Divinity Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition

[Lacrymas]

why dont you just enter the sequence to remote?

I tried to self-destruct it but it just set my toon on fire. Besides, you get extra xp (and loot?) if you kill it the old fashioned way. I did use the remote to prevent it from electrocuting us, though, it's impossible to save the guys if you let it use its electricity attack. Unless you keep it permanently frozen I guess.

 

[DraQ]

I decided to play some Original Sin to get an idea of where the Baldur's Gate franchise is going. My character is so beautiful it's hard to believe she'd ever be an adventurer. She'd be an actress or model or whatever the medieval equivalent is - some Duke's mistress? Most women don't want to be fighters.

My character seems to be about 6-feet tall and is striding about like a cat walk model. Her 'armour' consists of brown (leather?) yoga pants with bits of metal strapped to the front of her legs. Her boots are knee-length high-heels (always practical). At least we know Baldur's Gate III will have good looking people.


Also, the blonde archer character claims to have been raised by bears - but her hair betrays her. She just stepped out of a salon, for sure.

DOS1 has shitty art direction, news at 11.

 

[Lacrymas]

Here are some more observations:

I am almost finished with the Into the Dark quest (Crabs and Pirates in original) and the traps were more annoying and gimmicky than having a point. I just cheesed most of them with teleport + pyramids and don't regret it in the slightest. The game also suffers from a lack of information, not only with crafting but with quests as well. I often get quests where I have to go to a specific person but it's never clear where that person is. The ghost in the lighthouse is sad that his beloved Desdemona is dead. I vaguely remember from original she actually isn't and you have to find her, but I don't remember where she is (perhaps Silverglen?).

The problem is that the quest doesn't give you any pointers whatsoever about what you are supposed to be doing. It's too vague. What am I looking for, game? Where? Another example is the Legionnaire's Will quest where you are supposed to find his wife, but surprise, surprise it's not stated where she is and I'm not about the go through the entire Cyseal to mouse over every NPC to find her.

Yet another example is the adventurer's weapons. The UI makes it clear they have 3 upgrades (like soulbound weapons in PoE) but nothing tells you what you are supposed to upgrade them with. After you find the adventurer's kits it's clear, but before that you can go into the cycle of combining them with every piece of shit you find. I googled it of course, I'm not about to do that. It feels like a purposeful waste of time.

Another thing is that the game feels like a Super Mario game in terms of zones and themes. You have the pirate zone (water world), the undead zone/s (let's say air world for no reason), the orc world (let's say fire world), Hiberheim (ice world), Silverglen and the zones around it (kind of a Savannah world), etc. It feels like their designers have all grown up with Nintendo games like Zelda and Mario, and nothing else.

 

[jackofshadows]

The problem is that the quest doesn't give you any pointers whatsoever about what you are supposed to be doing. It's too vague. What am I looking for, game? Where?

You're just not paying attention. Because writing is unbearable and it's impossible to take game's world even remotely serious. Details are in the dialogues and next to journal there some recent history of them but that's pointless (by the way, since you're playing in german maybe there's some localisation issues as well). Some simple chapter about NPC who the fuck is who would be nice instead. Crafting recipes are in various books across the world and I'm not fan of that either.

As for overall design - they just went for element's theme WAY too much. It's all over the place beyond ridiculous. Ironically, it's a very common eastern theme so why of all devs Larian went for it - is a mystery for me. Not to mention that almost every encounter was made with those element surfaces in mind. Funny enough, on tactic difficulty they're reverse that in a ham-fisted attemt by giving some creatures including fucking pigs mass winged feet

 

[Lacrymas]

But I am paying attention. You are given no clues from the ghost in the lighthouse apart from "I sunk their ship". If it were logical, she would be a ghost on the beach or maybe an undead pirate with the rest of them, but she's not, I remember she's alive. That undead legionnaire doesn't tell you where his wife is, I assume she's in Cyseal, but Cyseal is way too big for me to go around mousing over every NPC. The adventurer's weapons give you 0 clues about what exactly you are looking for. Some of the encounters are pretty bonkers, like the Pontius Piratus one. He halves my entire party's HP before I even start my turn by teleporting slime on me. Next time I try this fight I'm just gonna have Bairdotr pulling him alone, so he drops the keg on her (she has an ability that makes her immune to poison) and the others joining the fight later.

 

[Strange Fellow]

The problem is that the quest doesn't give you any pointers whatsoever about what you are supposed to be doing. It's too vague. What am I looking for, game? Where? Another example is the Legionnaire's Will quest where you are supposed to find his wife, but surprise, surprise it's not stated where she is and I'm not about the go through the entire Cyseal to mouse over every NPC to find her.

