Divinity: Original Sin

 PC
User Score
8.6

Generally favorable reviews- based on 2293 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,929 out of 2293
  2. Mixed: 198 out of 2293
  3. Negative: 166 out of 2293
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  1. slumpy
    Jul 5, 2014
    7
    As is typical of Metacritic, most reviews are excessively negative or positive. This game does not deserve a 0/10 and it certainly does not deserve a 10/10 either. Divinity: Original Sin is an homage to the top-down RPG's of old, taking major hints from the Bioware hits Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. But does it really measure up? If you ask me, it comes damn close but misses by aAs is typical of Metacritic, most reviews are excessively negative or positive. This game does not deserve a 0/10 and it certainly does not deserve a 10/10 either. Divinity: Original Sin is an homage to the top-down RPG's of old, taking major hints from the Bioware hits Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. But does it really measure up? If you ask me, it comes damn close but misses by a thread's hair.

    Let's break it down:

    Maps. The maps are huge and there is no loading in between interior and exterior environs. The graphics, for this type of game, are great. Probably the best I have personally seen in this genre. They don't just look good, but they're really well designed as well. The terrain has a natural flow to it, it's up and down, not just flat surfaces like you would find in the previously mentioned RPG's.

    Music. Is great. It's thematic, it of high quality and all around just works. The sound effects are likewise done well. That's all I really have to say about that.

    Story? Well, let's just say the story isn't winning any points in originality, the setting itself is your standard high fantasy fair. It actually sort of reminds me of the "rift" universe. In aesthetics, design and theme. As suggested by the title of the game there are underlying religious tones (it's got the typical Tolkien inspired "good vs ultimate evil" story) though I am not far enough in the game yet to make a real judgement.

    The writing is good, GOOD. But the game is not winning a Pulitzer (or even a Hugo). Dialogue is generally well written, if a little clichéd. It's more or less what you'd expect to find in a fantasy themed MMO (yes I realize this game is not an MMO, I'm just comparing the dialogue). There are only voice-effects for ambient dialogue, entering into a conversation is text only, so I hope you like reading (luckily, I do!) or mashing "1" to get through the dialogue options as quickly as possible. Exploration is highly encouraged and rewarded, in both items and experience. Seeking out every lonely corner of the map to search for treasure and baddies to kill is a must if you want to find the gear to outfit your party.

    Gameplay - Generally, aside from a few nit picks, the game play is decent. It doesn't really contain anything I haven't seen done (better, in some cases) in other games but it's solid and pretty fun. The only real downside is the excessive "difficulty" and I put difficulty in quotations for a reason. It's difficulty stems largely from the fact that you are always at a disadvantage, and usually, it's an artificial disadvantage. Certainly the AI does not seem to have the same limits on action points and thus each "unit" tends to be capable of doing more / turn than your party. But generally the fights are exciting and you never really know which way they will go. There were many times I thought I had a fight in the bag only to be thwarted by having my healer focus fired and decimated. The AI doesn't seem fabulous, but it's not riding the short bus either (*cough* Rome2 *cough*).

    The game tries to develop relations between characters (a la Dragon Age), however, none of the characters - That I have found - really have much of a character and those that do are stunningly simplistic. The only real PC I have come across that seems to have much in the way of a personality is the Warrior Madora.... Who only stands out because of the illogical and excessive bigotry this character seems to have towards anything and everything for reasons that are so far completely unexplained. The party social interactions sort of miss the mark, in my opinion. Dragon Age was such that the characters were fully developed, each had their own idiosyncrasies and background you could delve into through conversation. Personally, I grew attached to certain characters in Dragon Age and hate others. Dragon Age, in my opinion, was a break through in player immersion. The social/romance options and the fallout that came from them were, in a way, revolutionary. This was definitely helped by the fact that, true to Bioware standard, every line was voiced. You could hear the passion (or lackthereof), the cynicism and positivity of the characters according to their personalities. Divinity tries to accomplish this in various ways but falls disappointingly short. Anyone like me, who will take immersion over gameplay will feel this aspect of Divinity is a little lacking.

    Given that this is by an indie studio, however, this is perfectly understandable. They obviously don't have the resources of Bioware.

    Overall?

    I'd recommend this game to any fans of NWN / BG. It's good, it's fun, it has a lot going for it... But it's not the epic perfection that the Metacritic reviews make it out to be.    … Expand
  2. cattlehunter
    Jul 8, 2014
    6
    Mostly very good turn-based combat. Breaks down late-game if you min/max at all, and can also break down early-game if you min/max competently, but if you avoid doing that then the combat is the best part of the game. Environmental interactions: Best I've ever seen. Water+lightning, fire+poison, water+ice, water+fire, lightning+blood, etc.; the way they interact is very fun, and makes theMostly very good turn-based combat. Breaks down late-game if you min/max at all, and can also break down early-game if you min/max competently, but if you avoid doing that then the combat is the best part of the game. Environmental interactions: Best I've ever seen. Water+lightning, fire+poison, water+ice, water+fire, lightning+blood, etc.; the way they interact is very fun, and makes the battles interesting, though cluttered at times (especially as the smoke created by your fire magic obstructs line of sight to your targets).

    Character customization is alright, but between 2-4 characters you can experience everything the game has to offer. Not very deep. Some talents are very fun, but most are extremely boring. Also no appearence customization.

    RPG elements are honestly very poor. The dialogue is weak; quirky, but the humor falls flat a lot of the time. Never sure if I'm supposed to take what's happening seriously or as a joke; it's played straight and not over-the-top enough that it could go either way. In either case, I didn't find it especially funny or interesting, but that may be because of my personality.

    Game reacts very poorly to player actions. For example: Two guards attack you at the start: You can murder them and nobody cares. You can't tell the guard captain about what happened. Another example: You can find physical evidence as to the identify and actions of the early-game antagonist is by exploring, but you can't tell anybody about what you know (despite even having his journal in hand) because that's not a part of the quest. Another example: After you complete the first zone, nobody cares. Guard captain still calls you an obnoxious **** who's only there to get in his way, people of the city act if it's still in danger, etc. Many more examples, too many to list.

    Quest system is very bad. After the first zone, you get no clues about where to go. "Find the white witch"; white witch's cabin is protected by a force field. Remove it. How? Never explained, nobody knows. Hope you like exploring and have a character with high perception to detect the hidden main story quest items, or are happy with googling the solution. Not only example of this problem, but I'm trying to be succinct.

    Puzzles: Very annoying. One puzzle, looks like you can throw your teleporting pyramid over a chasm, but you can't because there's an invisible wall there. Next room: the solution to the puzzle is to throw your teleporter pyramid across a chasm identical to the situation that was impossible just a few minutes ago. Many other examples of this: The rules of what's possible and what isn't change arbitrarily; are inconsistent. You cannot deduce the solution to a puzzle a lot of the time, it's just trial and failure, or pixelhunting. More frustrating than satisfying.

    Companion NPCs are nonexistant. Only two in game, other are voiceless henchmen.

    Other things... no day/night cycle. Camera is not very good. Can't zoom out far enough, gets stuck at strange zoom levels, foreground elements (like trees, big rocks, foliage, etc.) constantly obstruct vision. Dents in the terrain often impact camera strangely.

    Interface is overall poor. Many important features hidden with tiny icons; not designed for big monitors and high resolutions. Did not even know about "delay turn" button until someone told me.

    Skill bar: Too small. 10 skills, 3 bars, must be cycled through (with no hotkey) by clicking tiny arrows next to the bar. Very irritating; you will end up with 50+ skills on your mages, making you constantly click the tiny buttons or just opening your spellbook to cast them from there.

    Combat complaint: You need to click models to target them. Models continue playing idle animations in combat. Sometimes they will be obstructed by aforementioned doodads. Situation: You mouse-over your target. You wait 2 seconds to be 100% sure you can click it. You click. The model played its idle animation, which (somehow...) made its center of mass no longer act as a point it could be selected at. Your character spends action points walking up to the enemy instead of attacking it. Extremely irritating.

    Inventory management is cluttered; too much crap to pick up, which can't be ignore because some of the crap you pick up will be vital to have on-hand to solve puzzles - you can end up with 100 items in your inventory, often making it a nightmare to navigate until you can go through every single item and rule them out as important then get rid of them.

    ARPG/Diablo-style, but with no "smart loot". You will probably not remember a single item in this game. You will not care. 99.9% of it is vendor trash. Vendors sell random loot, including random skill books required to learn skills, and only reset their inventory when your main character levels up. If unlucky, you may never get access to many of the skills in the game.

    TLDR: Combat is very good, most other aspects are alright but need a lot of polish, RPG aspects are very poor.    … Expand
  3. Davaek
    Jul 7, 2014
    5
    I am extremely disappointed in this game. Even if this game is in early access it has in no way earned the status of being able to stand next to games such as Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and PS:T. People are saying that this is the best RPG to be released in the last 10 years. If that were the case then I probably would have given up gaming for good. Even extremely average RPG's such asI am extremely disappointed in this game. Even if this game is in early access it has in no way earned the status of being able to stand next to games such as Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and PS:T. People are saying that this is the best RPG to be released in the last 10 years. If that were the case then I probably would have given up gaming for good. Even extremely average RPG's such as DA:O were more to my taste. I regret buying this game and should have waited for Torment and Pillars of Eternity to be released. The character creation is completely lack luster with a one size fits all body type for each of the character, I hope to hell that this is just because it is in early access, the skills are also lacking not including basic skill choices such as dual wielding. The story is average at best although it is one of the stronger points of the game. There are some innovative features for this genre such as combining different elements much like in games like Magika. All in all I wouldn't buy this game yet.… Expand
  4. Cyliann
    Jul 4, 2014
    6
    Camera is absolutely rubbish, it even flying out the sky If you do simple things like walking up or down, combat has absolutely absurd miss chances in melee (I specced 100% Into hitting my blows and I still had the issue of only having about 50%~ hitchance against huge lumping orcs), Spells are either completely absent without spending thousands of golds in vendors, do no damage or simplyCamera is absolutely rubbish, it even flying out the sky If you do simple things like walking up or down, combat has absolutely absurd miss chances in melee (I specced 100% Into hitting my blows and I still had the issue of only having about 50%~ hitchance against huge lumping orcs), Spells are either completely absent without spending thousands of golds in vendors, do no damage or simply never feel like applying their effects when you need it the most as casters are the most fragile classes and don't even get me started on the dialog system. Rock paper scissors. Really?

    My biggest disappointment and at the same time, great laughter though, was that how my 2 hulking warriors could not take down a thin, wooden glass door with 3 greatswords and 2 halberd axes. Initially planning to break in and steal some stuff in a deserted house, the door got down to 40% before all of my weapons broke, leaving me with a slightly damaged nigh invulnerable door and huge expenses in weapon repairs and that's just pathetic for any RPG standard.

    Yes, I am well aware that you can pick locks but unfortunately, my character specialized in lockpicking did not deem it necessary to bring any lockpicks on his grand journey and nor did any of the 52 NPC's I've traded with or the dozens of houses I robbed have any. These may seem like small complaints, and from some aspects of view, they are. But really, the biggest offense here was how I tried to derail from the generic path at the first city and was met with only opponents more than 3 times my level, which I either had to abuse-win by packing oil barrels and letting them explode in their faces or get instantly wiped out even with the best gear humanly possible.

    Long story short, this game has a long way to go and It's really quite the embarassment to be called a release with patch after patch after patch confirming this.    … Expand
  5. Zhael
    Aug 9, 2014
    7
    This game has so much potential to be a 10/10 classic of all time game, but it just loses the opportunity. Graphics are great, controls are ok, audio is great and the game design is fresh and gripping. For whatever reason the game designers built in serious fun-killing experiences. So here is how it goes: you discover a new location (great!) and you have a challenging battle with aThis game has so much potential to be a 10/10 classic of all time game, but it just loses the opportunity. Graphics are great, controls are ok, audio is great and the game design is fresh and gripping. For whatever reason the game designers built in serious fun-killing experiences. So here is how it goes: you discover a new location (great!) and you have a challenging battle with a large group of enemies (great!). Now you're having a nice time in the game and thinking you're glad to be playing it. BUT now comes the hour you spend looking for a switch that is 2-pixles square, or the lever that's no where to be seen but you know it's there. The pace stops the fun stops and the frustration begins. The cycle continues throughout the whole experience.… Expand
  6. msk1970
    Jul 16, 2014
    6
    I gave this game an 8 or 9 after a few hours of playing, but 20 plus hours into it and lots of running in circles and not knowing what to do to craft/smith, having to run around vendors because there are no signs indicating who sells what, and lots of 'grinding' by stealing everything that is not nailed down - it has me getting bored and fed up with this game. good game, but questI gave this game an 8 or 9 after a few hours of playing, but 20 plus hours into it and lots of running in circles and not knowing what to do to craft/smith, having to run around vendors because there are no signs indicating who sells what, and lots of 'grinding' by stealing everything that is not nailed down - it has me getting bored and fed up with this game. good game, but quest directives could be clearer, there are no cool guilds, and the wave high ratings will subside once people have spent enough time playing this to get fed up with its shortcomings.… Expand
  7. lonelorn
    Jul 19, 2014
    6
    I wanted to love this game so much, sadly i can't. The worst about it, is Larian actually made a wonderful job and D:OS could have been a great game but all the little things i dont like in this game are a deal breaker for me.

