Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition

I tried several newer rpgs, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder, I liked none of them. I kind of like this one better. It looks pretty on my Imac, it's turn based combat, none of that dumb press pause every 3 seconds thing. The tutorials are numerous. The other two games either had not enough tutorials, or the combat was the crap pause thing. Pillars had no humour whatsoever. This game has none of these faults. However some things about it are stupid, this has been mentioned by others, for example the Jake thing. They refer as a 'councillor' named Jake. Ahru the wizard, and Jake the councillor? Lol. And Jake who? Oh, THAT Jake, the guy who lived down the street. However the rest of the game seems well made, the music is beautiful, the humour is there but not overdone. One other thing I don't like is that the characters never shut up, even when you read what you say faster than they say it, they still voice the whole thing word by word. But all in all it seems a good game. That's all I can say about it, I only played it for 10 minutes.

I don't get how this piece of garbage has won so many awards and gets such high ratings. At best this is Dark Souls level challenge strategy game, not an RPG in the least. Its difficulty isn't its worst flaw though. It has a steep learning curve with very little guidance. The "tutorials" are vague and incomplete. The interface is clumsy and the control scheme is unintuitive. NPC dialogues constantly run in the background which are annoying as hell. Combat mechanics are often inconsistent making certain things much harder than they should be. This game looks great, and has an interesting concept. But it's steep learning curve, crappy control and interface, and inconsistent combat mechanics make this train wreck no fun to play at all.

This is the first Larian game I have played, although I have played many other isometric CRPGs. I think the game is good and worth playing, but imo it falls short of the genre greats. It seems like a good example of the difference between a game engine and the game that is made on the engine. I think the engine is absolutely fantastic. The graphics are great and I love the turn-based combat, which is tactical and interesting. I also really like the interactivity with the game world, which is similar to Ultima 7 or Elder Scrolls in the sense that you can pick up every cup and candlestick, if you want to. The game also has an interesting and extensive crafting system - with a high enough crafting skill, you can craft pretty much any usable item. Character progression is also very well done and flexible. It is probably the closest thing to a tabletop RPG that I have seen in a video game. However, I think the game they have built on the engine is 'ok', but leaves quite a bit to be desired. Shortcomings in my opinion are: - The writing is not particularly strong. The plot isn't very imaginative or inspiring and the character development tends to be a bit shallow, with few truly memorable characters. I am also not a big fan of the overall tone of the game, which is full of cheap gags and silly, over-the-top characters. - There is a huge over-abundance of magic loot, to the extent that you will spend a significant amount of time managing your inventory and struggling to offload piles of magic items you will never use. This somewhat cheapens magic equipment and makes the crafting system pointless for magic weapons and armor. - The game world is very generic and not very open. The player is steered quite strongly along a path that is not easy to deviate from. Overall, it is a fun experience with room for improvement. The game itself is a bit on the mediocre side and doesn't fulfill the potential of the awesome engine.

This is the first CRPG I finished, after 93 hours. Overall I enjoyed it, but it has many flaws. I'd still recommend it, but go in with realistic expectations, as it's far from perfect. The Good: * Combat. Especially if you have casters in your party, you can do a lot of fun things, so combat isn't simply "hit enemy until it dies". * Character progression. I was under-leveled for certain parts of the game, but by the end I felt over-powered. It was satisfying to see how my characters had grown. * Build variety. I barely scratched the surface here, playing with 2 melee characters (one tanky, one DPS) and two casters (buffs/debuffs, elemental magic). Since the game doesn't lock you into classes, there are plenty of interesting builds you can go for. * The magic system. I love that the spells in this game aren't "per rest", and only the strongest ones are "per encounter". This made it fun to actually use magic, rather than saving casts for the next tough encounter. This freedom is balanced by most spells being fairly weak damage-wise. You have to get creative to be effective as a caster, and IMO that's a good thing. The Bad: * Inventory management. You can sort by type, but everything is still contained in a single messy window. * The plot. I had heard praise for the ending, but it felt underwhelming. * The tone. Practically no characters in the game take things seriously. Instead they crack jokes, speak in alliteration, sound like they're auditioning for a play, etc. * The quest log. Having no quest markers can be a good thing, but sometimes I had no idea where to go next. * The puzzles. They're either way too easy, or way too obtuse. It almost never felt satisfying to "solve" one. Half the time, I couldn't tell whether I was solving them as intended, or if I had exploited a bug. * Crafting is a mess, and not clearly explained. * Companion plots are extremely lackluster. I finished one's quest without ever having him in my party. * Choices barely matter.

Love the game mechanics. Combat in this game is a lot of fun. Writing and story telling leave a lot to be desired, never really pulled me in and felt a bit like a chore outside of combat. I grew up playing Fallout 1 & 2+, Baldur's Gate series, various text MUDs and have always loved the varying RPG genres. Will check out DOS2 as I'm sure a lot was learned, but have to leave a 3 star. Story and character development is too important for this genre. Pillars of Eternity, good story & character development. It's too bad it didn't have DOS's combat mechanics; still ended up playing a lot more PoE than DOS.