Divinity Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

[thesheeep]

Wow... that crypt in Arx has got to be one of the worst designed levels of all time.

First, you have to solve some bullshit pipe puzzle - what the heck? 1985 is called, it wants back its quest design.
Well, after that particular waste of your time, there comes the death room - and boy, that is probably the worst combat in the entire game.
Not because it would be difficult. It isn't. Not at all. Those 8-10 puppets barely do any damage. Nor do the traps they run around and activate. In fact, they kill themselves regularly doing so - and just respawn.
But one of those (randomly picked) levers causes all your characters to be transformed into a cow for two turns, being completely unable to control them.

So there you go, two full rounds of combat in a turn based game where you still cannot speed up animations - because annoying the shit out of your player seems to be Larian's prime design goal. With at least 12 participants in the combat.
I took the time. About 10 minutes I had to stare at the screen until I could act again.

And then I won a round later because that "puzzle" - you have to press 5 certain levers yourself - is completely ridiculous as well.

Why, god, why, do designers still put puzzles in their games?
There are two things I hate with all of my being: Puzzles and wasting my time. This particular combat has got me enraged like nothing else in many years.

 

[Grunker]

- hating puzzles

- playing an original sin game

sorry bro i was with you with most of it but that shit's just confusing

 

[Ausdoerrt]

Don't hate on DOS's writing just cause you don't get Belgian sense of humor. At least it's not as bad as Obsidian's stale crap or Bethesda's intelligence-challenged drivel

Comparing piss and shit .

Eh, DOS is one of the few RPGs I know that does comedy right. So do Divine Divinity and the Divinity 2 expansion. DOS2 not so much, but it still got its moments.

A sense of humor is kinda required to appretiate this, though, so I don't blame ya.

 

[Grunker]

does comedy right.

if ur six yrs old maybe

 

[thesheeep]

- hating puzzles

- playing an original sin game

sorry bro i was with you with most of it but that shit's just confusing

I played this game for 90 hours by now.
That shit was the first puzzle I encountered.
Maybe you count having to talk to people or place crates on pressure plates already as a puzzle, and if so I guess there are more "puzzles" than just this one.

Way worse than the pipe puzzle is the combat in the death room, though. That is just a waste of time, as it is super easy, but if you get unlucky, you have to sit through 10 minutes of doing nothing.

 

[tripedal]

Wow... that crypt in Arx has got to be one of the worst designed levels of all time.

First, you have to solve some bullshit pipe puzzle - what the heck? 1985 is called, it wants back its quest design.
Well, after that particular waste of your time, there comes the death room - and boy, that is probably the worst combat in the entire game.
Not because it would be difficult. It isn't. Not at all. Those 8-10 puppets barely do any damage. Nor do the traps they run around and activate. In fact, they kill themselves regularly doing so - and just respawn.
But one of those (randomly picked) levers causes all your characters to be transformed into a cow for two turns, being completely unable to control them.

So there you go, two full rounds of combat in a turn based game where you still cannot speed up animations - because annoying the shit out of your player seems to be Larian's prime design goal. With at least 12 participants in the combat.
I took the time. About 10 minutes I had to stare at the screen until I could act again.

And then I won a round later because that "puzzle" - you have to press 5 certain levers yourself - is completely ridiculous as well.

Why, god, why, do designers still put puzzles in their games?
There are two things I hate with all of my being: Puzzles and wasting my time. This particular combat has got me enraged like nothing else in many years.

Source vampirism on the puppets. Also this puzzle was trivial, it takes a minute...

 

[thesheeep]

Source vampirism on the puppets.

Not an information I had going into the battle.
You can probably somehow get the toymaker to tell you this, I assume?

Also this puzzle was trivial, it takes a minute...

Exactly.
So why have it in the first place?
Imagine the resources that went into creating that thing. Does that seem worth it to you?


Aaaand won the final battle.
Again, horribly designed battle fully impossible without pre-combat knowledge. Of course, given the game so far, that could have been expected. Thankfully I practically eradicated the map before going there so I was level 22... I doubt that would be beatable at level 20.

You also wouldn't normally get the idea to focus on Dallis or the hooded guy - they are by far not the biggest danger.
Or making the mistake to focus on the Kraken


PS:

Spoiler

What actually happens when you willingly give up your Source to Lucian? Does the second stage with the Kraken trigger automatically and Braccus reveals himself?

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Abu Antar]

Source vampirism on the puppets.

Not an information I had going into the battle.
You can probably somehow get the toymaker to tell you this, I assume?

Also this puzzle was trivial, it takes a minute...

Exactly.
So why have it in the first place?
Imagine the resources that went into creating that thing. Does that seem worth it to you?


