the fighting allowing players disinterested in this aspect to enjoy the plot and the depth of the characters without worrying about the rest, or the functional redesign of the skill bar that now more clearly divides talents and spells consumable for rest and combat as well as offering better navigability of quick-use items. But the most important news concerns two aspects that have direct consequences on the gameplay, especially near the end game. Patch 3.0 introduces the damage caused by the knockout, when our character falls to the ground unconscious for the end of his resistance. In this case he will find himself with a fairly important penalty depending on the type of damage that caused his dizziness: a broken rib, burns or frozen limbs, concussions and so on. Obviously this damage will have quite important consequences on the fights and can only be eliminated by resting. The other element is the complete overhaul of the Athletics and Survival stats. Now the first determines the intensity of a new ability that all the characters have, called Refound Momentum and which allows you to recover a certain amount of stamina once per fight, while Survival defines six different types of bonuses that can be accessed by a party member in the moment of rest, a bit like when you sleep in a tavern or in the stronghold. Obsidian's precise and constant work in improving the aspects, even secondary ones, of his role-playing game is certainly to be commended by actually pampering its users and showing a propensity to listen to feedback, often truly ruthless and violent, which is rarely possible. find in our industry.

At the same time, however, we feel compelled to point out that the biggest negative element of Pillars of Eternity continues to remain absolutely vivid and unaltered. We are obviously talking about pathfinding, that is the ability of the characters, especially those directly controlled by the player, to reach the areas indicated by us. A phenomenon that negatively afflicts the otherwise splendid work of Obsidian and that seems to continue to worsen with the passage of time. Even this second part of The White March is not exempt and, indeed if possible, the new locations and some particularly numerous meetings tend to highlight more the game engine deficits in this aspect. It is evident, at this point, that the developer can no longer do anything to solve this problem and we sincerely hope that the inevitable sequel will be realized from the beginning taking this problem into account. For our part, we must admit that moving the various characters individually to make them climb a ladder, or getting stuck for hours in the micromanagement of each party member to make sure that it hits the correct enemy and does not get some disengagement shots when we were limited. activating a skill has now definitely unnerved us.

For few

And then we come to talk in detail of the second part of The White March. Let's start immediately by saying that it concludes in a pleasant and detailed way what started with the previous segment. The story, in its entirety, is at times linked to the main plot of Pillars of Eternity and manages to appear well written and consistent with the setting.

Once again we will encounter about three brand new locations combined with the partial restyling of the village of Stalwart and a couple of other smaller locations. All for a quantity of hours of gameplay that exceeds, by heart, the time taken to complete the first part of the expansion. To want to deepen this aspect in detail, it is not that there are more things to do in this second episode than the previous one but there are a further increase in difficulty and above all some sequences that seem designed to try to stimulate a strongly stealth-oriented approach. In fact, a large part of the new environments offers more entry points and a well-studied exploration allows you to avoid the largest groups of opponents, in cases where it is not possible to circumvent the clashes by properly exploiting the dialogue options to which we have become accustomed. the original title. From this point of view we can say that the second part of The White March perfectly follows the path taken with the first half and the developer's greater practice, combined with the experience gained with the title, has allowed him to offer more game situations. original or otherwise less related to the usual "clean up the area before moving on to the next". In this sense, the interactive sequences also help that forcefully return to break the rhythm of the action and offer much more complex enigmas and environmental situations to solve and deal with, even if it seemed easier to "cheat" by selecting all the available options as there were no malus or penalties in cases where you happen to make a mistake. There is also a new character introduced with this second part. This is Maneha, a barbarian Aumaua from the coastal area that we will meet in the center of the village of Stalwart as soon as the add-on is installed and, very interestingly, it will be possible to use it immediately even if you decide to leave with The White March from the start.

Its narrative line is linked in a double way with one of the expansion's environments and, however short and perhaps a little too superficial, it will pleasantly accompany us until the epilogue of the gaming experience. Where it is difficult to notice the big news is in the graphic aspect of the add-on. In fact, artistically, as expected, this second part does not differ from the previous one and the new settings are all strongly anchored to the style of the White Brand: therefore snow and ice everywhere. We noticed a greater care in the interiors that we happened to come across and above all in the new opponents that we had to face that are enriched with some very interesting additions and definitely above the norm in terms of dimensions. It is also interesting to note that a good job has been done to try to distinguish, just enough, even the numerous groups of humans that we will meet and that on more than one occasion have made us sweat a lot because of the combinations that The White March set us in front of us. Nothing to say on the musical front and it's a shame considering that from this point of view we would have expected some news while the themes seemed to us practically the same, apart from the addition of a single track. On the other hand, the dubbing in English remains exceptional and the written translation in Spanish is excellent.

PC System Requirements

Test Setup

Processore: Intel Core i5 4690k a 4.0 GHz
Memory: 8 GB of RAM
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit

Minimum requirements

Processore: Intel Core i3-2100T a 2.5 GHz o AMD Phenom II X3 B73
Memory: 4 GB of RAM
Scheda video: ATI Radeon HD 4850 o NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Operating system: Windows Vista / 7/8 with the latest service packs installed
Disk space: 14 GB

Recommended Requirements

Processor: Intel Core i5-2400 at 3.1 GHz or AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
Memory: 8 GB of RAM
Video card: AMD Radeon HD 7700 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570
Operating system: Windows 7/8 64-bit with the latest service packs installed

Comment

Digital Delivery Steam Price 14,99 € / 23,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

8.0

Readers (5)

8.6

Your vote

The second part of The White March is the perfect conclusion to an expansion capable of adding a lot of content to Pillars of Eternity including brand new environments, brand new party members, high level loot and some new monsters to face. It would be a crime not to buy the complete package if you fell in love with the magnificent classic role-playing game by Obsidian. At the same time, however, we do not feel like pushing the vote upwards simply because outside of all the additions that can be expected from an expansion, there is nothing that truly manages to amaze the player starting from a story. pleasant but never epic that goes alongside the main plot without ever completely amalgamating with it.

PRO

Excellent gameplay improvements also available to owners of Pillars of Eternity only
A small step forward in the design of areas, especially those indoors
The plot of the expansion ends perfectly ...

AGAINST