    So what do i not like in this game : 1. It's extremly linear, despite the (kind of) open world. Sure there are a few side quests, some of them hidden, some of    I wanted to love this game so much, sadly i can't. The worst about it, is Larian actually made a wonderful job and D:OS could have been a great game but all the little things i dont like in this game are a deal breaker for me.

    So what do i not like in this game :

    1. It's extremly linear, despite the (kind of) open world. Sure there are a few side quests, some of them hidden, some of them really cool, but apart from those, you have to stay on the intended path or the game will punish you. Brutally. As soon as you try fighting ennemies more than one level higher than you, you get your sorry ass handed to you.

    2. Even the way you should fight have been laid out for you : always use the environemental stuff around or die (or turn the game to easy mode). What i love about CRPGs is to create original parties, with non conventionnal ways to fight. You can't really do that in D:OS, especially given how dull the spells are (oh look i can give you a ONE strenght bonus ! for a whole TWO rounds ! aint THAT sexy ?!)

    3. Most of the time, you're at a loss about what to do. I'm not asking for quest markers, but i'm pretty sure the game could have made what you're supposed to do a bit more intuitive. And dont even get me started about crafting, it's the worst crafting system i've ever laid my eyes on.

    4. The game is still pretty bugged as of now. Larian seems to be doing a fine job of correcting this, so this might not be an issue for a long.

    5. Only 2 companions ? Are you kidding me ? Yes i know you can recruit some generic companions later in the game, but that seemed bugged in my game, they did not level up the level of my main characters when i hired them. Fighting level 10 mobs with lv1 companions seemed like a bad idea so i passed.

    6. Did i mention how dull the spells are ? That and the fact that you have no idea why a spell worked or didnt. For instance my warrior has a 1h weapon that has a 30% chance of crippling target. After around 2 hours of using it, i have yet to see it work. Just Once.

    All in all, i'm not regretting having bought this game, i had a pretty good time playing it. But to me it just can't compare with the genre classics such as BG2 or NWN.    … Expand
  8. Sidian
    Jul 16, 2014
    6
    Competent effort, but quite mediocre overall. Poor writing, poor characterisation (only 2 companions, and even they are dull and given very little dialogue!), boring and generic fantasy world that you've seen a million times -- oh, elves and goblins and a dark mysterious evil that you, the chosen one, have to defeat. Yawn.

    The question design is pretty bad. In Fallout, you'll encounter    Competent effort, but quite mediocre overall. Poor writing, poor characterisation (only 2 companions, and even they are dull and given very little dialogue!), boring and generic fantasy world that you've seen a million times -- oh, elves and goblins and a dark mysterious evil that you, the chosen one, have to defeat. Yawn.

    The question design is pretty bad. In Fallout, you'll encounter a cave full of scorpions that have been causing problems for the nearby town. You can choose to simply go in and kill all the scorpions, of course, but you can also choose to blow up the cave with dynamite if you have the right skills to detect the ideal weak point in the cave wall to place dynamite. There are constant skill checks in dialogue and in the world, you really feel like the character you created is YOUR character. In Divinity Original Sin, that is not the case. The scarce skill checks are all related to one skill: charisma. Worse yet, even if you have very low (or possibly non-existent) charisma skill, you can win anyway via the tedious Rock Paper Scissors minigame. All this might be acceptable if the quests themselves were interesting, but they never are; go here, kill that, retrieve this, return. Maybe you'll be 'lucky' enough to spend time searching for a small hidden switch behind some barrels or something as you encounter the ever familiar traps such as lava that will kill you instantly if you walk on it, or ice which will trip your characters up for a good 5 seconds which is just amazing fun let me assure you. The developers expect you to clear the ice with fire area of effect spells, so I oblige and sit through the insanely long animations and cooldown times over and over again to clear a path to my goal.

    Despite being 'open world' it's really very linear with a clear path to follow once you get past the initial city area.

    The item system is awful. I have yet to find a good staff and I'm nearly done with the game. Oh, scratch that - I did find one among the piles and piles of one handed swords I found a staff after killing a certain boss. Finally, I thought. Too bad that staff needs to be destroyed for story purposes, so despite being a great staff with good stat points and granting you a spell ability, it will quickly need to be destroyed with no replacement offered. Brilliant. Crafting is abysmal, unclear and always provides terrible items that aren't worth using. Perhaps I needed a very high crafting skill to make it worthwhile?

    The one saving grace of the game is the combat, which is above average to be sure but nothing great. The amount of times my characters walked to a certain location instead of attacking due to the ridiculously finicky and inaccurate cursor is beyond count. The spell animations are far too long. The balance is off, with pyrokinetic spells being by far the worst -- I came across a huge amount of enemies where fire spells were not only ineffective but HEALED the enemy. Lightning spells meanwhile were pretty much always great, with only 1 or 2 enemies resisting it. The secondary effect is also clearly superior - would you rather deal a bit of damage, or prevent your enemy from doing anything at all for several turns?

    Overall, I have enjoyed this game despite how critical I've been. A mediocre CRPG beats a good shooter any day of the week for me. And it's a hell of a lot better than "RPGs" like Skyrim, that's for damn sure.    … Expand
  9. whatever523
    Feb 27, 2015
    7
    I loved BG2 and D:OS is a technical improvement in almost every way...

    + nice graphics + good music + great user interface and controls + lots of content ... but while the game is technically great, it's also riddled with poor design decisions: - skill book distribution is random, so it's possible that you will not be able to get the skills you like. some skills are bugged and    I loved BG2 and D:OS is a technical improvement in almost every way...

    + nice graphics
    + good music
    + great user interface and controls
    + lots of content

    ... but while the game is technically great, it's also riddled with poor design decisions:

    - skill book distribution is random, so it's possible that you will not be able to get the skills you like. some skills are bugged and don't drop and are not sold at all. they never bothered to fix this. incredibly lazy job
    - no rest option and no health regeneration. crafting food or teleporting to town breaks the fluidity of the game and drags out the play time unnecessarilly, especially at the start of the game, when you don't have good healing skills
    - the trait system is ridiculous. You get negative traits for not helping slavers and murderers, for example... yeah. Someone didn't really think that through.
    - everything about the crafting system is terrible. I would need more than 5000 characters to describe all the things that are wrong with it
    - the inventory could be better: item stacking, containers (different colors), better sorting. also, the vendor screen has a different sorting than the normal inventory. managing items is a chore
    - quest items don't disappear when quests are done. there are so many quest items that the inventory is a mess
    - weapons break too fast. it's ok when using them to destroy chests, but they should last longer in combat. I've had fully repaired weapons break from one fight. Seriously, what the ****
    - no day/night cycle. i understand the reason for this (it's a lot of work to implement), but it's a very important feature that really adds to the atmosphere and immersion.
    - the game is very linear in that you always have to find the area with monsters you can actually defeat. your level pretty much dictates what to do next, because the penalties when fighting higher level enemies are over the top
    - the riddles in D:OS, if you can even call them that, almost entirely consist of finding an item hidden in a room and clicking on it. very boring and a waste of time
    - characters feel mostly bland with a few exceptions
    - some armor items have stupid colors (light green?) and there are no dyes to fix it

    The fact that I still give 7/10 despite all this criticism shows how great this game could have been. Now there's hoping that there will be good mods.    … Expand
  10. Teleman
    Jul 7, 2016
    5
    I have no idea what is with the high scores. The killer of this game is turn based combat. For a genre that is based on a fantasy setting and rpg style, the story should be told at a pace that is immersive. This is no XCOM, I am not trying to play tactical combat, I am trying to live in a fantasy world that is 100 times more interesting than my life; but if I have to play 10 hours for whatI have no idea what is with the high scores. The killer of this game is turn based combat. For a genre that is based on a fantasy setting and rpg style, the story should be told at a pace that is immersive. This is no XCOM, I am not trying to play tactical combat, I am trying to live in a fantasy world that is 100 times more interesting than my life; but if I have to play 10 hours for what basically a couple of pages of a books content then **** you. My life is faster paced than this. The combat is not that interesting either, hated the loot due to the distinct lack of explorable sites and random useless items, hated the magic system due to having to collect ****ing books to learn one (really, should you be playing a game where you keep alt+tab'ing to see where to find **** that is ESSENTIAL for your characters). Besides the main story line itself is too short but you have to player hours and hours until yours eyes bleed to get a single step on.

    Examples of good RPG in fantasy setting that has very good and immersive story and rightly paced: Neverwinter Nights 2, Witcher 2 and 3 etc.

    Examples of insufferable bad storylined games that are slow paced and relies on annoying side quests instead of their short main quests: This **** Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim etc.    … Expand
  11. Goatsecks
    Jul 23, 2014
    6
    1. crafting system is absurd.
    2. story-line is really boring.
    3. ranged is favored.
    4. some abilities and attributes aren't worth the levels.

    The rest of the game is good. Lots of replayability but I can't seem to do it a 2nd time considering how boring the story was.
  12. Skellimancer
    Jul 23, 2014
    6
    The combat is a cut down version of ToEE. The game delights in one shotting your party for clicking on inanimate objects. The hirelings consist of a redneck mage hater and an edgy as **** demon hunter. The game forces you to go level up before even leaving the first town which is filled with the most irritating NPCS I have seen for generations. glitches can occur that force you to reload,The combat is a cut down version of ToEE. The game delights in one shotting your party for clicking on inanimate objects. The hirelings consist of a redneck mage hater and an edgy as **** demon hunter. The game forces you to go level up before even leaving the first town which is filled with the most irritating NPCS I have seen for generations. glitches can occur that force you to reload, example: tutorial dungeon. I unlocked a large stone door and opened it, misclicked the door again and it slammed shut and could not be reopened. This is not an awful game but it is mediocre at best.… Expand
  13. steevm
    Oct 25, 2014
    7
    Despite all the gushing praise being heaped upon Divinity: Original Sin, it's not actually the second coming of Baldur's Gate (or whatever your favorite old-school RPG is). It IS a decent game, but it's marred by some serious flaws resulting from some poor design choices. Given the fact that there were apparently 20,000 kickstarter backers, it's strange that these obvious issues are stillDespite all the gushing praise being heaped upon Divinity: Original Sin, it's not actually the second coming of Baldur's Gate (or whatever your favorite old-school RPG is). It IS a decent game, but it's marred by some serious flaws resulting from some poor design choices. Given the fact that there were apparently 20,000 kickstarter backers, it's strange that these obvious issues are still in the final release.

    The good:
    - It's a party-based CRPG with turn-based combat.
    - Nice twist on the genre, with an interesting mix of elemental effects that complement each other. Oil burns; water puts out fires but creates steam; water conducts electricity etc. This adds a whole new element to combat, elevating it beyond the more traditional "ice monster = fire attack".
    - There's various moments that require role-playing, where your two (main) characters can express their opinion and influence their character traits. Different traits can give you distinctive perks when high enough.
    - Overall it's great fun to play whenever you forget about the flaws (see below).

