Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire - Season Pass

I have complicated feelings about this Season Pass, and I think that honesty is more useful to you than a tidy recommendation. The three DLCs bundled here - Beast of Winter, Seeker Slayer Survivor, and The Forgotten Sanctum - each represent a completely different design philosophy, and whether the package is worth your time depends almost entirely on which of those philosophies you came to Deadfire for in the first place. Beast of Winter is where I'd start if you're a lore obsessive. It drops your Watcher into the orbit of Rymrgand, the god of entropy, winter, and the eventual heat death of everything - a character who, frankly, deserves a whole game to himself. You get Harbingers' Watch, a vaguely Norse pale-elf settlement at the edge of the map, a trip through the Shattered Passage into a literal white void, and a confrontation with an undead dragon that Rymrgand very much wants dead again. The dungeon design in that passage is some of the tightest level work in the whole Deadfire package. The criticism is fair: the story is largely self-contained, and at around eight hours it ends just as it's getting genuinely eerie. New party member Vatnir is the only character with any real arc here. For lore-hungry players, it's still a solid detour. For people expecting White March-scale heft, it will feel small. Seeker, Slayer, Survivor is the divisive middle chapter - and the one I personally argue about most. It sends you to the island of Kazuwari and into the Crucible, an ancient arena presided over by the hunt god Galawain's three aspects: the Seeker (tactical precision), the Slayer (raw power), and the Survivor (attrition across waves). If the base game's real-time-with-pause combat felt like it had a "dominant strategy" problem for your party, this DLC is the corrective. It forced genuine reconsideration of positioning, ability use, and party composition in ways the main campaign rarely demanded. The scavenger hunt for Artifacts spread across the wider Deadfire map adds optional depth and reason to revisit areas you've already sailed past. The honest negative: narrative depth is thin here, and players who came to Deadfire primarily for its writing will find the story machinery holding up the arena fights feels perfunctory. If combat theory-crafting is half the reason you play CRPGs, SSS is worth your time. If you're here purely for character moments and faction intrigue, it will feel like a detour that didn't need to happen. The Forgotten Sanctum is, by general consensus and in my own view, the strongest of the three. It pulls you into the politics of Eora's Circle of Archmagi, built around the return of Llengrath (a character who debuted in the original game's White March expansion) and the gloriously untrustworthy mage Tayn, whose voice work alone justifies the price of admission. The dungeon beneath the Hall of the Unseen is deep and demanding - expect enemies that target Intellect, Resolve, and Will constantly, leaving under-prepared parties paralysed or mind-controlled before the second room. New soulbound gear, new spells, and new subclasses carry over into the main campaign, and crucially, Sanctum's ending actually has weight within Deadfire's main quest conclusion. It is also the pack that best reflects what Deadfire always did well: motivated character writing, a world that holds together logically, and the sense that your choices are being registered by people who care about the outcome. At roughly ten hours and with some of the toughest encounters in the whole game outside the optional Megabosses, it respects your time without padding the run. Taken as a bundle, the Season Pass is the right way to acquire all three if you're going to play Deadfire seriously. None of them rival the first game's White March expansions in scope, but The Forgotten Sanctum in particular closes out Obsidian's isometric RPG era with something close to the grace the series deserved. Come in at level 15 or above, pack two healers for Sanctum, and do not skip the god dialogue.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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