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Divinity Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
Patron
Joined
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Messages
28,238
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
rather than going after rats with a battleaxe. And I'm the one who's playing this wrong?
Yup. Why aren't you going after the rats with a battleaxe?
 

Modron

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
9,937
Walking around in a forest, detecting mines. Such fun!
Yeah mine detection range really needs to scale with sight radius or something you are always like 2 steps from it when you discover even with high skill, and the formations of your companions often times walks them over it (and into lava) despite spotting them. Also they need to scale back the prevalence of them in most areas, I don't mind heavy entrenched buildings and the occasional trap/puzzle house/guarded treasure but there were 3-4 mine fields per map location and not to mention separate dungeons filled with them.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Finished it. The void dragon fight was pretty tough actually. OTOH I was "only" on level 19 for it and didn't prep all that carefully.

Mistake I was making was trying to finish him off fast, and then got swarmed by the summons, and also Astarte died -- I didn't realise I was also supposed to babysit a mopey goddess. When I did it the Divinity way -- slow and grindy, by meticulously dealing with the summons and only then the boss and making sure Astarte was healing all the time -- I managed it.

I'll prolly have a longer rant coming (although not a review, never fear -- I've decided only to review games I like from now on), but here's a very brief recap on my thoughts:

On the plus side:

(1) The combat mechanics are simple but rather good, and there's tons of stuff to mix up. The rock-paper-scissors damage-disable type/immunity thing was a bit dull, but stuff like summons, charms, and teleportation shook things up nicely.
(2) The encounter design was overall excellent, despite the size of the game. They weren't /all/ fantastic, mind, but many were, and they managed to keep things lively all the way to the end. My main beef with the combat was that it was too easy a lot of the time, but overall I enjoyed it a lot, and there were only one or two fights I actively disliked (e.g. the Hiberheim Guardian).
(3) The areas are nicely structured. It has something of a feel of an open world although it isn't really, and I like the way you can move between places to sort things out (e.g. Luculla -> Hiberheim -> Luculla).
(4) It's well executed. Runs flawlessly, very short loading times, only a couple of minor bugs I encountered.

On the minus side:

(1) The UI is unpleasant and unresponsive. It doesn't immediately respond to clicks. Sometimes this means stupd deaths, such as when combat mode ends and some of your characters are Poisoned or Burning, I frantically look for the guy with the counter and click it, and it won't respond --> die. This is stupid. It's also unpleasant even when not lethal.
(2) Character-buliding is one-dimensional. It''s either Strength, Dex/Ranged, Dex/Melee, or Intelligence, with a little bit of variation in them and the possibility to salt it up a bit by putting one pip in a complementary skill (e.g. aerotheurgy for a knight, for greater mobility, or rogue for a ranger, for speed and invisibility).
(3) The attribute system is so dumb it might as well not be there. The only attributes that matter are (primary) and Speed. Pump anything else, and you'll fall behind on (primary), which will lock you out of your level's best gear/lengthen your ability cooldowns, which means you're gimped. (Okay, very late in the game there's a little wiggle room, but still.)
(4) The loot system is awful, terribad, no-good, depressing, like straight ouf of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Randomly-generated, level-locked loot and a crafting system that trivialises any weapons and armour you might find. It turns this whole aspect of the game into a tedious, soul-crushing grind, when it should be one of the main drivers of it. For one thing, there's no way to build around items since the items are random, bland, and throwaway. And you guys were complaining about Pillars itemisation?
(5) Cooldowns baby. I thought the Codex was supposed to hate cooldowns? Why do you give them a pass here?
(6) Puzzles. Uniformly bad, tedious, pointless time sinks. They're either pixel-hunting for a hidden switch, interacting with random shit until something happens or you find a clue, or meticulously working through combinations, or idiotically applying the same technique over and over again. Yeah, teleporting a Sentinel out of the way was cool when I discovered it the first time. But the fifteenth time... augh, no. Autistic, boring, awful, terribad.
(7) Mines. They. Are. Fucking. EVERYWHERE! And while there are lots of ways to deal with them, none of them are interesting or exciting. You can pump Perception on one of your characters and scout forward, which is tedious. You can use the Fireball targeting circle as a mine detector and Fireball itself as a minesweeper, which is also tedious. You can use Perception potions etc. etc. All of these approaches are boring, tedious, and really fucking unpleasant the gorillionth time around. I mean once, yeah, sure, but again, and again, and again, and again, everywhere. FFS people
(8) Worldbuilding. As in, it's not even ethere. This isn't a fantasy world, it's a theme park, a random mishmash of elements thrown together, like an 11-year-old dungeon master in his first campaign.
(9) Writing. Bad. The humour is almost uniformly un-funny, again that prestigious and refined 11-year-old taste. As well as the mandatory loredumps in poorly-fastpainted cinematic interludes, books, and what have you. And you were complaining about Pillars' writing? Compared to this, it's fucking Dostoevsky and Raymond Chandler combined.
(10) Difficulty/level curve. The power curve in this game is steep, you literally go from zero to god. This puts serious constraints on the worldbuilding as (without level scaling) it will inevitably become a kind of a corridor; stray more than two ... maybe three levels or so off the path and you'll get clobbered. Also, Void Dragon notwithstanding, the difficulty doesn't keep up with the power curve -- after the early game, which was pretty hard, things got soporific fast. Only the final bossfight was kind of hardish for me, and as final bossfights go it wasn't /that/ hard -- and I was playing in Tactician mode, a level under the target, and didn't prep all that well.