    The bad:
    - The game is actually very linear. Sure, you can explore areas outside the city that aren't part of the main storyline at the beginning, but only if you don't mind instadeath whenever you meet enemies.
    - The camera can only be rotated 90 degrees, which makes it really hard to see things obscured by the scenery or to target enemies. You can toggle between top-down and pseudo-isometric view, but that doesn't really solve the problem.
    - Targeting is extremely finicky and requires pixel-perfect precision. Move your mouse one pixel between targeting and clicking and your warrior will waste half their action points walking all the way around an enemy, while giving the enemy a free attack of opportunity in the process. Combine this with the limited camera and given how tough some of the combat is, this is EXTREMELY frustrating and can turn the tide of the battle.
    - Inventory management is poor, and the trade interface is a shining example of how not to design a game. Only ONE member of your party can trade at once. That nice new spell you wanted to buy for your mage? Turns out your mage is 4 gold short after adding all his loot to the barter screen. Want to add 4 gold from another character? No problem. All you need to do is leave the trade screen. Transfer the 4 gold to your mage, and the reinitiate trade and add all the items again. The most bizarrely frustrating and useless change to the tried-and-tested party based trade in every other CRPG ever. It makes the inventory management in the unpatched Jagged Alliance: Back in Action seem almost sane, and that was terrible. At least JA: BIA got a patch, AFAICT this isn't going to happen with D: OS.
    - Speaking of trading, another major annoyance is that trading is further complicated by virtue of the fact that irrespective of which character you have selected to trade with, gear in the shop is always compared to the gear worn by the character that initiated the conversation with the shopkeeper. Start conversation with your fighter, switch to your mage and then mouse over a robe, only to see that, yes, the robe isn't suited to your fighter. Solution: cancel and restart trade again. I can only assume that this is a bug... but it sure is annoying.
    - Lack of quest markers and lack of information on what you need to do next to advance the game. Yes you have a journal, no it isn't helpful. After pointlessly walking around town talking to everyone 192029 times, you'll find yourself reading the walkthroughs rather than wasting your time, which is always a pity.

    In essence, if you like CRPGs and can look past some of the frustrating design flaws, you'll probably get your money's worth, just be aware that the game isn't flawless and isn't the best CRPG ever. The funny thing is that although this game gets called "old school" all the time, in many respects it's taken a step back; rather than adhering to tried-and-tested conventions, the devs seemed to feel it necessary to fix what wasn't broken - the result being that they broke it, which is to the detriment of the game. D:OS is however a good solid game and with a little more polish and care could even rub shoulders with some of the classics.    … Expand
  14. Hicks
    Dec 11, 2014
    5
    I am writing a mixed review cause with such high score comes high expectation that do not really delivers in this game.

    I can agree with the score for a classic RPG however this game without google would be a nightmare. You can miss an important item in a messy room and struggle for hours, really! You have barely a clue where a quest begins where it ends. For Hardcore RPG player    I am writing a mixed review cause with such high score comes high expectation that do not really delivers in this game.

    I can agree with the score for a classic RPG however this game without google would be a nightmare. You can miss an important item in a messy room and struggle for hours, really! You have barely a clue where a quest begins where it ends.

    For Hardcore RPG player maybe who are still nostalgic of You are the hero Books. Need better system to keep your track of your main quest at least. Another thought character customization could be improved. For a design fan of the latest games, I can’t understand why your character still have to walk with banana yellow boots and electric blue full plate.    … Expand
  15. ChunkySaurus
    Jul 26, 2014
    7
    I would say that all the 10/10 reviews out there are Kickstarter backers who want to help promote the game. The game is decent but no 10/10. If you liked Baldur's Gate, then you will probably enjoy this game too.

    The elemental area of effect mechanic adds a lot of fun to the game. Cover an area with flammable poison ooze and then set it on fire to create an explosion. Then use a    I would say that all the 10/10 reviews out there are Kickstarter backers who want to help promote the game. The game is decent but no 10/10. If you liked Baldur's Gate, then you will probably enjoy this game too.

    The elemental area of effect mechanic adds a lot of fun to the game. Cover an area with flammable poison ooze and then set it on fire to create an explosion. Then use a hostile teleport spell to throw enemies into the conflagration for good measure. Make sure you pick up a good spread of elemental abilities. Not only is it fun, the game assumes you have them at certain points.

    The Rock, Paper, Scissors method of winning arguments with NPCs is stupid. It detracts from immersion in a big way. At one point I accused someone of doing something(no spoilers!). When I presented evidence to back up my case, we played Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide the argument. I'm not kidding or exaggerating, you actually do this several times in the game. If they wanted to randomize success when using Intimidate, Reason or Charm a hidden dice roll would have been less annoying.

    The writing and dialog are pretty good, when the game has a chance to "warm-up". It is a little iffy early on; they dump a lot of weird useless story on you early in the game. At times your two main characters will have "discussions" where you role-play both sides. This is good if you want to role-play but silly if you just want to have an experience.

    You will be frustrated by the interface, unless you are a sniper. There is no assistance to click on very small or moving objects. If your mouse is one pixel off, you don't select the monster/item. It is very frustrating when a monster shrugs so your attack command turns into a move.

    Crafting exists but it is not explained very well. I haven't done any the whole game. You probably won't either.

    All-in-all, this is not a bad game. Good for some nostalgia if you liked BG. Some bad design choices hold it back though. Worthwhile on a sale.    … Expand
  16. kafkaz
    Jul 25, 2014
    6
    I expected this game as new revelation, I backed it up on Kickstarter, I was avidly watching developer diaries. Today, I finished the game.

    My thoughts? First off, this game is something me and a lot of old school players were waiting for. We´ve finished Baldurs Gate many times, and we´re starved to death. No suprise we are ready to overlook caveats, and focus only whats good. We    I expected this game as new revelation, I backed it up on Kickstarter, I was avidly watching developer diaries. Today, I finished the game.

    My thoughts?

    First off, this game is something me and a lot of old school players were waiting for. We´ve finished Baldurs Gate many times, and we´re starved to death. No suprise we are ready to overlook caveats, and focus only whats good.

    We praise:

    1) Combat: it is complex, fun, turn-based. Working with elements and combining them is refreshing technique and is very well implemented. It is great fun and the main highlight of the game. But - continuous turn-based/realtime system in Baldurs Gate IS FAR SUPERIOR.

    2) Graphics, atmosphere. This depends on your taste, but the game is meticulously crafted, there is no deny. But, why do have to male protagonists look like STEROID BUFFED ANIMALS? They are literally looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his best years, even fragile wizards types! But, you can design your underwear. This game can be weird. Some call it humour, not me. The progression of your character´s visuals doesn´t work also. Remember how in BG you were looking like truly menacing wizard, after you´ve finally found that great robe? There is nothing like that in here, you look insignificant at the end same way as you were at the start (this applies mainly for wizards). A robe is robe, it has one look and that´s it.

    3) Music. Again, your taste. For me, its nowhere near Baldurs Gate 1 brilliance, but good enough to not be distractive.

    Blunders we overlook:

    1) Story: nothing to write home about. It is uninteresting at the start, it gets somewhat intriguing in the middle, only to finally become big letdown in the finale. Bottom line: if you want to make Baldurs Gate successor, you don´t have to make 2 of 4 protagonists ex-demigods. It´s worn idea of long gone novelty. As if this wasn´t enough, one of the companions just happens to be ex-king. Do writers thing that great story can come only through gods and kings? Come on.

    2) Useless features:
    - crafting is absolutely useless, it only makes your inventory clutter in epic way. Finding out what ingredients you need to combine is quite tiresome. You need to find books, get through blocks of irrelevant texts to realize you need to mix mushroom with stick to get something. It is so cumbersome that after I tried to make few things, I ditched it forever. It just is not worth the trouble. You find tons of items on the way, which are the same meh quality as the one you make, so why bother.

    - blacksmithing: see above, apart from making more junk, you must repair your weapons and armor. Is it fun? No. Is it tedious and superfluous? Yes.

    - lockpicking: this buffles me the most - lockpicking in Baldurs Gate was blast, you´ve found dozens of mysterious chest with great loot, you could burglar random people´s houses, so it was VERY WORTHWILE feature. Here? It is ABSOLUTELY useless, not even kidding. Every chest in this game can be opened with a key lying around. There are like 4 chests in THE WHOLE game, which actually require lockpicking.

    3) Loot
    This game has really bad loot system, even worse than vanilla Diablo 3. The items are randomly generated, very often giving you heavy armor with intelligence bonus, wizards staff with strength bonus etc. It is annonying to kill bad ass boss only to be rewarded with this junk. Very often you will find yourself playing with lvl 15 characters, which wear 5 lvl items, because nothing better dropped for the last 15 hours of gameplay.

    4) Inventory and management
    Do you remember how many inventory slots did we have in Baldurs Gate? 20? At max. It was great. You weren´t feeling like travelling gipsy wagon, you carried items that mattered. Here, you´ve got LIMITLESS inventory space, and believe me, there are moments when it almost feels it is not enough. So, be prepared to spare much of your time tidying up your inventory, rearranging hundreds of items which you won´t ever use. It really is not right when you feel like a clerk while playing a game.

    5) Puzzles
    Most of the puzzles are unfair and uninspired. Either it is about pixel hunting small switches, or trying to follow instruction of some obscure guide you´ve found hours ago, granted that if you´ve kept it at the first place. You WILL be searching on the internet A LOT to get through. The teleport pyramid technique, although interesting at first, grows VERY INCONSISTENT later. In some situations it work, in some it doesn´t, you never know when, so you just try it all the time.....

    6) Dialogues and co-op
    Co-op dialogues turns to save/load fest thanks to the stats you get if you answer "correctly". You will find yourself answering not how YOU would like to answer, but the way so your character gets some special bonus. Depending on what you choose, you become e.g. Romantic, which will get you +1 charisma, or Pragmatic +1 to intelligence, etc. Your decision are commanded by which class you play, not by your conscience.    … Expand
  17. jgr94
    Mar 26, 2016
    7
    This game ended up being to slow for me (its turn based)
    But the graphics, lvl design and story is great.
    Not a game for me but if you like "turn based games" give it a try.
  18. Lanky14
    Oct 15, 2014
    7
    This game can get tedious but if you play with a friend, it has endless possibilities.

    My favorite aspect was the lack of 'classes'. You literally play whatever you want. If you want to be a mage that wears heavy armor and carries a sword and shield, you can do it. If you want to go 100% melee, enjoy smashing things. etc..
  19. matt79
    Nov 20, 2014
    7
    Game is nice overall, but too linear for me to call it a RPG. You make some decisions but they barely change anything in the plot. Yeah, I can get things done in various ways, but it just doesn't make much of difference. After playing Witcher 2, I'm expecting my choices to really matter in RPG's and I'm not getting it here. Other then that I had a lovely time with it, combat system isGame is nice overall, but too linear for me to call it a RPG. You make some decisions but they barely change anything in the plot. Yeah, I can get things done in various ways, but it just doesn't make much of difference. After playing Witcher 2, I'm expecting my choices to really matter in RPG's and I'm not getting it here. Other then that I had a lovely time with it, combat system is good, game design is good.… Expand
  20. suneater
    Oct 5, 2014
    6
    "It's over... It's FINALLY over." After drudging through DOS's heavily padded campaign, unlocking the "real" final, final boss, and beating it after a crash on Turn 30, this was all I could think. Divinity: Original Sin starts out beautifully by dropping you off in a large seaport town called Cyseal, the start of your murder mystery. The first dozen or so hours are gripping; not because"It's over... It's FINALLY over." After drudging through DOS's heavily padded campaign, unlocking the "real" final, final boss, and beating it after a crash on Turn 30, this was all I could think. Divinity: Original Sin starts out beautifully by dropping you off in a large seaport town called Cyseal, the start of your murder mystery. The first dozen or so hours are gripping; not because the plot is particularly good, but because Cyseal feels like a handcrafted cRPG town of old, a gigantic playground for your heroes to explore. However, even within this first area, the game's problems start to rear their ugly heads.

    The Journal system is almost useless. Quests are just dumped into your book with no filtering or sorting options besides being able to toggle visibility of completed quests. Two very important quests (one was required to continue the story and and another to unlock the "real" final boss fight) were lost in the list of tedious & ambiguous side quests that I picked up along the way. The Journal is also wildly inconsistent with how quests are followed and marked: some quests will drop markers for each part on your map, while others are so vague they will have one line of text saying "congrats! you did it!" with no indication of how to continue the quest. Too many times I had to go to Google just to figure out where I was supposed to go for a quest because the journal, local NPCs, and pocket portal friends were clueless or just too vague.

