I can't get into Divinity OS games and i can't figure why.

[kangaxx]

I don't think they're as bad as people on here say, but they have flaws. The loot system and scaling is atrocious, and you're swimming in useless items before you know it. The environment is too interactive if anything (weird complaint, but it gets tiresome having to search 100 drawers and cupboards in each room). Crafting is pointless and basically a byzantine optional extra, save for one or two minor side quests.

I can see why the loot and hyperactive environment alone would put people off to be honest.

 

[DraQ]

The environment is too interactive if anything (weird complaint, but it gets tiresome having to search 100 drawers and cupboards in each room).

That's not too much interactivity. That's just every boring crate or grain sack potentially containing phat lewt.

 

[Desiderius]

The environment is too interactive if anything (weird complaint, but it gets tiresome having to search 100 drawers and cupboards in each room).

That's not too much interactivity. That's just every boring crate or grain sack potentially containing phat lewt.

That will be obsolete in half a level.

 

[anvi]

You are probably playing the EE which is bad. The original was better. Still kinda dumb though but probably worth a play through for most people. DoS2 not so much.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I've just started playing Divinity: Original Sin and am rather enjoying it. I started with a ranger and a fire/earth wizard, and just picked up a two-handed sword wielding meat shield and a second wizard that specializes in water/air. I'm a sucker for trying to solve mysteries, and there are a few to try and solve right at the start of the game. I wasn't sure if I was going to like the combat, but the two wizards give me a lot of different combat options, such as spreading oil on the ground and then lighting it up with my ranger's fire arrow or a fire spell, and having my second wizard teleport enemies in the middle of the flames. You can also take advantage of the environment in combat, and it's turn-based, which I also like. I'm only a few hours in but my enjoyment of the game is increasing the more I play.

I don't own the second game, but it's rated better than this one on metacritic.

 

[Tigranes]

I've just started playing Divinity: Original Sin and am rather enjoying it. I started with a ranger and a fire/earth wizard, and just picked up a two-handed sword wielding meat shield and a second wizard that specializes in water/air. I'm a sucker for trying to solve mysteries, and there are a few to try and solve right at the start of the game. I wasn't sure if I was going to like the combat, but the two wizards give me a lot of different combat options, such as spreading oil on the ground and then lighting it up with my ranger's fire arrow or a fire spell, and having my second wizard teleport enemies in the middle of the flames. You can also take advantage of the environment in combat, and it's turn-based, which I also like. I'm only a few hours in but my enjoyment of the game is increasing the more I play.

I don't own the second game, but it's rated better than this one on metacritic.

Enjoy that mystery feeling, because it doesn't come back after Cyseal.

Second one is 'bigger bigger bigger' but not necessarily better.

 

[Ontopoly]

The best thing I ever did was put down that absolute garbage of a game. You're on the right track in life. Next thing you need to do is play Dos2 because people tell you it's so much better than the original. It's still horrible, but at least you'll learn your lesson this time and will be able to shit talk the entire company whenever they come up.

 

[kangaxx]

The environment is too interactive if anything (weird complaint, but it gets tiresome having to search 100 drawers and cupboards in each room).

That's not too much interactivity. That's just every boring crate or grain sack potentially containing phat lewt.

It kind of amounts to the same thing IMO. If you need to search every crate or potentially miss out on loot then it's boring game design. This is made worse by the fact that there's no "system" per se, and you do very occasionally find unique weapons in items of furniture.

There is one bit

Spoiler

in Arx in particular when you're presented with a huge underground library

... containing something like 30 bookcases with 3 shelves each maybe even two sections per shelf. I actually stopped playing for the day so that I could approach the 'looting' with fresh eyes.

For me the BG series strikes a far better balance between searching and rewarding the player.

 

[Slaver1]

Nice to see this sentiment is becoming ingrained in the community. The strong commercial success of DOS2 on PC exemplifies the appalling taste of rubes on Steam. They haven't yet discovered a trashy, memefied, multiplayer/CO-OP game that they won't scoop up in huge numbers.

 

[kangaxx]

Nice to see this sentiment is becoming ingrained in the community. The strong commercial success of DOS2 on PC exemplifies the appalling taste of rubes on Steam. They haven't yet discovered a trashy, memefied, multiplayer/CO-OP game that they won't scoop up in huge numbers.

I don't think DOS2 is bad, just that it had very notable flaws. If they addressed the atrocious loot system and kept the momentum from Act 1 going then it could have been really good.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

DOS2 became hated here the moment it became popular. Popular = bad, gotta appear cool and hip to the fellow codexers.

