Quick Look: Divinity: Original Sin II

I'm on the hardest difficult and my party is a lightning/dual wield dude, a straight fighter, a rogue, and a cleric/mage/summoner hybrid. I have a pretty varied party that I just sort of made on the fly and it works fine. Going pure physical would probably suck because the only real CC is a one knock downs and some enemies have absurd amounts of physical armor but almost no magic armor. Mages get a bunch of debuffs/cc on top of all their damage having innate dots/slows/stuns, they can combo elements to create huge terrain hazards (ie water+frost=frozen enemies+giant ice field that causes one turn knock downs when people walk on it)

Were they really finding it that hard? My only CRPG experience was the first game and this adds a bit over that, but I've never found either anywhere near the realm of "brutally difficult." Yeah, you die pretty often once you start out... but that's because you're learning the gameplay mechanics. We're playing in a 3-man co-op team, with one of us being brand new to the series, on Tactician, and we're total dipshits and have gotten pretty deep into the first big island past the Fort Joy Island. I can't imagine playing these games solo, though, co-op is so incredibly important to the experience to me.

Also, you can respec any time you like (for free) at certain mirrors. I think you see one for the first time after leaving Fort Joy? Or it might be on the boat before that. I can't remember.

A well-balanced party is what we have, and it has been extremely useful. Problem with trying to say "fuck it let's all go physical to attack the same armor type" is that enemies have resistances on top of armor, and different enemies will flat out have a shitton of one type of armor (and none or very little of another) which will be where a well-balanced party shines.

But beyond that, there's no dedicated classes in the game, and everything I've seen shows that it's pretty normal for even dedicated spellcasters to have multiple spells that deal physical damage, or for melee characters to have quite a few elemental effects on their attacks.

Do not try to just brute force one armor type, it won't work out for you. The armor stuff is fun once you get the hang of it. And there's plenty of synergy. As a Polymorph mage, my main transformations or attacks actually rely on physical armor, so if I want to turn an enemy into a helpeless chicken, I have to let the melee guys bash down the physical shields, stuff like that.

Also, seriously, you're gonna hit a point where trying to "aggro down" a group of 8-10 enemies with just physical damage would be hilariously ineffective without anyone laying down some serious environmental or elemental status debuffs or something.

Wait, why is Rorie attacking friendly NPC's? You're missing out on useful sidequests, bartering, and content by killing them.

@xbob42: to be fair the divinity combat system isn't at all like other crpgs. basically you have experience with the only game that would prepare you for this one.

Everyone should play this game, It's pretty damn great.

The only problem with maining an origin Character is that player characters aren't voiced.

@dr_mel: @sin4profit: @dave_tacitus: Thanks! I might pick this up then, really love the look of it.

I feel like 90% of this game's difficulty is just figuring out where you're supposed to go for your current character level.

I thought the writing in the first game was a terrible way to sabotage a really well made game. Everyone in DivOS was written like there was some joke to their existence that the player was supposed to see and recognize irony, laughing at them for their farce or their dumb slapstick mistakes that put made them a NPC whose too nice for his own good or an NPC whose too much of a hardass and should just lighten up! All of the writing, all of it felt like a huge eye-roll and they just threw it at you.

GOTY.

All of a sudden I really miss Dave Snider...

Sure, but both Vinny and Rorie played the first one as well.

@xbob42, @garr123: That makes sense. Thanks for the replies! The game is probably just different than what I'm used to in terms of party-based RPGs. Sounds good, I'd love to get into this.

I'm gonna check out some more gameplay from different sources and see where I can squeeze this into the schedule.

I've gotten used to the armor system a bit (although I'm only at the end of Act 1) and I tailor my attacks so that one enemy is getting magic armor reduced by spells/whatever and another is getting it's physical reduced by direct attacks if possible. It isn't the best way perhaps but seems to work in classical mode well enough. I agree that it can be frustrating when you are focusing on one enemy and half your attacks are taking magic armor off and the other half are taking physical off and neither are doing actual damage to health, sometimes I will move a magic character into a support role if I'm trying to get the physical armor down and don't want to waste action points on magic damage that isn't going hasten the fight.

There should be more cross country quicklooks. The premium subscribers demand it.

Looks like my kinda game. Might check it out. Thanks guys.

I feel like this Quick look was a kinda on the dry side. This is a big crazy game with a ton of weird personality and I don't think any of that came through. It was just kind of some clinical bullet points from Rorie.