    The plot, its pacing, and the gameplay's pacing are all terrible. Many parts of the game involve listening to long-winded NPCs tell you their life story so you can pick up a side quest from them that will simply unlock their store front (or something similarly unimportant). D:OS is overly compartmentalized; you can feel the devs saying "Okay, combat NOW! Okay, 5 hours of NPC chat NOW!" I don't have a problem with reading text in a RPG but D:OS often feels like NPCs are chatting just for the sake of chatting. The story is heavily padded with long, boring sequences that stray from any semblance of plot that the game tries to carry. Too many times I loaded up my saved game and thought "What am I even doing here? Where am I supposed to go? What does this have to do with the story?" The main story itself is godawful too, shoveling in every trope the devs can think of (ancient evils awakening, chosen heroes with amnesia, pandora's box, an evil church, an evil twin sister, etc.) that attempts to twist and turn through a series of often predictable events that your characters have little effect on. Despite having little voice acting, there are few real dialogue options; most of the time during important NPC conversations, you're sitting there reading page after page of text, pressing 1 repeatedly until you get the chance to press 2 because you have a key item in your inventory from a side quest.

    Even though the combat system is enjoyable and has plenty of room for character customization, I often found it an exercise in frustration. D:OS's combat isn't hard or even particularaly challenging, the game just plays itself better than you do. Enemies often "cheat" by teleporting in more foes after you engage them, a la Dragon Age 2, along with summoning pets of their own. While the Magicka-style elemental combos are a unique touch to a cRPG, enemies often utilize them in unexpected ways, like shooting lightning at a pool of blood (that came out of an enemy you killed) to stun your hero for at least 2-3 rounds (not counting additional stun checks while the field is active). Combat often comes down to who can CC who harder, turning fights into a knockdown/blind/stun-fest while you beat the punching bag enemies before they can summon pets or kill your mages in one enemy's turn. At least a third of the spells in the game have direct upgrades making many early spells obsolete in 20 or so hours (why use a single target version of a spell when the AoE has the same AP cost?). This would be reasonable in a MMO but in a single player cRPG where the highest spell req is level 20, it just looks like lazy design. Like the plot, combat is too compartmentalized; many areas have large swaths of nothing, while the last map in the game has a party of 4-8 mobs every screen width.

    Tons of smaller issues plague this game. A clunky inventory system where important quest items gets easily lost in a sea of crafting materials. A frustrating crafting system that rewards guesswork and wiki-reading more than ingame exploration. A tedious Rock-Paper-Scissors minigame system for winning dialogue checks. A painfully long mandatory stealth sequence against invincible enemies that will kill your heroes in 2-3 hits. Although I think Divinity: Original Sin is a decent cRPG and I recommend it to fans of the genre, I feel no desire to ever play it again. Too much of D:OS is just tedious busywork in a predictable story that is stretched too thin to be consistently enjoyable.    … Expand
  21. Gavitron
    Mar 25, 2015
    5
    It's technically a decent enough game with a great soundtrack, and I love that Baldur's Gate-style games are making a comeback, but I honestly found this game quite boring and tedious. Admittedly, I only played about five hours into it, and it's supposed to get good later on, but throughout my five hours of gameplay I was never given a reason to care about anything in the game world. TheIt's technically a decent enough game with a great soundtrack, and I love that Baldur's Gate-style games are making a comeback, but I honestly found this game quite boring and tedious. Admittedly, I only played about five hours into it, and it's supposed to get good later on, but throughout my five hours of gameplay I was never given a reason to care about anything in the game world. The dialogue was just so hackneyed. I really tried to like this game. Maybe I was comparing it too much to the far superior Baldur's Gate. Either way, I simply can't recommend it.… Expand
  22. changrot
    Jul 14, 2014
    5
    Some reviews are comparing this game to a new Baldur's Gates, wich lead me to buying this game and regret it. I'm not saying this is a bad game, but be advised that you'll like this game alot more if you're into WoW or ElderScroll online than classic RPG like BG.

    Let me explain myself. Right from the start the mechanics of the game gives you that feeling that it's been designed to    Some reviews are comparing this game to a new Baldur's Gates, wich lead me to buying this game and regret it. I'm not saying this is a bad game, but be advised that you'll like this game alot more if you're into WoW or ElderScroll online than classic RPG like BG.

    Let me explain myself. Right from the start the mechanics of the game gives you that feeling that it's been designed to target the young MMORPG players more than the old timers (like myself) who played AD&D as a teenager. The way you use your skills and spells is typically derived from game systems like WoW. You do not have to sleep, learn spells, plan a strategy once in combat the way you do if you've played BG before for example. You only click (or press mice/keyboard hot keys) on what you want to do based on a turn-based combat system. For my part, this is not exactly my definition of what fun mean...
    I've not played the game to the end, but the story doesn't seems to me really engaging. Right from the start, you got this feeling that you just don't care about what's happening. You just hang around in search of something to do and end up opening alot of "Level 1 broken vases..." more than wondering what's the best course of action to take.

    Some others game mechanics are not really well done. Sneaking and pickpocketting are not really fun and i couldn't just believed it when i had to play "rock, paper, scisor" to win an argument with one of my party member... The level of immersiveness is just plain low.

    Graphically, the game is not bad, but i can't say i was impressed by the look of it. Diablo 3 looks way better for a comparison.

    Believe me! It's not the "best RPG of the last decade" like somes says, far from that.    … Expand
  23. spajn
    Jul 19, 2014
    5
    First of all i want to say im a hardcore Infinity Engine RPG fan so when i heard about Divinity: Original Sin i was so excited. It seemed to be the best parts of Baldurs Gate with a Modern yet 2d:ish graphic engine, Perfect!

    Well it didnt take long before the game started to piss me off. Its like the game was playtested by nothing else than Ultra-Hardcore Oldschool RPG fans or by people    First of all i want to say im a hardcore Infinity Engine RPG fan so when i heard about Divinity: Original Sin i was so excited. It seemed to be the best parts of Baldurs Gate with a Modern yet 2d:ish graphic engine, Perfect!

    Well it didnt take long before the game started to piss me off. Its like the game was playtested by nothing else than Ultra-Hardcore Oldschool RPG fans or by people who made the game and knows the ins and outs of every single thing in the game.

    You Almost at the start of the game arrive at a Major city which is a major mistake of a RPG.... you should never start at a major city and confuse the player who is already confused by learning all the new game systems of a game they just started playing. Only RPG who has pulled this off is BG2 but that game was so much alike BG1 they got away with it.

    Then you want to go on your first quest, NOPE! You get like 10 quests at the city and MAYBE you can complete two of them because the rest if way too high level for you. The game never tells you the quests are out of your reach. Im all for the game not holding your hand but if they playtested their game a little more they would figure out its not a good play experience to get access to content you have no chance in completing. Some quests begins as a quest made for low levels, only with the boss fight being against a level 7 boss mob...The game howeever never bothered to tell you that you aint got no business with 90% of the quets the game gives you AT THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME. Baldurs Gate never had this problem, there was challenging fights there yes, but nowhere like this **** where you get insta killed in 1 hit by random mobs. Why the **** give me quests that i got almost zero chance in completing?

    They Ofcourse you want to go level up somewhere. BUT THERE ARENT ENOUGH TO DO TO LEVEL UP! First Quest area is mobs of level 3-5.. i was level 2 when i got there... sure with lots of blood sweat and tears i cleared it... now im level 4, almost level 5. The Next area is level 5-7 monsters. FIghts can often be your 4 party members vs 8 enemy mobs. When you are lower level than the monsters AND outnumbered the game just starting to be torture on your ****ing brain. There is not enough quests and monsters to level up unless you refuse to give up before you have found every ****ing little xp hidden away.

    WAY TO GO TO **** UP A GAME. Thank god for pillars of eternity.

    I give this game 5 Just because i love old school RPGs but this game is a huge fail.    … Expand
  24. supercow51
    Jul 4, 2014
    7
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I think this has a potential to be a great game. At release, however, it needs a bit of work. There are only two NPC companions, and no AI personality for the starting companion character. This makes comparisons to Baldur's Gate 2 a bit hollow, since the best thing about that game was the personalities and interactions of the NPC characters in your party.… Expand
  25. demondred79
    Nov 28, 2014
    5
    Let me sum this up in one word: CUMBERSOME!

    After 35 hours of single and co-op play with a friend (both of us old school RPG players) we just couldn't take it anymore. It's a very polarizing game which explains why there are so many 0/10 and 10/10 scores on this one. Ambitious? Yes. Deep? Yes. Overwhelming amount of loot (and NOT in a good way), poor crafting, bugs, poor camera    Let me sum this up in one word: CUMBERSOME!

    After 35 hours of single and co-op play with a friend (both of us old school RPG players) we just couldn't take it anymore. It's a very polarizing game which explains why there are so many 0/10 and 10/10 scores on this one. Ambitious? Yes. Deep? Yes. Overwhelming amount of loot (and NOT in a good way), poor crafting, bugs, poor camera angles, UI issues in co-op mode, frequently getting lost in quest dead ends....yes.

    The bottomline is this one hell of a frankenstein's monster of a game. We wanted SOOO badly to love this game and the first 15 to 20 hours we were addicted after a steep learning curve. But ultimately it's the overwhelming amount of moving parts that sum to a bogged down adventure that forces you to overthink and slog rather than enjoy.    … Expand
  26. AlexSeven
    Jul 4, 2014
    7
    This game reminds me of Baldurs gate, and thats a good thing. the turn based combat is fun and challenging. The graphics is nice and lush, and sounds are well made. The story and details in it is engaging. Excellent fantasy RPG if you want something more meaty to dig into.

    However, this game needs more work. I would wait with buying this if i was you because a lot of what makes an RPG    This game reminds me of Baldurs gate, and thats a good thing. the turn based combat is fun and challenging. The graphics is nice and lush, and sounds are well made. The story and details in it is engaging. Excellent fantasy RPG if you want something more meaty to dig into.

    However, this game needs more work. I would wait with buying this if i was you because a lot of what makes an RPG fun and exciting is missing here and there. Voice acting on a lot of the important characters you meet is not there and you have to read a lot of text instead. Its not catastrophic to have to read, but it takes away immersion. The music, although well done, i feel is not fitting in many places as well. Meeting with the woman of time for example the music was a combo between lounge piano and spanish guitar music which felt weird. I expected something more fantasy/epic and a voice to listen to. That would have drawn me into the story and moment much more (immersion).

    Another thing is the rush of gear looking the same.I found a lot of rare weapons and armor and a lot of them look like the armor and weapon you find in barrels or buy from people. The stats are there and they are what counts of course, but in RPGs you want to feel progression both through story and gear. You want to see that you get stronger and stronger. At least i feel the rare gear could have had a special look from common gear. So far a lot of the magical gear have had at least an effect to them even though they also looked the same as common gear. Hopefully they improve on this through updates. For me its too late though.

    The three negative points above is what stops me from playing it constantly since if they were all ok i wouldnt stop until i finished it because it is a very good game. You can see the amount of work that is in the details, i just wish they took more time before release

    Still i give this a 7/10 which means very good. There arent many (or any) RPG atm with this much awesome in it, and you should definitely buy it, but maybe wait a little bit (if you can).    … Expand
  27. sisho
    Jul 14, 2014
    6
    Divinity: Original Sin is a good game indeed but it won't go further as the groundbreaking title everyone is claiming it to be. The developers put a great deal of effort in making it look and play like the old school rpg titles and the game really shines when it comes to it's re-inventive gameplay, but sadly it is not strong enough to cover the cliché story and foolish dialogs.
  28. Dracolich6z
    Jul 14, 2014
    7
    I have reviewed this game before but I change my score to a 7 from a 10 due to not being able to continue the game past the last boss, thus ending the hope for more content or mods that allow end game content.
  29. 731
    Jul 11, 2014
    7
    It is definitely a fun game in co-op and a step in the right direction in a genre that has been very underwhelming for the last few years. But I don't really consider this a masterpiece, as it has its fair share for problems like a very forgettable story, lots of bugs, terrible charisma system and shallow characters. It is not meant to be taken seriously but I can't say I am a big fan.It is definitely a fun game in co-op and a step in the right direction in a genre that has been very underwhelming for the last few years. But I don't really consider this a masterpiece, as it has its fair share for problems like a very forgettable story, lots of bugs, terrible charisma system and shallow characters. It is not meant to be taken seriously but I can't say I am a big fan.

