All roleplaying games have at least a dual nature. It helps to know that the company that invented the first one, Dungeons & Dragons was TSR, which stands for Tactical Studies Rules. It was a company making wargames, and D&D at its core is a squad-based fantasy wargame. Tactical combat is an important part of nearly all roleplaying games, and even more so in the computer games. The other layer of RPGs is the story layer. What is that group of fantasy heroes fighting for or against? There frequently is an archvillain or some other greater evil, and in high fantasy settings the heroes might well end up saving the world, or at least a part of it. Now pen & paper RPGs usually just stick to those two parts, but in CRPGs there is quite often also a bit of a management part to it. The group of heroes has resources, for example spells, which deplete over time and recover by resting, and you need to manage these resources. You also need to manage equipment and inventory.

Pillars of Eternity has a big world-saving kind of story, about a very peculiar type of world. In this world, reincarnation is real, and magic / technology can be used to meddle with the souls that are transferred during reincarnation. The story deals with various aspects of that, from the main characters ability to remember his previous incarnations and speak with errant souls, to the major story about what gods are in such a world of reincarnating souls. While the writing is often quite good, it has to be said that the story is very complex, very long, and somewhat esoteric. It doesn't have the "tadpole in your eye" immediate directness and urgency of Baldur's Gate 3. Much of the story of Pillars of Eternity is only presented by text without voice acting, and that involves a lot of reading. In the end you don't really know whether you are chasing the archvillain because of what he did to the world, or just because you want to get rid of your status as a "watcher", as that is driving you crazy.

The walls of text problem of Pillars of Eternity is made worse by the game having been financed by crowdfunding. This allowed backers who paid more money than others to add their own text to the game, in the form of NPCs with their own backstories, or in the form of epitaphs on graves. You quickly learn that clicking on an NPC with a gold nameplate and reading his backstory is just a waste of time, as that story was written by a backer, and doesn't really have anything to do with the story of the game. Kickstarter stretch goals also added other unnecessary ballast, like an "endless dungeon" to crawl through for no reason, or a half-baked system in which you manage a stronghold, much worse than in Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

I am playing Pillars of Eternity now, because the game this year added a turn-based mode. For me, the tactical combat is more fun in turn-based mode, as I find real-time with pause frequently confusing. Having said that, I reached the point where the tactical combat isn't that much fun anymore. To me it seems there are some rather fundamental balance problems in the system. Due to enemies damage reduction being deducted from any damage you do, weapons that deal lots of damage slowly to me appear much more powerful than weapons dealing smaller packets of damage more frequently. And because the world of Pillars of Eternity has firearms, and firearms are slow and deal lots of damage, all of my group is now equipped with firearms or heavy crossbows. While against a large group of enemies some spells like fireball are very useful, against a single enemy my mage is dealing more damage with a pistol than with a spell. And the spell is a resource that depletes, while the pistol has unlimited ammo and shots.

Another reason that the game has become a bit too easy for me is the structure of many computer roleplaying games that have a main quest and optional sidequests. The dungeon I am in is apparently meant for level 7, but my group is level 9, because I did every single available sidequest. And that is without the DLC, of which is part is designed to be played at level 5+, and which results in your group being even more overleveled for the latter part of the main story. But the sidequests to me actually were more fun that the main story, as these smaller stories are easier to understand, and often deal with interesting moral dilemmas. They are more relatable than the main story about souls and reincarnation, because the moral dilemmas are of a kind that could also occur in our world, not just in a world with a specific way souls work. Being somewhat completionist with the sidequests and exploration also led to the management part of the game having become trivial, as Pillars of Eternity allows you to take all loot everywhere into a stash with unlimited capacity, and sell it from there later. I have far more gold, gear, scrolls, potions, and materials for crafting than I will ever need.

I think I am going to somewhat rush the rest of the game, and if that doesn't work, I'll stop playing before reaching the end. I can't remember a single computer roleplaying game in which I found the grand finale big boss fight satisfying. Some games do better than others by making the end feel better from the story aspect, but the final tactical combat is almost always somewhat tedious. Which isn't surprising, as even in pen & paper Dungeons & Dragons I find character progression at lower levels a lot more interesting than the high-level stuff.