Review RPG Codex Review: Divinity: Original Sin

[Infinitron]

But.. I wonder if setting the bar up this high will somehow harm the success of the other "big" upcoming RPGs. It really is something that remains to be seen.

And here I thought people played RPGs because they were fun, not because they wanted to play the single best RPG ever and then retire from the hobby

 

[Angthoron]

But.. I wonder if setting the bar up this high will somehow harm the success of the other "big" upcoming RPGs. It really is something that remains to be seen.

And here I thought people played RPGs because they were fun, not because they wanted to play the single best RPG ever and then retire from the hobby

Well, it's not literally "harm", Infi, but you know what happens when you start having high expectations, right? I mean, after SRR my expectations towards KS RPGs was mildly positive, then, after extensive period of D: OS alpha/beta it went up by a lot, then, thanks to some awesome Codexer, I tried out WL2 alpha and went "Oh, um... Time to scale back on expectations a little". And now there's a ready D: OS to compare against. People are funny like that, we like to poison our enjoyment of the moment by going back to something we think was OH SO MUCH BETTER and then being like BUT WHY ISN'T THIS AS GOOD SURE ITS NICE BUT IT ISN'T LIKE THAT TIME I HAD A FIVESOME WITH BEAUTIFUL VIRGINS AND THEY FED ME CAVIAR AND WASHED ME IN COGNAC AAHHHH.

 

[InspectorRumpole]

Any word on when the voice bug will get fixed (the reverb/echo thing) ?

 

[Jack Dandy]

Infinitron Eh, there'll always be fags who put stuff up on a pedestal, whether it's to get a rise outta someone for shits & giggles, or just plain ol' fashioned fanboyism.

When it comes to RPGs, I say the more, the merrier.

 

[Serious_Business]

Tell me more about your sister

 

[DefJam101]

dumb story, shit setting, WoWesque art design, mages op, economy broken, filler combat everywhere, doom explosion barrels and envirunmental interackshun gimmicks galore. 0/10, would not play again

better luck next time swenny

Spoiler

 

[Jaesun]

 

[Rake]

dumb story,

True

shit setting,

True

WoWesque art design,

Not a bad thing

mages op,

As they should be

economy broken,

As in every game ever, not a big deal

filler combat everywhere,

combat is the whole point in the game

doom explosion barrels and envirunmental interackshun gimmicks galore.

Most people like them


Try better next time

 

[l3loodAngel]

DOS is hands down one of the best RPGs I have ever played. Sadly, most of other KS games won't come even close...

Most Kickstarter games aren't going to be made by established studios with 10+ years in the industry. Well except WL2 and PoE.

That is true, but 50$ is 50$. The question is what you get for it.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Good write-up brah, but I disagree with sum points

The character system in Original Sin is a simple enough thing that most RPG developers in the recent years have managed to screw up. Fortunately, Larian hasn’t, and the result is a simple and solid system based on genre-standard ability scores, skill points, slightly less standard traits as well as minor boosts coming from playing the characters consistently in dialogue.

The character system looks good at first, but kind of starts crumbling as you go. The traits are the best example of that, at first you look at the list and think 'woooooo, so many things to choose from', but after you get 3 or 4 that you absolutely needed, you realise that the rest serve you only in a very minor way, and each time you pick one, it's more on the basis of "now which one is the least useless of the ones left". Not to mention some of the skills that are best left to item boosts - lockpicking would be good if everything wasn't so easy to bash down, telekinesis is just meh (or at least I thought so), same with lucky charm and some craftings.

Melee combat, while lacking much of the versatility of mage’s or ranger’s arsenal

Depends on what you mean by "melee", and in both cases it's kind of not true. Scoundrels have almost all the cool stuff that rangers have at their disposal, just that it's 3m-ranged. Man-at-arms, on the other hand, I think might have the most skills in the whole game just to iron the versatility difference out, and considering they include repositioning, mass KD, mass resist debuff and various other buffs and status effects, the wammos also have quite a selection of shit when push comes to shove.