 

[Zarniwoop]

They're really only fun for the combat. I enjoyed the combat in both games quite a bit (the first one more than the second tho, fuck the round robin initiative and the armor system), but the story especially in the first game was so utterly forgettable I don't remember a single thing about it. Except for the cheese merchant. I do remember a couple of combat encounters though.

Pretty much this.

The impenetrable armor Tacticool Mode in 2 is shit, otherwise the fights are the reason to play this game. That and the interactive world.

Don't expect a 2deepforu story or some gay shit like that.

Oh and be prepared to kill Braccus Rex like at least 5 times per game. That fucker just doesn't know how to stay dead.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I've just started playing Divinity: Original Sin and am rather enjoying it. I started with a ranger and a fire/earth wizard, and just picked up a two-handed sword wielding meat shield and a second wizard that specializes in water/air. I'm a sucker for trying to solve mysteries, and there are a few to try and solve right at the start of the game. I wasn't sure if I was going to like the combat, but the two wizards give me a lot of different combat options, such as spreading oil on the ground and then lighting it up with my ranger's fire arrow or a fire spell, and having my second wizard teleport enemies in the middle of the flames. You can also take advantage of the environment in combat, and it's turn-based, which I also like. I'm only a few hours in but my enjoyment of the game is increasing the more I play.

I don't own the second game, but it's rated better than this one on metacritic.

Wait until you discover the ultimate, awesome combat cheese

Spoiler

Teleport enemies into lava for insta-death

 

[felipepepe]

Also could never finish them... hell, D:OS2 I just played like 3-4 hours.

Which is weird, I like Larian games, finished Divine Divinity, Divinity 2 and even Dragon Commander. Their humour doesn't bother me. I even thought I was burned out on RPGs, or maybe tired of isometric party games after Dark Souls spoiled me.... but nope, gave up on D:OS2 and then had a blast playing 100+ hours of Pillars of Eternity II.

I'm happy for this thread, because it's something really hard to put in words... in theory they should be all that I wanted, but the execution never hits.

Reading some of the comments here, the problem seems to a combination of several factors: I'm playing it by myself, I really dislike the character & item system, the wacky world lacks "weight" and they all start by throwing you in a huge area with a billion quirky NPCs and quests. It's ten times more overwhelming than Baldur's Gate II's Athkatla, and that city came up after a solid dungeon crawl and some strong character & plot hooks.

So you start the game, see that there's a billion things to do, none of them matters much, the progression doesn't look like it's going nowhere and you have 80+ hours of this to beat the game. In a sense, feels like a GTA/Saint's Row-like take on RPGs, so I can definitely see the appeal, but it's a hard sell for me :/

 

[Cyberarmy]

Finished the first one both single and coop. Coop was especially fun fooling around, killing ourseleves with friendly fire and such.
Second game was kinda boring , finished it once and kicked it into the abyss of "never to play again" games. In 2nd game they tried to focus on story, serious writing(lol) and companions while not upgrading combat. Hell armor system and turn order is a massive downgrade.
Can't get hyped for BG3, even a little tbh. Especially that now we have Pathfinder games.

Edit: Still loving Divine Divinty games btw. Replayed the first game and still had fun.

 

[kangaxx]

So you start the game, see that there's a billion things to do, none of them matters much, the progression doesn't look like it's going nowhere and you have 80+ hours of this to beat the game. In a sense, feels like a GTA/Saint's Row-like take on RPGs, so I can definitely see the appeal, but it's a hard sell for me :/

I think the beginning of DOS2 is the best bit. You're on a mysterious prison island and need to get off, and you get a real sense of progression as you level up from piss weak to half decent. Fort Joy has some nice dungeon areas to sneak around in, and there are some fun quests on the island.

But then you get off the island, following a really exciting boss fight, and the story just loses all direction and focus. It's the same kind of gameplay loop but on a map 4x as large, and the focus of the last chapter (escape!) is gone. Insta-death comes quickly in this act if you happen to stumble upon the wrong fights.

It's at this point that you begin to realise how much pointless loot there is in the game, because you can spend 15-20 mins at a time in the town square listening to that annoying bint say "KeEpInG iT ToGeThEr BrEe" a million times whilst you sell everything and upgrade your weapons/armour... again.

 

[JDR13]

Hell armor system and turn order is a massive downgrade.

How is the turn order different from how it worked in the first game?

Still loving Divine Divinty games btw. Replayed the first game and still had fun.

DD was pretty good except for the endgame which was a slog. Dragon Knight Saga was even better imo.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Hell armor system and turn order is a massive downgrade.

