A critique of Divinity Original Sin 2. Spoilers from 24:01 - 35:17 I recommend watching the previous video on original sin 1 before this if you haven't already: • Divinity Original Sin ...
I didn't really consider that this video might one day get a lot of attention from youtube recommending it to people who may not have watched my previous video on D:OS1, so just to be clear: This video is heavy on comparisons to the first D:OS and i'd really recommend watching that video first (which can be found here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NdhpxDFt9kI.html ).
I am absolutely one of those people. I think I got recommended your video after I watched a few documentaries about Larian and the making of DOS2. Not only had I not seen your previous video, I haven't played the first game yet(though I intend to). I made a comment about a week ago expressing some dismay at the amount of comparisons you make to the previous game. I think I worded in a way that made it seem more negative than I had intended it to. I actually really enjoyed your video as a whole and did get a lot of insight out of it, despite not having the frame of reference that I think you assumed or intended your viewers would have. Maybe my initial dismay was my fault for coming into the video with both false expectations and a lack of knowledge, having not seen your previous video or played the previous game. Either way, I'm excited to see what you do next. I actually really liked the way you opened the video, since while i'm not a CRPG veteran, I'm not exactly a mainstream newcomer to the genre. I have started Baldur's Gate 2, Dragon Age Origins, KOTOR and its sequel, and several others but always fell off of them a few dozen hours in. I have always had an interest in the genre, but no game ever held my interest to the end...until Divinity Original Sin 2. I'm not really sure why it was able to keep me, where others weren't. I think the writing and voice acting helped a lot. As did the combat, I enjoyed the combat far more than any other CRPG I had ever played(or even most turn based games in general), though after having watched your video, I do see some of the issues you pointed out. I think that no matter what anyone says about DOS2, it did do something incredible with how it managed to appeal to both experienced CRPG fans, mainstream new comers, and everyone in between, even if it didn't stick the landing for everyone.
Well done, you put to words everything I feel about the game. I think the game was at its strongest in Fort Joy. Everything from the theme, tone, story, game-play, balance ec. Was just right. From the mid of Act 2, things just felt out of focus.
@@Daniel-zg5mb CRPGs and just RPGs in general tend to have severe pacing issues, especially the first time. The trick is to brute force through, often requiring a session where you not having very much fun. The mage tower in Origins, Pegasus mining station in KOTOR 2, Mako & Citadel sections in Mass Effect, The Hinterlands in DA: Inquisition or putting of Skellige in The Witcher 3 comes to mind. The only game that avoided them that I can think of, is Mass Effect 2 with its episodic content. Though at the expense of the trilogy's overreaching narrative. But if you manage to get through these sections, you eventually trickle back to the parts that make it all worth while.
I enjoyed your KingMaker review and found that helpful, but feel a need to comment on this one. Your critic of DoS2 just doesn't hold the same weight for those of us who didn't played Div1. The game is fine the way it is for element effects and AC types and spectacularly so; it's even better in the definitive edition with the minor tweaks. People watch who watch this video of yours might be put off by DoS2 due to your nostalgic whining and that would be a shame. The game earned its praise and rightly so.
And sweet mother of God, I wish they had implemented a way for another party member to interject into a conversation. There's nothing more annoying than finishing a fight, and then instead of talking with your party member you've maxed persuasion, or certain stats and tags on, they talk with whoever's closest, usually leading to an unfavorable conversation.
I had that issue with the skeleton locked in a cursed chest on a beach on Fort Joy, fortunately by then I'd made a habit out of constantly saving, so when Lohse who was the only one w source in her used Bless and was forced into conversation with him, I failed that persuasion check hard. The backtracking to get my persuasion person source'd up was... An ordeal.
In the menu there's the Gift Bag section, where you can turn on things like shared persuasion and barter. Also the mirror in fort joy and the ability for summoners to use buffs on other summons than the incarnate.
"playing competitivly" means RPing as a villain type who steals all the sweet loot, sabotages team mates, and gets yelled at while the host re-loads because he didn't like the outcome you orchestrated
I like DOS2 a lot. It's and incredible game, very expansive. Only on my first play through but love it. It's a very extensive game. I like the story somewhat. Better than pillars imo. Im looking forward to baldurs gate 3! BG2 was my favorite game. So I'm glad larian is making BG3. (From what I've seen they could've almost called it DOS3, but that's not even a bad thing)
There is a mod in steam workshop called "Divinity Unleashed" that addresses every combat complaint you mentioned plus more you didn't, and that includes the armor issue. I'm 3/4 of the way through the game (second playthrough) using this mod and incredibly surprised and pleased with the changes. My favorite change is that the environmental effects are once again deadly: no more strolling through fields of fire! I'm playing on tactician and the mod makes tactician actually feel like tactician. And if you love dogs I also highly recommend "Happily Emmie After" , which gives you satisfying options regarding buddy and emmie... if you played the game you know what I mean :)
11:45 I know I am late to the party but there is a tactical reason the AI skips their turn when they are far away. The reason is that it is more AP efficient for them to save up their AP and let you use AP to get to them than for them to just waste all of their turn walking towards you, just to get smacked in the face. 6:38 Also regarding your point about the stun and freeze status effects, the hydrosophist and aerotheurge (mainly aerotheurge) skill trees are the best stunners in the game. The reason is that while it is true that chilled and shocked need to be cast 2 times for it to stun, you don't lose any dmg since knockdown abilities deal far less dmg and have a huge cooldown while almost all damaging hydrosophist and aerotheurge skills applies the status effects so they pretty much get stunnlocked.
I feel like the criticism you bring up at about 29:30, where you talk about companions supporting your claim to divinity unquestionably, is false (I'm also writing this way after this video is released, so you probably already know this or won't see this comment, but oh well). Your companions don't always support your claim to divinity. They can either support you depending on the actions you take, or they don't support you and you have to try to convince them to, and if you can't convince them, you have to fight against them in the race for the wellspring. Also, the statement that only your main character can ascend to divinity is totally just wrong; anyone in your party can ascend, it doesn't have to be your main character at all.
true its mostly based on how far into their character story lines u help them through... if you ignored their stories completely then yeah they tell you to go fuck yourself i want to be god dont think he really did his research on this one
Old Post I know, but how do you get others to ascend to divinity? I convinced all of then to support me at the Nameless Isle, and now all of them unquestionably let me take divinity at the end. I haven't found a way to let one of them become divine. Do you need to choose certain dialogue much early on so that they aren't so loyal to you?
@@eliran9231 I mean it's a CRPG, it's kind of expected that the player saves at least every 15 min. Also iirc, the game does mostly autosave before each fight doesn't it?
The problem of this game is that after the first act 99% of the fight are just gimmicks and/or ambushes,and it’s not even ambushes that you can predict in some way,they just appear from thin air
@@SuperSpikewolf Exactly. It's just a stupid invisible trigger. Even if you already finished the game and know exactly where those events will trigger you barely have the chance to get the drop on them. Had one of the worst experiences with ONS2DE ever (after the first chapter). And it's klunky, bugged inut detection is a joke. Especially movement.
I always explored being READY to the risk of being ambushed, though? There are legitimate gripes to worry about in this series (and this video touches on the most relevant ones, namely loot and progression) but this isn't really one of them.