That said, an occasional difficulty spike can cause a great deal of frustration to certain party builds – encounters with some of the “bosses” often hinge on a successful disable spell, and the game is not always particularly generous with these

Like I said before once, this only happens if youa re dum, and saying the game is not generous with disables has more holes than a slice of this fine gorgombert

Conveniently, the AI is generally good at using the elemental mechanics as well

I believe many of the routines are kind of hard scripted. Especially for rangers, throughout the game I always felt like all archers acted nearly precisely the same.

Not the nudity mod though, thank you very much.

 

[himmy]

telekinesis is just meh (or at least I thought so).

It's a cool mechanic that sadly doesn't have a lot of applications (the biggest one being the one of control convenience, making picking up things easier and allowing some barrel tricks in combat). It should be a really cool part of the sneaking/thieving activities, but after picking up your first few paintings, you will never really need money again, so that opportunity is lost as well. It would work really well in games where stealing things from people's houses could really make a difference, like Gothic or Morrowind (the Vivec vaults and the high-tier shops come to mind, as examples from the latter), but the loot scheme makes thieving boring and mostly useless.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

But.. I wonder if setting the bar up this high will somehow harm the success of the other "big" upcoming RPGs. It really is something that remains to be seen.

And here I thought people played RPGs because they were fun, not because they wanted to play the single best RPG ever and then retire from the hobby

Best RRG ever may involve enough replayability that you'd have no time to play any other game though.

Also, Angthoron

 

[Gragt]

Gragt there's no need to put so much effort into replying to someone

I believe that everyone should be accountable for their words and action. I could have brushed it off as the words of an idiot or a troll, or possibly both, but that would have been just as much of a cop-out as his initial attack. One of the things that attracted me to the Codex in the first place was that idiocy and ignorance used to be countered with more than a mere "forget it, Jack, it's a dumbfuck", otherwise it just becomes another form of circle jerk.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

Lack of social skills and quests makes it a pretty combat oriented linear experience. Combat is very fun, but the fun part in general suffers a lot from the length of the game.
Pixel hunting really starts to piss you off, when all you want is to be done with it already.

Fun game, not a very good cRPG.

 

[Angthoron]

telekinesis is just meh (or at least I thought so).

It's a cool mechanic that sadly doesn't have a lot of applications (the biggest one being the one of control convenience, making picking up things easier and allowing some barrel tricks in combat). It should be a really cool part of the sneaking/thieving activities, but after picking up your first few paintings, you will never really need money again, so that opportunity is lost as well. It would work really well in games where stealing things from people's houses could really make a difference, like Gothic or Morrowind (the Vivec vaults and the high-tier shops come to mind, as examples from the latter), but the loot scheme makes thieving boring and mostly useless.

Thing with TK is that it was actually very different in the beta. I'm a bit sad they "nerfed" it - with TK you could basically enter any house you had any kind of line of sight to with the use of pyramids, which was obscenely cool. I guess it was axed because it rendered lockpick completely useless though, but I personally think they should've kept both options for break-in and entry. It was seriously useful. Maybe some mod will bring it back.

The character system in Original Sin is a simple enough thing that most RPG developers in the recent years have managed to screw up. Fortunately, Larian hasn’t, and the result is a simple and solid system based on genre-standard ability scores, skill points, slightly less standard traits as well as minor boosts coming from playing the characters consistently in dialogue.

The character system looks good at first, but kind of starts crumbling as you go. The traits are the best example of that, at first you look at the list and think 'woooooo, so many things to choose from', but after you get 3 or 4 that you absolutely needed, you realise that the rest serve you only in a very minor way, and each time you pick one, it's more on the basis of "now which one is the least useless of the ones left". Not to mention some of the skills that are best left to item boosts - lockpicking would be good if everything wasn't so easy to bash down, telekinesis is just meh (or at least I thought so), same with lucky charm and some craftings.