Why can't this just be a hook to keep in mind for later? Not every quest has to be immediately solvable right away.

Another thing is that the game feels like a Super Mario game in terms of zones and themes. You have the pirate zone (water world), the undead zone/s (let's say air world for no reason), the orc world (let's say fire world), Hiberheim (ice world), Silverglen and the zones around it (kind of a Savannah world), etc. It feels like their designers have all grown up with Nintendo games like Zelda and Mario, and nothing else.

Either that, or they've played old-school CRPGs, which also often have themed zones.

 

[Lacrymas]

Because I want to know where I am supposed to find her/them/it. Like I said, going through the entire Cyseal mousing over every NPC doesn't sound like a fun time, I don't know about you. It's very easy for the journal to say "she's the fish merchant in Cyseal" for example, but they give you nothing. There are also quests which give you no directions at all and you aren't even sure you were given a quest before it popped up in your journal after speaking to the guy (lighthouse). I also very much doubt they've played old-school RPGs. I remember M&M3 having themed regions, but it honestly feels more like Zelda or Mario to me.

PS. Yeap, the moment I lured him only with Bairdotr the fight turned into a joke because I'm not being chained from slime to fire to poison cloud to explosion in a single turn.

 

[Efe]

in short, you want quest markers.

 

[Lacrymas]

That's retarded.

 

[JDR13]

I think we have a younger millennial here. He wants everything spelled out for him so he doesn't actually have to figure something out on his own.

 

[JDR13]

why dont you just enter the sequence to remote?

I tried to self-destruct it but it just set my toon on fire. Besides, you get extra xp (and loot?) if you kill it the old fashioned way. I did use the remote to prevent it from electrocuting us, though, it's impossible to save the guys if you let it use its electricity attack. Unless you keep it permanently frozen I guess.

Afaik, you can't actually self-destruct the Sparkmaster 5000, and you get the same amount of xp and loot no matter how you deal with it. Also, you don't have to save all three of the NPCs for the quest bonus.

 

[Lacrymas]

Randomly stumbling over the quest NPC is not "figuring stuff out". You are all trying a bit too hard to defend this game.

 

[Strange Fellow]

These are some weird compulsions my dude. You HAVE TO explore every square inch of Cyseal and talk to every NPC and loot every container the minute you step into it, and you HAVE TO solve every quest the minute you receive it. I would say whatever floats your boat, except it doesn't seem to be floating your boat at all.

I also very much doubt they've played old-school RPGs. I remember M&M3 having themed regions, but it honestly feels more like Zelda or Mario to me.

Not sure what to tell you, it felt p old-school to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In fact that's partly precisely because it gives you these quest hooks without much of a direction and expects you to stumble upon the solution further down the line. If leaving a quest unsolved causes you this much gnashing of teeth I can see how such a mode of quest design would not be enjoyable.

 

[jackofshadows]

You are given no clues from the ghost in the lighthouse apart from "I sunk their ship". If it were logical, she would be a ghost on the beach or maybe an undead pirate with the rest of them, but she's not, I remember she's alive.

That undead legionnaire doesn't tell you where his wife is, I assume she's in Cyseal, but Cyseal is way too big for me to go around mousing over every NPC.

Looks like you're mixed up this two quests after passed years. The dead presumably whorish woman is in the forgotten cove next to some debris, which it's pretty logical and the legionnaire's wife in the Silverglen - your localisation is fucked for sure mate, look:

Spoiler

"... Marise from Silverglen..."

 

[Lacrymas]

Yes, you are right, I just checked the quest log and it says she's in Silverglen. I must've mixed these quests in my head somehow. I thought that Desdemona is in Silverglen and there was no information about Merissa. If Desdemona is indeed in the black cove, I've yet to find her. I still have that ghost crab encounter I remember, she might be there.

In fact that's partly precisely because it gives you these quest hooks without much of a direction and expects you to stumble upon the solution further down the line. If leaving a quest unsolved causes you this much gnashing of teeth I can see how such a mode of quest design would not be enjoyable.

Even though it seems these two quests are logical and I was the problem, it's not that I want to complete them now, I just want to have some sort of direction because I do get jittery when I might miss a quest solution/item/place and then having to read a walkthrough to find where exactly in the huge map that is.

 

[NJClaw]

With D:OS you need to put aside your OCD and accept that some quests are gonna remain open forever. Just follow the flow of the game and ignore them. At least, that's what I had to do to stop investing time in aspects of the game that weren't that fun to me and start paying attention only to what I enjoyed (combat encounters).

Items and experience rewards are not worth it:
- you already get a steady flow of experience from the main quest and the side quests you automatically complete without giving them too much thought;
- you will probably find better items after an hour or two.

