LiefLayer: I think it's Pillars of Eternity, I played PoE 1 and 2 and they are both great.
The combat system is interesting but is not the focus (at least for most of the two games, you can avoid a lot of combat with the right skills), the book interactions are great, and I just love the style of the game.

The best thing in PoE 2 is that you can explore and discover new island and you can give them a name! I really love to discover all the world in this game, it was something new and interesting.
In PoE 1 you can do something good too, explore the castle to the bottom... just a great optional journey.

Divinity original Sin is not a bad series at all... but turn based combat, a cartoon style and more focus on every combat in the game make it hard to explore and enjoy the world. Still it's not like it is worst... it's more like a different kind of game that you can enjoy more or less based on your own taste.
The main thing is that there are lot's of good new turn based rpg (for example Shadowrun)... but the new real time with pause games are really rare.

Just play both.

Radiance1979: If with bad you mean that no matter how you configure your party it just comes down a hit m all freefight at max speed unless your willing to micropause your through combat i wholeheartedly concure. Both in Pillars, Tyranny ( same company duh ) and Kingmaker combat plays out quite awfull if set to a.i. ….. not to mention the awfull spell style used since BG …. somehow Tales of the Swordcoast played out a lot better in a sense...
it is a shame they pulled down that game

Radiance1979: Dragon Age bored me 2 tbh, after playing the first 2 countless times on a younger age i waited quite a long time to start with inquisition but nah, it looks great ( you do need to forgive bioware ofc about some of their face choices ;) ) but starting to feel overly boring when i met about halfway of the game 20something hours played

Dos i did enjoy until i reached some point that i could not be bothered again to find out how to proceed i tried the original for about 6 hours and spend around 28 good hours in the enhanced version…. In the end the more puzzle approach to leveling and fighting which however entertaining did not get me very exited to continu

PoE is another i have trouble with getting into. The game looks beautifull, but somehow i never managed to get past the first 10 hours of the game. Maybe i spend to much time with the original baldurs gate!

more or less rpg games that manage to tickle me nowadays are Mass Effect A( andromeda.. yes i now ) Nier Automata and i'm hoping to find a similar vibe in either Elex or Outward

So vinal verdict..... vvvvvvv DoS enhanced edition

Leroux: To what extent you can make use of things in the environment, even - or especially - in combat. Like teleporting barrels around and such. And the synergies, like lighting oil puddles, but also the opposite, like damp creatures only getting dry, not burnt, if treated with fire etc. Maybe also what they tried to make co-op play more involved, like one player being able to challenge the decision of the other, although that rock-paper-scissors game isn't that great, and ultimately I expected D:OS to be more polished and geared towards co-op play even outside combat after all the praise for it. The combat is fun with others, but the rest of the game is still pretty much a single-player game that doesn't work all that well in co-op (particularly those endless dialogues that mostly condemn the other player to a passive reader).

I also like how the Divinity games work without hard class restrictions and give you a lot of freedom in building and experimenting with your character without much of a threat that you can mess it up. I'd say that this is something that has mainstream appeal, more than the tone, although I don't know if it would actually draw in players who usually aren't into the genre either.

kai2: other than the fact I moved on very little from the original town in those 15 hours!

LiefLayer: what are you talking about. I think the combat system is good, not bad.
also there is no need to micropause (in PoE2 you don't even need to pause) just use the scripting system and you can prepare everything and win without even touch the pause button (not always and you need to create a really good script, but it's not impossible to pause only a few times even when the battle is hard).

Radiance1979: ...
more or less rpg games that manage to tickle me nowadays are Mass Effect A( andromeda.. yes i now ) Nier Automata and i'm hoping to find a similar vibe in either Elex or Outward
...

kai2: With the games you've spoken on, I'd suggest you might check out Greedfall (easily my favorite game of the last year... but then I dig Spiders' style of RPG). It is a AA action RPG very much in the Bioware mould.

Elex is great vertical exploration RPG if you can get beyond the terrible hitboxes and generally poor combat (yes, seemingly worse than PB's usual combat systems). I loved the game... but early on it's definitely a chore.

Outward is a strange case. I wasn't a fan of the 10 or so hours I played (yes, I played because some compared it to Gothic). It felt open, loose, and very lonely. I got the distinct feeling that most who enjoy it are playing co-op and I played on a console with no internet connection... but... with the devs still releasing patches and dlc, I may go back to the game at some point. Maybe on GOG?

Leroux: Really? That's a bold thesis. I'm not sure if I'd buy into it. I can't really imagine someone who's usually not into tactical RPGs to play D:OS just because of its tone. I can imagine people who usually are *not to play it* because of it though.