I hope in the near future Vinny could run a 4 player co op game with some of the Giantbeast people and just kinda have fun. Doesn't have to be game master mode. But just something a little more... fun.

I kind of felt the same way. The game is crazy fun and is just absurd in an amazing way in co-op. The fact that the game hates "perfect" saves (which is a good thing in my opinion) makes it all the better, with different people having different objectives, goals, gameplay styles, but all having to work together in the end.

It's fucking magnificent in a way that you'll just never get if you insist on playing it "perfectly" solo in a super dry run. Get in there and get SLOPPY, boys! Accept whatever mistakes you make and move on! It's so much more fun and less stressful.

Also inventory management is like 10x easier with a full co-op group, since everyone gets 1 bag instead of one player getting all 4.

You also really feel a lot more specialized. If you're THE guy with pet pal, people will find animals and bring you over, if you're THE guy with teleportation, you're gonna be used for all kinds of wacky stuff. If you're the thief, be prepared to be the center of ridiculous heists for free skill books or weapons. All of this is fine single player, but is just delightful with friends.

Not watching at it all, there are definitely more suitable people to inform me about this game on the internet.

The following is very long, I apologize in advance, but here is my impression of the game, after 10 or so hours.

This game on surface seems to offer some exploration and freedom of movement, but the set path through the quests in the main area is more or less set due to the fixed level enemies or 'gates' that one can't overcome easily without reaching level parity. So the game will be more or less offer identical experience derived from a funneled path through quests and NPCs. This path will not deviate much, regardless of skill, race, or any other categories that may give you a sense of your character being especial or unique. The only significant differences here are different 'walls' that one will inevitably crash into while being railroaded on to that path, often ending up in frustration. And since the main path is quite mundane and not much different from 'you are the chosen one, save the world' trope, these failures will define experiences that will stay with me the most. So if you like your experience in RPG be defined by a series of failures and how you ground out through some cringe worthy writing and bugged combat to overcome them, then this game might be up your alley.

One thing I do dislike quite a lot, is an option later to re-spec any of your characters the way you see fit without any penalty or explanation behind such a feature. Is this explained anywhere how this is possible, is this related to anything? Lore? History? Who knows? There is very little consequence in how the characters are set up, no repercussion how one decides to develop them in the first place after completing the first area. I found it quite interesting but cynical attempt to give a blank check and wash their hands of any of the internal shortcomings related to how the character creation might fit into the rest of the game, and remain viable. Maybe this will change later, with revelations and exposition in how this feature is believably integrated into the game. Speaking of lore, I found the multitude of books strewn about serving as lore dump being one of the most unfortunate piece of writing in recent memory. Even Fallout 4 had more interesting and cogent entries written in one of their terminals than this excuse of collected verbiage wholesale dumped there.

All of the skills, and I mean 95% of them, serve one single purpose of combating your enemies and surviving combat encounters. Any other approach to encounters using attribute check is perilously difficult to achieve or anticipate. Sometimes one character with higher finesse skill can persuade an NPC where another with higher strength cannot. How does your finesse skill lead to that particular choice? What does wit or constitution have to do with any of the dialog options given? How does Persuade skill fit into all these? This game is very much an action RPG, and not the kind of early Fallout games where one can talk your way through major encounters. Is there anything wrong with that? No, but be ready for combat and lots of it, that's where the XP is, and you need XP to fight more enemies.

And I'm not sure if the problem with the combat has been discussed in this Quick Look, but the issue with initiative is a problem that Larian has to solve. Even with your characters at low initiative scores, in combat they alternate their turns with adversaries that dwarf your initiative, not in the strict descending order. I guess since even your low initiative character gets to trade turns with those with much higher initiative, the balance skews to the player's favor, right? Well maybe, but it points to a deeper problem. The opponents that may have the same level as you in the game have attributes that are simply not possible were they constructed in the same system as your character. It is a different system where enemy at level 10 may have twice as many attribute points added to the baseline compared to yours and therefore always end up with huge initiative scores. So the round robin turn system of alternating between sides was implemented to circumvent the most obvious problem, but it is arbitrary and artificial. If anything it isn't consistent and not at all balanced.

There is a lot to love about the game, to be sure, it is chock full of content and has beautiful graphics. There are tons of loot and customizing options and crafting. It features some innovative and quite enjoyable puzzles. Despite lack of banter or interaction, supplied NPCs and characters are interesting and come with their own unique origin stories. The combat uses environmental effects well, implements high ground and elements like fire, ice, poison, etc. with two different armor ratings that provide new challenges and strategies. Amid all these problems I and others mentioned, there is a good game in there, but I recommend, just like the first Original Sin, that most should wait until the Extended Edition to play this game.

