Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition

Good: The best part of this game is the turn-based combat. For a party based RPG, I always think turn-based combat works a lot better than real-time combat. Magic, skills, special arrows and grenades, the game offers you a lot of tools to outsmart your enemies, and in higher difficulty, you certainly need these tools. Though sometimes the game can throw some nasty surprise at you, the enemy encounters generally feel balanced but pleasantly challenging as long as you are fighting enemy at similar level. The game never exactly tried to build a dark atmosphere, instead, the writing always has a lighthearted theme. Thus people with different mindsets approaching this game, will probably have a different opinion. I personally have no problem with it, and don't mind the occasional amusement and giggle. Bad: While sometimes the game offers a lot of options to solve different situations, sometimes it doesn't offer enough. For example (MINOR SPOILER), in one stage of the main quest in early game, your character is required to steal to proceed. There are alternate routes, but both routes require stealing. There are other occasions that I feel some very natural options are lacking. There is also the problem of crafting. It feels really out of place for a isometric story driven RPG, and it is unnecessarily complex as well. For example, to make some certain rather common food, it require 4~5 steps in crafting. The lack of a comprehensive resource gathering system makes crafting even less useful most of the time. There's puzzle solving as well. Most of the puzzle involve navigating through load of traps. At first it feel pretty refreshing to do some puzzle outside of combat, but it get tedious rather fast. As long as your characters have some of the important environment skills, there really is not much challenge in it except for the occasional invisible traps. While I did list more Bad than Good, those Bad are all very minor. I still enjoy the game a lot and recommend it.

The best RPG games I have played in the past 10 years have been Planescape Torment, Witcher 2, Witcher 3, and Pillars of Eternity. Divinity Original Sin Enhanced edition has just earned a spot in the best of the past 10 years. Amazing. It's well-crafted, funny, beautiful, and entertaining. I got it on a sale, it was worth every penny!

The game offers turnbased combat mixed with rpg elements. It has even some inovations like combat combos and the pyramide travel. But the atmosphere, the writing, the pacing and the voice acting are far from good. The combat system is not bad, but the controls and the camera can be annoying which often leads to disaster. The controls are also a problem when operating in dangerous terrain or near traps. Movement and and combat feel also bit slow. I tried it multiple times to finish the game, but became always annoyed and bored, no only because of the gameplay but also because the music and the graphical style are not to my likings.

Review after one playthrough in "classic" mode. The good * Turn-based combat with lots of options. * You can save at any time, even during combat. * No random encounters, each battle is carefully staged. * Battles are hard and force you to be creative with positioning, spells, and environmental effects. * You can do cool things with environmental effects. * Compelling storyline. * Lots of quests and large maps to explore. * Teleportation as part of the story makes it easy to get around. * Nice graphics + sound. The bad * Controls can be a bit wonky. The game does not accept new input until the previous effect/attack is completed. Also, the boundary for selecting an opponent moves with the animation. If you time your mouse-click wrong, you may accidentally click next to an opponent and thus move your archer into melee instead of firing. * There were several cases where I ran into a TPK with no warning, had to reload and then let the party do apparently senseless things to prepare for what would come (deathtraps or scripted moves in a boss fight). For me, that breaks immersion with the game - I like getting an in-game warning which allows me to avoid the TPK if I am clever enough. * Battles are hard and many take multiple attempts. This can be frustrating and there is little feeling of progress in character ability. Example: I was shocked by the difficulty of the first undead encounter outside Cyseal, which was my first "real" battle after the tutorial. The skeleton archers can easily wipe out the party with special arrows if you are not careful. Also, I would not have managed the boss fights in the final quest without the ability to save every combat turn. * Missile combat, especially using special arrows, dominates the early game too much. * The character system is over-elaborate with skills that do little but allow you to learn moves from books. * Some effects are overdone, e.g., the lightshow you get for the basic "first aid" ability.

First off, let me say that I first started this series with Divinity: Original Sin 2 based on recommendations here and elsewhere, and that is a near-perfect RPG on nearly every level. I was so impressed early on that I immediately picked up the "original" and started playing it after finishing up D:OS2. While this isn't a "bad" game per se, having played through D:OS2, it feels very much like a rough draft for D:OS2 and lacking in many ways.The UI is rough; the voice acting is sub par; the music is just... uggh. I honestly couldn't keep playing it after getting to the first town. Inventory management is pretty terrible.... trading with vendors gives you the option to sell gear you are wearing, with no indication you are wearing it! All in all, while I would not say don't buy this game, if you are jumping in based on the most excellent sequel, temper your expectations accordingly. Likewise, unless you are an aficionado of RPGs and very forgiving of this one's shortcomings, I wouldn't even bother with this game because it may discourage you from giving the sequel a whirl.