Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

By making the combat quite difficult, the game puts a huge emphasis on carefully building your characters and party (choice of classes, skills, gear etc). In general, this is a good thing because it means those systems actually are relevant. The problem, however, is that the game does not provide the information you'd need to make informed decisions. For example, there is no way to see and compare what skills are available without walking all across the map and checking the skill books NPCs have on offer. And you have to spend skill points before you meet all related NPCs. Baldur's Gate also had a system with learning spells from spell books, but you found the spell books much more organically and at more suitable times during your exploration and it was easier to make the right decisions. This makes the game extremely tedious and frustrating. Also quite buggy, considering it's out for well over a year now (skill bar gets emptied randomly; journal constantly highlights old entries as new; ...).

Great game, nice to see easy DRM-free direct connect multiplayer in this day and age.

1. The writing is terrible. The narration is needlessly complicated, because whoever wrote this thinks that all you need to be a good writer is lots of adjectives and similes in every sentence. I felt zero connection with any of the characters and the story felt convoluted and uninteresting from the start, and only got worse as it progressed. 2. It's supposed to be an open world game but this is handled very poorly. If you don't head out in the direction the game wants you to go in, you will meet a batch of enemies that WILL kill you, because they are a much higher lever than you are. This actually makes the game feel very linear. 3. It's advertised as an rpg, but in fact it's just a turn-based tactical action game, with role-playing elements. There are simply no negative dialogue options in most conversations, which means that you can only play as a good guy, and more often than not, a bumbling idiot for everyone to kick around. Your choices make little to no difference at all, and the game constantly pushes you towards playing as a positive character. That's not roleplaying. 4. Your character's race and background have NO EFFECT on the story whatsoever. Outside of combat, they are completely meaningless. Every once in a while you get to pick a race/character specific line of dialogue, but almost every time that just leads to more pointless narration, and then the conversation continues on the same path it started on. I was lured in by the promise of an epic co-op adventure, and I immediately thought Neverwinter Nights. Unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed, and left with the bitter realization that true RPGs are a dying breed. We're living in an age where a mediocre tactical action game is widely renowned as "the best rpg of all time", and it makes me incredibly sad and angry. All I can do now is leave this bitter review to warn gamers like myself; don't believe the hype, leave this to casuals, and try to find true adventure elsewhere.

If you liked BG3, you'll love this.

I am not at all a fan of top-down games, turn based games or classic crpgs, but this game sucked me in instantly. Its world is beautiful and richly detailed, both visually and in terms of hidden details, and the game requires you to really pay attention to it in order to progress. The immersion is facilitated by fully voiced characters all of which have distinct personalities, and whose dialogues is full of humor (this is somehow also one of the funniest game I have ever played). The combat? It puts all rpgs I have played to shame. It puts most games to shame actually, it is deep and varied, encouraging you to experiment, be clever, and sometimes do things that feel like cheating, consider the terrain, the position of each character of your party according to their abilities and weapons... But it all feels natural because of how logical it is. I am hype to play this all over again. Only downside is that it's one of those rare games which kill other games of the genre for you by being just so utterly superior in every single way. Very hard to get into Pillars of Eternity after this game lol