Divinity Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition

[NJClaw]

Not to defend this game or anything, but "why does my character want to escape this concentration camp?" is a dumb fuckin question

I think it's more about making the player care about it than anything.

"You're in this boat full of dangerous people and there's a murder to solve"
"Now this even more dangerous woman is destroying the boat"
"Now you're in Alcatraz"

It's hard not to feel disconnected.

 

[V_K]

It's a Larian game, duh. They've never cared much about coherence, whether narrative or mechanical for that matter. How's that even a surprise to anyone who has played any Larian game before is beyond me.

 

[Lacrymas]

Not to defend this game or anything, but "why does my character want to escape this concentration camp?" is a dumb fuckin question

I think it's more about making the player care about it than anything.

"You're in this boat full of dangerous people and there's a murder to solve"
"Now this even more dangerous woman is destroying the boat"
"Now you're in Alcatraz"

It's hard not to feel disconnected.

Yes, it's not so much understanding the motivation to escape, it's more about making the player care about that motivation. Everything feels very disconnected, as if a 7-man cuck squad wrote it without having an overall vision they are working towards and everyone writing whatever they feel like. And it literally is that, every quest is an island. In a different dimension. Slasher movies and porn better contextualize what they are doing.

 

[FugueLah]

So, I am thinking about buying this game since it is on sale. How does this one compare to the first? Despite its supposed flaws, I enjoyed the first one till the end and if this one is comparable or better I won't regret a purchase.

 

[bec de corbin]

I think if you enjoyed the first one you'll probably enjoy the sequel as well. Some people really don't like the armor mechanic, but there's mods to get rid of it if it annoys you.

 

[MWaser]

So, I am thinking about buying this game since it is on sale. How does this one compare to the first? Despite its supposed flaws, I enjoyed the first one till the end and if this one is comparable or better I won't regret a purchase.

I think if you enjoyed the first one you'll probably enjoy the sequel as well. Some people really don't like the armor mechanic, but there's mods to get rid of it if it annoys you.

The game has way more high-level problems than just armor - enforced round-robin turns causing initiative to be worthless, exponential stat bloat - and screwed up itemization caused in relationt o it, and bad encounter design that leads you to getting constantly ambushed are just the few most damaging ones I can think of off the top of my head that weren't present in DivOS1, which was a considerably better game (albeit not without its own flaws)

 

[Cleric of Asmodeus]

Vaguely interested in this game. Is it good?

Just install this - Divinity Unleashed - and this - Initiative-Based Turn Order

Problem solved

For a detailed guide here's my mod thread: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/d-os-2-definitive-edition-mod-thread.130123/

 

[Darth Canoli]

I think it's more about making the player care about it than anything.

"You're in this boat full of dangerous people and there's a murder to solve"
"Now this even more dangerous woman is destroying the boat"
"Now you're in Alcatraz"

It's hard not to feel disconnected.

You fool, the first mod you should have grabbed was the one that skips the ship's intro, a real marvel.

I never made it past the first island, killed the magisters once and then stopped, i was playing on max difficulty with the epic mod, bad idea, the extra encounters are extremely difficult and with the terrible combat system, it's the purest form of masochism.

 

[Iskramor]

What mod should i use for shitty armor magic armor system?
Armor based saving throws
OR
Controls are back?

 

[Lacrymas]

There's nothing that fixes this mess, but I used the saving throws. No idea about the other thing.

 

[Beggar]

I want to get it on steam sale. When? How long must I wait

 

[Ismaul]

What mod should i use for shitty armor magic armor system?
Armor based saving throws
OR
Controls are back?

Git gud, learn to do damage and make characters versatile against different types of armor

 

[DJOGamer PT]

What mod should i use for shitty armor magic armor system?