    But combat is really where this game shines, it is really fun with a friend and provides some good encounter design and neat challenge. Exploration was alright, I was expecting more but the scope is quite large for a 40$ game. Visuals were pretty good and varied. Soundtrack was alright but nothing to write home about.

    I had good fun for about 60 hours, time will tell if I ever replay it. But as of now, I am more interested in Pillars of Eternity by Obsidian, as I expect it to be more story-driven and bring some of that Black Isle magic back.    … Expand
  30. Ivan665
    Jul 27, 2014
    7
    Except for combat, there is not much going on for Divinity: Original Sin. Environments are decent, crafting is decent, yes there are many, many recipes but nothing that stands out. Most dialogue is fun. Quest navigation is all right, the player is given enough clues to get going, and the journal logs all the dialogue from the first line in the game.Now for the bad part: No races. This isExcept for combat, there is not much going on for Divinity: Original Sin. Environments are decent, crafting is decent, yes there are many, many recipes but nothing that stands out. Most dialogue is fun. Quest navigation is all right, the player is given enough clues to get going, and the journal logs all the dialogue from the first line in the game.Now for the bad part: No races. This is the most striking thing for me, the dialogue is not voiced, the Bio would be the same, so I see no reason why the developers could not add a couple more player models. More bad: The Rogue class in this game is utterly useless piece of effing dead weight. In calssics like BG II: SoA for example such a character was a valuable addition. But here his dmg is way, way (I cant stress this enough) subpar to the Ranger, Rogues cant dual-wield (huh?!), Rangers with high Awareness (which is a decent stat for them) can just see traps and ground shoot them. Rogues are my second favorite RPG class after Wizards, so this is a big downside for me. Speaking of magic users, Wizards are completely imbalanced. Air magic dominates all school trees, the first support character will cover most other magic needs with Rain, Heal, Teleport (playing with 2 Teleports is too OP) and any other points put in a different magic tree of your main Wizard other than Air magic significantly decrease dmg output. Next: money. Gold is really scarce in the start, so the player cant afford anything other than a few healing pots. Spellbooks look like something from the Vatican Archives, items look like the new limited edition Channel collection. The way around that is to steal from houses which is so easy in this game, its stupid. Another stupid thing is that Secret Agents working for the government are forced to petty theft for chump change. The devs should have thought of some way to get gold in the start, after that gold is not an issue any more, and if the second main character has Barter high enough, the player can hoard on pretty much anything. Which is another imbalance - no gold in the start, gold is irrelevant afterwards. And lastly its not open-world, the game is almost entirely linear and its not very long, its rather short compared to classics and TES games. If you see bad scores, know they are given by children who are lied that they have played real RPGs and are usually fans of ME, WoW and consider Dragon Age to be hardcore (it was the only good one after KotoR but still a far cry). On the other hand the perfect scores are given by Kikcstarters to self justify and suppress buyers remorse. So take everything with a grain of salt. My best tip: skip this one and wait for Pillars of Eternity.
    7/10    … Expand
  31. BSim500
    Jan 27, 2015
    6
    Game starts well, but outside Cyseal everything rapidly gets bogged down. Pacing & movement speed are abysmally slow & after 70hrs I still wasn't even 2/3rds of the way through & simply lost interest. Instead of a major plot line kept flowing in a linear fashion with minor sidequests, it follows multiple interlinked paths of a major plotline which must be done in precisely the order theGame starts well, but outside Cyseal everything rapidly gets bogged down. Pacing & movement speed are abysmally slow & after 70hrs I still wasn't even 2/3rds of the way through & simply lost interest. Instead of a major plot line kept flowing in a linear fashion with minor sidequests, it follows multiple interlinked paths of a major plotline which must be done in precisely the order the devs wanted (which you have no idea in advance).

    Eg 1 : To enter a wizard's house guarded by a barrier, you need object A to active portal (which you don't know you need). You get it from person X (which you don't know they have unless you kill & loot their body breaking the plot) as person X merely says "you need to provide proof you're friendly with person Y" without telling you they will give object A in return for the unspecified item of proof you need, which you don't have anyway & don't know you need because you've played areas in the "wrong" order even though they were the "right" order in how you traveled across maps.

    Eg 2 : You have to talk to animal X (who only appears once) to get a quest but you accidentally initiate conversation with character who doesn't have Pet Pal talent, so you exit conversation and try to reinitiate with char who does have it, but animal X has now disappeared for good.

    This isn't an "old school" intellectual challenge, it's simply "fake open world" linearity & quest bugs dressed as something else. It's actually far better to have a Neverwinter Nights style progression where the main plot is split into linear chapters and kept flowing at a pace that maintains interest across 60hrs whilst simultaneously giving the player full freedom of travel & sidequests within each chapter than this confusing frustration-fest of endless main plot dead-ends & illusory "open-ness". The journal / quest NPC's are sorely lacking in any meaningful quest data so you end up first losing track & later on losing interest out of "slow boredom". I've been gaming for 25 years and a lot of what gets called "hardcore old-school" out of confused nostalgia actually isn't. In DOS, you can easily play 4-days of 3x hours a day sessions & feel like you haven't made any progress at all which wasn't the case with "PC golden era" RPG's.

    It's sad because the GFX, soundtrack are fine, the turn based combat works mostly well, the difficulty is refreshing, etc. But there are so many annoyances that spoil it. Some sidequests are area limited & fail without warning if you stray too far. The game is riddled with "progression bugs", ie, you'll regularly get a "mid-quest" comment about a plot you haven't even started yet that makes absolutely no sense (which is precisely why some "protection" for quest items / locations makes sense & isn't considered "dumbing down"). The puzzles are nonsensical and often involve either tedious pixel hunting for tiny 5-pixel size switches, sticking barrels over poison vents or "rock-paper-scissors".

    Other problems : ambient NPC dialogue is repeated every 20s, crashes 4-6 times per day, enemies dance about during your combat turn which combined with a small "hitbox" means you'll often inadvertently order your ranged character to waste their AP's running behind the enemy instead of attacking them. You can't even pause the game short of ALT-TABbing and using Process Explorer to force suspend the game (hitting ESC and bringing up the main menu keeps the game running). I've no idea why any dev would leave out a pause option as people get interrupted all the time. Camera only rotates 90 degrees, after a quest is completed related dialogue options still show up, poor inventory management (everything uses the same size reused icons with no visible text unless you manually mouseover your 150 similar looking inventory items...) Trading is equally tedious and can only be done one at a time (ie, if your fighter char sees a magic staff, you can't just click on your mage to compare equipped items), tedious rapid weapon degradation, etc. This stuff falls into the "fun vs realism" thing - it may be "hardcore" to some but it simply isn't fun - and isn't that the bottom line of playing games - to have fun?...

    Overall, I liked the early game but once you leave Cyseal and it starts to "branch out" across multiple forests, the whole thing gets bogged down in a convoluted mess of main quest dead ends, pixel hunting / RPS puzzles, "over-loot" and cumbersome trading & inventory management. It's like the devs looked at what's wrong with "dumbing down" in modern games, but then wildly over-compensated in all the wrong areas by creating a game with such an unhelpful main plot progression / journal system / nitpickity micro-management centric mechanics, it actually ends up more frustrating than challenging.

    Score : 6 (8 for inside Cyseal during the first 10hrs and 4 for the rest where the game virtually grinds to a halt for days on end under one main quest dead-end after another and tedious pixel hunting "puzzles").    … Expand
  32. Narziss
    Jul 26, 2014
    6
    The good: all the skills to strategize about and the awesome tactical combat
    The bad: the tedious story and other annoying role playing elements (like secret quests from talking to animals)
    If you are the sort of player who prefers to strategize all day long and wants a combat heavy game, get impatient with roleplaying (reading lots of text), and would rather just get right into the    The good: all the skills to strategize about and the awesome tactical combat
    The bad: the tedious story and other annoying role playing elements (like secret quests from talking to animals)

    If you are the sort of player who prefers to strategize all day long and wants a combat heavy game, get impatient with roleplaying (reading lots of text), and would rather just get right into the fight, then this game is *very* sadly not for you. I say "very sadly" because the combat is amazing, I just personally don't have the patience for this kind of story (I prefer combat only but don't mind story if it's a good story, which for me this isn't imho).    … Expand
  33. Uyzy
    Aug 19, 2014
    7
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. In the sea of reviews that usually give any game 0, 1, 9 or 10 it's always nice to read a review with the score of 4-8 in my opinion. I don't believe any game, book or a film can be called a 0 or a 10 without properly defining it's strong points and weaknesses. That being said, let's proceed to the review.

    D:OS is a typical kickstarter project. By that I don't mean to insult it, but it seems a lot of kickstarter games are old school comebacks. While the game proudly states it's genre as full fledged RPG, I'd say it's a mix between adventure game and tactical rpg. When I think of an RPG, I think of a lot of important choices, character depth and complexity. Adding stats, some companion dialog and a billion of items doesn't make an RPG (hence i cringe when someone calls Diablo an RPG). Despite the size of the world and its seemingly vast amount of choices, in reality this game delivers a simple (albeit finely done) story about saving the world. The story itself seems to wink at the players with its references. Sometimes they are hidden in a line of dialog, other times they are ripping off (and I don't mean this negatively) old RPGS. The finest example of the latter is teleporting to The End of Time (for those, who don't know - google end of time chrono trigger).

    So we got a basic, but coherent plot of saving the world. Now what about the world itself ? I'm pleased to say, that the graphics combine the old&new very well. A drop down perspective pleases the eye, the details are decent and while the design it self is rather generic, I think that technically-wise the game looks good.

    When it comes to the game mechanics, it contains everything we've seen plus a little bit extra. Tactical games like this always present similar challenges and have their pros and cons. It's no different this time. While we have a lot of things to work with (spells, classes, elemental effects etc.) there are simply so many calculated ways, builds and ideas of how to play it some players will get lost, while some will abuse the system. As an example, after 15 hours of game play I noticed, that the battles that were difficult were those that played out on the first map. Then after about 3-4 hours I understood the system quite well, and for another 11 hours I'd pretty much use the same tactics all the time. There also seems to be a lot of interesting to use mechanics, that peter out towards end-game. One of the example is specialist arrows. While the effects are great at the beginning, toward the second part of the game my archer would always dich out more damage just using his skills and normal attacks. Not to mention piercing defenses of high level enemies is almost impossible. While it may seem like I nitpick, I certainly enjoyed the combat most of the time and it gives the player a lot of possibilities.

    To sum things up, Divinity: OS is a solid title, that scores double points for the simple fact, that there just aren't too many amazingly good rpgs lately. If you're a fan of old school rpgs and tactical games be sure to check it out. However, if turn based combat, calculating your chances and a loooot of quick saving isn't your thing, I'd pass it.

    Ps I didn't touch on the subject of "moral" choices, as despite being an interesting mechanic, it doesn't truly do much for the game imho.    … Expand
  34. conradtj
    Dec 4, 2014
    7
    The story starts off strong only to gradually taper towards the end. Truly, the entire game, from the atmosphere to the quality of the combat, unwinds like a split thread as you progress. Divinity's content was designed to be played in a specific order, but it doesn't compel the player to play it in any particular order. This would be fine if not for the fact that if you play sections ofThe story starts off strong only to gradually taper towards the end. Truly, the entire game, from the atmosphere to the quality of the combat, unwinds like a split thread as you progress. Divinity's content was designed to be played in a specific order, but it doesn't compel the player to play it in any particular order. This would be fine if not for the fact that if you play sections of the game out of their intended order, you'll be either over or under leveled for a section of the story - both of which spoil the fun of combat.

    The combat and character progression are genuinely fun. The story is alright. It's a generic doomsday tale with generic twists and generally generic attempts to make itself original. The quality of the game is utterly belied by conflicts in design - the game was designed to played in a certain way but does not have any inbuilt mechanism of directing you.    … Expand
  35. kwerle
    Sep 17, 2014
    7
    Graphic performance disappointing on my system that runs D3 just fine.
    I found the game tedious after a while (18th). Quests failed to clear when goals became obsolete or impossible. Dealing with inventory is a drag. Crafting is a little random and not logged - making it a pain to do it again. Combat feels poorly balanced.
  36. djball
    Nov 19, 2014
    7
    Great old school RPG, with a lot of old school fail.

    In particular "what do I do next"? This game is loaded with massive time sinks, the map shows no information which is ok, but your journal is also practically useless... clues are very subtle you have to read carefully. Most often you will set out in the wrong direction breaking many of the quests. Player punishment was the    Great old school RPG, with a lot of old school fail.

