Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Divinity: Original Sin 2

[unfairlight]

For prison is correct. Go to hell, cuckold.

 

[aris]

For prison is correct. Go to hell, cuckold.

 

[Black]

 

[Darth Roxor]

meanwhile...

 

[Mortmal]

Nobody is arguing about this. The point was that you claimed that combat tactics change significantly over the mid/late game, and I argued that this is not true, because you get almost all tactical tools very early, and the same tactical routines you use in hour 5, remains viable and efficient in hour 55. Do you understand?

I understand your words, but with my party and in my playthrough I had to use more varied advanced techniques in the second half of the game than in the first half simply to survive. How can you say this is not true? Maybe you played a different character/skillset combination.

Nibba please.

I liked DOS2 and all but but combat difficulty is not its strong suit, just like the 1st game, and it doesn't really force you to do things differently to win, even on tactician.

You win early game DOS2 battles by quickly stripping the enemies of their armor and then crowd controlling them to death.
You win mid game DOS2 battles by quickly stripping the enemies of their armor and then crowd controlling them to death.
You win late game DOS2 battles by quickly stripping the enemies of their armor and then crowd controlling them to death.

Sure you get different tools as you go along, but the essence of every battle remains the same - strip enemy of their armor and crowd control them to death. Almost every single battle I fought involved chaining knockdown, battle ram and other AOE crowd control until all the enemies died. It wasn't even hard to get everyone in position because the AOE sizes were very generous. I remember there were a few enemies like the trolls that were immune to knockdowns but then I'd just use different CCs like charm or fear. It's literally a "one tactic wins all" game and the tactic is CC spam.

You dont have to do crowd control, i finished the game not using any , alpha strike with melee characters+ sneak and the teleport backstab. The best strategy is probably the two lone wolf summoners , sneak use fane source ability to allow a second turn, its extremely efficient. Some friend finished the game using strictly elemental mages, that guy first impressions was "finally a real rpg", last time he liked one was BG2.
Now your strategy dont have to evolve , anything that works on the island will work on the final fight too,you just get more efficient ablities and better loot. Its the same for 99% of the RPG .At least the game is open to multiple solutions for combat.

 

[Decado]

Darth Roxor, did you play on multiple difficulty levels for any decent length of time? Besides HP bloat, was there anything noticeable?

I'm asking because according to the wiki, there are several differences:

http://divinityoriginalsin.wiki.fextralife.com/Difficulty+Modes

But, I think I dropped down from "Tactical" to "Explorer" because I was getting bored and I noticed no difference, except smaller HP pools.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I played Tactician up to level 4 or 5, I think, then restarted on Classic because it was unbearable. The differences that stuck out to me I've noted in the review:

- Tactician has HP bloat.
- It makes enemies use grenades, which never happens in Classic.
- Otherwise, it doesn't make the AI any less retarded than it is on Classic when it comes to AoO suicidal tendencies or running back and forth/up and down ladders for no apparent purpose.

 

[unfairlight]

Darth Roxor
I dunno if your game was borked or something but I remember enemies clearly throwing grenades in Classic mode.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Ah wait, you're correct, I recall Trumpgoy throwing water balloons around on Classic for example.

But nevertheless, I'm sure they use (or carry) grenades very rarely on Classic, since that water balloon might be the only one I remember. IIRC on Tactician even the gambling prisoners at the start of Fort Joy would throw around nail bombs or sth, while that was definitely not the case in Classic.

 

[unfairlight]

I took physical damage grenades from one of the 4 guys that kept the kitchen in Fort Joy. I got them relatively often, I guess your mileage may vary depending on how retarded the AI wants to be.

 

[Suicidal]

You win DOS2 battles by quickly stripping the enemies of their armor and then crowd controlling them to death.

You generalize at a too high level of abstraction it becomes meaningless. In other games, it would just be winning battles by CCing enemies to death, or if there's no CCing, just bringing enemies' HPs to 0. Baldur's Gate to Fallout and AoD can be reduced to this, as can all FPSes. So what's your point? That DOS2 has a protection mechanism distinct from other games?

It's not the general pattern that's an issue with DOS2. It's pretty logical that you'd reduce enemies' defenses or find a way to bypass them before inflicting serious harm. That's like the basic internal story logic of any game with a defense system. What matters is how it's done. Saying that "every fight I have to defeat my enemies it's so repetitive" is a terrible argument.

So what's the problem then? That there's too much available CC abilities? Well, that's why there's the armor system, to make you work to be able to use them, so that you plan and choose specific targets for CCing by disabling their defenses first. Remember in DOS1 the pattern was just "Pump initiative, CC everything in the first turn before they act and skip the fight". That was terrible. It's clear that the initiative change and the armor system are a response to this. Were they the best possible solution with the best possible implementation, clearly not. But it's still an improvement over DOS1, because you get to play out the fight and use the mechanics in a targeted way according to a plan you make. I hope they do better next time, but at least fault the system for its faults, not for the premisses it shares with most combat systems. The armor system is not intrinsically bad.

