Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

This is MY opinion on the game, which i wanted to play together with my dad. However, something just didnt feel right, i am a huge fan of rpg games, but i just could not immerse myself into this world. Me and my dad played like 20 hours, and he was enjoying it, me however, i knew from the start that there was something wrong, something that kept me from immersing. After 5 hours i started to feel boredom already, i tried so hard,really, but i cant play games only for duty. But i kept playing, as i said my dad was happy that i am playing with him so, it was kind of bad thing to abonden him. Finally he moved to and another game and i was free. So, my problems with this game, starting with combat. Dont get me wrong, combat has a potential, but those armor types, really? It looks to me the combat is artificially extended, enemies have many hp but my abilities are too weak, (even when i am same or higher level than foes!) This gives feeling of tactival opputurnities and all that, but in reality, it just drags, I could easily imagine faster paste. Spending of points has no depth, it is too streamlined for me. Level up should mean something that you are waiting for, something you want and work hard for. I have no motivation for lvl up here because it is just one point here and two there and thats all. Loot is rare, new weapons and armor are rare. When you kill someone thinking you will get their good looking armor you will get nothing, NOTHING from their corpse, this kind of design is everywhere nowadays, non logical nonsense I say. Other things like slow movement, camera too close. Party members have some quests, yea, but there the depth of their character ends. The journal, oh the journal, what a mess, i loved morrowinds journal, baldurs journal, but this...is not a journal. This game is not true rpg for me. Despite all the trying, i cant play it anymore, I even gave it second chance yesterday, my mind not changed.

I went into this game completely blind, I hadn't played any of the other Divinity games nor have I played an RPG like this (that is, turn based with action points) so I really didn't know what to expect. I found it very beautiful with excellent voice overs. The story isn't linear, there's multiple ways to progress which is awesome and the game doesn't hold your hand. For example on of the early game quests tasks you with finding a dude's oranges. That's all the info you're given so you have to talk to the other NPC's and explore the area to find this dude's oranges. There's loads of classes, knight, rogue, ranger, summoner, tank, paladin, mage, warlock, etc and loads of armour choices that can boost various skills and attributes. There's 6 story characters you can choose or you can make your own and with either there's loads of customization options to make the character look exactly how you want. The dialogue options are fantastic, your race, whether or not you're undead, your attributes (strength, wits, persuasion, etc) and all affect how you interact with a character. It's not like Fallout 4 where you only ever have 4 nondescript dialogue options, each and every play through can result in a wildly different story. Nevertheless, despite all these good things about the game that are sorely missing in modern games, I find the game quite dull. Each act has a massive map but it's quite empty in terms of enemies to fight and loot. My party is currently level 12 in act 2 and I've explored most of its map but I have zero desire to keep playing. Maybe there's something wrong with me. Even though I gave this game two stars, I'd still recommend people play it.

This game is a master class in all things for this type of turn-based RPG. The story is engrossing and deep with various turns and twists. Your choices matter. The voice acting is top notch. I particularly enjoyed the "Narrator" as it reminded me of my old days playing D&D with my friends as the Dungeon Master would describe a scene or a subtle interplay between characters. They even have voice actors for rats, frogs, bunnies, and turtles. Pretty much if it moves it is voice acted. I cannot fathom the army of voice actors they hired or the number of lines of script written to capture this game. The visuals are stunning, and well optimized with numerous tiny details that show someone really loved this game and painstakingly placed every pebble, flower, and butterly. The combat is very tactical and well designed. You are not pidgeon holed into any particular set of characters because melee, ranged, and spells all have their advantages and disadvantes. There's a ton of replay available just by messing with different builds for your party. Content wise it took me just shy of 60 hours to beat the game on my first play through, and I know there's still content left to discover. I didn't have the dwarf or the undead in my party and I created a custom character instead of using one of the prebuilt characters, so there's at least 3 character stories left for me to discover. This game is a worthy successor to the original. It's superior in every way while still keeping its roots and what was great about the first one. If you like deep story, huge variety in character builds, open worlds to explore, and tactical turn-based combat this game is a must play.

DOS2 isn't a bad game, but it's review scores would make you think it's the pinnacle of modern RPGs, and 50 hours in and I'm still finding it all rather tedious. Combat is slow, but finnicky. You'll frequently accidentally hit your allies because the AOE highlighting is bad, or find you can't target something because of the wonky line-of-sight system whereby a waist-high wall prevents you from targetting enemies but they are still able to hit you. The elemental surfaces system is a neat idea, but it's so overused that virtually every single fight more or less immediately descends into a mess of elemental clouds and surfaces, such that it's not possible to move normally without being burned/poisoned/cursed/shocked/etc. and most attacks cause things to explode everywhere. The story is not particularly inspiring. The characters are well voice acted, there's a lot of NPCs and dialog, but I just didn't really find the characters or the world to be very engaging. It's hard to say exactly why, but - especially by the second act - the story, quests and characters felt like something that was just tacked on the top of a map full of enemies, hazards and loot. Like DOS1 I feel like the game would be better if it was actually a lot shorter, they set out to make a 120+ hour game but it ends up being spread too thin and most of the content is a bit lacklustre. Like DOS1, there's an entirely unnecessary and tedious crafting system, and the game is something of a loot-fest - magic items are everywhere but mostly don't have much character, just bigger numbers than what you had before. All in all DOS2 is just okay.

The game is surprisingly linear that a second (more knowledgeble) playthrough will feel like ticking off a checklist. The enemies in the game are fixed and distributed in zones by level. You are somewhat forced to progress from zones to zones or you will run into unreasonable difficulty spikes. Yes some fights are possible with a good party composition, placements, but the ones involved in the main story are unavoidable. From what I've gathered, this is also present in the first game so obviously there's no plan to change it. There are some commonly-known bugs such as the Polymorph re-stat, and the conflict between the quests Seed of Power and Counting you Chickens that the developers have never bother to fix.