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Very disappointed with Divinity: Original Sin

Joined
Dec 17, 2013
Messages
5,103
Played through most of the EE version before finally uninstalling in frustration today. My interest with Larian games goes way back, and I still fondly remember playing Divine Divinity in early-mid 2000s, back when almost no one even heard about it. Divine Divinity wasn't perfect, but it was a very fun game, in what I would call the 2nd tier (first tier being isometric games like BG saga, Fallout 1/2, PS:T, and so on).

But D:OS just rubbed me the wrong way. The main reason is of course the retarded writing. Although I enjoy well written RPGs (PS:T, Witchers, Arcanum, Betrayal at Krondor), great writing is by no means an essential part of a great RPG. Some of my all time favorites had writing that could at best be described as functional. But at least it took itself seriously. It provided some framework for the world, and some inventive for the player to delve deeper. D:OS's writing works against the game, sapping the player's motivation to play at every turn.

It's a rare combination of terrible overarching plotlines (the void dragon, the guardians, sourcerers) with an insistence to be funny at every step of the way, as if you are at some clown convention. Half the damn quests have to do with cats or imps, ffs, hooking cats up, converting cat-men into cats, and other horrible shit like that.

I actually enjoy watching comedies, but the difference is, good comedies actually have a serious background, against which the humor is contrasted. Here, there is only shallow, childlike humor over and over. And there is a difference between watching a 2 hour movie and playing a 100 hour game, where you are supposed to be on a grand adventure and build up your hero(s), while dealing with this insanity.

Once you get past the writing, there are other issues. The combat system is pretty good overall, but certain builds get royally fucked as the game goes on. What's worse, the game is pretty manageable for those builds for most of it, but then the difficulty ramps up significantly on the last map, and you might be stuck with gimped characters. For me, I went with 2 lone wolf characters, one was a knight and the other a cleric. First two maps were challenging but manageable, but then suddenly the last map turns into a giant deathtrap unless you took the easy way and just had a party of mages.

So many terrible puzzles too. Good puzzles are logical and elegant, terrible puzzles make you scan pixels for some stupid lever or button. I got so annoyed with the latter in D:OS, I just started looking them up online. Sample terribad puzzle: in the temple of death, you find a note in the alchemist room at the end, saying you need to drink a potion of perception to notice a hidden door. Ok. Little problem: the hidden door is almost all the way at the other end of the temple. The potions last a few seconds. So how is this puzzle supposed to be solved exactly? Wouldn't it make more sense to place the note close to the hidden door?

Another issue: in their excitement with the game engine (which is pretty good), they just plopped a crapload of boxes, barrels, and other crap in every single inch. I know a lot of RPGs are guilty of this as well, but I think it's time to move on from this OCD stuff. You can ignore them as a player, of course, but then you feel like you might miss some important stuff.

Another thing, although the overall combat system is good, some things about it royally pissed me off. Turn based doesn't work very well for large groups. In D:OS, most enemy parties have 5-9 members, so waiting for all of them to complete their turns (with the loooooong animations) was just putting me to sleep.
 

Jokzore

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 18, 2017
Messages
623
In D:OS, most enemy parties have 5-9 members, so waiting for all of them to complete their turns (with the loooooong animations) was just putting me to sleep.

THIS. I quit the game for this very reason, the combat was just too tedious.

Theres a lot to love about the game though. I was holding out hope that EE would introduce a combat speed option so I can get back into it .... guess not.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,123
DOS1 was absolute wank. But it was popular here for reason. Codexers love to talk big about their preference for prestigious oldschool RPG experience. What they actually want is pwetty colors, Diablo-style loot and combat systems packed with overpowered Awesome Buttons that make them feel like they're amazing at this video game thing.
 

thesheeep

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 16, 2007
Messages
9,939
Location
Tampere, Finland
Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
long animations in RPGs are a fucking plague.
And I continue to be more and more put off by games released nowadays that are turn based, but have no option to speed them up.
I don't... I just don't!
Why would you do that? Why?! It is a single variable! Instead of animation.advanceTime(timeDelta), you do animation.advanceTime(timeDelta * animSpeed).
Actual mechanical results should be decoupled from rendering anyway, making this even more trivial.
FFS!
 

