Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

The game looks wonderful, but that's about it. In no particular order: I don't know why this game is isometric; there is so much verticality in the maps that the inability to look up makes you feel crippled, it's beyond frustrating. Everything is fully rendered so why even bother with this limitation? It would have been a wonderful experience with a free camera system like the one in Dragon Age. Instead it's claustrophobic and frankly nausea-inducing. I didn't think I would ever say this about a game, but there is simply way too much content. You can't walk 3 feet without finding a sidequest. Some sidequests are straightforward, some take you all over the map into areas you're not even close to ready for, or which you'll need to go to later for a main quest. Keeping track of all of them becomes more work than fun. The combat is just plain silly. The idea of combining environmental effects tactically seems clever, but in real life it just means the entire map is on fire after two turns. And turn-based combat may have been interesting in the 90s but it's like watching paint dry today. In short, it's a game that should be good, but it's crippled by throwback game mechanics that detract from the experience.

Your character moves slowly, very very slowly, the pace of combat is slow, the response to mouse clicks is slow, etc. Compare this to a game like Titan Quest where everything is fast and responsive. Plus, the fact that you have to constantly reposition the camera manually is annoying. Very unfortunate because the game seemed really interesting, but I asked for a refund. This slowness kills all the fun of the game. Probably an unpopular opinion, but hey, go watch some YouTube videos of the gameplay and draw your own conclusions.

1. don't create custom characters. Larian's custom characters are better... but wait isn't this an RPG? am I not supposed to create something I like? supposedly I guess because Larian's designers didn't care about what you want. they wanted to show you instead what they wanted. get it? you don't get to roleplay nerd. the designers do that for you. 2. don't expect freedom despite the misleading storepage information. this is a linear, on-rails, turn-based tactical game. 3. don't expect your actions to have meaningful consequences. killed a major character in one act and are confused how they managed to reappear in the next, despite the fact you defiled their corpse and left a puddle of mush behind? tough luck mate. Larian's designers don't like that, so the character you killed, receives anime-style plot armor. man these larian guys are way too infatuated with themselves. uncanny. even a bit egotistical and proud. 4. look up guides. 5. use the giftbag ( community mods that you can active in-game ). it adds a ton of qol that is absolutely necessary to enjoy this game. but hold on. larian's design team is too proud and smug to admit in shortcoming in their own design. so achievements are disabled. keep in mind the devs baked these mods in the game. by now, if you are fortunate enough to have a functional prefrontal cortex, you can tell, I dislike divinity 2. however I dislike smug game-designer far more. I can't stand the lot of them. they are the bane of this industry and the reason so many halfbaked and flawed games exist in the first place. and Larian seems to have no shortage of this plague.

Bad armor system, bad story, simplified compared to other rpgs, gimmicky... everything. I don't think this game is as good as people claim.

Great game already in early access. Everything else has been said by the top rated reviewers.