There's nothing that fixes this mess

Divinity Unleashed

Here you go:
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/d-os-2-definitive-edition-mod-thread.130123/

 

[Lacrymas]

Even with armor-based saving throws, removed bloat, less experience gain, initiative-based turn order, and what have you, the biggest problem still remains and is an issue in almost every encounter - the split between the two armors. It's very easy to bring an enemy down to very few hit points but not have any character left to do the type of damage required, so you waste that character's turn by doing damage to the wrong armor type while the mob is still alive the next round. This forces you to have both damage types on all characters, so they start feeling samey. With the fixes I mentioned, it is definitely playable, but the worst design decision still niggles at you constantly.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Divinity Unleashed removes armor types

 

[HoboForEternity]

Anything to fix the stupid loot and level scaling?

 

[Ismaul]

It's very easy to bring an enemy down to very few hit points but not have any character left to do the type of damage required, so you waste that character's turn by doing damage to the wrong armor type while the mob is still alive the next round.

Another case of needing to git gud.

It's an epidemic.

This forces you to have both damage types on all characters, so they start feeling samey.

It would feel so much less samey if there was just one type of armor like you want, right?

 

[Iskramor]

It's very easy to bring an enemy down to very few hit points but not have any character left to do the type of damage required, so you waste that character's turn by doing damage to the wrong armor type while the mob is still alive the next round.

Another case of needing to git gud.

It's an epidemic.

This forces you to have both damage types on all characters, so they start feeling samey.

It would feel so much less samey if there was just one type of armor like you want, right?

Low effort trolling even by your standards.

 

[Ismaul]

Low effort trolling even by your standards.

Except I'm not trolling.

I truly believe the criticism about the armor system is overblown, it greatly improves the gameplay compared to DOS the first, and I have argued so in this thread and others when I'm not bored with this one-sided debate. The addition of armor and the new initiative system, while not without flaws, do what they were meant to do: prevent you from stacking initiative to act first and disabling the enemies' ability to even act by applying elemental effects to them before their first turn. It also pushes you to diversify your builds, and find synergies between your characters. I could go on.

I also argued that not knowing how to deal efficient damage, admittedly because the damage formula is nowhere shown to the player, makes people do low damage to armors and feel like it's this huge issue they have to deal with. The solution to that being, obviously, learning how to deal damage efficiently to remove armor. In other words, gitting gud.

Also, the idea that having two types of damage on a character makes them samey is frankly ridiculous. There is much more to a character than its damage type. And reducing the damage types to one by removing the armor system wouldn't in any way fix this supposed sameness.

 

[Lacrymas]

All of this could've been avoided by not handing out CC abilities like candy. The armor system is a ridiculous solution that makes matters worse. If they didn't want us to stack initiative in order to always act first, let it be a dice roll which gets modified by our initiative stat.

 

[V_K]

...not to mention that stacking CC abilities was the single fun thing in otherwise painfully mediocre DOS1.

 

[Ismaul]

...not to mention that stacking CC abilities was the single fun thing in otherwise painfully mediocre DOS1.

Yes, but that's not the issue we're talking about. It's the combo of stacking initiative and CC'ing everything before the enemy acts, that basically cancelled the whole gameplay. DOS2 overcompensated, but it was still better than DOS1.

 

[Ismaul]

The armor system is a ridiculous solution that makes matters worse.

No, it adds to tactics. You have to choose priority targets to CC and therefore from which to remove armor first. Also, if you want to be optimal, you'll want to attack the weakest armor of the enemy, and therefore use attacks and characters that are better at damaging it.

 

[V_K]

Yes, but that's not the issue we're talking about

The issue is that the armor system took away the single fun aspect of DOS while not improving anything else. There's literally zero reason to play it now. If I want a mediocre TB RPG, I'd rather go for Deadfire in TB mode - that one at least has a fun setting.

 

[Lacrymas]

The armor system is a ridiculous solution that makes matters worse.

No, it adds to tactics. You have to choose priority targets to CC and therefore from which to remove armor first.

But that's not how it goes down in practice. When you've stripped the enemy of their armor, you don't CC them in order to focus on someone else, you kill them to permanently remove them from play. There's also the fact you need both kinds of CC on all characters in order to not waste any character's turn by targeting the other armor type. There are much more elegant solutions to this problem and that's what it comes down to, even if the armor system did what it purports to do.