Daedalos

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
5,559
Location
Denmark
D:OS 1 was shit, D:OS 2 was slightly less shit.

Combat being the selling point of both games, and the MULLTIIPLAYAURR EXPERIENCZ TOGETHA, and all that crap about CO-OP.

When combat becomes boring and the you skip the co-op part, the game really begins to break down and you realize how shit they are in every way.

Also, fuck the combat speed, and fuck you Larian.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,083
Location
Bulgaria
Yeah slow turn based games are retarded and rally disrespect your time. Waiting 10 minutes per turns is stupid and show the devs incompetence.
 

Vorark

Erudite
Joined
Mar 2, 2017
Messages
1,394
Not even hurricane-conditions could make me enjoy D:OS.
What a seal of disapproval. :lol:

I couldn't stand the writing either. I was stoked for the lack of quest markers, since I had completed Morrowind a couple of months before D:OS released. Turns out I had to suffer through terrible writing in order to get directions. Say what you want, but MW wiki dialogues were brief and to the point.

Other show stoppers were the already mentioned longass turns and the pixel hunting.
 

Neanderthal

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2015
Messages
3,626
Location
Granbretan
Yeah just about sums up my impressions o the game, as with most modern games i'm left unimpressed wi way they can't match up to their own earlier works. DivDiv was superior in my eye, though admittedly it needed turn based badly. Companies aren't improving or even matching decades old games, an all you get is apologists excusing em for this.

I enjoyed about half on OS, but I can't say it were owt to write home about.
 

Popiel

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 15, 2015
Messages
1,499
Location
Commonwealth
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
I played the nonEE version only once with a friend, and it was truly a fucking blast, we had a lot of fun even when screwing up. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who would play in a different way. The game would be just bland and boring I fear.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,083
Location
Bulgaria
so TB party rpg with influenceable enviornments (both in and put of combat) and ultima style world interactivity and some neat puzzles.

Was an sip of incline after years of Akshun Popamole Shit.

Codex Reaction?

MUH WRITING!!!111!!11
Go play romancing saga 28!

This, but not ironically.
Is it really any good mate? I was just messing around because it have shitty name. Would you recommend it? Does it have random encounters like the old jrpgs and does it have any type of timers ?
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
13,997
Location
Platypus Planet
so TB party rpg with influenceable enviornments (both in and put of combat) and ultima style world interactivity and some neat puzzles.

Was an sip of incline after years of Akshun Popamole Shit.

Codex Reaction?

MUH WRITING!!!111!!11
Go play romancing saga 28!

This, but not ironically.
Is it really any good mate? I was just messing around because it have shitty name. Would you recommend it? Does it have random encounters like the old jrpgs and does it have any type of timers ?

Romancing Saga shows all the enemies wandering on the map. It's a good game if you're able to accept a jRPG with perma death for party members, very lite on the story and mostly a game about learning the gameplay systems. You can check the Romancing Saga 2 thread in the jRPG sub, I posted my Steam review there.
 

ilitarist

Learned
Illiterate Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 17, 2016
Messages
857
dos is great but i'd say only the non-enhanced edishun

which is rather ironic

I haven't played EE but the vanilla was shit after the first act and the difficulty quickly vanished. I heard they at least did something to difficulty in EE.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
I haven't played EE but the vanilla was shit after the first act and the difficulty quickly vanished. I heard they at least did something to difficulty in EE.

Didn't matter, they unbalanced it with all the things they added.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,123
The depressing thing is that DOS1&2 had such a staggering success, both games are likely to become a de-facto standard for what modern gamer expects from this type of game.

And we all know how that ends. It's going to become the Oblivion of TB RPGs and it's going to spread its cancer throughout the planet, leaving no game untouched. Publishers are going to give instructions to studios to "make it more like that Larian game". It's going to pulverize everything in its path and leave only a pile of shit, tears and broken hopes behind.

The end is nigh, people, so start reading those prepper websites and learn how to process your urine into drinking water.
 

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