Yeah, some skills could've been more useful, I agree - or maybe moved to Traits or Class Skills instead of being point-bought skills. There's essentially no point of investing into lockpick - just carry some +modifier gear with you and you're golden. Or just bash it.

Melee combat, while lacking much of the versatility of mage’s or ranger’s arsenal

Depends on what you mean by "melee", and in both cases it's kind of not true. Scoundrels have almost all the cool stuff that rangers have at their disposal, just that it's 3m-ranged. Man-at-arms, on the other hand, I think might have the most skills in the whole game just to iron the versatility difference out, and considering they include repositioning, mass KD, mass resist debuff and various other buffs and status effects, the wammos also have quite a selection of shit when push comes to shove.

Yeah, but you still can't projectile-piss, for example, to create a Wet surface. Although with a little bit of Telekinesis you can drag a candle into a puddle of oil and make it go boom!

That said, an occasional difficulty spike can cause a great deal of frustration to certain party builds – encounters with some of the “bosses” often hinge on a successful disable spell, and the game is not always particularly generous with these

Like I said before once, this only happens if youa re dum, and saying the game is not generous with disables has more holes than a slice of this fine gorgombert

Well, I did talk to some people for whom it was an issue, what can I do. It's just a thing that happens. Maybe it's actually more of an indicator of how OP the disables actually are.

Conveniently, the AI is generally good at using the elemental mechanics as well

I believe many of the routines are kind of hard scripted. Especially for rangers, throughout the game I always felt like all archers acted nearly precisely the same

Hmmm. I think it's less of a thing about the script and more of a thing with inventory contents + prioritization. I'd imagine Gas is Priority 1, then Fire, then the rest, Unless Wet, or something like that. Someone more advanced than me in this item might be able to explain that better.

Not the nudity mod though, thank you very much.

IF I WANTED NUDITY I'D GET NAKED.

 

[Fireblade]

The character system looks good at first, but kind of starts crumbling as you go. The traits are the best example of that, at first you look at the list and think 'woooooo, so many things to choose from', but after you get 3 or 4 that you absolutely needed, you realise that the rest serve you only in a very minor way, and each time you pick one, it's more on the basis of "now which one is the least useless of the ones left".

You mean talents not traits, right? Assuming so, you can also trade talent points with the demon in the End of Time for skill points and/or attribute points, so all the talent points are still useful even if there's no worthwhile talents left to pick.

 

[Angthoron]

The character system looks good at first, but kind of starts crumbling as you go. The traits are the best example of that, at first you look at the list and think 'woooooo, so many things to choose from', but after you get 3 or 4 that you absolutely needed, you realise that the rest serve you only in a very minor way, and each time you pick one, it's more on the basis of "now which one is the least useless of the ones left".

You mean talents not traits, right? Assuming so, you can also trade talent points with the demon in the End of Time for skill points and/or attribute points, so all the talent points are still useful even if there's no worthwhile talents left to pick.

Yeah, there's also this. I just didn't want to mention it in the review proper because 1) knew someone would bring it up and 2) would be a little spoilerish for a mechanic I guess, I dunno.

 

[Dr Schultz]

DOS is hands down one of the best RPGs I have ever played.

half way through the game i got bored of the fights. always the same tactics and no interesting encounters to warrant even a single thought outside the box. besides all the other, more or less, little things to bitch about it's still a good game, but a mediocre crpg.

half way through this comment I got bored of the bhs :asd:...

 

[Maiandros]

We have had this discussion before, offensive way of putting it aside (assuming you'd excuse it) Gragt my issue lies in the timing and the circumstances

might i remind you how we had a thread in regards to this? The site's Overlord himself posting, promising a thorough, UNFORGIVING, et al, deconstruction?
and what did we get instead?
i knew it would be a nice, great even, game Gragt. I knew that.
But when someone dictates that said "interview" is to be conducted with typical Codex standards and i get to eventually read about how sweet those guys are and how cool and shiny the world is..?
when in fact, it -did- have some flaws didn't it? The kind one would have expected to see analysed. Here, in the Codex.