Aaaand won the final battle.
Again, horribly designed battle fully impossible without pre-combat knowledge. Of course, given the game so far, that could have been expected. Thankfully I practically eradicated the map before going there so I was level 22... I doubt that would be beatable at level 20.

You also wouldn't normally get the idea to focus on Dallis or the hooded guy - they are by far not the biggest danger.
Or making the mistake to focus on the Kraken


PS:

Spoiler

What actually happens when you willingly give up your Source to Lucian? Does the second stage with the Kraken trigger automatically and Braccus reveals himself?

Spoiler

He reveals himself and Lucian and co side with you. Braccus Rex summons the Sallow man and other bastards to fight for him. You only need to kill Braccus Rex for the combat to end.

 

[thesheeep]

PS:

Spoiler

What actually happens when you willingly give up your Source to Lucian? Does the second stage with the Kraken trigger automatically and Braccus reveals himself?

Spoiler

He reveals himself and Lucian and co side with you. Braccus Rex summons the Sallow man and other bastards to fight for him. You only need to kill Braccus Rex for the combat to end.

Then it is as I assumed. The fight would be MUCH easier in that setup - but who in their right minds would make that decision after fighting it for the entirety of the game?

 

[Abu Antar]

PS:

Spoiler

What actually happens when you willingly give up your Source to Lucian? Does the second stage with the Kraken trigger automatically and Braccus reveals himself?

Spoiler

He reveals himself and Lucian and co side with you. Braccus Rex summons the Sallow man and other bastards to fight for him. You only need to kill Braccus Rex for the combat to end.

Then it is as I assumed. The fight would be MUCH easier in that setup - but who in their right minds would make that decision after fighting it for the entirety of the game?

You can still do whatever you want after the fight.

 

[thesheeep]

PS:

Spoiler

What actually happens when you willingly give up your Source to Lucian? Does the second stage with the Kraken trigger automatically and Braccus reveals himself?

Spoiler

He reveals himself and Lucian and co side with you. Braccus Rex summons the Sallow man and other bastards to fight for him. You only need to kill Braccus Rex for the combat to end.

Then it is as I assumed. The fight would be MUCH easier in that setup - but who in their right minds would make that decision after fighting it for the entirety of the game?

You can still do whatever you want after the fight.

Yeah, but again - that is knowledge you can't previously have. By picking that decision you can only assume you really actually help the "bad guys" - that you are later free to do anything anyway isn't exactly foreseeable and IMO not really how C&C should work.
Which wouldn't be a big problem if it wouldn't so significantly alter the difficulty of the whole thing.
I'm still not quite sure how I managed to beat the fight in the most difficult setup. That kraken alone can probably kill any level 20 character per round.
With some help in the easier setup of the fight, I could see this working out well - more cannon fodder to target for the kraken and the... real boss.

Next time, I will surely stack and brew every single fire resist potion I can throughout the entire game
In this playthrough, I ignored crafting completely - except arrows and armor of the eternals. I just can't stand crafting in almost every game*, but looking at the recipes now - some of them are pretty damn useful.
Nails on my boots would have helped me a lot early on... I'm just so used to crafting being completely optional and usually useless as you can just find better stuff anyway and whatever you craft will be obsolete in 10 minutes.

* Cue Grunker "He hates crafting and puzzles, plays DOS hurr durr!"

 

[Bohrain]

I think the combat could be vastly improved if armor made certain disables weaker instead of nullifying them entirely, more disables worked through armor like slow and there were more immunities to deal with so everything couldn't be solved with physical damage spam to knockdown loop.
Also more enemies with lots of armor and tiny amount of health and a handful of piercing damage damage spells distributed to different magic schools so hybrids were actually worthwhile.
Biggest hurdles of the system are the number bloat and equipment. Latter would support different builds better if more stats were delegated to runes so you could customize stuff more to your liking.

It's very salvageable in my opinion, but I fear that Larian is way too happy of what it is in this flawed condition.

 

[Ausdoerrt]

Source vampirism on the puppets.

Not an information I had going into the battle.
You can probably somehow get the toymaker to tell you this, I assume?

You can ask him how he made the puppets come to life, and he'll tell you "The Source, or course!". The rest is a pretty logical chain of thinking.

 

[thesheeep]

I think the combat could be vastly improved if armor made certain disables weaker instead of nullifying them entirely, more disables worked through armor like slow and there were more immunities to deal with so everything couldn't be solved with physical damage spam to knockdown loop.

It's very salvageable in my opinion, but I fear that Larian is way too happy of what it is in this flawed condition.

Yes, absolutely. Or instead of weakening, allowing chilled, burning, poison and shocked through armor, but not frozen or stunned.

I've come to like that you can't just stun/knock down/freeze/charm/chicken/cripple everything in your path.
But I see little reason that the other, weaker effects shouldn't work through armor.

