Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

At first look, Divinity: Original Sin 2 seems to be okay. Nice looking graphics, strong plot and deeply developed world. But then... Then you realize, that it's just a lie. Poor combat balance, lack of choice in decisions, some flawness here and there, and - voila! - it's just another overrated and overhyped, quite mediocre game. Well, at least you had a fun with those barrels

Good B game like many new age rpgs DOS 2 isn't perfect. It feels like a testament of things that could have been great, but falls short and you feel the sting on certain expectations. For starters you generally really don't care for the story line, it is stupid and just has you turn into a mass murdering psycho because really that's how you feel about the blandness and flat world archs. Killing your own party or forcibly leaving them behind feels like a chore, at most times you don't really feel like being in a group their (1. Annoying, 2. Terrible in fights, 3. You just don't want to deal with micromanagement.) the whole experience is like like a deep chore in pain and punishment. Next we come to towns and NPC's, mass murdering everything in sight is the first thing you feel like doing. On occasion you only look out for a main story if you can find one like poking around for leads, as there is nothing telling you or directing you where to go who to speak to. Majority of the game is spent with NPCs that can't tell the difference if your a male character or a female, so occasionally you might run across a lonely elf or dwarf male that thinks your a woman when your playing a male. A joke? No a bug that simply leads to being funny, maybe for some twisted dark borderline character appeasement. It just translates as wtf? I have also come across characters with reverse gender voice overs apparently seriously like wth? Why would we care about some such dumb humor in such a nonsensical world? Then you have the worst game braking mechanics that destroys hours of playtime spent, solving unsolvable mysteries or just plain stupid puzzles that really shouldn't be there. Most of your game time is spent going back and forth over the maps searching for weird riddles, plots, twists, missed items, secrets rather than bashing skulls and looting corpses. Also I'm really not a fan of the combat system, its turn based action which turns even the most bash rng fest into a gated looong boring hours spent moving through the maps like a grid experience. I guess I was expecting a fluid action rpg with player customizable party and minus the bleeping dumb humor and puzzles. Instead what we got was an overweight diseased zombie rhino, with a story and plot equally stupid and disturbing. Its all about divinity yes we get it but all that could have concluded in one opening trailer, its all about you becoming a godly hero or villain yes we got that in the first five minutes didn't need a hundred different characters explaining the merits of our simple choices. The good: - Awesome music. - Amazing art and tiny little details and exploreable maps. - Lots of choices in things that you can do. - You can talk to animals :) - Traps of all kinds of platitudes, you just don't know what your walking into. - The most surreal flying ship carved out of the remains of a living tree. The bad: - We don't really care about divinity or being a god, we care about taking over the world and ruling it with an iron fist evil smirk. - Inventory sucks without a mod no seriously. - Terrible UI even your skills bug out they apparently just pop out even when you locked your hotbar. - Horrid zoomed third person view, you can't zoom out beyond a certain point also there is no sky box thats partially why they cut out the zoomeable option. - Trekking is not journey more like a badly woven thing you have to deal with, would have been nice to have mounts for faster traveling. - The bar/inn experience, lets go to x pub, talk to x benefactor about y job fullfil dumb tasks kill the npc rinse and repeat. - A mute button for the dang narrator. Please no more just shutup. - Party wipe means save reload, kind of a huge sigh for a turn based game. I would have opted for rezing at the nearest town.

Spent like 60 hours finished the game. If you want a decent CRPG to kill time then you might grab this, if you want a perfect RPG this is not it. Story - Great example that dark/Catastrophe not always equal to deep/great character and story. All the faction in this game are unlikeable. Just evil, arrogance, selfish as hell. You end up just want to kill them all for the sake of rivellon. The last part is rushy and the ending is unsatisfy. I understand dev might want a plot hole for squeal but ending without fighting the greatest enemy faction is just not good. Combat - It have a good foundation for combat design but the level design and balance are really bad. First of all class balance is too bad. When mages can do great aoe damage+CC at range (and doesn't require good weapon because it scale on level/int) , and having many utility skill in pocket. Melee have trash damage even using the best weapon at the same level, short range/small size AOE means you need AP to walk( or teleport) near enemy, and the field system will end up give you disadvantage when your mage bombing your enemy. Balance even worse at end game when you can get good crit gear for your mages. Using AP for walking is tedious when you can just teleport/swap for 1 AP( +haste if you use huntman skill), you will end up just using movement skill all the way. And as other people already said, most of the combat in the game player will start at a very bad spot and enemy will on optimized spot. So swap/teleport are always the only way to win.

I'm not usually a fan of CRPGs, but after putting around 140 hours into DOS2 I can say that it is one of my favourite games of all time. The story is great, world is as immersive as it gets and the writing is excellent. Although it can be overwhelming and seem complex at first, once you get into the the swing of things it becomes extremely addictive.

This will be one of the few reviews that dont praise it. I didnt like the prequel but I thought this looked better. The preset characters feel wooden and out of place, the voice actors for fane and red prince are so wrong, they just dont match. Right from the start I felt like I was in an area where I shouldnt be, all enemies have at least %40 more health and do more damage. This cant be down to a poorly made character as its only the begining really. Miss clicking can get you killed, I cant count how many whole barrels or bed rolls Ive picked up trying to navigate the oddly light environment. Just not impressed sadly.