@@TucoBenedicto im just saying maybe theres too many ambushes for its own good. For an rpg its realllll heavy on combat encounters, just saying it'd be nice if there was a better balance of exploration and combat. Downtime in games is important, at least to me.
I love that in OS:2 they aren’t afraid to mix humorous and horrific tone! It’s like they’re making jokes but they don’t feel the need to hide grim elements from you for the sake of the joke.
The Dragon Quest series has kind of a similar shtick. I *suspect* it's because both Divinity and DQ were directly inspired by the Ultima games, which were also pretty mood-swingy.
I didn't like it at all, cheapens the whole experience with the constant haha funny moments. To the point that I completely stop caring about the world and what happens to it.
While the armor mechanic was clearly flawed for reasons you stated and I do agree with, I still think credit is due in acknowledging that it did achieve in what it set out to do which was mitigate the amount of influence RNG had in the outcome of a battle. So for that alone I don’t agree that DOS1 encouraged the player to try different approaches to get past a fight more than DOS2 did. For if if you try the same losing strategy in DOS2 100 times, you will almost certainly lose 100 times. But if you reload and repeat a failing strategy 100 times in DOS1, you will probably come out ahead far more often than you should based only on favorable rolls. Because DOS2 leaves so little to chance it did feel rewarding to see how much small tweaks in your strategy can completely change the outcome of certain engagements. It makes the combat feel more like playing chess whereas the all-or-nothing nature of DOS1 sometimes felt like you were just playing slots.
I can absolutley agree with that. That's the main reason i prefered DoS2 over the first one. I can also backup the fact, that even sucu tiny tweaks as switching 1 or 2 spells out for a specific battle, or switch to a slightly better equipment item, can change the whole outcome of a battle
Absolutely! Every time me and my friend lost a fight, we had to change everything about it: in which order we enter the field of battle, how far do we position our characters from one another, who do we engage, in what order, how much crowd control we need, etc. Sometimes even leveling up didn't help to win, but more intelligent approach to fighting did.
@@One.Zero.One101 Playing one of those Rng (Completely Random) Rpgs was actually fun for me when the enemies and me were on the same playing field and there are consumables that mitigate some of the rng but they are rare and a lot of the fun I had was reloading a fight to figure the most efficient way to spend my consumables and when I get super unlucky with the randomness but it feels like I get rewarded for my skill point investment that can lower the worse outcomes for yourself or make the enemies outcome worse.
Played both on highest difficulty that doesn't limit saved games. DOS2 combat is far better balanced IMO, as in the original game I could just blast through the game with water+lightning CC without much problems and the skill progression just wasn't interesting for me because every skill not on 5 in the original game was underpowered. In DOS2, the selection is much broader and there is a good balance between using one/two point wonders and dumping points in a skill to boost damage. Damage is king now? Try to blast through the later enemies only with fire+earth on the highest difficulty, I can assure you you won't get far with that, you need to control them eventually or you die a horrible death. The resource management aspect to the source skills makes them also much more interesting than what the original game had. Of course there is the exponential progression that is way too much, but it will be fixed in BG3 due to the nature of the setting.
I think what he means by damage is king is that blasting through an enemies armor or magic resist is the top priority. Once those are gone you can cc them and take them out of the fight for usually 1 turn.
both were actually really easy on highest difficulty after mid game which was sad stuff but before mid game dice mechanic of DOS1 worked out much better for mixing tactics .I rather see baldur 3 returning back to DOS1 mechanics rather than 2 but also make mid game onward much more difficult on highest difficulty for players that make good builds
Dunno, i've played both games for over 1000h and I enjoyed combat in divinity OS:II A LOT more. It's the matter of taste I guess, if you don't like it it doesn't mean it's worse. I can agree on slow enemy animations, grenades and traps, but I highly disagree on the other ones. Also trying to beat the game with one character on LW is actually a great thing to have fun with. (that freaking oil fight tho)
More like level 16 actually. In the last sections of the Driftwood map, the Isle of Blood (or whatever its in-game name is) notably. I remember that's where Fextralife often posted footage of their builds since the builds were really complete by then. But already by level 12 you
A trap I ran through many and many times never killed me. I recently played after a long time of not playing and it ended my Honour playthrough. I was speechless.
I doubt any developer could do a better job creating BG3 than Larian. Any other developer, I'd be skeptical, but I feel BG3 is in safe hands with Larian.
@@Dueilangoisseus Yes! They can make good classic RPG that get to 2020 standards of gamplay rather than "look, we make RPG! But it's same like BG2" and nostalgic prey. In the same time they knew about flaws of system they created what we can see from BG3 interviews :D
From the footage shown so far it looks nothing like Baldur's Gate and everything like Divinity Original Sin 3. The first red flag was the turn based combat. We are getting DOS3 with a Forgotten Realms skin. Like @William Bodie said Obsidian would be a much better choice for BG3. Not as commercially successful perhaps, but true to the originals.
I think the main reason they changed the initiative system in DOS2 was because you could easily stack up a ton of it on DOS1 and CC the enemy before they could do anything. Not that DOS2 initiative's system is any better.
Yup. IIRC that system was even still in place in the first (few?) EA builds, till they replaced it with round robin with much discussion as a result. But sadly all that discussion seemed to have been on deaf ears.
I like how you brought up the combat differences between both games. DoS 1 usually has me on edge with a lot of fights but by the time I reached the middle of act 2 on my first DoS 2 playthrough I was already getting comfortable. Now I want to play through 1 again for the 7th or 8th time but...Cyseal. Really wish they had stuck that area in the middle of the game.
I've finally (recently) laid my hands on this game. I believe this video is 100% constructive criticism, and some of the balance issues between different classes are annoying, especially at the early stage. But I'm still amazed by the truly open-ended gameplay, and the huge amount of freedom in dealing with almost any mission. You can even exploit the game's dialogue UI to steal NPCs, which never gets old. I believe the dev really understands what player's freedom means, and this game has way more freedom than those sandbox games in which missions are extremely linear in fact.
I never understood the complaint about CC being the primary deciding factor in most fights for this style of game. How else would you overcome unfavorable odds in an outnumbered/overpowered situation if not through manipulating the terrain and utilizing tools that efficiently give you the advantage by denying the enemy their ability to surround you? The only other option is a good ol' slug fest DPS race and hope you have enough healing resources to out-sustain. Whoever has the bigger numbers wins...which I think is what DoS2 did, and it wasn't very fun or engaging. A lot of older CRPGs basically fall into this category too, where the most efficient strat is to simply hold a choke point and let the AI ram their body into you repeatedly until you win or run out of resources to sustain and die.
Necrofire everywhere This is fine though the odd time i come across a blessed puddle of water that doesn't get blown away within one turn by the enemy is AMAZING
Necrofire everwhere can be annoying. Getting better at the game though means most enemies die before they take a turn. Means almost no necrofire the whole run.
I remember fighting oil slugs in the black pits. There was one, huge zone filled with necroflames surrounding my characters, and every turn it would switch between flames and necroflames, and that meant every turn waiting 30 seconds for it to change entirely. And then change again once the slugs moved in it. (When i say slugs, i dont mean the fire slugs. I mean the oil kind of slugs.)