You can use those "regular" arrows on elemental surfaces/sources to create arrows of that type.

@applegong: Huh. I've been playing for 20 hours, and I don't share the same opinion as you do. The writing's very good, and quite funny sometimes, the combat is enjoyable, and doesn't seem too random. It feels tactical, the placement of your character is insanely important and there are many options you have during an encounter to defeat your enemies (not at the start, but then it opens up). I don't think a suspension of disbelief is a bad thing when they're streamlining some things, and re-specing a character is fine. A lot of conversations can, and have turned out both ways for me (after loading the game) where I was able to solve an encounter by talking to someone.

Now, having said that, yes, the initiative thing is problematic, and definitely could be better. It's not downright bad, but it's not perfect by a longshot. And yes, there are level gate walls in the world, but I prefer that than invisible walls or enemies that level alongside me. It's fine, they have to gate you somehow.

Do you still have to have conversations with yourself? Because that's what turned me way off the first game.

I'm about fifty hours in and have a party balanced between physical and magical damage. You benefit greatly when you run into groups where some of the enemies have more of one type of armor than the other, and when you run into somebody who lacks one of them, you cackle. Diversifying the offense means being able to switch unnecessary characters into support, tanks, and distractions. There has never been a time when I've felt my party was useless. But I also don't dump all my points into one skill pool. The magic schools are broad enough to let your characters do a lot.

This game has some flaws but overall it's a masterpiece. Definitely my GOTY

I don't think you HAD to do those, but why would it turn you off so badly? They were generally short and just fleshed out your characters. Of course, it really shined in that game when you and a friend were playing co-op and had very different opinions. Doing the dumb-but-fun rock-paper-scissors mini-game (where the points you earned for winning were increased based on the stat needed for the argument) was very enjoyable for us to "win" arguments and continue conversations our way.

Sadly that mini-game is gone and the talking-to-your-party thing seems much reduced. So... good news for you, I guess!

@xbob42: I personally like WRPGs for the story, and I didn't like the way that those segments take agency away from the writers. I'm all for creating the personality of ONE character by myself, but more than that is too many to me. I also have no interest in playing these games co-op. I might check this out if that's gone, though.

For someone who has played all these games, from Baulder's Gate 1 to Wasteland 2, where should I start and what are the top 3? I'm a bit OCD when it comes to genres and I always want to work my way through them historically (at least the highlights) but each of these games is so long it's not really practical anymore. From the outside, it seems like Torment, Baulder's Gate 2 and this are the highest ranked among fans.

This game is amazing.. sadly the QL isn't showing the game off very well. I personally didn't find the game very hard (that said i played the first one.)

After you get off the first main island you can spec as much as you want. Change any points. So, don't stress the skills. Also search EVERYTHING! they should have found better armor and weapons at this stage of the game already.

@boonsong: I'm very much a gamepad guy, but I started this with mouse and keyboard, tried switching over and hated how fiddly it was. You may be able to get used to it though. It's worth it, the game is amazing.

@lonelyspacepanda: As someone who vaguely fits that requirement, I'll say straight up that there really isn't a great place to start with old-school CRPGs if you're trying to come to them now, in the year of our lord 2017. I love a lot of those games, but you're going to have to jump through some hoops and put in some effort to get anywhere with them. The genre's modern incarnations are easier to get into, though I imagine even stuff like this game would be daunting for a newcomer.

That said, if you want my take on which trio of games would serve as a pretty good survey of the late 90s/early 00s era of CRPGs, I'd probably say something like... Fallout 1, Baldur's Gate II, and Planescape: Torment, with a possible substitution of Might and Magic VI/VII if you want a taste of something that isn't isometric. Those aren't necessarily my absolute favorites and a strong case could be made for a bunch of other stuff, but in terms of influence and variety those are the ones I'd stick with if you don't just want to jump to more modern stuff. Don't be ashamed to skim a guide or look stuff up.

On the contrary, if don't mix a magical/physical party, you'll end up having a bunch physical dmg and physical armor only, that leaves you open for magical dmg. One of the balance changes from the past game, is that now you can't use the ridiculously overpowered knockdown magic attacks from the previous game. Knockdown is now only affected by physical attacks. Since magic has more options for turn-skipping statuses like Frozen and Stunned, they require either the target to already have Chilled or Stunned status. I don't remember how it was in the previous game, but at least knockdown was too OP and could be abused very early in a fight with magic users.