    In particular "what do I do next"? This game is loaded with massive time sinks, the map shows no information which is ok, but your journal is also practically useless... clues are very subtle you have to read carefully. Most often you will set out in the wrong direction breaking many of the quests.

    Player punishment was the developers soul directive in this title and they pass with flying colors. In other words Google is your friend, unless you have 8 hours to find an important item this totally kills a game. And save save save save save save save save or you're f'd, it becomes rather tiresome.

    Aside from all the serious negatives, it's still fun, well written, and a good score(music). The second play through is proving to be much better because I know where to go.    … Expand
  37. mrpomo
    Jul 6, 2014
    5
    This game gets a lot of nostalgia up votes, but it lacks polish. This may be a kickstarter game, but Larian has been around for a long time since Divine Divinity (which I felt was better polished for its time. I like that its a throwback to the classics, but it just doesn't measure up to them.

    Pros have been mentioned ad nauseum. It does have deep tactictal combat that uses the    This game gets a lot of nostalgia up votes, but it lacks polish. This may be a kickstarter game, but Larian has been around for a long time since Divine Divinity (which I felt was better polished for its time. I like that its a throwback to the classics, but it just doesn't measure up to them.

    Pros have been mentioned ad nauseum. It does have deep tactictal combat that uses the environment and has challenging AI. Many battles requires creative use of the map for success.

    But the cons can be frustrating. The camera does not rotate more than ~20 degrees which renders it useless. Finicky mouse detection makes clicking enemies, picking up items, and other activities a chore. Agonizingly slow, slow character walk speed. The UI lacks obvious shortcuts so everything requires too many clicks. Dialogue of quantity rather than quality. Lack of waypoint quest markers practically guarantees you'll be stumbling into overleveled enemies. If your party is too far away from your scout when the battle begins, you cannot rally them to battle. Fixed enemy levels means you will be exploring the world in a fairly linear fashion. Many obvious gameplay elements like these just ruin the experience.

    Combat can definitely be satisfying in this game. But the forgettable dialogue and characters, clunky UI, and general design flaws makes playing the game an unnecessary chore.    … Expand
  38. blade01
    Aug 3, 2014
    5
    Ive played some hours into the game and than.....deinstalled it!Why?Visuals are ok but its not my style.Same for the music.The music repeats itself very quickly and sometimes it will not suit the situation.Than i encountert a massive problem with the loading/saving times.IT TAKES FOREVER TO SAVE A THE DAMN GAME!!!!And i need to save a lot because it crashes randomly.And its not really anIve played some hours into the game and than.....deinstalled it!Why?Visuals are ok but its not my style.Same for the music.The music repeats itself very quickly and sometimes it will not suit the situation.Than i encountert a massive problem with the loading/saving times.IT TAKES FOREVER TO SAVE A THE DAMN GAME!!!!And i need to save a lot because it crashes randomly.And its not really an easy game.There are many enemys that can kill you very easy when they die.There are some walking living bombs for example.I lacked the skill to put out the fire on the fuse, they blow up on dying, end of story.While this may be funny and challenging it pisses me off when a game needs longer to save than other games to load an entire level.What do we have up to that point:Crashes, slow saving.Not great.The interface is clumsy too.Like some reviewers stated you need to click right onto the enemy, otherwise youll walk instead of attack.The enemys are animated, so the hitboxed for the clicking move around a bit.Suckz, cause the battles are challenging.And this is a con for me, they are challenging because the game dictates you what you have to do.Ive encounterd many enemys that needs a specific strategy.Like those bombs.Youll have to use water to put out their fuse.The problem with this is when you dont have the right spell available the fight is not winable or so hard that there is no fun in it.This might be fun for some people but not for me.That counts for the quest markers too.There arent any.While its ok to give you the option to turn them off it suckz if they are not there when you dont have the time.My time is limited and i cant search for every **** piece of intel.Besides that the game got some new ideas.You have 2 characters, they can argue.Good idea.But how this plays out is stupid.Stone-paper-scissors.Seriously?That is too random.Another idea is to manipulate the enviroment.For example you can save a burning ship with a rain-making-spell.Thats quite an idea.But all in all with the crashes and the savetime, sorry, this isnt a good game.After some hours ive to uninstall it because i dont have the time for that crap.The story wasnt that engaging up to that point where i uninstalled too.And i think the game is doing a fairly poor job job by NOT telling you where you can go.Ive left the first city, the first enemy was deadly.Death after 1 hit.Sorry, that suckz too.Everyone that claims this is a masterpiece is a backer, im sure.I dont know what the magazines are testing, its not this game.… Expand
  39. Cauthon
    Jul 12, 2014
    6
    The developers tried to catch every subgenre, including all kinds of things (oh...MMO-players like crafting ...let´s make em do crafting) and making the nowadays typical frankenstein-game that doesn´t deliver a smooth story-based interesting crpg. If you let yourself be fooled by all the 10 points metacritique "I don´t understand the rating-system" scores who -like me- think this game isThe developers tried to catch every subgenre, including all kinds of things (oh...MMO-players like crafting ...let´s make em do crafting) and making the nowadays typical frankenstein-game that doesn´t deliver a smooth story-based interesting crpg. If you let yourself be fooled by all the 10 points metacritique "I don´t understand the rating-system" scores who -like me- think this game is great in 2 to 3 aspects and think that´s a great idea to include interactable environment (which is -like the turnbased combat- awesomely done!) you will be disappointed by the endless hours in between that people might think make this a deep game...but the story isn´t original enough (understament), the conversations lack atmosphere (just because you could read for hours on end doesn´t make your game Planescape Torment, the 20th NPC telling you the same f...ing **** in different uninspired word doesn't make it deep. Frankly I bought this game because people compare it -like so often- with baldurs gate 2 and -like so often- makes me wonder if they have ever played any of the infinity engine games, even the weakest of those had 10 times the athmosphere of this game. (devs...please don´t try to catch and satisfy the looters and the crafters and the 50k+ useless items hoarders when having a great idea for a fun game)… Expand
  40. InWeirdPeril
    Jul 8, 2014
    6
    For someone who is into gaming since the late 80s, but has passed up pretty much all Major RPGs, like Baldurs Gate, Arcania, Planescape Torment, etc... this game is not easy to get into. Bordering on impossible. Wanting to give the game a fair chance, plus loving Ego Draconis, I dove into the world of Original Sin. I took my time to learn the games interface and tried my best to understandFor someone who is into gaming since the late 80s, but has passed up pretty much all Major RPGs, like Baldurs Gate, Arcania, Planescape Torment, etc... this game is not easy to get into. Bordering on impossible. Wanting to give the game a fair chance, plus loving Ego Draconis, I dove into the world of Original Sin. I took my time to learn the games interface and tried my best to understand the game mechanics. The Tutorial, sure enough, gave a good glimpse of things to come. Playing with the elements was a promising mechanic. And of course the Larian typical Humor was ever so present. And for that alone the game should be praised. The world looks beautiful and there is always stuff happening. No matter where you go. But going places... that is what broke the game for me. Like I wrote before, I passed on pretty much all the classic RPGs of their time. Thus, the complete lack of hand holding was it that broke the game for me. While it is fun to explore and to figure things out, the tiniest bit of help would have gone a long way. But let me explain:

    The "Maps":
    Pretty big and counter intuitive. Sure, you could argue a map was all that people had in "that time" and GPS would be technological overkill, but since the maps are so damn contorted, at least some help with getting to different planes would be much appreciated. Exploration has its limits when you've been running around for over an hour, just to figure out how to get down a cliff just to see some more of the story.

    Quest Design:
    Oh this is the 2nd big complaint I am having. I do like the fact that you have to get that head meat involved to solve things. But what I do have an issue with is illogical design. To solve a quest that has you do the laws work, you need to steal and do some breaking and entering. And even though you get caught, you get away with it. The quests are designed with flexibility in mind, but that part can not be avoided?

    Graphics:
    This is more of a minor issue really. While the camera is a tad bit glitchy, the items that lay around are just too damn small. And constantly pressing ALT can really get on ones nerves. The world looks great and I would think that a slightly more "free to rotate" camera would have done the game some good.

    Story:
    I am all but certain, the story will unfold and tell a interesting tale eventually. But due to the slow pacing, and completely generic start of the game I do not think I will ever get to enjoy it's full potential. Sure, some prefer it that way. Myself on the other hand, I need something to keep me interested from the first moment as game play alone is not doing it for me. Though I do give the developers credit for not having us kill rats in some cellar on the first quest or start in a cell with no memory...

    Rock Paper Scissor:
    If you want to charm, reason or intimidate someone, you play a game of Rock Paper Scissor.
    Let that sink in for a moment. Done? Good. While I do appreciate the intention to make dialogs interesting besides reading them. I have no idea who thought this was in fact a good decision.
    To win the action you have to get a total of X Points. Each game gives your skill levels worth of points. Reach the needed amount and you win the action. So, the higher your skill level the faster you win the action. In my book you can try to reason all you want with that logic. In the end, its still dumb luck if you win or not. Bad design decision.

    In conclusion, if you already are into these kind of RPGs, Divinity Original Sin, might be the one game you had been hoping for all those years. And I can basically see why. Though for those who are new to them, like me, it may be the first and last game of its sort for you. So choose carefully. I regret spending money on it.    … Expand
  41. Maneinarr
    Apr 27, 2015
    7
    The game is good, just not as good as people are saying.
    I see a lot of misplaced nostalgia actually, and the game takes advantage of timing, for it was released before pillars of eternity (aka baldurs gate 3) and got to the gamers before, but in comparison is lacking depth.
    Why I'm mentioning pillars of eternity? they're very similar, yet they have substantial differences, but for the    The game is good, just not as good as people are saying.
    I see a lot of misplaced nostalgia actually, and the game takes advantage of timing, for it was released before pillars of eternity (aka baldurs gate 3) and got to the gamers before, but in comparison is lacking depth.

    Why I'm mentioning pillars of eternity? they're very similar, yet they have substantial differences, but for the purpose of comparison, here it goes:

    Pillars of eternity vs Divinity: OS:

    Graphics: DOS
    PoE: 9/10, DOS 10/10. They're similar and both are isometric looking, and although the art itself is inferior in Divinity, the world seems more interactive than Pillars, hence, this one goes to Divinity.

    Sound: Draw
    You'll feel very inmersed in combat/adventure with both of them which is fricking important for any decent gamer out there!

    Story: PoE
    PoE (8/10), DOS (5/10). This is where Divinity takes a MAYOR hit in the nuts. You get a linear experience through the game, with a couple of boring missions/side quests (with the "do them in perfect order or you will get punished" mechanic), with boring characters and dull storytelling. At least it's not dumb, but it's very "basic", basically :). PoE is totally interesting and storytelling is wonderful, but the only real interactions you'll have will be with your preset partners (more on that later), in the end it also suffers from some characterisation to make it more vivid.

    Rpg elements: PoE
    PoE (10/10), DOS (9/10)
    Very close to each other. The thing is that PoE gets creative in the way you get experience, while DOS gets stingy with exp to make you suffer more every battle, which in the ends slows down gameplay. In terms of character customization both are very deep, but once again PoE takes it further because of how many different characteristics and combinations are posible.

    Combat: DOS
    PoE (7/10) DOS (9/10)
    PoE is good, but magic is way to basic to even count. It all goes down to cutting, blunting and piercing. Magics cost way too much to be enjoyable. DOS not only makes magic users powerful (they actually are overpowered, that's why it get's a 9... balance, people!) but also makes environment critical. From a tactical point, it's refreshing to see your mage not only putting a zombie on fire, but litting 30 mts around it on flames from a poison cloud explosion! talk about special effects! but is not only eye candy, it can seriously turn the battle one side or the other. Definitely a worthy mechanic to keep for the future, game designers!

    Adventure: PoE
    PoE (9/10) , DOS (5/10)
    Interaction, exploring, sneaking, and triggered events are overall better done in PoE. You will feel excited while exploring a new area and also thrilled with excitement, while in DOS you will be desperate to finish it or get in a fight soon to avoid dying of the boring monotony.

    Interfase: PoE
    PoE (7/10), DOS (5/10). More polished basically, also everything is easier to understand. You can check the monsters you have slain in your enciclopedia to develop better strategies next time you face them... you even have your own notepad for personal notes. DOS is very lacky in this department.