4 years later, Larian continued to shine and shine even brighter with Baldurs Gate 3 -- Thank you Larian! A spark in the darkness of corporations following just the money.
@@1984Kojot That is your taste, not mine! And when you frame games like that because you like specific details not of them, you just show how valuable your opinion is (NOTHING). I guess, you did not even try to play the game, because of your (religious?) believes. I give you a tip: You don't need to play a gay character in this game, if your religion forbids!
@@What_do_I_Think Why you are getting so angry??You said that there are no games like that. This is not true. Simple as that. There is really a lot of crpgs. Some of them are better...by far. BG3 is crappy rpg and that is what it is.
@@1984Kojot 🙃I don't get angry. I just analyzed your negative comment as what it is. And that you don't reflect on my comment but just repeat your indefensible claim, just shows that you are angry yourself and are not able to reflect your own behavior.
I just bought this game on Christmas and loving it so far, playing on Tactician so fights require me to actually think. I've never played an isometric RPG before, so I had to get used to the combat and gameplay, but it's so damn rewarding. Small tweaks to your strategy can have great results. For example, I was fighting Orivand and co in Fort Joy and had difficulty outhealing/outarmoring his attacks, but eventually I figured out I can use the teleportation gloves to just toss him down into the main portion of the room and block out entrances with fire/ice to sometimes prevent enemies from advancing and make them choose the longer path and the fight became much easier. Also, the soundtrack is fire, some of the battle tracks are just straight kino.
While I like your methods of explaining your points I feel as if you didn’t play these games as much as I did. In OS1 while environmental effects were great they were also ignored once you realized cc was so brutally overpowered it made combat heavily focused on managing cc. OS2 is the same with but managing damage then CC, honestly I preferred OS2 armor system because it forced me not to abuse go to strategies and I felt more inclined to use wacky interesting builds I just would have ignored in OS1. Grenade were absolutely busted in OS1 so much so that they could sway entire fights with the CC they pumped out, I like that they aren’t broken in OS2 but still usable. Melee builds in OS1 were also kind of meh because all of the environmental effects that while awesome and a highlight of the game made moving into melee range a chore and often a death wish, and the new movement spell let heavy melee builds be far more fun than they once were. I just didn't have this experience you did of highly varied combat encounters in OS1 it always ended up with me chain stuning specific targets and blocking off other enemies with effects.
he was on point with the fights, it is much more unifacial and knockdown is the best CC because oters are unreliable, i did everything he said he did before i watched this video, there are one or two optional strategy and everything else is subpar compared to them, and he is also right that raw damage output is king in the second game (maybe that changed later, i played the original 2017 version of the game and that was bad)
@@fixpontt Playing as an Aero/Hydro mage specifically, I found that both freeze and shock were very easy to pull off. I was able to CC lock just as well as any warrior/rogue/marksman I've ever played with knockdown.
@Uliani i still disagree. The action point economy in the first game felt miles worse than in 2. I understand how you might feel that way. But CC was always an invaluable tactical choice for my playthroughs on Tactician.
In my opinion 2nd game is much improvement from the 1st one. First of all narratives are way better, even if they aren't perfect. Story is more engaging, characters are more interesting. I actually enjoyed roleplaying my character in dialogues, something that I haven't experienced in cRPGs since Fallout New Vegas. And finally male character models don't look like bodybuilders while they have minimum strength... I like armor system, I imagine it like a barrier (magical or physical) that gets penetrated by every hit. Wheter combat system is better or not... it's hard to decide. It has pros and cons. But overall DOS series combat is my favourite one in video games at all. It's faithfull to it's table-top roots and entertainig (I still remember a fight, when I teleported a shark out of the water, so it instantly died). But as always it's really a shame that magic is pretty much portrayed as elemental powers and necromancy. I think it's primitive, there are much more application options for magic. The only feature that was significantly better in DOS1 in my opinion are charades and riddles. I think those were more imaginative, but that just personal feeling with really no arguments to support it.
this game is an absolute dogshit when it comes to fair combat. Every encounter is an ambush with disadvantage, totally garbage compared to Baldur's Gate series
Though I agree with almost all of the things said in the video, in my IMO I think some of the criticisms of the narrative are unfair 1. In regards to the issue of the other characters deferring and giving up Divinity, I don't think that all group dynamics need to have a specific reason or explanation. I mean the real answer to why they give up Divinity is cause you're the PC. Without diving too much into pedantic apologetics, the reason they trust you could just as easily be because you technically have brought the team together, have made all the major narrative decisions up until that point and were, of course, instrumental in each of your companions' questlines (which is also because you're the PC). That's just my headcanon but I think using that as evidence, you can very easily just say that your character was generally more assertive (because you're the pc) and became the leader by chance, which I don't think is too contrived. Though I do wish that there would be more contention over who becomes Divine throughout the story 2. I think that the tone shifts can be okay with the darker tone of the story. Despite all the Grim Dark imagery, I wouldn't consider the game's narrative to be overly depressing or hopeless. I think the light-hearted aspects can make the world endearing, especially for the companions and the other supporting characters. Seeing more light-hearted aspects of the world made me feel like I actually made me feel like the world was worth saving despite the many despicable people that inhabited it. This is all just my opinion, obviously. It's awesome seeing how invested people are in this game and it's not hard to see why. This was my first crpg and it has become one of my all-time favorite games. Despite my counter-criticisms I think this was a great video, and seeing how willing to address criticism Larian was when making DOSII I can only hope that they finally find a balance for the combat in Fallen Heroes
@Hesus I hope you realize your companions can turn on you and fight you because they believe you aren't fit to ascend and it's their job. The reason why they back up and let you is because they trust you and you've built positive relationships with them. You've got your panties in a bunch
@@isaaclong6085 my last playthrough fane and sebille were cool but beast had decided I was too selfish and reckoned it should be him, seeing as I had no real desire to ascend and playing as a human my god was a massive twat anyway I agreed. My only real gripe with the writing was some of the ending scenarios seemed a bit conflicting
It's definitely refreshing to see someone have something to say about Dos2 other than praise(which I do appreciate as I adore this game). That said, as someone who never played dos1, I was a bit dismayed to see that nearly every point was based on a direct comparison to the first game and as such, I didn't really learn much from the video other than "there are things that dos2 did worse than dos1". It's absolutely right to make comparisons with previous games in a series, but I do also think it's important to consider dos2 as its own game as well. I think this also ties into your last comment about how Larian should have not just concentrated on fixing the bad, but also put some thought into improving the good, because I think it's somewhat parallel to critiquing what dos2 did badly(and more specifically what dos2 did worse than dos1) and ignoring highlighting what the game did well.
Well is a sequel after all, it is heavily tied to its predecessor specially when things that made first game so unique change. It is important to remark why such changes can potentially affect the game in ways that even the developers didn't intend or could not foreshadow.
@@zzxp1 I completely agree. But I don't think that should be the whole review. This was a few days ago, but the only thing I remember the review covering that wasn't a comparison to the first game was the story and that was brief. What I'm saying is that it's absolutely important to consider where dos2 came from and making comparisons to the first game is totally great, but it's also important to a game as its own thing as well and consider its qualities abstract from predecessors. You can do both in one review.
