God DAMN Divinity II is addictive

[thesoup]

Just skip the expansion, he says.

Skip TO the expansion, dammit.

Fugg. Failed my reading comprehension check.

 

[Metro]

Said it before in this thread but couldn't get past more than ten or so hours because the engine (Gamebryo) makes the combat feel like shit. Death sentence for an action rpg.

Just skip to the expansion.

Not sure how that changes things.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Just skip to the expansion.

Not sure how that changes things.

It means you waste less of your valuable time before quitting in disgust.

 

[Mangoose]

Said it before in this thread but couldn't get past more than ten or so hours because the engine (Gamebryo) makes the combat feel like shit. Death sentence for an action rpg.

Just skip to the expansion.

Not sure how that changes things.

There's more and better non-combat quests?

 

[T. Reich]

Frankly, I've never considered DKS (the non-add-on part) a combat-heavy game, I kinda feel that exploration of environment is a much more prominent element of gameplay. Most of the combat felt like sort of an afterthought and wasn't really challenging or grindy for the most part.

The only annoying combat was in the fortresses, but all of them are optional, both in the sense that a) they feature no main story quests and b) you don't really need to grind them to pass the level/gear check of the final game area. They do feature some phat loot and some quests for your tower's masters, but, really, that's stuff for completists mainly.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Frankly, I've never considered DKS (the non-add-on part) a combat-heavy game, I kinda feel that exploration of environment is a much more prominent element of gameplay. Most of the combat felt like sort of an afterthought and wasn't really challenging or grindy for the most part.

If there was that much to explore then I'd partially agree with you, but it's a very small game world with not a lot to explore. That was my overwhelming memory of the game - seeing places I'd like to go but being unable to go to them. It looked like an open world game (Two Worlds 2 comes to mind) but it's mostly on rails. The other memory of the game I have is combat, combat, combat - I can only vaguely remember what the plot was about. I enjoyed it for the most part, but found it frustrating as I felt it had a lot of unfullfilled potential.

 

[T. Reich]

If there was that much to explore then I'd partially agree with you, but it's a very small game world with not a lot to explore. That was my overwhelming memory of the game - seeing places I'd like to go but being unable to go to them. It looked like an open world game (Two Worlds 2 comes to mind) but it's mostly on rails. The other memory of the game I have is combat, combat, combat - I can only vaguely remember what the plot was about. I enjoyed it for the most part, but found it frustrating as I felt it had a lot of unfullfilled potential.

I'll agree with some of your points as well.
The world is kinda small, especially once you get the dragon form. The first game was both much larger and had a higher content density (except the last act, which was obviously rushed and feels exactly the same as the fortresses in DKS).
The whole "combat, combat, combat" thing is also understandable, given that, unlinke the first game, there are very few hubs of civilization, so the amount of non-combat quests is limited, and so is the quest-to-combat ratio.
However, the world isn't really limited. Sure, you can't go to Orobas Fjords right away (beyond the entry point, that is), and it's a little disappointing, but the fjords were obviously designed as a dragon-mode area mostly. The valley village area limitation is also understandable, since it serves as a starter area, and it's very short anyway. Once you get access to the valley itself, you're free to roam as you wish. And once you get to the Sentinel Island (but before forcing confrontation with that no-nose guy) you are free to roam both the island and the valley. The areas you couldn't reach by foot are very few, and they contain nothing but modest loot anyway.

 

[Zeriel]

If there was that much to explore then I'd partially agree with you, but it's a very small game world with not a lot to explore. That was my overwhelming memory of the game - seeing places I'd like to go but being unable to go to them. It looked like an open world game (Two Worlds 2 comes to mind) but it's mostly on rails. The other memory of the game I have is combat, combat, combat - I can only vaguely remember what the plot was about. I enjoyed it for the most part, but found it frustrating as I felt it had a lot of unfullfilled potential.

I'll agree with some of your points as well.
The world is kinda small, especially once you get the dragon form. The first game was both much larger and had a higher content density (except the last act, which was obviously rushed and feels exactly the same as the fortresses in DKS).
The whole "combat, combat, combat" thing is also understandable, given that, unlinke the first game, there are very few hubs of civilization, so the amount of non-combat quests is limited, and so is the quest-to-combat ratio.
However, the world isn't really limited. Sure, you can't go to Orobas Fjords right away (beyond the entry point, that is), and it's a little disappointing, but the fjords were obviously designed as a dragon-mode area mostly. The valley village area limitation is also understandable, since it serves as a starter area, and it's very short anyway. Once you get access to the valley itself, you're free to roam as you wish. And once you get to the Sentinel Island (but before forcing confrontation with that no-nose guy) you are free to roam both the island and the valley. The areas you couldn't reach by foot are very few, and they contain nothing but modest loot anyway.

