Reposting my mini-review because, well, I'm a collossal egocentrical dickhead. Some of the con's have probably been fixed by recent patches, eh, maybe it can warrant another playthrough, this time also with mods.
Good stuff
- The writing and overall story seems much improved from D:OS 1, but overall still shit compared to many many other cRPGs. Still, I feel abit more engaged in the story, and I guess that's a plus. The writing tries to be serious and
it shows, but it just doesn't really strike a nerve, it's still too goofy and whimsical. The story kind of apes some of the
classical fantasy clichés, and even borrows alot from PoE. The Chosen one stories get boring in the end, and D:OS 2 in
so different in that regard. It's so hard to care about the story, but at least Larian tried this time.
- The music has been improved, and is actually quite nice all throughout. Really liked it.
- Itemization is a bit better than D:OS 1, but overall still bad compared to other cRPGs
- Graphics have been touched up, and look ok/decent for the most part, though not really that much different from
D:OS 1
- The sounds have been improved, and alot of the ambience, skill sounds and so on are nice.
- The combat is still great. It was great in D:OS 1, and it hasn't really changed much. It's definitely one of the core
strengths of the games, and it continues to be so. It has alot of variety in terms of builds and skills and that's fun.
There are, however, still glaring flaws which will be touched under Con's.
Bad stuff
- The combat system: NO FUCKING COMBAT SPEED SLIDER - FUCK YOU SWEN FOR WASTING MY LIFE ON
WATCHING ANIMATIONS FINISH. I don't have as big a problem with the new combat system as most here, but I still
find it kind of limiting and annoying, how the armour and magic armour has been implemented. I get that D:OS 1 was
too cheesey, but there's gotta be a middle way, rather than the implementation in D:OS 2. The broken initiative is
fucking retarded, and the armor changes are hard to ignore.
- The dialogue system is generally retarded. Why a 3rd person narrator? Very very unecessecary and kills the
experience somewhat.
- Not really any apparent C&C or reactivity so far, perhaps I'm missing it from the quests.
- The voice acting is, for the most part, annoying and boring. Actors sound very much alike, and not many NPC's truly
stand out as something else. I feel they should have just gone with voices for important characters, and then made
them more impactful... which leads to
- The narrator. P. annoying, especially voiced. I mean, I kind of like it at times, but mostly it's an annoyance the way
it's structured in the dialogue system
- The UI is simply a fucking clusterfuck. Nothing from the problems of D:OS 1 seems to be absolved. The UI is very
clunky, it's annoying because there's alot of drag drop, not enough quality of life buttons and features. There's no
highlight button for interactables (only on controller) and I hate the camera work, because it requires alot of uneeedy
panning and turning all the time, which takes from the experience. There's tons of micromanagement issues with
items and interactables that gets very nitty gritty and very timeconsuming.
- Crafting still sucks and I never used it because of all the items you get, and there's an incomplete amount of recipes,
not in the game.
- Not enough new skills, and some skill trees have very few cool skills. Especially necromancy, doesn't really feel like
a true necro build. I expected D:OS 2 to have alot more new spells n shit compared to D:OS 1. Overall D:OS 2 feels
less tactical and limited, because the skills themselves don't really offer anything special.
- It seems the game does have quite a few bugs, mostly to do with quests. I had several quests that I couldn't
finish, and some where just straight up bugged and didn't go further. I've also managed to bug the game when talking
to NPC's, and couldnt interact with anybody after that.
Conclusion:
The game plays like an expansion, it really does. A nice expansion, but an expansion nontheless. Or what the D:OS 1 EE should have been, but wasn't. I feel like this game needed more UMPF - more value for the money, to truly call itself a sequel. Too bad, maybe next time, Larian.
Rating: 6,5/10
Right now, we again lean to the eastern civilization...