@@Daniel-zg5mb You're making a weird connection somewhere I feel. Yes, he compared it a lot to DOS1 rather frequently but his critique isn't "This game isn't like DOS1." Instead, its "These are how the games systems work and these are the flaws of them, lets use DOS1 to show its flaws more easily.." I feel he did a rather good job of doing both in one review and all of his criticisms don't merely exist in a vacuum of "Its not like the first."
@@dickking9373 What connection am I making? And I generally agree with you. My problem is that if you have never played DOS1, the majority of the review is meaningless. So it's not a review of DOS2. It's a review of DOS2 through the lens of DOS1.
@@Daniel-zg5mb The connection you're making is that because he mentions DOS1 a lot this critique is largely "Meaningless" so the game isn't as bad as he's making it sound. You have indeed made that connection given your last comment I would say. Either way, it's still a review of DOS2 and none of the problems he mentions go away. Yes, he frequently compared it to DOS1 but even in a universe where DOS1 didn't exist but 2 somehow did, his critique of the game is still valid. None of his problems is "This isn't like 1 and isn't a good sequel cause 1 did it better." Instead, they are. "With a little bit of thought, this combat system could be more dynamic and interesting and rethinking the armour system as it pushes a damage meta is necessary to have said more creative and interesting fights." In a universe, without DOS1 those problems still exist and the mods intended to fix them would also still exist. Regardless of if he meets it in whatever way someone arbitrarily defines "Meeting the game on its own terms as its own thing," DOS2 is still deeply flawed and most those flaws stem from an attempt to fix DOS1s systems that weren't broke. Mentioning DOS1 is certainly needed for context and also mentioning DOS1 would still be required to meet it on its own terms as those terms as "I'm a sequel and want to fix this stuff." In the universe, without DOS1 its terms would be "I'm trying to be an RPG with lots of multi-classing, a dynamic combat system with lots of environmental effects and varied approaches to combat and enemy encounters." Which is still not achieved due to the exact things he mentioned in the video.
There was a mod in original sin 1, when you CC an enemy it becomes immune to that CC for 2 turns after. It made it more interesting because you had to mix CC and couldn't just use the same over and over.
As someone who completed this game 3 times in full, with 2 of those being on Lone Wolf I'd like to add something that I found lacking: 1. The pace of the game drops in the middle of act 2, when you're halfway done chasing the "Masters". It just loses some "juice" and becomes all about clearing the map. The story doesn't keep up very well 2. If you use magic the game becomes too easy. Magic armor and damage is far superior to physical damage and you can CC enemies into oblivion if you use a 2 character combo of Aerotheurge and Hydrosophist. After the 1st 3rd of act 2 you are basically unstoppable. The balance feels way off and thus the game loses a part of it's charm. I still love it and I still think it's the best cRPG ever created, but it has some flaws for sure.
Regarding the damage/armor system, there's a mod called Divinity Unleashed that reworks it to an EHP-based system, where armor offers varying degrees of damage resistance instead of total resists, along with other balancing tweaks. Surfaces are actually dangerous, traps hurt, and combat is just way more fun.
I like the zig zagging of the tone. I learned quickly not to get attached to anyone since half the people you meet end up getting murdered and that started to make me apathetic towards new characters. Without the jokes and the laughs, the story just gets too dark.
Worse combat? Any game where I can put a chest full of chests in a chest full of other chests full of chests and drop it on a boss's head to one-shot them has perfectly balanced combat!
To many fights end up in a curse fire mess. Then you need blessed rain to make curse into normal fire then you need normal rain to put that fir out. What a pain.
I don’t know. Honestly love BG3. I think the combat system in DOS2 is legit the most unappealing part. It feels clunky and that even in classic that I “have” to make a specific build that’s abusive towards the Ai or deliberately “broken”. Combat is fun in parts but quickly turns into a nuisance. Honestly enjoyed the story, If there wasn’t a combat section for break in between. Again. Loved BG3, love what Larian does. But BG3 has superior combat (significantly less clunky feeling). Idk maybe I just like the actual dnd universe better than discount dnd lizardman.
I hate the addition of NECROFIRE! Also my biggest issue with Dos2, was that my questlog got overloaded with different quests, and I quicklu lost track of what I was doing , and where the story was evolving towards.(this especially was the case in act2)
Really? Act 2 feels very solid it what it wants you to do. From minute 1 they give you a goal and that is basically what Act 2 is about. Its just Act 2 has so many ways to complete itself that it feels very open ended.
@@gearhead417 for some reason i always just start over in act two, i get to the town and just dont feel like continuing for whatever reason. Love act 1 though ive restarted over 10 times and love it just as much as the first time
As far as the combat, I can live with most the changes compared to o OS1 but one major thing I disagree with what was done was the consolidation and removals of physical damage types and resistances. The damage potential of magical damage was more variable, which made it more fun. Where physical damage felt more static. Piercing damage had a bit more distinction but that rarely came into play. When fought a skeleton, its weakness used to be blunt damage and healing magic and sometimes fire if it still had some flesh, but resisted cold, poison and piercing. You had more options with physical or magic. Now the interesting interactions are mostly magic based, for you and enemies due to no physical damage variance. Another thing related to combat that could help the stale nature of encounters is some randomization of enemies and enemy types. Just playing through once you pretty much get the best course of action for each encounter, which in itself can be fun on a second go round, but ends up negating challenge and experimentation even more. That and how source was required for a lot of skills, but turned out not to be even worth using, and felt like wasted source. Kind of summed source as a whole really for how pivotal source is supposed to be in the plot and the series.
If you want to have a complete playthrough with all origin characters get the max party size increase mod. So long as all members are in your party during the first Dallis fight they all survive the first trip to the hall of echoes. Just swap them around afterwards to keep your party at 4 as you help each of them with their individual missions
Just a couple of thoughts: Disagree a bit on magic. I don't know, but I found it quite OP, even on Honour mode. The Torturer talent helps a lot of the effects off magic (except maybe Aero/Hydro), along with Savage Sortilege/Hothead you can do massive damage. Agree on rewards. Not being able to compare is extremely frustrating especially when you get an item you don't need. My complaint: Dwarves and Lizards seem way less useful than Humans and Elves, which reduces variety. Great video!
From what I've seen in my couple hundred hours with the game, Physical will always outperform Magic. This is mostly due to elemental resistances being so widespread, and the fact that magic has to naturally do less damage because it has more CC power. If you also add the fact that some elements can basically nullify each other, and that mixed parties aren't really useful/viable, Physical comes out on top, and it just keeps getting better and better in the late game. In the last part I could oneshot literally any enemy, and sometime finish encounters in a single Arrow Storm (is that what it was called? The ultimate ranged source skill that rains arrows in a huge area).
@@nicosonico94 I'll agree magic is weak overall, but there's a couple of avenues that lead it to being the most busted skill investment (which hurts build variety a ton). Mostly, elemental affinity talent, combined with the adrenaline skill, plus heavy investment into polymorph to access skin graft and apotheosis, makes for what I believe is the most powerful build in the game, almost regardless of your choice in school of magic.