Oh I'm not saying DOS1 was better - it was in fact worse in this regard, because you could nonstop CC enemies as soon as the fight started. But I played it before the enhanced edition so maybe they changed something there, I wouldn't know. DOS2 made an improvement in this area, but it was such a tiny and clumsy improvement that it doesn't really matter because of how easy it is to completely disable enemies in this game. My problem isn't "every fight I have to defeat my enemies it's so repetitive", but rather "every fight I use the exact same abilities and most enemies don't even get the chance to show my what they can do, it's so repetitive". I remember fighting the big werewolf guy in the forest and noticed how his wolf allies were giving him a stacking buff to damage and crit every turn I let them live. "Oh, that's a pretty cool mechanic" I thought - too bad the big werewolf guy spent the entire fight laying on his ass, unable to utilize the stacking buff his allies were giving him even once.

But I'll give you one thing - now that I think of it, aside from a pathetically small number of exceptions, 99% of RPG combat, no matter how complicated the systems are or how many abilities you have access to, devolves into checkbox ticking sooner or later.

 

[Ismaul]

"every fight I use the exact same abilities and most enemies don't even get the chance to show my what they can do, it's so repetitive"

That's a fair criticism. But then you have people claiming that enemies have bloated HP / Armor, which means in a way they'd like them to die sooner...

It's not an obvious thing to balance for the designer, you want enemies to be up enough to use their abilities and challenge the players, yet not overstay their welcome. You want players to be able to be clever and disable the hardest enemies by CCing, but you want those same big guys to be able to pack a bigger punch and not be disabled the whole fight. And you want the CCs to be useful, which means they need to be applied when the enemy still has some life in him, otherwise it'd just be better to kill him right away. Every RPG faces those issues if the character/combat system is complex enough.

The Armor system is meant to be a solution to this, and I don't find it terrible at all. But maybe the fact that the able/disabled status of enemies is so preditctible makes it perceived/felt as a foregone conclusion, and the fight as having a binary state rather than keeping something unexpected for the end. A CCed enemy is just an enemy waiting to die, and it seems pointless just to go through the motions of finishing him off. That might be the issue. Thing is though, in practice you don't and can't CC every enemy in a fight so there's still challenge / unexpectedness even at the back end of the fight, it's not pure finishing off gonna-be-dead CCed enemies.

I'm not sure what could be done to make the combat system better. Obviously, the initiative system was a misstep. The armor system, I personnally don't have a problem with it. I don't think a non-deterministic version would be better, even though it would make it seem better to some because of unpredictibility. I like making plans I know will work. DOS's surface system kind of requires it, because you're supposed to be planning and making combos, and if one part of the combo doesn't work due to RNG it's all pointless. So they've made this choice because it supports comboing better. Otherwise players would have to make contigency plans, not rely as much on combos because they could fail, and the whole idea behind the system would fall flat on its face.

Oh I'm not saying DOS1 was better - it was in fact worse in this regard, because you could nonstop CC enemies as soon as the fight started. But I played it before the enhanced edition so maybe they changed something there

Played the EE, it's the same.

 

[RK47]

 

[NotAGolfer]

Trans rights, alt rights, what's the difference?

 

[aris]

meanwhile...

Which is better and why?

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Trans rights, alt rights, what's the difference?

Only one of them has balls.

 

[RK47]

Can't wait for the rerun of POE review drama for POE2.
Delayed by Infinitom again.

 

[l3loodAngel]

Pretty much. "Balancing" a game by making all action equally pointless, boring numeric tackons is what is wrong with these games.

No idea when exactly that happened but at some point people apparently started to think that this is what balance means and then proceeded curbstomping everyone advocating for balance. Puzzling.

Yeah. Balance = No challenge. All the effort goes in to removing anything that can challenge player or at least make him stop and ponder. I guess it's the Cod crowd they are after and secretly every RPG creature wants to be bioware. I am not sure it's avoidable at this point.

 

[Azarkon]

I think it says a lot about a game that not only Darth Roxor, but even the people who were supposed to proof read his review, failed to get the basic system mechanics correct. I remember when I started playing this game, it took me about 5 minutes of search to find out that certain skills were better multipliers than others. The game's been out for more than six months now, so it's all been worked out, yet people still didn't bother to do the research. Compare this to Pillars of Eternity's in-depth analysis, which is often cited by both critics and fans of Obsidian's system, and where the Codex was definitely way ahead of other sites in analyzing the game, and the difference is obvious.

Basically, what it says to me is: reactions to this game are so indifferent among Codex writers, nobody wanted to waste time writing about it. Darth Roxor never finished the game, and nobody who has finished the game, cared enough to offer their own review in the six months in between its release and now. Unfortunately, I have to agree with this general feeling - I couldn't get through the game either, and dropped it much earlier around 20 hours.