    *Items: DOS
    POE (5/10), DOS (7/10), Both are waaay to simple, but POE is just lazy. Fine, exceptional and elite (or somethingl like that) and some elemental properties and another minuscule crap... and that's it?! wtf?!. At least in DOS you have some variety... but just some... not that much to be noteworthy (at least not in comparison to dragon age and full plated dragon armors and that sort of badass gear we ALL want in our team)

    In the end it goes like: awesome fights, and more eye candy effects, plus better loot... go DOS
    very good (not awesome) fights, darker deeper story, adventure thrill, hardcore rpg gaming, ... go POE.

    To me POE wins actually, but it's your call. Hope it helps... phew, that was a lot!    … Expand
  42. Bobblebeheader
    Jul 6, 2014
    7
    Divinity: Original Sin is a good RPG. There. That is all you need to know.

    People giving it a low score don't understand the game, so ignore them. People that give the game a 10 are exaggerating, and you should not ignore them, but take them with a large grain of salt. Personally, I love the game, but hate the turn-based combat. I liked, and played to death, games like the Black Isle    Divinity: Original Sin is a good RPG. There. That is all you need to know.

    People giving it a low score don't understand the game, so ignore them. People that give the game a 10 are exaggerating, and you should not ignore them, but take them with a large grain of salt.

    Personally, I love the game, but hate the turn-based combat. I liked, and played to death, games like the Black Isle games (Baldur's Gate series, Planescape: Torment and my favorites, Fallout I and II). But let's face it people, gaming has moved on. Real time came, and I loved it even more. The first Divinity game, Divine Divinity, I LOVED it. It was one of the most fun RPG's I ever played. Larian is a fantastic studio, that can make great RPG's that however often slightly miss the mark. Slightly, just below the bulls eye.

    Original Sin looks great, but it is just trying to hard to be "old school" to be more fun than a game like Divine Divinity. Movement is sluggish and slow, as is the combat. Yes, I know it's "about tactics" (not really), and it's not "dumbed down" (it is kind off...), and "you have to be smart to win" (not really, you just need to understand the game mechanics), but I don't really like it. The game just doesn't feel as fun as many other RPG's I've played, especially the combat is kind of disappointing. Everything else is just swell, but I can't nearly justify a 10 because for me a game hits the spot in all marks except the combat.

    Pro's:

    - Looks and feels great.
    - Tons of stuff to explore, steal, sell, abuse, etc.
    - Humour, most of it actually funny!
    - Emersive
    - Nice amount of, if somewhat boring, loot.

    Cons:

    - The game is slowwwwwww... Movement, and combat. An easy way to make a game last longer of course, but still...
    - Turn-based combat. But I guess that is personal.
    - Story isn't great.

    I would have given this game a 9/10, if the combat wasn't turn-based (you know, for that "old skool" feel the oldies always complain about). Now it's a very solid 7,5/10.    … Expand
  43. Kalador
    Apr 12, 2015
    5
    To play this game, you will need the use of a web browser because figuring out puzzles, what do to next will be utterly impossible to a normal person who has a life. I had to google what to do next so many times, the game should be called: DIVINTY: The Sin of having to Google.

    + graphics + combat (fantastic) + crafting +magic and skill effects -lack of quest indicator -inventory    To play this game, you will need the use of a web browser because figuring out puzzles, what do to next will be utterly impossible to a normal person who has a life. I had to google what to do next so many times, the game should be called: DIVINTY: The Sin of having to Google.

    + graphics
    + combat (fantastic)
    + crafting
    +magic and skill effects

    -lack of quest indicator
    -inventory menus
    -lack of random encounters (baddies just stay in a fixed position)
    -lack of wondering monsters
    -quests are absurd and too spread out. You will probably already have an object on you to proceed through a door yet that same character must be the one opening the door. Too much text to remember
    early on for a later part of the quest.    … Expand
  44. Argeon
    Jul 6, 2014
    6
    I've played my fair share of RPGs, tabletop and more, but this game seems to be trying to hard to stay by the books, to try to be "old-school", and that's what makes it so unenjoyable. There seems to be no passion behind the game. It's pretty, it has solid mechanics, creative puzzles, etc. but it lacks 'fun'. Undoubtly you will rate this review down because I don't find this game to be aI've played my fair share of RPGs, tabletop and more, but this game seems to be trying to hard to stay by the books, to try to be "old-school", and that's what makes it so unenjoyable. There seems to be no passion behind the game. It's pretty, it has solid mechanics, creative puzzles, etc. but it lacks 'fun'. Undoubtly you will rate this review down because I don't find this game to be a 10/10, but please understand, a game needs to be fun, otherwise it feels like a chore. Here's what the game gets right: +Co-op +Graphics +Turn-based Combat +"Table-top"-style +Modding Here's what it's missing though -Enjoyable dialogue -Fun It's like a pretty cake that towers over you with it's glory, but when you take a bite, it's stale.… Expand
  45. Erazor
    Aug 30, 2014
    7
    I enjoyed it, It brought back something that was missing in games these days. However loot was annoying to manage, too many junk items, books and quest items should disappear when no longer needed. Its just my opinion but I really dislike inventory management in RPG's it's just a chore that takes away from the game. Quite a bit of pointless conversations and lore that's not directlyI enjoyed it, It brought back something that was missing in games these days. However loot was annoying to manage, too many junk items, books and quest items should disappear when no longer needed. Its just my opinion but I really dislike inventory management in RPG's it's just a chore that takes away from the game. Quite a bit of pointless conversations and lore that's not directly related to the current time of things that's happening now making some conversations very boring to listen through, it's like a history class but it's fictional, it doesn't help me immerse more into the game either so I see no point of it (cutscenes of the guardians were fine though). Making gold was too easy (stealing paintings). Some quests became hard to interpret after the first area, leaving me to double check things online, as I no longer have the patience to explore things over and over again. If those things were addressed to my personal liking more I'd give it 10/10.… Expand
  46. TheJudgernaught
    Dec 6, 2014
    7
    Divinity: Original Sin is definitely a breath of fresh air for old school RPG lovers! So, let's get down with it

    - Combat (Strong Points). It makes you take into consideration your party's strengths and the environment around you. The fact that it is also turn-based makes you think each and every action. Everything you do is meaningful, even positioning yourself better! It's also not a    Divinity: Original Sin is definitely a breath of fresh air for old school RPG lovers! So, let's get down with it

    - Combat (Strong Points). It makes you take into consideration your party's strengths and the environment around you. The fact that it is also turn-based makes you think each and every action. Everything you do is meaningful, even positioning yourself better! It's also not a walk in the park, especially on hard and forces you to choose your party accordingly (I had to re-start at some point because my party set-up wasn't any good).

    - Combat (Weak Points): The fights were there are too many NPC's involved feel slow, but that's like 2 or three cases, as far as I remember, in the whole game.

    - Crafting (Strong Points): Time to get creative here! I think crafting is one of the most important factors giving you the feeling of RPG-ness. The things you can craft are many and you can get really creative in this process (oh the joy when you discover some recipe/reagent by yourself!). And it does feel like proper crafting; you need the proper tool/place to make the item you want.

    - Crafting (Weak Points): Some materials are limited and you might accidentally waste them in the start of the game. Also, you can't craft helmets nor bracers.

    - Story/Plot (Strong Points): It is as it should be; it starts from something small and escalates to grand proportions. It begins slowly at first, but soon you're hooked up and eager to find out what happens next.

    - Story/Plot (Weak Points): The plot has been based on... a very popular story(ies) of our time. It's unoriginal and I feel they could have made a better job at transforming these stories into their own, giving off only the slightest hints to where they had based their own creation.

    - Puzzles/Riddles - Secrets (Strong Points): There are many of them lying around on the map and it makes the game ever more so engaging. They drive the player to explore more, be more observant of his surroundings and be creative on his solutions!

    - Puzzles - Secrets (Weak Points): Two switches in particular were too hard to see and they were needed to advance the story (their search was tedious due to the vastness of the room they were contained).

    The writing and the dialogues are good, even if cliched at some points. There choices for the outcomes that, even though they exist, most times (if not always) are restricted to two and don't seem to have a great impact on the story, apart from your protagonist's traits. There are too few memorable characters and they come out a bit one-dimensional in their personalities. Although it seems they had attempted to created some sort of relationship between the protagonists (and the companions), it isn't really fleshed out.

    Praise the Lord for it's 4 quicksave slots and the quick moving around with waypoints! The graphics are also quite good. If I could change something, I'd change the camera and the inventory system.

    I could elaborate more, but I'll leave the matter at that. I give the game a 7. It's quite enjoyable indeed, replayable at least once. It's nowhere near perfection though; some things are missing (e.g. day/night cycle, alternative endings/more options for your story) or could be improved (e.g. story and character depth, complexity and number, npc interaction, npc voice acting, inventory, UI, more character creation options etc.).

    I can only hope that Original Sin: Divinity might whack a bit of sense to RPG making studios (I am looking at you Bioware) and show that old-school >>>C    … Expand
  47. Mrsmit12
    Jul 28, 2014
    5
    Meh.

    This game has such positive reviews and I bought it. After playing thirty minutes, I wasn't impressed at all. Without voice acting, the game moves at a snail's pace. The story is confusing and the initial trailer wasn't impressive at all. I play some silly games like Nancy Drew for PC and those $6.99 games have better character development than Divinity: Original Sin.    Meh.

    This game has such positive reviews and I bought it. After playing thirty minutes, I wasn't impressed at all. Without voice acting, the game moves at a snail's pace. The story is confusing and the initial trailer wasn't impressive at all.

    I play some silly games like Nancy Drew for PC and those $6.99 games have better character development than Divinity: Original Sin.

    The environments are pretty stellar though.

    The combat is slow and feels ancient.

    After giving it a second go, I was disappointed by the $40.00 I spent. Don't waste your time with this overrated game.    … Expand
  48. sonarctica
    Jul 31, 2014
    6
    I just found it really boring after playing for 40-50 hours... I just couldn't get into it. I can understand why people like it, I really wanted to like it too and get sucked into the world but didn't happen for me.
  49. LibertyPrime
    Nov 18, 2014
    5
    Overrated and overhyped - Divinity: Original Sin in a nutshell.

    Like many others here im a huge fan of old Bioware rpg's and generally everything on Infinity engine. D:OS was supposed to be Bladur's Gate second coming. The game was massively hyped and showered with great reviews, many people called it a "masterpiece". But is it truly a masterpiece? Not even close. I'll start with imo    Overrated and overhyped - Divinity: Original Sin in a nutshell.

    Like many others here im a huge fan of old Bioware rpg's and generally everything on Infinity engine. D:OS was supposed to be Bladur's Gate second coming. The game was massively hyped and showered with great reviews, many people called it a "masterpiece". But is it truly a masterpiece? Not even close.

    I'll start with imo the most important thing in rpg's: the story. Its so cliche that you stop caring about it right from the beginning. Someone, somewhere is raising dead and you have to find out whats going on. Seriously? Any elementary school kid could come up with something better over the weekend. You just don't care about the story at all. They could remove main plot and no one would even notice.

    While we are at the story let's talk about a related thing: playable npc's. I don't know how is it possible but they managed to create the worst npc's in history of rpg's. There only two of them and both are completely uninteresting (and that's a huge understatement). One is a chick who wants to kill everything that is evil without giving any thought. Second one is some run-of-the-mill, ordinary, boring dude, like a cook or a taxi driver or something. I didn't care enough to ask him wtf is he anyway. Remember those awesome npc's from Planescape: Torment, Mass Effect or first Dragon Age? Good, because you're not gonna find them here.

    The game is plagued with a plethora of terrible design choices. It's like they tried to be too hardcore for their own good. Quest log is completely useless, don't get me wrong, i don't need quest markers, but it doesn't tell you anything. Even if a quest giver told you where to find something its not noted in your journal for some reason. You can't highlight items on the screen wich will make you to look for things with your mouse cursor, scrolling up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down... It's especially annoying when you have to look for some tiny lever or button which are completely invisible and most of the time you don't even know that you should look for them. Inventory management is a mess too.

    Bugs are omnipresent from broken quests, spells to npc's. You can even break the game by doing quests that you were supposed to do later. Its "fine" if you have recent saves, but if you don't you are in deep sh....

