Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire - The Forgotten Sanctum (PC) Review

The story follows the Watcher as he or she embarks to set foot on the titular dungeon, after a powerful tremor shook the whole Deadfire archipelago. The dungeon seems to contain quite the secret within it, which has also attracted a little bit of competition. Without giving anything away, the story on offer is great, the writing retains its high quality, and the lore added is probably the most interesting yet (amongst the three DLC packs, that is). The best thing about The Forgotten Sanctum, however, is that choices within the dungeon, resonate to the core game.

Simply put, what you'll do while dungeon crawling in here will actually affect the ending of the main questline, something that previous add-ons lacked, something that heavily undermined their role-playing aspect. Even better, instead of introducing new characters, this puts the focus back on the main cast. Moreover, compared to Beast of Winter, which was the most… RPG so far, this is even better, with a hefty amount of missions, and a variety of ways to complete them. Yes, once more this will be a short trip, but the length feels kind of right this time.

In terms of difficulty, this is, without a single doubt, the toughest of the bunch, to the point that playing it on hard makes it feels almost unfair. While the challenge occasionally borders on annoying, unlike Seeker, Slayer, Survivor, this has a better balance between character interaction, battles, and boss fights - which are awesome by the way. Too bad the level cap won't see an increase in here, not to mention that the gear that you'll find within the dungeon can't exactly be considered big game changers.

It has been already mentioned that the story is very good in here. In terms of audio-visuals, however, this kind of feels on the weak side - on par with Seeker, Slayer, Survivor, less striking than Beast of Winter, which is a shame as fans of Eora will have to wait for quite a long time for the next Pillars of Eternity. So, in conclusion, a DLC worthy of a purchase? Sure… but you should probably wait for a patch of two, because there is a tiny amount of quest-ruining bugs that could potentially destroy your 100-hour play-through.