good
It begins well enough but deteriorates at every stage (as other reviews have correctly pointed out) all the charm and cleverness of something like Legend of Grimrock is replaced, time after time after time, by the same locked room ambush. Level after level, this is repeated verbatim until you expect it, you anticipate it, you look into the next room and say to yourself "yup, here it comes again", and you become increasingly disgusted when, yes, here it comes again. There's a lot of potential in the atmosphere of the game but this is greatly hampered by a cliché story featuring some very bizarre failures of logic (for example: I can't imagine why each member of Vaporum's staff has decided to tear their journals into fragments and distributed a single page of each of them into every single locker and box in the place). In short, it's obvious that the strength of this game's creators lay in shaping the environment for Vaporum, but after that there's really not much else to recommend it.
It begins well enough but deteriorates at every stage (as other reviews have correctly pointed out) all the charm and cleverness of something like Legend of Grimrock is replaced, time after time after time, by the same locked room ambush. Level after level, this is repeated verbatim until you expect it, you anticipate it, you look into the next room and say to yourself "yup, here it comes again", and you become increasingly disgusted when, yes, here it comes again. There's a lot of potential in the atmosphere of the game but this is greatly hampered by a cliché story featuring some very bizarre failures of logic (for example: I can't imagine why each member of Vaporum's staff has decided to tear their journals into fragments and distributed a single page of each of them into every single locker and box in the place). In short, it's obvious that the strength of this game's creators lay in shaping the environment for Vaporum, but after that there's really not much else to recommend it.
The high rating and enthusiastic reviews of this game might lead you to suppose that whatever little flaws it has will be minor enough to be buoyed up by the excellent quality of the thing as a whole. For many people, evidently, this is the case. It really boggles the mind. It's almost as astounding as I the 4.3 star rating of this game is suspicious. Almost, but not quite. Many of these reviews, both professional reviews and the reviews on this website, refer often to the humor in Divinity: Original Sin. As was I, you might find yourself guilty of thinking these people are implying that some degree of wit, of sharp dialogue, or of clever situational irony is present in the game. That is not the case, oh no; not at all. By humor they mean "silly voice acting, rattling off banter that was tired well before this game came out, and doing it non-stop. All the time." Divinity may have a great many excellent things about it - although these things might not have been overly keen to present themselves to me during our time together - but thoughtful writing is very much not one of them by any stretch. Regarding the atmosphere, let me give you an example of the profound level of imagination and immersive world building you're going to be faced with here: in the opening moments of the game it's revealed that you've been sent to investigate the murder of someone named: ...and I swear I'm not making this up... he's called "Sir Jake". And it's consistently like that; or at least I can verify that it was written like that up to the point where I couldn't bear to see any more and threw in the towel. I have no wish to insult the audience that appreciates this sort of thing - everyone has a right to their own pleasures. But, if your pleasure happens to depends to any degree at all on sophisticated writing, please be aware that you will not find it here.
If only there were an option to turn off the embarrassingly bad, repetitive, fight banter it would be so much easier to appreciate all the good things about this game. It's very clear that a lot of thought went into making this, and it's equally obvious that while the person doing that thinking was putting his soul into making this game, another part of the creative team was totally dedicated to breaking his heart. The fight banter is the most unavoidable iteration of this, but there are plenty of others. The over all impression is very much like trying to appreciate a stunningly beautiful orchestral concert while the person seating beside you is farting continuously. You regret walking out, but it's worse to stay. It's a real shame.