Yeah, they discussed this in the DKS anthology. The game was going to have a whole 'nother area and city in addition to what they put in DKS expansion, it's definitely a victim of a serious amount of cut content.

 

[Durandal]

Do I get the Director's Cut or Dragon Knight Saga?
I need to satiate my ARPG hunger.

 

[Zeriel]

They're basically the same. Director's Cut just has a cheatmode you'd never use if you're a normal person + some videos you can find on youtube.

 

[Nomad_Blizz]

Do I get the Director's Cut or Dragon Knight Saga?
I need to satiate my ARPG hunger.

It's the same thing. Director's Cut (in developer mode) just allows you to use cheats.

 

[Metro]

Said it before in this thread but couldn't get past more than ten or so hours because the engine (Gamebryo) makes the combat feel like shit. Death sentence for an action rpg.

Just skip to the expansion.

Not sure how that changes things.

There's more and better non-combat quests?

Well I wouldn't play an action rpg for non-combat quests.

 

[Mangoose]

Said it before in this thread but couldn't get past more than ten or so hours because the engine (Gamebryo) makes the combat feel like shit. Death sentence for an action rpg.

Just skip to the expansion.

Not sure how that changes things.

There's more and better non-combat quests?

Well I wouldn't play an action rpg for non-combat quests.

Uh.. if those quests are noncombat then you're not playing an action-RPG during those quests. Unless you're somehow only interested in playing action-RPGs.

I don't even consider Div: Original Sin to be a pure RPG. It's an adventure-RPG hybrid. Puzzles, dicking around with teleport, secret areas, etc. If it were just combat it'd be mind-numbing as it's not Gothic I/II or Risen I.

There's a reason I play Larian games. That reason is there's enough non-combat content (well, besides Div II vanilla) that is really interesting and fun. And still depends on your character build to some extent (again, RPG hybrid).

 

[Metro]

ur ghey

My point is the writing in DII is utterly forgettable so why would I play it for the quests? The non-combat content in D:OS blows the doors off of the non-combat content in DII. Never mind the fact the combat itself is vastly superior. You can't save a bad game by isolating 25% of its content and holding it up on a pedestal when that content itself is fairly mediocre.

 

[Durandal]

I wouldn't say that the writing in DII is completely. But yeah, Original Sin is the better game.
II just makes me wish I was playing Dragon's Dogma instead, or that there was a Dragon's Dogma PC port for that matter. How come you can't block with your shield? The game feels too much like a MMO.

 

[Gnidrologist]

My point is the writing in DII is utterly forgettable

This is utter bs. Are you per chance a BG series fan?

 

[Durandal]

I got to a hill isolated by a river and the mountains. To get up that hill, I had to cross a pass. Midway that pass, I got ambushed by bandits from both sides, which I escaped from after somersaulting backwards like a madman and then killing them all afterwards.
Somewhere up that hill, I got to some kind of broken shrine. A whimsical wizard appeared out of nowhere, and summoned a pack of goblins which were combined weaker than the bandits individually I encountered before. He told me that I could only pass if I killed these goblins. I did, and the wizard was nowhere to be seen afterwards.
At the top of that hill, I found three people asleep. I had to mindread them all to find out what they were dreaming about. They could only wake up if I placed a specific item in their hands. This cost me 900xp. As a thanking gift, they gave me a worthless gem, and they ran off. There was nothing more on that hill, so I went back down.

What the fuck is up with the NPC placement in this game?

 

[T. Reich]

I got to a hill isolated by a river and the mountains. To get up that hill, I had to cross a pass. Midway that pass, I got ambushed by bandits from both sides, which I escaped from after somersaulting backwards like a madman and then killing them all afterwards.
Somewhere up that hill, I got to some kind of broken shrine. A whimsical wizard appeared out of nowhere, and summoned a pack of goblins which were combined weaker than the bandits individually I encountered before. He told me that I could only pass if I killed these goblins. I did, and the wizard was nowhere to be seen afterwards.
At the top of that hill, I found three people asleep. I had to mindread them all to find out what they were dreaming about. They could only wake up if I placed a specific item in their hands. This cost me 900xp. As a thanking gift, they gave me a worthless gem, and they ran off. There was nothing more on that hill, so I went back down.

What the fuck is up with the NPC placement in this game?

> Calling malachite a worthless gem
> Not digging Belegar
> Questioning the wonderfully whimsical nature of special encounters that is one of the Divinity series' distinctive traits.

Who are you? What are you doing here?