 

[Tigranes]

I think it says a lot about a game that not only Darth Roxor, but even the people who were supposed to proof read his review, failed to get the basic system mechanics correct. I remember when I started playing this game, it took me about 5 minutes of search to find out that certain skills were better multipliers than others. The game's been out for more than six months now, so it's all been worked out, yet people still didn't bother to do the research. Compare this to Pillars of Eternity's in-depth analysis, which is often cited by both critics and fans of Obsidian's system, and where the Codex was definitely way ahead of other sites in analyzing the game, and the difference is obvious.

Basically, what it says to me is: reactions to this game are so indifferent among Codex writers, nobody wanted to waste time writing about it. Darth Roxor never finished the game, and nobody who has finished the game, cared enough to offer their own review in the six months in between its release and now. Unfortunately, I have to agree with this general feeling - I couldn't get through the game either, and dropped it much earlier around 20 hours.

Not sure which exact errors you're talking about, but POE had a serious and complex gameplay system designed for many different kinds of parties/builds (whether or not you think said system was actually any good), while DOS1/2 involve a pretty shallow and limited palate spiced up by a nice range of fun abilities (again, regardless of whether you thought that ended up with a nice fun game or not). There's really nothing to analyse one way or another when all your levelling decisions take about 3 seconds of thought.

 

[Azarkon]

I think it says a lot about a game that not only Darth Roxor, but even the people who were supposed to proof read his review, failed to get the basic system mechanics correct. I remember when I started playing this game, it took me about 5 minutes of search to find out that certain skills were better multipliers than others. The game's been out for more than six months now, so it's all been worked out, yet people still didn't bother to do the research. Compare this to Pillars of Eternity's in-depth analysis, which is often cited by both critics and fans of Obsidian's system, and where the Codex was definitely way ahead of other sites in analyzing the game, and the difference is obvious.

Basically, what it says to me is: reactions to this game are so indifferent among Codex writers, nobody wanted to waste time writing about it. Darth Roxor never finished the game, and nobody who has finished the game, cared enough to offer their own review in the six months in between its release and now. Unfortunately, I have to agree with this general feeling - I couldn't get through the game either, and dropped it much earlier around 20 hours.

Not sure which exact errors you're talking about, but POE had a serious and complex gameplay system designed for many different kinds of parties/builds (whether or not you think said system was actually any good), while DOS1/2 involve a pretty shallow and limited palate spiced up by a nice range of fun abilities (again, regardless of whether you thought that ended up with a nice fun game or not). There's really nothing to analyse one way or another when all your levelling decisions take about 3 seconds of thought.

The simplicity of the system makes the act of fucking it up all the more telling. I was referring to Ismaul's major correction of Darth Roxor on page 4. Ismaul is right, of course, and I encountered the same issue at level 2 when I was trying to figure out why you would ever pick class skills over weapon skills. Then I did a search and found the answer in five minutes. The Codex review didn't bother to do even that, and I'm not saying I blame the Codex or Darth Roxor personally, but it demonstrates how little people cared.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I remember when I started playing this game, it took me about 5 minutes of search to find out that certain skills were better multipliers than others.

I admire your inquisitiveness, it takes a whole new level of curiosity to perform an outside search just to compare +5% damage increases of everythin.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

I admire your OCD, it takes a whole new level of autism to perform an outside search just to compare +5% damage increases of everythin.

Fixed.

 

[Ismaul]

Hardy har
Who has time to learn the rules?
Not Mr. Reviewer
He's too clever
But if you ever
You're a retard
Hardy har


A true disgrace.

 

[Shadenuat]

Rules are rules because of being documented. The formulas of damage multipliers are not rules and player is not supposed to make judgements based on them.

If Roxor finished the game though, he would have found out that pumping only one skill is only good for first half of the game. For some skills many times so - Summoning is a prime example, but if you want mages to do damage and quickly learn all skills, you'd better to increase one magic skill before splitting into another too.

It's closer to end of the game where you can make characters like pyrostaffer with fire, fire buff on staff & warfare, and begin searching for alternative damage options, like choosing between weapon skill and backstab for example. You can play it differently, but why? Physical fighters pump Warfate & 1-3 (or none, if you have rings + skills or something) extra skills for more abilities, and that's that - for most of the game.

And to be honest... after years and years of being and OCD gamer in PC & P&P games and wargames to boot myself - I personally am completely tired of finding those extra 20 damage from whatever to my 600 basic damage, because it's banal and boring. I just want choices in character development and during conbat be interesting and challenging and surprise me. If they fixed the formula so Warfare and other skills would be equal for physical characters, it wouldn't really change anything. Character development in DOS2 would still be an MMO chore and +5%, and that's that.