I don't think I've ever had a quest reward item that's actually useful to me. By the time I complete a quest, my gear always seems to outclass the relatively boring items given as a "reward". Usually pick the most expensive one so I can sell it on the next inevitable upgrade cycle.
This is why i always prioritize having the escapist trait on everyone at the begining of the game. i always play honour mode. I beat the first game after 6 restarts coz i wasnt planning ahead enough or sending one person to scout an entire area sometime. Im still playing the second game in honour mode on my 4th restart. When my scout gets ambushed i just use escapist and then come back to that area with my party knowing the enemy's weaknesses and their levels.
you can make a hybrid mage if you scale your damage via intel instead of the class specific damage (aka leveling polymorph and then specing into intel)
Thank god, Finally, someone talked about how useless Initiative is in this game. Also, there are so many situations where enemies have a ridiculous amount AP or how so many times they can attack through walls and obstacles but your ranged player is always blocked by vision and obstacles!
One of the only important things in this game is initiative. That is who goes first, you or the enemy. It also allows for a member of your squad, who has low initiative, to not be total punished and put behind 10 enemies. But then again the enemies shouldn't be taking a turn.
It's amazing how this game is worse than the first original sin in every way possible. It's still a truly outstanding game technology wise (not talking about visuals, those are way worse than the first game), you can still play on a toaster with an old os, play coop via lan (this deserves the praise), but everything else from ridiculous armor mechanics to absolutely retarded main quest and linearity is a downgrade. It's like larian, after initial success, hired some fake degree graduates to a lead positions that made all the decisions, then masterfully crafted them into the game. The game works flawlessly bad, without a hiccup or crash, offering the players worst adventure imaginable. This is the worst fully functional game i've ever played. The closest i can compare it to is suddenly world of tanks. You have an absolute banger of an idea, the solid core, but everything else around it rage and anxiety inducing. You keep playing it suffering from stockholm syndrome, hoping that this bad segment was the last and surely next one will be better, but it will not. This is a horrible overpraised game that get recommended by people who never even finished it. As for overleveling enemies. How is this a bad idea now? You put effort into quests, you get rewarded with easier playthrough. It's not "Game is consistently challenging" in do2, it's skyrim levels of "you spend more and more time killing the same looking enemies with bigger healthbars".
Interesting, I haven't played the game, just seen some trailers and read a couple of rows, and I assumed that source was the same thing as magic and that magic was forbidden, because it is so powerful. I'm surprised that no one on the team pulled the break on that one and declared that it isn't well though through.
After BG3, I'd wish Larian do something new. Not another DOS game. This whole source user/godwoken is a bit cliche for my tastes. Dos2 half the time it feels the narrator is being overly descriptive for the sake of it. I know I don't encounter people in my actual life that I would describe in the ways the Narrator describes these so-called regular people of rivellon. Every person you encounter has to be like: Narrator: The small-town cashier looks up with a wry twitchy smirk, almost dancing around her smoke-addled teeth that chatter, itching for the next break. She has seen the condoms. Cashier: Got a big night planned eh? Narrator: Her eyes still bloodshot from that all-weekend binge. She bags them discreetly as any other of your purchases, with a twirl in the air, like a gunslinger showing-off. Player: Yeah Narrator: She poises her purple-lashed nails for the next moment. Cashier: Cash or Credit? Half the time all this unnecessary description irks me with this game.
I never felt DOS2 was whimsical and light-hearted. Like, at all. Some characters are funny and make jokes. Yes, some characters. Not the setting. The setting is bleak and pessimistic. Still, some people try to laugh and fight depressions and nihilism.
The Leveling system bothers me so much. I dislike every physical class needing to level Warfare. It just doesn't feel right. Overall a great review. Oddly enough what got me into the game and ruined it for me was co-op. Specifically my friends wanting to restart the game over and over and over. I went through Fort Joy 4 times before seeing act 2 and at this point that file is gone too (I can't remember how many times I've done the prison ship). What bugs me more is that there is a respec station in act 2 so it all felt very unnecessary to keep restarting. That's probably more on my friends than the game though.
I so agree with you on the co-op thing! On paper it's great but in practice it's like he said, you really need to play with people who have a similar playstyle as you. My husband and I didn't even make it past the fort, lol. I like to explore, he rushes through and misses probably a third of the content, then we're separated and he's annoyed as I stop to do the things he missed but then I'm waiting as he feels compelled to come all the way back so his character doesn't miss anything vital. So now it's a single player game. Regards the leveling system: check out the mod "Divinity Unleashed" on the steam workshop, it makes the game near-perfect.
I played DOS2 before 1, and while I had some issues with the armor system, when I first saw the saving throw nonsense, I was really pissed at all the RNG I'll have to endure...
I'm doing the same thing now, saving throws are bit too reliable for the enemies, that and the good old one way visibility through smoke etc and my archer missing about 8/10 shots are both annoying. The worst bit is market traders dialogue in cyseal though, that Is some proper hammy shite. On the positive no twin armour nonsense is nice
@@janisir4529 I think driftwood chatter is more constant and is definitely annoying , but the voice work is much nicer, cyseal vendors just make me cringe, the voice acting in 2 Is just alot easier on the ear I reckon.
@@janisir4529 The driftwood chatter is hilarious though. It all sounds good, but its repeated over and over again. Nothing sounds annoying, but it drives you insane. It is extremely well done, it makes you insane every time you are out there buying items and makes you question your moral choices. Do you kill Brie when leaving for the nameless isle, just out of frustration? Playing as a morally good character is all fine until you get to driftwood. Not killing every single fucking short midget there requires extreme restraint. I have also learned every single line of dialogoue and can memorize it peferectly. HEAR YE, HEAR YE, still plagues me in my sleep. 10/10- drove me insane.
@@JewTube001 I mean in terms out how the game reacts to your actions. In order to get the villain tag you have to do some very specific "evil" actions, and they are all worth the same score towards the tag. Scamming someone is apparently equivalent to committing deathfog genocide or condemning souls to the void by consuming them. Just in general though, most "evil" choices in the game boil down to just being a jerk in dialogue or refusing to help someone.
You have raised some good points. Source mechanics and how underwhelming it is. There is some balancing that needs to be done still, I think there is just too much happening with surfaces and especially flammable ones, it's almost impossible to have a fight without setting the ground ablaze, which makes pure geomancer build just not viable. Also the skills should have more higher requirements, because at some point you have access to most of the useful skills. On the other hand most of the other points are either nitpicky or just your preference. Especially the armour mechanics, I think it is the best aspect of the game and it add a lot of tactical depth to each fight, I have that any day over 20% chance to resist stun mechanics. Also I really like the mixed tone of the story, because it doesn't make it depressing and it gives me a chuckle sometimes. There are couple of games that do it right.
I recently found your content and enjoy your thoughts. Tip of my hat to you sir. I have spent a fair bit of time on most of the games you have reviewed so far and your critiques have provided some insights I haven not thought about.