How is the turn order different from how it worked in the first game?

Still loving Divine Divinty games btw. Replayed the first game and still had fun.

DD was pretty good except for the endgame which was a slog. Dragon Knight Saga was even better imo.

First game had standart initative turn order, if all of your party had high enough initiative you can play before enemy. Pretty standart turn based RPG system. Leadership was important.

Second game had forced 1 turn for your guys, 1 turn for the enemy. You can have two high initiative guys with similar numbers but one of them still had play after the enemy who had much lower initiative then him. Initiative became a dump stat except one party member.

Edit: Also in 2nd game when an enemy dies all of the other enemies turns will be reshuffled into the cascading turn order, so they will essentially get their turns one turn sooner than the previous round. This can lead to some battles where an enemy gets 2 turns seemingly back to back.

 

[DraQ]

It kind of amounts to the same thing IMO. If you need to search every crate or potentially miss out on loot then it's boring game design. This is made worse by the fact that there's no "system" per se, and you do very occasionally find unique weapons in items of furniture.

It is NOT the same thing. If you could reasonably expect sacks of grain to only ever contain grain* then you would have no reason to ever search them unless you wanted grain specifically (or wanted to hide something in them yourself).

*

Any exceptions being explicitly signaled in one way or another - for example you find someone's note that they hid a shipment of magical weapons in sacks in SE corner of the warehouse.

 

[anvi]

DoS2 had its moments but it is worse than the first game because fewer AP and the stupid armor system. It makes control magic weak. You can change all this with mods but then the game balance is wrong. Also the loot is a constant chore and the zomg super awesome spells that need a timesink to recharge was a terrible idea too. Other than that... it was mostly DoS1 all over again.

 

[kangaxx]

It is NOT the same thing. If you could reasonably expect sacks of grain to only ever contain grain* then you would have no reason to ever search them unless you wanted grain specifically (or wanted to hide something in them yourself).

Ok, you're being quite pedantic here but my point remains the same.

No such exception system is in place, and you often find things other than grain in the grain sacks. The loot is randomly generated. So it does amount to the same thing, even if it isn't TECHNICALLY the same.

With an exception system in place it would be fine.

 

[DraQ]

It is NOT the same thing. If you could reasonably expect sacks of grain to only ever contain grain* then you would have no reason to ever search them unless you wanted grain specifically (or wanted to hide something in them yourself).

Ok, you're being quite pedantic here but my point remains the same.

No such exception system is in place, and you often find things other than grain in the grain sacks. The loot is randomly generated. So it does amount to the same thing, even if it isn't TECHNICALLY the same.

No, it amounts to very different things. You are behaving like those retarded parents who campaigned to ban capped pens at one point because their also retarded son choked to death on one in school. You completely miss the entire fucking actual problem, concentrating on superficial symptoms instead.

"Omg, the patient has severe jaundice, it's liver damage, we need to act fast!
Quickly, let's paint them in fleshier tones!"

With an exception system in place it would be fine.

Without exception system it would also be fine. You'd still have sacks of grain containing grain (+ whatever else you put in as a player), that you could also throw at the enemy, or for example set aflame and throw into a puddle of oil.
You don't even need a system to have exception - it's all just content, sacks of grain should contain grain by default but there is nothing preventing you from putting something else in a specific one, and putting some breadcrumbs leading to it.
The problem is an exception system - randomized one, so player has no way of finding the exceptions other than exhaustive search.

 

[kangaxx]

So... the way the game's systems are set up you're forced to interact with everything to check for loot, and the environment is filled with things you can interact with... not sure I really said anything more or less than this?

I don't really disagree with you, but you could probably drop the insults over some imprecise wording on a gaming forum.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

DOS2 became hated here the moment it became popular. Popular = bad, gotta appear cool and hip to the fellow codexers.

Or maybe you know, the fact that they somehow make a lot of thing worse than DOS 1 without really fixing anything about the problems DOS 1 had.

The only thing DOS2 managed to be better is writing tone which is taken more seriously. The quality of the writing, itemization, character development issues are still there from DOS 1. They also managed to take out the fun of the combat from DOS 1 due to the introduction of the stupid Armor system. Doubling down on muh fun meme co-op to the point single player is affectefd negatively.

But sure. we hate it only because it is popular.

 

[Cat Dude]

Well, even Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor is more monocled than Divinity OS.

Maybe try ToEE if you haven't already. Or Silent Storm.

ToEE is more like combat-focused Icewind Dale but in turn based