Overboard when a Jew brofists your posts, i need do nothing but rest my case. Keep compounding upon Codexian one liners, they will broaden your horizons i'm sure ^^

 

[Maiandros]

also, though this is not your fault, i freely admit to some bias, as at that time, i was reading a Grotsnik interview. That was a fucking incline.

that guy needs to write more. Someone should nudge him. Hard

 

[Infinitron]

Overboard when a Jew brofists your posts, i need do nothing but rest my case.

Classy.

I always get a laugh from these "betrayed hero worshipper" types. It's like they read on some other website that the RPG Codex is a site of UNFORGIVING GODS OF RPG EDGINESS. Then they come here expecting "Skyway, Excidium & Roguey: The Forum" or something, and become butthurt when they discover we're just regular people.

 

[Achiman]

Even if you don't like the setting, the story, the graphics or the combat; playing through a co-op RPG is fucking fantastic with ventrillo. The amount of laughs we had fucking over each other in combat accidentially and sheer overall joy at questing away together makes this one of the most important games of the last few years.
Stable no fuss co-op multiplayer RPG through a non-mmo or ARPG type game is a big plus as far as I'm concerned.

My only real gripes with the game are:
* Trying to backstab and it fucking walks you around because the animation moves your cursor slightly just before you click...Very annoying
* If you could use the map to select a location, click on it and actually have that location shown. Why do you have to scroll manually to where you want to click to walk to it.
* The journal system is pretty obscure. It is better than a fucking quest arrow holding your hand, but some of the quests are impossible to know what to do next due to the vague clues.

8.5/10 is a pretty reasonable score for such a good game. Remember that you could get a 2 pack of this for 60 bucks on Steamypoo just before release. Value!

 

[jdinatale]

Even if you don't like the setting, the story, the graphics or the combat; playing through a co-op RPG is fucking fantastic with ventrillo.

>Implying that I have friends.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Good write-up brah, but I disagree with sum points

The character system in Original Sin is a simple enough thing that most RPG developers in the recent years have managed to screw up. Fortunately, Larian hasn’t, and the result is a simple and solid system based on genre-standard ability scores, skill points, slightly less standard traits as well as minor boosts coming from playing the characters consistently in dialogue.

The character system looks good at first, but kind of starts crumbling as you go. The traits are the best example of that, at first you look at the list and think 'woooooo, so many things to choose from', but after you get 3 or 4 that you absolutely needed, you realise that the rest serve you only in a very minor way, and each time you pick one, it's more on the basis of "now which one is the least useless of the ones left". Not to mention some of the skills that are best left to item boosts - lockpicking would be good if everything wasn't so easy to bash down, telekinesis is just meh (or at least I thought so), same with lucky charm and some craftings.

Melee combat, while lacking much of the versatility of mage’s or ranger’s arsenal

Depends on what you mean by "melee", and in both cases it's kind of not true. Scoundrels have almost all the cool stuff that rangers have at their disposal, just that it's 3m-ranged. Man-at-arms, on the other hand, I think might have the most skills in the whole game just to iron the versatility difference out, and considering they include repositioning, mass KD, mass resist debuff and various other buffs and status effects, the wammos also have quite a selection of shit when push comes to shove.

That said, an occasional difficulty spike can cause a great deal of frustration to certain party builds – encounters with some of the “bosses” often hinge on a successful disable spell, and the game is not always particularly generous with these

Like I said before once, this only happens if youa re dum, and saying the game is not generous with disables has more holes than a slice of this fine gorgombert

Conveniently, the AI is generally good at using the elemental mechanics as well

I believe many of the routines are kind of hard scripted. Especially for rangers, throughout the game I always felt like all archers acted nearly precisely the same.

Not the nudity mod though, thank you very much.

Goes to one Gamescon and he thinks he's some sort of authority.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

WoWesque art design,

Not a bad thing

It's not my cup of tea.