This man deserves more view.... Ha well at least he gets to read my comment =D. I have done the 1st but not the 2nd yet. I can understand why Larian took those directions. Seemed to be the right thing to do...even if it is as you say. I rather see a different game slightly under than the same game with just new graphics
I found out you can cheese 95% of the fights in DOS1 using oil barrels. Goblin village for example I set up about 10 through a choke point. Once they had reached the middle of the choke I set them off. They couldn't see with the smoke which lead to them to skip there turns more often than not. Those who didn't were forced to burn themselves alive while they wandered through the fire and flames. It works with most of the other fights as well.
i do agree with the most of your points,esp. the loot/leveling system caused to abandon the game.. what i dont agree with is your last point - the TONE , this is purely subjective and really not well placed. critics based on something being "sudden" really doesnt make up for an argument, anyway good work
I just can't buy into how enemies one or two levels higher can be so hard. Sure I've played with the old Lone Wolf levelling on, meaning skills are not capped to 10, but on my build it really ended up buffing my Incarnate, other than that my friend could nuke anything with me being a shacles of pain battery. The first thing we did in Arx at lvl18 was beta the Kraken, we beat Hannag at lvl13, I've killed Slane without letting my physical armor being reduced to Slane. Sure base difficulty only, but if you chose a higher difficulty then that's a challenge you accepted yourself, not a negative of the game.
And to be honest if you play semi viably, or use your head the harder fights can still be pretty easy on the harder difficulties. IE my character could 1v1 and dick on slane since I would use the tyrants gear and be cursed with burning or whatever so I couldn't be frozen by him, and I just beat the shit out of him and made him a chicken
The main problem was: Leveling up was more important than putting points in your attributes. The stat change from leveling had a huge impact and one level difference could make a fight into a piece of cake, at least on tactician.
I only play honour with cheat table because yes the AI is fucking awesome that i admit myself im suck at it and i just want to blast everything and enjoying the game without much thinking. Otherwise the classic/story difficulty is really enjoyable and manageable.
So interesting how different personalities analyze a game. My priorities for games are story, immersion, music, voice acting, and exploration. Gameplay and mechanics tend to be secondary. I see these points you’ve made and agree with them, but half of the beauty of this game was hardly even covered here because I’m guessing it doesn’t matter as much to you. Found that fascinating. Love your videos, as it gets me to critically look at elements I don’t look at as often as other gamers.
Yeah this is true, it is really interesting. To play a mild devil's advocate, I would say that the kind of people who like CRPGs are probably people who are more (or at least equally to role-playing) focused on mechanics, especially a Larian game where they make a huge promise of mechanical depth (which they mostly pull off).
Oh come on! You can run away from ambushes, for God's sake! There is even a perk for it (Escapist). And you can always use some sort of mobility skill (like cloak and dagger) to get away from the enemy and escape then. You don't have to save/load all of the time - this isn't fucking Kingmaker. And the price of resurrection scrolls is very reasonable - even if you get a few near-TPKs, you can still res everyone and continue playing.
Honestly the combat was great, to me the main problems came from it being a bit slow, which is fine, but combined with the fact that you know way ahead of time if a battle is already won (once ennemies lose their armor) and it makes the end of every battle a slog. I didn't mind for the first 3/4 of the game, but once I started not really unlocking any new abilities to toy with for every battle that's when the battles felt slow and too similar. The abundance of curses was also very annoying as you pointed out, cursed fire is just not interesting, it just means everyone is taking damage every turn and that's about it. (other cursed effects are alright tbh, but fire is so common and locks the terrain so much it really made some battles annoying).
This game felt like it had no mechanics, just pretty picture and forgettable dialogue. The combat was so bad. characters all ended up using the same powers. I have no idea why this game receives so much praise. it probably because people have not played baldur's gate or fall out 1 and 2. just goes to show, don't trust ratings when most people are stupid.
Spot on. While the story in DOS2 is better, the first game is a lot more fun to play. Another thing that should be addressed is what a grind it is to find level appropriate content in the sequel. For me the game ended when I simply could not find things to do at lvl 11. I cleared all the level 11 content I could find, but this had not given me the necessary levels to move on. After several hours of searching, doing absolutely nothing, I decided I had better things to do with my time. The perfect reviews for this game were not deserved.
The point about persuasion being a let-down due to the lack of investment is very, very true. In every game that has an actual "talk your way out of problems" skill tree it's directly related to how much combat ability you want to sacrifice via stats or skill points, which means that your charisma IS your role. Persuasion checks in this game boil down to 1) is there an actual reward for being right, 2) do I want to skip this whole segment, and 3) do I want the combat exp anyways?
The end of this video really tanked the rest of the recounting. The game can go from happy lighthearted and joyful to morbid in a matter of seconds but that is far more realistic than everything always being awful or everything always being whimsical. The two examples you gave visually were in extremely different parts of the game in very different moments in the storyline and it’s kinda a really poor example.
I agree that the exemples are poorly chosen, but it is undeniable that the game's jarring tone is appaling at times. All the silly conversations with pets juxtaposed with intense acts of cruelty - towards children, notably - are very bad taste and I am surprised that this is not brought up more often when discussing this game.
@@arthursimsa9005 do you realize how bad of logic that is, talking to animals not being funny? Do you think if you had to ability to talk to animals in real life they would be all depressed or something? Like what are you even trying to say it's in poor taste? Do you think talking to a squirrel is supposed to be super dark?
@@TheSectric If you haven't even understood "what I am even trying to say", then why do you challenge my position? Pick up your brain where you left it and maybe we can talk. And if you don't know what bad taste in humour is, just read any satirical newspaper that vehemently makes fun of whatever political or religious believes you have.
Don't understand why you criticise players concession on the matter of chosing certain skills playing as mage. Do you want to set burning, slow/crippled, stun and frozen enemies and still do a decent amaunt of damage in the same build? Prioritize 2 skills playing at any build is more than enough to provide combat variations and lots of replayability.
I bought both and haven't finished either. It gives you nothing to make you want to find out about how it ends while it throws stupid puzzles and teenage humour at you for no good reason. And knowing Baldur's Gate 3 will be more of the same makes me sad.
11:43 - That Oil rig fight took me almost 2 hour to finish :) was down to 2 characters before I used Fane to teleport (cloak and dagger) away from the rig into the nearby cave :)
31:00 It seems a bit dishonest to use these 2 scenes as examples of jarring shift in tone, given that they occur around 150 hours apart. The tone does change, but I don't remember there being any sudden shifts that come out of nowhere, and I thought that both the dark moments and the silly ones were done well. Personally I found the story really engaging, and it's one of the few games that really gripped me emotionally.
Your complaint for the armor system started off by say chance based status aren't as rewarding as a good strategy then go on to praise original sin which had chance base and say that the armor system in divinity was bad (which is about using good strategy) idk guy was weird
Initiative being a completely useless stat? Don't listen to this, that's probably the one absolute best advantage my party had in Tactical difficulty. Being able to play first, ahead of bosses even is just god tier in term of importance.