When I started playing the game, I thought the changes to magic armor and physical armor just overcomplicated the combat system. But it made sense after a few hours honestly and balanced the game much better.

I play as Fane. This game is poison.

So, does this game make sense as a co op experience? I've been playing for a while and it just feels like the pacing and combat aren't what I'd think of as co op friendly.

@dr_mel: I played the first game coop and I much prefer the solo experience. The problem with such a dense game in coop is the pace of how you play is dictated by whomever is less patient which often leads to missed or rushed content.

Lots of people have different ideas on how they want to play these games, and unless you can basically coop with yourself who isn't literally yourself you're going to get annoyed at times by how the game pans out.

Haven't watches yet, but I'm stoked for a Rorie/Vinny QL

This game is real good. Very deliberate and rewards patience, but real good.

Multiplayer playthrough has been a ton of fun, too, like a MMO that is much more open-ended and fun mechanically.

Rorie ends up on these CRPG QLs a lot, but what's the last game like this he actually liked?

In tactician, act 1 is really really rough. I fortunately put thievery into my main and just started pickpocketing everyone for gear. Position NPC sight cones away from the mark by talking to them with a party character, and always have one talking to the mark as well. This will prevent any bystandards from noticing, and the mark won't realize they've lost something until you stop talking to them. Make sure the person who pickpocketed them is a good distance away once u get your fill. They'll realize they been duped, go to the nearest party member and search for the goods. If that party member dont have any of the goods, you're solid.

And save often. Very often.

I've played most of the recent cRPGs (torment, tyranny, pillars, wasteland, etc), and this game's combat is more difficult than any of those by a significant margin (on classic, anyway). The enemy AI is quite a bit smarter, and has access to enough of the same skills your party has to make most encounters tough. That being said, the learning curve is not insurmountable, and if you try to only engage with groups of your level you should be okay.

I'm with Rorie, that fight on the ship was rough, it was the first fight i lost. I ended up reloading and teleporting the character you need to protect out of the line of fire to keep her from getting backstabbed to death.

This is the actual game of the year. Incredible release that is defining and renewing the CRPG genre.

I'm a huge fan of this game series and have purchased both games for PC the day they came out.

That being said I'm only a handful of hours into this game and I really can't say I like it as much as the first game. The first game was so much fun to start combat with a huge fireball before you even aggroed the enemies and watch them burn and finish them off with your first attack with a ricochet arrow or even throw some oil and burn them before starting combat. I loved being able to have two casters flank enemies and create tons of elemental havoc.

That is completely gone due to the way the armor system works. Magic armor and physical armor both make it nearly impossible to set up fun elemental traps like that and due to the long cooldowns of attacks you generally have to use basic attacks in between cooldowns. There is a bigger focus on "blood" magic rather than elemental magic which really, really bums me out.

I also don't like any of the origin characters I am finding the writing to be not that great and I just don't know what happened in between games. I do plan on playing through it and hope my experience changes but after several hours I'm just so sad it isn't more of the first game but a different thing entirely. This armor system is a real drag.

I love that they got both Rorie and Vinny on this QL.

As someone who regularly plays Pathfinder, I'm super into the idea of games like this, but I just don't have the time to play as many of these as I'd like.

Uh... what?

I think you're just speccing your character a certain way. My character has almost 2 full pages of spells. If he's ever using his basic attack, something went horribly, horribly wrong. Or he got silenced or something. Learn multiple schools of magic!

Been looking forward to this one!

@ivdamke: That's what I figured. It seemed super appealing when it was being talked about in the previous game, but it either wasn't working or I didn't get around to doing it or something happened, I forget.

This time, it just seems almost inappropriate. Like playing a normal Dragon Quest game with two players. Why?

Because it's a lot of fun unless you have terrible friends. And we're doing it with 3 people! Would love to have a 4th, but scheduling gets tricky at that point.

What you're basically asking is "Why do D&D with friends when you can just do it yourself?"

Yes, different people will have different levels of patience and ideas on how to progress and want skills that maybe don't mesh perfectly with yours. And that's exactly what makes it so memorable and amazing!

I don't think Vinny appreciated Jason's "boner" pun.

@fatalbanana: Everyone i met played hardass on me so i ended up slaugthering that entire shitcamp. I dont feel like i missed out ;)