I just wrote a 2000 word review breaking the game down into different categories, and my browser crashed, which cost my the whole thing.
To summarize, I've played every major fantasy RPG from Baldur's Gate onwards, and this is by far the best.
It is bug free, features liberating and satisfying combat, has gorgeous graphics, solid writing, varied and immersive voice acting, and decent ai. The character appearance creator is quite limited for faces and bodies, and they get recycled in the game, which is disappointing for such a high profile title in 2023. But that's my only criticism.
If you want more great games by independent studios that love their product, then buy this game, take your time with it, and enjoy!
At first I was like, ok... this is like divinity... then I was like... "those dice are really getting on my nerves" and then i coudn't stop playing for over 100 hours. One of the best games out there. The complexity of the stories is so great that the whole thing is a big mess near the end lol, but your own original mess, and I loive it. The combat is awesome, ocne you win an impossible battle, tired, without spells and with a few potions left, but still manage to be victorious, it makes you feel the win. Totally recommend. A hell of a good work done by the devs.
The game is impressive, truly epic in scale. You have so many ways of doing things, so many choices throughout the story, that you and your friends can have vastly different experiences. This alone makes it worth for every fun of cRPG games. Companions are fun to talk to and fun to have them in the party. They are very well written and marvelously acted (seriously, all actors are great). The world we explore is rich and interesting, enemies are plentiful and companion quests are excellent. All of that is so great, it makes up for all the issues that this game has, and there are plenty.
The main issue is the ending. Actually, most of the act 3 doesn't feel as good as 1 & 2. The ending though, it was clearly under cooked. I hope Larian makes an enhanced version with focus on expanding the ending (and adding one clearly missing resolution, which I will not spoil!). This game deserves to get that.
Other big issue I had is the D&D system, stupendously over complicated, gameplay limiting D&D system. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I much prefer the system from Divinity Original Sin. And to think I complained about D:OS system being limiting. I clearly didn't know what a limiting system was, which is of course this D&D thing, that I really disliked from the beginning to the end. I will probably never play any other game based on D&D (excluding possible expansions and continuations of this one :)).
The music could be more pronounce. There are only maybe 2 moments where the music made me feel something. Most of the time it's just there. Not that it's bad but it's also nothing special. To me at least, music in games can massively add to the experience (Witcher 3 is still the king).
Finally some annoyances: equipment management is very clunky (especially in camps), party should stop when perception checks happen instead of walking into literal mine fields, act 3 could use some optimization.
Despite all that I thinks it's a must play for all who like the genre.
Last sunday 18.02.2025, it was my first finished run for this Game (over 200 hours) and I am so sad, because it's over now.
But I am happy too! It is one of these games i will never forget!
I am a gaming nerd since the 90ies and D&D player since 2000 and I never thought that a game would ever fascinate me again like this and merge this too worlds so good!
If there is one I could negative about the game, than it is the camera control, holy moly is this picky and limited in sight in some situations and that I can't look to the sky in the endfight was really annoying (!SPOILER: I wanted so much to see the Dragons fighting in the Sky - SPOILER end) - but with this I can really good live :)
I am waiting for Divitny 3 :D
I haven't played the game extensively with how long its been out, but so far it seems pretty good.
Gameplay: very similar to divinity 2. Satisfying fight animations, similar movement but adapted to the turn system DnD uses for combat along with the DnD rest system. Character creation is a number of different presets instead of anything with sliders, I get it for hair/horn options but I was hoping for something super customizable with how much fun it is to be creative making actual DnD characters. Most glitches have to do with textures or model clipping, but does occassionally crash and seems much less stable on multiplayer. Looting, at least in the early parts of the game, gives a lot of the same mundane items which fits the TTRPG but it would be fun to see things with different non-magic abilities (quarterstaff has a topple option, it'd be nice if they gave more weapons little abilities like that).
Story is good in the early parts, an interesting idea with fun characters. Its possible to kill story important characters if you attack them but I don't know if this impacts gameplay later on besides removing their quest lines.