 

[Durandal]

I'm not that far in the game, so the uses of Malachite are unknown to a layman such as myself.
I'm quite digging the encounter design (one mage in the town says not all wizards are whimsical weirdos with pointy hats engraved with stars and a long white beard, then the next moment I'm woken up by a whimsical weirdo with a pointy hat engraved with stars and a long white beard), but a question popped into my head wondering if Larian just tried to cram as much side-content as possible into any side-area with little regard as to how those different bits and piece would connect together. I guess this is like Anachronox where you want to explore and talk to all the NPCs just to see what kind of odd shit you will find, not to find every possible sidequest.

 

[T. Reich]

You'll find all sorts of odd shit as you keep playing and exploring. What you've seen so far isn't even too far out.

As for malachite, you want to hoard as much of it as you can find (you won't find much). Let's just say that there are quests that give you a choice of either a malachite gem or two, or one or two skill points. Some people actually advocate taking malachite over skill points, depending on your priorities.

 

[DraQ]

Just skip the expansion, he says.

Skip TO the expansion, dammit.

Still retarded given that the expansion follows from vanilla's ending.

ur ghey

My point is the writing in DII is utterly forgettable

The fuck you're on?
Especially given you praise out of combat content in D:OS, a game that's pretty much completely kept afloat by combat and combat alone (aside from music but that's something Larian games up to this point have had in common ).
Yes, there were some nicely structured quests and I can genuinely see and appreciate this sort of nuance to game design but the writing was completely unengaging - currently I've halted my playthrough and I'm waiting for EE as I would restart anyway.

OTOH while mechanically and structurally not nearly as good, DII - even vanilla, prior to expansion - just kept me hooked, not in small part thanks to off-the-wall humour.

I wouldn't say that the writing in DII is completely. But yeah, Original Sin is the better game.

With actually forgettable writing.

 

[Multidirectional]

D:OS has way superior gameplay mechanics, no doubt, and therefore I'd rate it a lot higher than DKS. But writing in DKS is tons more enjoyable and jokes in it are actually funny. Like I wrote in D:OS EE thread, I suspect it's at least in part thanks to DKS being a fully voiced game which kept it from getting too verbose. Sometimes limits on quantity of writing are a good thing.

 

[DraQ]

D:OS has way superior gameplay mechanics, no doubt, and therefore I'd rate it a lot higher than DKS. But writing in DKS is tons more enjoyable and jokes in it are actually funny. Like I wrote in D:OS EE thread, I suspect it's at least in part thanks to DKS being a fully voiced game which kept it from getting too verbose. Sometimes limits on quantity of writing are a good thing.

TBH I'd rate DKS higher because it was a more interesting and more memorable experience to me even with much inferior (but still borderline enjoyable) combat, not as well structured quests and lack of systemic interactivity D:OS has.

D:OS is too "dry" an experience for me to be fully enjoyable and too combat centric to benefit from the broad systemic interactivity it has (like the way it allows player to manipulate containers) which is a damn shame. If the most memorable character player has ever met (not in the entire game, mind you, but in the entire first area) is a dog you're probably doing something wrong.
It's not that I find "dry" and serious experiences inherently unenjoyable, for example the entire TES series is about as dry as it gets, but you really need much more care put in your setting than I believe Larian to be capable of to pull this off.
In D:OS I just struggled to care about what's happening - slow (in a bad way) start seem to be a running theme with Larian games (my first playthrough of Divinity 2 stalled at that first goblin camp in the Broken Valley), but I don't think It's ever gotten as bad as in D:OS where you essentially start off as a pair of glorified inquisitors with hardly a reason to care about anything you're supposed to be doing. In comparison D2 sets the mood right in the intro (dat zeppelin, landscapes, music) and the "twist" to the protag's profession player couldn't have cared less about has thankfully been spoiled by each and every material about the game including its title.

And yeah, VOs are used splendidly in D2, which helps carry its particular brand of humour. D:OS doesn't have much humour to begin with, which is bad in a Larian game (it feels as if all writers capable of Larian's trademark humour were shunted to work on DC).
Brevity would have helped here as dry infodumps are only as interesting as info they contain and, with all due respect, Rivellon is nowhere near Nirn as far as interesting settings are concerned.

Overall D:OS was made entirely by its excellent (but not flawless) combat system, none of the numerous other things D:OS does right (exploration is about as good as physically possible in an essentially 2D title, pacing is good, music is divine, systems are deep, quest structure is nicely tied together) could even hope to keep it afloat despite player's initial and persisting disinterest - which is something I really hope they'll fix in EE.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Writing is about the best thing DIV2 has about it. I'd never keep playing it if not for that. Narrator, snarky protag's remarks and Belegar's rhyming are high points of the game.

 

[GrainWetski]

Writing is about the best thing DIV2 has about it. I'd never keep playing it if not for that. Narrator, snarky protag's remarks and Belegar's rhyming are high points of the game.

It also has one of the best soundtracks in gaming.