However, it is indeed unlikely to see changes like that being made outside of mods.

I also wish Scoundrel wasn't almost entirely useless without daggers. You can use like 3 abilities without daggers. And in many cases for no real reason.
Makes it far less worthwhile to invest more points into Scoundrel than you need for Adrenaline, Cloak & Dagger, Chloroform and that rather worthless exploding trap.
Of course every character needs one point for The Pawn, but other than that...
At the very least, they should add spears to the supported weapons as they are also Finesse based.

 

[Murk]

I fought and killed all of them alone at level 20 as a fighter (tactician).

The fact that they fight each other helps immensely, and you can turn it into somewhat of a joke if you have some invis potions/skills or chantrelles. Lucian can single handedly kill Braccus if the AI doesn't derp since he was doing 4k+ damage per swing.

Ironically, in one of my refights to check other endings, Dallis killed Lucian for me through dragon breath AOE.

Long story short, thesheeep is bad, git gud etc.

 

[thesheeep]

I fought and killed all of them alone at level 20 as a fighter (tactician).

Long story short, thesheeep is bad, git gud etc.

You do realize Lone Wolf, playing alone (or with two) is broken beyond belief, making the game actually much easier?

PS: They only fight each other if any are left "alive" to fight each other... unfortunately I killed the "right" ones last. Stupid me, eh? Trust me, I will do differently next time.
I mean, Dallis was "alive" alright, but knocked down by Kemm the moment she turned into a dragon. I think she got up once to fly somewhere. Pretty pathetic. The rest went after my guys

 

[Murk]

You do realize Lone Wolf, playing alone (or with two) is broken beyond belief, making the game actually much easier?

It's not broken beyond belief, but Lone Wolf is definitely easier than non-Lone Wolf. Same as how being level 22 makes things easier than being level 20. Whatever.

Anyway, you were bitching the fight is undoable without prior warning. You're wrong. Moving on.

Stupid me, eh?

Yes, exactly.

Yes, exactly.

 

[Grunker]

I got burned out on this I think. Too much sameyness, too much combat and too little puzzling, environmental interaction and stuffies. Basically the whole game feels like the latter, worse half of the original. It's not so much the system, despite all the criticism it's been getting here, because it kind of just makes the game different rather than strictly better or worse. Rather, it's the piss-poor content. Cyseal really carried the original as did the million billion secrets you can find. Here there's just... nothing.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I got burned out on this I think. Too much sameyness, too much combat and too little puzzling, environmental interaction and stuffies. Basically the whole game feels like the latter, worse half of the original. It's not so much the system, despite all the criticism it's been getting here, because it kind of just makes the game different rather than strictly better or worse. Rather, it's the piss-poor content. Cyseal really carried the original as did the million billion secrets you can find. Here there's just... nothing.

p. much the same for me, although with much bigger dislike of the system

 

[Grunker]

Yeah okay but let's say you have the same content with the old system. Wouldn't you still have gotten burned out? I'm 100% sure I would. There's just nothing to do but endless fighting fighting fighting, the biggest breaks you get are some remote locations with treasure (gee I wonder how to get to that... teleport) or isolated puzzles working from the logic of use element x to trigger y effect. There was so much ingenuity in the original, every area felt it had at least one major puzzle room or environmental idea.

I guess it's weird to hate a fightin' RPG for a guy who thinks Blackguards is the best RPG of the decade but that game was just setup around that concept with fantastically hand-crafted encounters. Blackguards this ain't

 

[Daedalos]

I love when I'm right.

As I predicted, this game is just more of the same from the first game, except you lost alot of the novelty from the first game, and now the same tricks dont capture you, they bore you and burn you out.
There are of course some improvements, but overall just the same, or even worse systems and mechanics. Not sure how it really surprised people, when this was first announced.

The game is still very much a glorified combat simulator, with rpg elements sprinkled on top, but with weaker exploration, quest design, half-assed story and content in general.

 

[Lacrymas]

I said it's going to be more of the same, but with more padding first!

 

[Darth Roxor]

Yeah okay but let's say you have the same content with the old system. Wouldn't you still have gotten burned out?

Odds are I would, but still, a big part of me not wanting to get back to this game are the recollections of stuff like having to metagame the fucking initiative on more than one occasion because if I killed some guy his slow-ass chum would then act before me and kill me. Or the super exciting level-ups that are "oh where do I put +5% damage in now". Or the lame-ass boring skills. Or the braindead AI.

Yeah. It's a bit more than just the game being an uninspired brawlfest, but the uninspired brawlfest part is deffo a major problem for sure.

 

[Lacrymas]

7 writers! Chris Avellone! More meaningful content! We totally learned from our mistakes! The sequel is going to be better!