Seriously people, if this is your idea of a great cRPG... I don't know what to think. Everything this does well, the likes of Battle Brothers or Pillars do better, and they don't do almost any of the really braindead stupid stuff that this trips on all the time.

I bought this game largely on the strength of the Codex's review. Rarely have I been so badly disappointed. The only genuinely satisfying thing about this was the fights, and I enjoyed that about Battle Brothers more. After a certain point the only thing that kept me going was a certain bloody-mindedness; I wanted to earn the right to shit-talk this game and figured this would do it.
 
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Prime Junta

Guest
When I did it the Divinity way -- slow and grindy

stopped reading right there

Okay, that was just a barb. Fast does work in combat most of the time (which is why I was attempting it here too). Everything else though /is/ slow and grindy -- puzzles, exploration, crafting, inventory management, item management, quests, exploration... everything.

Edit: seriously Roxor, you're such a fucking apostle of mediocrity. Somebody makes a bone fide attempt at worldbuilding, with a conlang or two, and it's "hwrpa dwrp." Someone tries to shake up non-combat mechanics, and it's "talking to people: the game." Someone makes a really fucking badass turn-based tactical game with a six-man team and a shoestring budget, and it's a "grind." But hey, somebody carefully recycles a tired old formula and puts in an Exploskeleton, and you jizz into your shorts. How in the name of Mog did you become some kind of arbiter of Codexian taste?
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
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Okay, that was just a barb. Fast does work in combat most of the time (which is why I was attempting it here too). Everything else though /is/ slow and grindy -- puzzles, exploration, crafting, inventory management, item management, quests, exploration... everything.

my experience with the game otoh was fast and furious

How in the name of Mog did you become some kind of arbiter of Codexian taste?

my mom used to call it animal magnetism
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,656
(5) Cooldowns baby. I thought the Codex was supposed to hate cooldowns? Why do you give them a pass here?

Getting mad about cooldowns was one of those things they thought they hated until they played a game with them they enjoyed, see also Underrail.

Mines. They. Are. Fucking. EVERYWHERE!

I honestly don't remember much of these. Maybe the EE added more? Wasteland 2 was far more of a mine-fest.

seriously Roxor, you're such a fucking apostle of mediocrity...But hey, somebody carefully recycles a tired old formula and puts in an Exploskeleton, and you jizz into your shorts. How in the name of Mog did you become some kind of arbiter of Codexian taste?

Don't forget his fondness for the Shadowruns. :troll:
 

Seaking4

Learned
Joined
Sep 4, 2014
Messages
362
Shadowrun is good for what it is (nothing more than that though). People that like Alpha Protocol are the true heralds of the decline.

Anyways, I enjoyed Original Sin until it turned boring. Once the great combat encounters disappear you're just left with a subpar experience for the rest of the game which is disappointing.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
The Shadowruns are all right. I liked Dragonfall especially. Not much reason to go back to them once you've played them through once or, perhaps, twice though. The atmosphere and music are a big part of it.
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
Patron
Joined
Oct 19, 2009
Messages
27,385
Location
Copenhagen
Roxor is apologetic about things he likes and overly critical about things he does not, news at 11

read: Shadowrun Returns

nah, read: Risen :troll:
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,405
Location
Djibouti
i am pleased that you are still so butthurt about that poe review i must say
 

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