Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition

Where to start. Story is bloody cliche'. Save the world hero in a super-high fantasy world. The entire planet in waiting for you to solve the crappiest of issues or the most involved matters. With that out of the way, the game shine for its combat system. If you are a happy mix-maxer. I'm not. While I enjoy engaging combat, D:OS literally oblige you in becoming one. You need to stack effects over effects to achieve maximum damaging bonuses in combat scenarios where you are constantly outgunned. The closes thing I can compare D:OS combats is to a puzzle game. There are a certain amount of combinations of powers that will allow you to proceed. Everything else is deemed to fail. The problems comes when your builds are sub optimal. When you didn't spent hours in thinking how to stack abilities to obtain maximum damage and crowd control. But... while I'm engaged by combats I don't give a damn about crowd control. I want a damn RPG not a combat puzzle game. Aside the cliche story and uninteresting world (it is simply a non-sense mixture of monsters and unrelated happenings), D:OS is mainly about how much damage you can shell in an area of effect. Disappointed.

This is a very long game (100+ hours), almost feels like open-world. But it does have interesting things to do and see every few steps of the way. So time flies by very quickly. There are lots of quests, but this game is "old school" in that quests don't often tell you obviously where to go or what to do next -- some players like it like that. Crafting, bartering, repairing, identifying, looting, pickpocketing, lockpicking, a fairly interesting karma system (materialistic or spiritual, pragmatic or romantic, etc.) and all the usual RPG mechanics are there. This is not one of those shallow hacking action RPGs, but a fairly traditional one that has a whole spectrum of mechanics. Combat is strictly turn-based, and there seems to be no battleground limit: you can run from one end of the map to the other during combat. My criticism is with the dialog and characters: much of that seems like caricature. The game attempts to be comical, but dialog (90% voiced) is often turgid and bloated ("Oh, Septimus, don't leave me alone or I'll faint!"). Comedic touches are abound. There is a smelly undergarment that gives +1 charism, and your character can actually equip it. One genuinely funny moment early in the game shows your heroes being unable to step over a rope on the ground; you later find out it is a way to teach you teleporting.

To me this game seemed a very serious RPG experience. A lot of games are blamed for too much hand holding. Not in this game. Most of the time you don't know where you should be going or what you should be doing. I guess discovery is part of the fun? The quest log is a mess, doesn't really help. Inventory could use a search function. The difficulty also varies a lot. First you might be fighting some enemies without too much trouble, then you suddenly get a battle that you can't win. Optimizing character skills and equipment is a must. Completing side quests also (but you have to find them first!). If you're tired of glorified walking simulators where you just follow an arrow to eventual victory without thinking, then this game can offer some more challenge. Myself I'm a bit too casual for this game. Might complete it some day, but for now it's too time consuming, not worth it.

Fun combat, interesting quests and characters, nice soundtrack, overall quite good RPG game. 7/10 in my book. In regards to ppl who write about DRM, there is no DRM, no need to create accounts etc. I installed game using Galaxy and I have no idea what they are writing about.

This game is probably overrated. There's a lot of praise going around that presents it as a new old-school RPG. I see the potential but in my opinion, there's a huge problem with this game. Writing. If you don't care about character development and writing, then go ahead and ignore the rest of this review. Writing is what this game is really lacking. There's no ethical compass, it's like whoever wrote the dialogues is either a spoiled kid or someone with severe emotional problems. Most of the times, the choices you get are between being egotistical, greedy or cruel. And if you get another one, then you'd be idiotically naive. For example (generically put, not really a spoiler), you can either decide to give up a valuable item to heal someone who happens to be crudely evil, and by doing so, help him go kill, or you can keep the item to yourself out of greed. So you get to chose between being greedy, or plainly evil. Awesome... Writing really is the most important part in RPGs in my opinion. You can mindlessly hack and slash in any action game, what makes (or should) the RPG a different genre, and what made the best of the genre being the best, is that deep character development, a psychologically valid ethical compass and overall well-though writing. Overall, this game could be a good RPG if it was completely rewritten and by different people. Someone with some psychological and emotional health, depth and understanding. Then we might discuss about comparing it to Planescape Torment and the like.