I think the story isn't really talked about enough in this game, because it has an incredibly strong theme to it: little guys suffering. The NPC that made me realize that is the blind magister in the swamp outside of fort joy. His friends are dead, he's permanently blind, he has no hope of surviving and is essentially panicking, but he still attempts to arrest you. That goal to detain sourcerers is so deeply imbedded in his brain that, despite his incredibly vulnerable state, he still attempts to arrest you. He even attacks you after you're assaulted by skeletons, flailing around and hitting whoever is near. He only calms down and talks to you if you keep him alive and fend off the skeletons, in which he simply thanks you and tells you to leave. He's a victim of the system he's been drafted into and only considers you human after you directly save his life. All the villains perform brutal acts to those under them in the name of progress. Braccus Rex curses and experiments on his court and prisoners to defend his throne, Dallis creates the silent monks in a weak attempt to reduce attacks from voidwoken, the Doctor actively makes human sacrifices of those assisting him, and so on. Even the main story is the story of your character's god grooming them to be the perfect successor. They don't care about the bleak state of the world or the massacre of the other sourcerers, they simply want their legacy to be carried on. They know they are dying, so instead of attempting to right their wrongs, they attempt to make your player character into an effective clone of themselves. The main character is a pawn in a petty proxy war between literal gods, ignoring the world below them in favor of carrying their name into the future. Every character in a place of true power cares more about a legacy or twisted mission than they care about lives, which is incredibly appropriate for a game where you carefully craft and follow a small party of 4 individuals through their own narratives. It does have those tone issues you mentioned, but i believe its main theme of individuals being lost in massive systems is strong, appropriate, and rings very very true.
@@tatianaes3354a lot of his issues were intentional design choices, so not a lot was "fixed with patches" per se. For example, i can see where he comes from when he says that there arent many super strong crazy spells to look forward to getting. A lot of the spells are pretty basic variations of each other that have different elemental flavors, and the few that have additional effects are pretty isolated and have questionable utility. However, i see that as an opportunity to explore the surface system. The biggest difference between magical classes is the kind of surfaces they generate and several can be either a benefit or hindrance to each other. Fossil Strike and Fireball are near identical spells whose only real difference is the type of surface they create, but because of that surface they have completely different uses. Fossil Strike can immobilize enemies, clear water surfaces, connect small pools of oil together, or detonate an already burning enemy. Fireball can ignite existing oil pools, turn water into steam and use it as cover from ranged attacks, or use it to block an enemy's path to you. Additionally, there are other factors that determine how you use spells. For example, when levelling your Pyromancer talent you'll only get extra fire damage, while levelling your Geomancy talent gets you earth damage AND additional physical armor rating, supporting a more hybrid battlemage playstyle. In that case, Fireball would more likely be on a high INT backline mage as an AOE nuke while Fossil Strike would be put on a melee unit as a low-damage ranged option primarily used for setup and area control. So, even if a lot of the spells are pretty basic and "boring", they're so flexible that you'll be putting them on different units and using them in different ways across playthroughs. Another thing he has a problem with is the new initiative system, which he says is worse and makes initiative "useless". The way i see it, initiative is a pretty passive stat. The only way to permanently increase initiative is by levelling wits. Wits also increases your Crit chance, and i see THAT as the main draw of the stat. Therefore, initiative seems to me more like a passive benefit you get while levelling your crit chance. As for staggering turns between your party and enemies, this makes it so 1 you can't go all in on initiative and nuke enemies before they even get a chance to swing back and 2 the game doesnt force you to level Wits just so your whole party won't go last in every single battle. I prefer the more balanced approach, but i can get how others would want more extreme options. So, i guess not much? A lot of it is just down to preference and perspective. He didn't like the big gap between levels cuz it streamlines the game, but i like how it was handled. He doesn't like the jumping between tones, but i think it strikes a nice balance. Etc etc.
@@Meese12 thanks. Which game you are talking about 1/2/Inquisition? BTW, when Dragon Age 4 (or whatever) will be released? Or was the series abandoned?
I don't agree about tone. I really enjoy this high contrast between silly humor and edgy grimdark,this makes game feel unique and something I never saw before. This is warm and happy fairytale with unspeakable horrors, violence and suffering. I do also really enjoy combat. Yes, it's not as reliable on oneshot wombo-combos, but it's very tactical - target priority means a lot, positioning means a lot, it often feels like you're really outsmarting the enemy.
I think the combat being so dependent on level and gear is the game's single biggest flaw. It seemes to activity discourage planning and positioning... in other words, tactics. There are times when I try to approach a difficult battle in different ways (and I can give details if anyone is interested) and get thwarted and thrashed. Then I try again two levels later and wipe the flaw with them. This is lousy and boring game design. And personally I have no interest in the story being well and truly over the chosen one trope.
The only time DO2 completely lost me was in the last act. I dont know about anyone else but I just completely lost interest in the game there. Mainly due to a ton of fights with what felt like infinite adds and like you said in the first part; it just felt like there was no strategy and all I was doing was bursting down mobs infinitely. Maybe a weird complaint to some but I felt like the fights dragged on so much in Arx that I completely forgot about the story.
You're not the only one. But it seems to be rare. A lot of people seem so scared of scaring off new players they won't admit that Act 4 is a mess. Even the ending can be unsatisfying. The quality fell apart, and it hurts to see it or admit it because Act 1 is so amazing and Act 2 is still good.
31:05 I'm not sure I understand this comparison. If you're trying to make a point that tonal whiplash is a problem, why would you pick two examples that are so far apart? The first is in Act 1 and the second is in Act 4, about 50 hours later, and I don't recall either of these having weird tonal whiplash. There were no jokes in the Doctor's mansion and the jokes in the Vault with Trompdoy didn't feel out of place.
I am not a fun of these games. But I am looking forward when Baldur'sGate 3 releases and you make a vid on it if you make one :-) Keep up the good work. Only few for subscribers and you make that sweet mark!
The items system you mentioned around 19:00 is the reason I stopped playing at the beginning of the last act. The amount of time I spend at vendors after each lvl up, how all of that divine stuff becomes useless scrap metal, no item sets are worth looking for except for collection's sake; all of that makes the game very boring to me. Besides, how does a basic random vendor get his hands on divine items, yet doesn't wear any? Really challenges my suspension of disbelief
Overpromising and underdelivering is not unique to kickstarter. Frankly, it plagues the gaming industry. It is essentially the job of marketing to overpromise and underdeliver.
Finally watched this video having played DoS2 and I tend to agree with everything you said. With the exception that I feel pretty much everything about the DoS1 story was superior to 2. The entire story in DoS2 is confusing, has the tonal flip/flops, and well pretty pointless. DoS1 may have had a pretty predictable story but at least it was coherent. The only areas where DoS2 is better than 1 is in graphics and companion story/depth. And the companion vs origin thing is a mess, I also felt left out and confused about what to do . . . create my own character or play as an origin one. For me DoS1 was hands down the superior game . . . but I can understand how others preferences would choose DoS2. Its going to be very interesting to see how Larian handles Baldur's Gate 3. The D&D ruleset should be a nice addition and should make the combat very fun. Cut scenes will allow for more cinematic storytelling. But I hope Larian really ups their game with the story, otherwise its likely to be a letdown for me.