"Story/dialogues/quests' endings" rewards are even worse: writing is already painful throughout the whole game, why would you want to endure more of it? I had fun with a couple of characters and quests, but deciding if you should invest time in a quest is simple: if the "hook" seems interesting, go for it. Personally, the only quests I can think of right now that were actually interesting enough to solve them were: the entire plot of the two wells, the quest where you have to produce some whisky for the bartender in Hunter's Edge and the subplot of the Winter King treasure room.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm almost finished with Cyseal, all that is left is Braccus Rex. Here's the thing with the difficulty, at one point the enemies start feeling weaker and that's not because we become stronger. They start doing less damage, have fewer hp, and stop having so many abilities. The last tricky fight is with Pontius Pirate and that's easy enough to cheese by just pulling with only 1 char and then have the others join in the second round. And yeah, after that you start having so many CC options it becomes a joke. All of the enemies are somehow immobilized by the end of round 1, 2 of them are charmed and start killing the others. The solution wasn't armor, however, it was fewer CC abilities, or CCs which have casting times.

 

[anvi]

The difficulty is a bit wavy. For me it was hard at the start, then got easy, gets hard again for some early bosses, then it was easy the entire rest of the game. Except for one boss nearer the end which took a couple of attempts.

 

[Reality]

In some RPGs characters Snowball from weak to strong, and in other ones you get Human Bulldozers

 

[Lacrymas]

There's also the fact CC/debuff abilities aren't made all equal. Charmed > stunned/frozen/tripped > everything else like weakened/blinded etc. Even though they cost various amount of action points (not that varied actually), it's not worth casting something which isn't a hard CC unless you have no other options (like due to surprise, surprise, cooldowns). The problem is that most of the time you aren't left with enough action points to do anything else after casting a CC unless you have glass cannon and/or lone wolf, so using a soft CC over a hard CC that leaves you with not enough AP is not optimal or smart. You can't deal 75% damage and have it cost 3 action points instead of 4. It's always, always, the best choice to hard CC. There are also some ridiculously powerful ones, like Bitter Cold (2 AP, ridiculous range) or Thunder Jump (ridiculous range and mobility, "AoE", it even costs 1 less AP than Blitz, still a novice ability, enemies have a harder time resisting stunned than tripped from Charge). I'd say only Witchcraft is properly balanced. You can cast Malediction and Oath of Desecration, OR Rapture, it's still the most reasonable thing to cast Rapture in the first round, but at least the others don't have inflated AP costs. I miss the Sawyer touch here and the problems are plain for all to see, I have no idea why people think EE is "balanced" compared to original, it's not. I also miss the ability to attack with only 1 weapon when you are dual-wielding so that it can cost half the AP and I can do other stuff. The AP game is fucked is what I'm saying and a lot of problems stem from it.

Here's what they could've done with CCs - not give them out like candy at the novice level, have them cost more AP than you have in a single round (i.e. you have to skip a turn to pool enough AP), casting times, have only 1 skill book in the game. I'm sure that by using a combination of these tools, they could've found a sweet spot.

 

[jackofshadows]

I also "like" how they balanced AP costs for summons: 7 for wolf, spider and most elems (8 for earth), 8 for advanced undead and for simple undead... 4. Fucking four ap for basically the same outcome (for a first turn, anyway) - body to absorb most of enemie's CC and some damage as a bonus while you can cast something else the same turn.

That said, I really liked their approach for character's building AP: maximum amount from constitution, starting points from perception&speed and turn points from speed.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Lacrymas]

Oh, right, the summons... It almost feels like the AI is coded to attack them first, which makes them overly useful no matter their type.

in dos1 attributes were meaningful, what happened in dos2 ?

Not really. At least not in any practical sense. You still pump the attribute your skills use and after that speed is overly powerful compared to the others due to how the system works. Scoundrels are particularly broken due to that, huge speed bonuses (+movement and AP), coupled with Fast Track. Dipped with Men-at-Arms for Rage and Attack Stance, backstabbing a tripped enemy with Oath of Desecration = lol. That's without Lone Wolf or Glass Cannon. Maybe Rangers are the only ones for which perception is actually important, so if they want to "dual-class" they'd have to focus on 3 attributes instead of 2. Speaking of, CCing an enemy gives you 100% chance to hit them.

 

[jackofshadows]

Maybe Rangers are the only ones for which perception is actually important

Not really. Their own "farseer" buff (for 2 ap) compensates any THC issues. Moreover, dexterity becomes not that important for them again, thanks to this insane buff so player can either pump speed alone or perception for crit and starting ap (also it nice to have 10+ for spotting traps and treasure hunting).

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG