Divinity: Original Sin 2 needs some Love!

Sadly there is probably no one on staff that will champion one of the top games of the year, Divinity: Original Sin 2. (Could they have named it something worse?) It is a turn-based RPG that is extremely long and has a steep initial learning curve. So basically it doesn't exist to anyone at GB right now. But this game is quality and fun all the way through. It has deep combat, great graphics and UI, and tons of dialog choices that are fully voice acted. It is kinda like if Baldur's Gate and XCOM had a baby. It stands out to me in a year of standouts.

The game is character driven. There is a story moving you along, but you are really in it just to see the next wacky thing that happens or fight the next wacky battle. You can stir up a poison gas cloud over your enemies and then ignite the cloud in a huge fiery explosion. You can teleport an enemy onto a pile of flaming goo half way across the map. Or grab that pesky mage from up on the inaccessible wall and plop him right down next to your tank and your back stabbing assassin. You can make a deal with a rat (the rodent kind) to help you solve a puzzle or get a treasure. Or sneak up next to the dude that wouldn't deal with you and steal the item out of his pocket without getting caught. Or get caught and have to fight. So many options. Moral choices to make at every turn. Brilliant!

I can't love this game more if I tried!

Honestly, I'm on my 3rd full play-through and I'm having so much fun with it. Definitely in my top 10 all-time favorite games ever.

It's a massive, challenging, deep fantasy RPG. Of course they didn't want to play it, that is like the opposite of their wheelhouse. Vinny and Rorie gave it a shot, but when Vinny brought it up on the Beastcast, it was met with groans and jeers.

@justin258: Understandably so, to say this game is a commitment is putting it mildly. It takes around 60 hours to beat it and that's if you're mainlining it. Double that if you want to do everything. Most players will be somewhere in between and that is a lot of hours to sink into a game in a year where there are so many games battling for your attention. I really like Divinity 2 but I surely don't begrudge anyone intimidated by it.

I pounded my head against the wall with the first Divinty OG Sin, but I feel the sequel has a much smoother ramp-up in difficulty.

DOS2 is def. in Witcher 3 territory with the crew (probably even less appreciated than W3). It's weird because DOS2 is an almost-perfect ARPG to me. The amount of lateral-thinking the game rewards is insane. It does the opposite of that thing in GTA games where, you have an idea to solve a mission, but it's not what the designers had in mind, so it doesn't work. DOS2 is the antithesis to that idea.

I'm really disappointed they haven't done co op feature yet.

People want playdates, this would be ideal. Just a one-off. To be honest, it would be for me to understand it better for a risky buy (probably during steam sale for a few dollars off). I've never played these kinds of games before, though I just gave Planetscape a little effort. I'm very curious watching some one with more experience, though there's you-tube, wiki's and such research also. Just not the good entertainment of GB.

I had my problems with DOS2 but it's likely my game of the year. Thing is, i'm not as enthusiastic about the games that came out this year as i was last year.

Divinity is a really really good game. Can’t remember the last time I did two simultaneous playthroughs of a game but I

Am happily doing so right now. One solo, one with friends. Its like the perfect fusion of jrpg tactical combat with old school bioware narrative flexibility.

Other than the bizarre one-off occurrence when Patrick played through and reviewed the first one, this site could not be less geared towards the kind of game that Divinity Original Sin 2 is. I don't think it's unfair to say that the staff has a slight bias against longer (20+ hour) games and has seemingly negative interest in super dense, involved RPGs. There are exceptions, obviously (both Alex and Ben finished Persona 5 this year) but if an open-world, action-focused RPG like The Witcher 3 didn't get serious traction on this website, there's no chance in hell that turn-based, systems-heavy Original Sin 2 was.

I can't entirely blame them though. Even as someone who loves these sorts of games, I still have trouble getting through them sometimes. I got like 20 hours into OS2 before getting distracted by other stuff, and while I intend to get back to it around the holidays, it's still a hell of a commitment. If you're playing a raw numbers game (like, say, if you're trying to play as much stuff as possible before your website does Game of the Year awards) then it's simply a more efficient use of your time to play a bunch of smaller games that everyone on staff is going to talk about than one that no one else gives a shit about.

I accepted a long time ago that Giant Bomb isn't the place to go for strategy game or old school RPG love. It's fine, I just go other places for that. The important thing is D:OS 2 is selling very well and Larian will be able to make more games.

Definitely my favorite game of the year and it's not particularly close, though Nier's pretty awesome. No one on the staff cares, obviously, but it got a lot of love from the venues that do care for those sorts of games, and it seemed like it was doing well sales-wise, so I didn't particularly care or even make note of the guys ignoring it.

It's definitely heartening how many people I've seen reflecting positively on the game, though. It definitely had (and presumably still has, though I've been taking a break before another play-through) some issues at launch, be it with general balancing or the armor / initiative changes, but I still found it delightful and completely engrossing. Sometimes I get worried that big, sprawling, complex, mechanically dense games like this — where the initial learning curve can be as long as a full play-through of a AAA game's main-campaign — have fallen too far out of favor with the broader crowd. It's nice to see that games have gotten big enough that even niche productions like DOS2 can have resources dumped into them and find an audience large enough to justify that investment.

I am happy to hear about so many others finding and enjoying this game despite it not being mentioned very much. It is just kind of sad to think that if GotY had a Turn Based category that Mario Rabbids would likely win over Divinity2 or War of the Chosen. Somehow 3+ of them found time to play through most or all of Rabbids. Marketing, I guess.

Yeah, Vinny should use Game Master Mode to create a feature for the site. Force Dan, Abby, and Alex to play in it. Could be a fine show.