Personally I was SOOOOooo dissapointed in D:OS2, and I backed this project day 1. The worst contenders are the armor system and 'curse'. The armor system rewarded heavy min-maxing in either physical or magic. Combo, which I used since I like it that way got heavily hampered. In theory you should use mages against low magic armor and physical agains low physical armor but it never ever worked out that way. A lot of the times half my team was just uselessly pulling armor away of something stunlocked. Gear for the player also was heavily biased towards physical with allowing many magic armor rings along their phys resist compared to most other items which gave little physical resistance so a mage using magic powers had barely physical armor (unlike the physical user which got both okay). And the worst off all, instead of actually adding tactics with control skills and attack skills EVERY skill had damage and EVERY skill had control, probably not to make them wasted if armor was up/down. But it made skills feel terrible and combat always resolved in boring removal of armor of everyone you could, stunlock those that did, rinse repeat till all dead. It made combat encounters so repetitive, and god forbid your armor ever broke since you'd just be stunlocked all the same. Stunlock gameplay, such a mistake. And then cursed. Purify was pretty hard to use requiring items and special resources, and everything would be cursed again anyway. So every single combat ends with cursed fire basically, unlike D:OS1. And probably not the best idea to play at launch, since most quests were bugged or hard to understand. There's a thing for no handholding like D:OS1 but here it really was just stumble along something most times. Use guide to see what X needed to suicide, then have them run home to do it apparently (why not right there?) and having to visit the graveyard to finish it, not their house? How does that make sense? And that's just one example. Didn't even bother with the EE, had no interest finishing D:OS2's original. Though it also had one of the most impressive choices I had seen, basically cloudkilling the final city. That one was impressive. Also the area where all 4 are split up to come together was very impressive. Though I have to wonder how that fares in Co-op since the 4th player basically needs rescuing by 3 other players, which can take several hours to get to. Do they just twiddle their thumb? Break the entire narrative by teleporting out and actually do something with their time? Some SP/Co-op discontinuity there. I loved it though (in SP). Now let's watch the vid to see if you agree or have total different opinions... EDIT: I almost forgot how insignifanct character skills was since all the stats were on loot, and moneyskills were OP due to them allowing you to purchase this upwards battle more easily, and relying on itemdrops (as I prefer) generally meant like 60% less power, a total insane number.
Oh, my sweet summer child, the obvious choice after you finally remove physical armor is clearly turn everything into a chicken. For the humor if nothing else.
i was desperately craving for another crpg experience and really been trying to like dos:ee and then dos2, but it just doesnt work for me.. its a pitty. but i also just cannot understand how this game received such a positive feedback. does this game appeal to some specfic kind of crowd iam not part of, or do i miss the greatness? or are people that like this game, are just accepting its massive flaws / have never played really good rpgs? :D
I could not disagree with you more about the combat in this game. I think alot of people who don't like the new armor system are largely the people who championed the first game in spite of the fact that in the first game it is insanely easy to CC an entire battle where the enemy does not attack at all. This game presents danger in so far as you cant cheese CC through fights and there is no way to build enough initiative to force your whole party to go first which practically nukes most enemies before they've had a turn. There is a challenge of actually having to think your way out of tough fight because you can't just lock an enemy down from the start of the fight. I think that's why some people don't like the armor system but for me, its why I believe that the combat in DoS2 is light years better than DoS1.
Agreed. To me the real problem with the game is how OP melee is vs magic amd even then its not really a problem for casuals like me because Ill have suboptimal builds for rpg and fun reasons anyway
@@Sneaky1ne A common misconception is that magic damage is weaker than physical damage. True damage dealing magic skills can now deal damage directly and it is devastating. Dot effects now tick through armor with the torturer talent and puts fire and poison magic on par with physical damage. CC effect magic found in Aero and Hydro schools do not benefit from this change but are offset by the increase in physical armor which means that it takes much more physical damage to get to flesh than at launch. This still means it is not a cake walk to CC, but allows high damage magic to be on pace with physical damage. In my opinion this provides more diverse gameplay as there is a distinction in magic schools that force the player into either a CC Mage or a damage dealing wizard. This allows character pairs like the Red Prince and Fane for example to be your front line Battlemage and ranged Wizard with a focus on earth and pyro damage dealing or Sebelle and Loshe to be your shadow blade and enchanter with a focus on Aero/hydro and scoundrel to focus on CC and damage dealing. By playing pairs of magic use you give yourself more AP per character to attack and either setup CC or deal damage.
I don’t really understand your point about origin characters not being “your” character but that custom character’s don’t get as much story. Are you saying this is bad? Because I don’t see a way the world building and companionship aspect of all the characters would work if they didn’t have story altering narrative pieces.
While I love your videos, I have to say that there's a lot that I have to disagree with, especially after playing Divinity 1 as well. While I understand the problems with armor, I think combat here is far superior to Divinity 1. Here every fight feels like a hand crafted puzzle whereas in the first many, if not all, feel like combat for the sake of combat. Its not bad, but its nothing even close to the second one. Not to be arrogant, but how did you manage to fail not to mention something like verticality? It changes so much. Sure there are problems and things you can improve on, but it is bigger and better in almost every way - and even if you consider some changes a stepback, it simply works so much better that I'd always choose the second as the better game.
the thing you said about feeling like you're missing out whether you play as one of origin character or a custom one really resonates with me. I have no idea why larian made it this way. Isn't making several pre-made characters with divergent quests and stories more work than just letting the player make a custom character like literally any other RPG? The characters they got are really great but I feel like they would work just as great as party member while the main character is the a custom. The story could possibly work better too, just giving the custom character some reason as to why they're the party leader and not one of the others. This is my main complaint, I actually liked combat way more than in DOS1, it just flowed better for me, and the enviromental damage was a great little quirky flavour that didn't decide the outcome of battle. But the characters... idk, the immersion with one of the origin character as a PC wasn't as good as either with a custom character, or as with one (1) template character as it happens in action rpgs (lara, witcher, asscreed and so on). It just felt like Larian is making an awkward full split over an abyss, one leg on the ledge of "let players build their own PC" and one leg on the "the PC is set from the start" ledge. I still love their games fiercely, but I wish they just picked one approach ;P
I think the reason Larian did it was because of co-op. Having the story revolve around one custom character won't work as well in co-op as only one person will get to be the _real_ main character, and I guess they didn't want to do the same as dos1 and base the story around two custom characters again.
@@NeverKnowsBest Frankly I liked it for solo play. It's hard for me to role play as anyone but myself when I'm playing games like this (unlike when I'm playing D&D), so being able to be Ifan or Fane was a really interesting way to play the game.
It's true that by removing the dice roll factor from an RPG such as this means a whole lot of other issues to deal with. I had the same idea at the begining of the game that it is too much focused in damage stacking and mass focus fire to get some results. However later in the game there is a selection of a skill that allows you to bypass armor and deal directly the status effect of the attack you did. This skill i gave to two of my party members and it made a hell of a lot of difference in how the fights went on from that point onwards. My archer/geomancer built was able to pick pot shots at anyone and cripple them in a consisntent manner as my main who was specced like a battlemage (Warfare/aerothurge/summoning) and he did a lot of stuff but was somewhat lacking damage he became in an instant a true asset to the entire party by teleporting left and right and providing support both offensively and defensively.