    Puzzles, don't get me started on them. There are more useless, annoying puzzles here than in all games i played before altogether. They don't test your intelligence, its just the usual "here are 6 levers, pull them in right orded" sometimes with annoying twist, just a completely brainless waste of time. At one point i came across a dungeon with 4 buttons and a door locked behind a magic barrier. I was pushing buttons by putting items on them, tried every goddamn combination, different order, i looked through dungeon multiple times for the clues, i looked for some invisible buttons, casted different spells, tried destroying them, I even went back to the quest giver and nothing... I had to check out a walkthrough which completely destroyed any immersion i had left. It turns out I had to put itemes of different weight on those buttons. Like 1 pound on first one, 7.5 pounds on second, 5.3 on third etc. But the worst thing is that those buttons were working before, when i put stuff on them the animation went off and they were pushed down. How in hell was i supposed to know that i need to put 2.3 more pounds on first one and 9.1 more pounds on third one? THEY WERE WORKING BEFORE!!! Its just a completely idiotic design.

    The game does some things properly. The music is awesome, i would sit in main menu just to listen to it. Graphics are nice too. Combat system is interesting at the beginning but deep inside its just your standard action point/turn based combat. You'll find combos that work for you and faceroll 90% of fights with them.

    Overall there are so many huge problems with this game that its not worth you time/money until you can find it for like 3$ on steam. And even then i would recommend getting something like first Dragon Age, Skyrim, any Mass Effect, Fallout 3 or NV if you haven't completed them yet. If you played all those games, you can try this one out, WITH CAUTION.    … Expand
  50. Indrigis
    Aug 23, 2014
    6
    When it works, it is truly great. Vivid colors, some combat variety, lots of dialogue and humor.

    But the combat variety is dulled by the huge cooldowns on most abilities so your fighters will rely on lots and lots of autoattack and your mages will use the same 1-2-3 spell set every turn, because everything else is on cooldown. The dialogue... Well, it's all voiced. But it's so    When it works, it is truly great. Vivid colors, some combat variety, lots of dialogue and humor.

    But the combat variety is dulled by the huge cooldowns on most abilities so your fighters will rely on lots and lots of autoattack and your mages will use the same 1-2-3 spell set every turn, because everything else is on cooldown.

    The dialogue... Well, it's all voiced. But it's so pompous it begins to hurt halfway through. Yes, yes, we're saving the world, blah-blah-blah, skip-skip-skip. Oh, you want to go with us? Sure. Oh, you've decided to not go with us? Ok. Why does this take five screens of text?

    Also, crowd control is very unreliable so quite a few fights can only be beaten by either blatant quicksave scumming or by massive overleveling.

    Environmental effects are decent and a breath of fresh air. Except after level 10 I could not care less if I was standing in a fire or in a poison pool. The best way to wage combat is to BLAST EVERYTHING!

    Many puzzles can be cheated through with the use of certain items but then again, you can't teleport anything over a knee-high obstacle...

    It all feels like Larian were really trying but had to cut a lot of corners to deliver the product. The game might improve over the next half a year with patches.    … Expand
  51. kuehnau
    Mar 29, 2015
    5
    Divinity: Original Sin is a sandbox style RPG, you are allowed to roam around, where you want, doing what you want, how you want. If you've played Fallout or Fallout 2, you will know what Divinity: Original Sin is like.

    The game has wonderful graphics and great music, along with great voice acting, so where's the problem? To begin with, the game is almost completely directionless.    Divinity: Original Sin is a sandbox style RPG, you are allowed to roam around, where you want, doing what you want, how you want. If you've played Fallout or Fallout 2, you will know what Divinity: Original Sin is like.

    The game has wonderful graphics and great music, along with great voice acting, so where's the problem?

    To begin with, the game is almost completely directionless. The first town you encounter, you are going to run into tons of quests, all of them wanting you to do all sorts of other things, help them out, whatever. That might not be such a terrible thing, but Divinity handles their quest systems awfully.

    To begin with, there is almost nothing to be said for it's quest tracking. The only thing the game does do is keep track of dialog you've have with other NPCs, as well as tracking things you've already done in the quest line. Besides that, be prepared to wade through thousands of lines of text, as well as randomly walking around the game world, hoping you run into what you need to complete the next quest.

    As if this weren't bad enough, Divinity has a poor sense of overall direction and this also makes completing the quests in Divinity all the more difficult. While some quests can be completed with ease, others, that are assigned to you at the very beginning of the game are impossible to complete until you've leveled up. I don't see the point in assigning quests to players that they can't reasonably complete until hours or days later into the game. All it does, it clutter up the awful quest tracker they already have and confuses players even more.

    Along with that, it's impossible to know if you should be in a specific zone or not. It's entirely too easy for players to accidentally wander into zones that are double or triple your level. It's almost always a death sentence and can help lead to a massive amount of frustration on the player's part.

    Besides the broken story, awful quest tracking, complete lack of direction in almost all ways and terrible design choices made by the developers, there's another issue I haven't addressed yet. The game is advertised to have co-op game mechanics in the game. I don't consider it a true co-op experience. Instead of allowing players to play their own games and then dropping into a friend's game, with their own character, players are forced to take on the role of someone else's character.

    This way is an awful choice because players are going to find themselves stuck in characters they didn't want, with builds they didn't want, being forced to play the game in a style they may not enjoy or are comfortable with.

    I wanted to like this game, but I can't.    … Expand
  52. Pinkbeaver
    Mar 30, 2015
    6
    100% Action RPG. Perfect combat system and nice, fresh coop mechanics. And that's all.
    Main plot is boring and bland, i had to force myself to play after first 20 hours.
    RPG mechanics are under-developed, the structure of the game is very linear - it feels more like a successor to Dungeon Siege or Titan's Quest than to Divine Divinity (which had some open-world feeling to it). The world    100% Action RPG. Perfect combat system and nice, fresh coop mechanics. And that's all.
    Main plot is boring and bland, i had to force myself to play after first 20 hours.
    RPG mechanics are under-developed, the structure of the game is very linear - it feels more like a successor to Dungeon Siege or Titan's Quest than to Divine Divinity (which had some open-world feeling to it).
    The world feels very artificial. Very limited dialogue choices. Very simple side-quests, no major quest hubs/cities. Very little lore, besides main theme/plot. Crappy immersion factor.

    I know that making inter-connected quests, with multiple endings, is a lot of work and bug-squashing, but it's what RPGs are about (at least for me) and it's certainly missing in this game.

    If you're looking for combat oriented Co-op dungeon crawler then Divinity:OS is perfect for you. But don't get your hopes up if you are, like me, looking for story/choice/immersion based RPGs.    … Expand
  53. PowerGamer
    Aug 31, 2014
    5
    I make my reviews as an independent thinker, that being said I don't see why this game is rated so high.
    To me as in the old tale the Emperor is truly naked here.
    Furthermore I've been playing RPGs and more since 1981 starting on an Apple2+ with Ultima, etc., and I've even worked (as a programmer) on an RPG of what people consider one of the top ten of all time..which might mean nothing    I make my reviews as an independent thinker, that being said I don't see why this game is rated so high.
    To me as in the old tale the Emperor is truly naked here.
    Furthermore I've been playing RPGs and more since 1981 starting on an Apple2+ with Ultima, etc.,
    and I've even worked (as a programmer) on an RPG of what people consider one of the top ten of all time..which might mean nothing other then to say I've played a lot of RPGs and have considered design in some detail.

    I had to read some guides and other views to see why people really like this game.
    My problems with it should be obvious.
    Apparently you have to really work at this game to understand it enough to even start.
    The whole experience seems very unpolished, unbalanced, and very unintuitive in a lot of places.
    Mind you I didn't play the original one, maybe it's a prerequisite.

    My first experience:
    I create a character, then I see okay I start with actually two characters. There is very little explanation or little telling you the significance of each.
    Now in game it's kind of fun. I do my first battle, etc., then I wander into a place where monsters are level 3 and they quickly wipe out my party. I reason, humm, okay I guess I need to get level 3 or higher to be on even ground. Then I reach level 3 go back and maybe I can beat them this time, and then hit another level 3 group but this time the boss dude has some kind of AOE that wipes out my whole party in one shot? WTF is going on here?
    And then there are quests with little indication where to go next to solve them.

    Yea all those classics (like the one I worked on) were fun, but the reason they just didn't have any of the advancements we have today are:
    A) They weren't invented/thought/tried yet.
    B) Were just not technically feasible yet.
    C) The costs/dev time was prohibiting.

    "Tough-S" is not the solution.
    There is a reason why more modern games have those helpful features, because they can.
    Proper gradient (in skills, advancement, etc.), arrows that show the way, etc., IMHO make things more fun.
    No one says you have to do everything for the player, but then doing little to nothing for them either?
    And sure they are a lot more work and resources for a developer to do.

    This game only made more sense to me as I read guides and or walk-throughs for it, okay I get that now. To me having to do all that sort of cases to make it a "game", it becomes more of a "job".. even from the get-go.

    Furthermore the skills and their interactions with MOBs are out of balance; the game lacks polish.
    Beta is not an excuse to release something before it's ready, and this game feels more like a barely playable alpha to me.

    In the end the game was fun for the several hours I played, don't mean to sound entitled at all, but because the game's imbalances,bugs, and incompleteness made me move on to other games..    … Expand
  54. kucyk
    Sep 28, 2014
    7
    This game is good, optimization is good too but loading time is totally damn long. After xx hours the game is a little boring, similar, boring enemies. But overall the game is good
  55. lifeofbrian
    Jul 26, 2015
    7
    Too cartoonish. The storyline is really boring and the characters are bland. Overall I can't say I would recommend it at full price. Wait for a big sale on it before purchasing.
  56. SethEvandor
    Sep 6, 2014
    6
    I wanted to enjoy this more as a big fan of Larian because I know they have good ideas. I think this got a high score because the co-op thing was fairly good although I wish you could be given the choice to argue a bit longer in the text. The second in turn in the argument has no option to give a choice and then change decide to agree. Also, when the options are rarely what I want to sayI wanted to enjoy this more as a big fan of Larian because I know they have good ideas. I think this got a high score because the co-op thing was fairly good although I wish you could be given the choice to argue a bit longer in the text. The second in turn in the argument has no option to give a choice and then change decide to agree. Also, when the options are rarely what I want to say and rarely give you the option would choose, it really ruins the immersion.

    NPCs will repeat the same lines which are randomly selected are the same for every similar NPC around it. NPCs with routines will keep doing routines, which is annoying when they keep shouting the same lines every time, it's very peculiar. I noticed one or two NPCs said Cyseal had fallen, so I thought Cyseal was basically burned to the ground, but it wasn't (it seems like the orcs just assumed it was?).

    I'd actually of preferred the game without the voice acting in its state. I think more voices were necessary. It was quite apparent that the male rogue voice and male warrior voice were done by the same person, so playing with two male characters didn't leave me with much options.

    I'm not really going to get into stereotypes. I noticed at one point, an NPC in Cyseal expects one of your characters to be male. Also, a female character is called Lord by another NPC.

    I have a big list of issues but those were my main qualms. I could nitpick all day since the game isn't that polished, but at least you can alter the storyline and use UGC with it. I felt the game was rather demanding considering the graphics, I hope next time everything improves TBH.    … Expand
  57. Gratson
    Apr 14, 2015
    5
    The game started out well, but the dialogue really turned me off. All of the characters felt like they were written by someone trying too hard to sound witty, I just didn't like any of the characters and that's a huge part of the gameplay. It annoyed me so much that I lost interest after the first act.
  58. Glaciergreen
    May 6, 2015
    6
    I don´t want to go into details about the combat system, the lore and/or the main story of this game.
    For me, the turn based combat is a refreshing change of pace and it takes some (quality fun) time to really understand what your character can do alone, with his companions and with the world itself - speaking of spell combos and things like that.
    I really like this game so far (played    I don´t want to go into details about the combat system, the lore and/or the main story of this game.
    For me, the turn based combat is a refreshing change of pace and it takes some (quality fun) time to really understand what your character can do alone, with his companions and with the world itself - speaking of spell combos and things like that.
    I really like this game so far (played apprx 10 hours), but there are some things that i miss for a really high score:
    - plot/story ... starts good, but loosing pace and difficult to follow since your journal only gives you a general hint where to look for your next objective. Because there are no questmarkers, there should be more detail in your journal, or you´ll spend hours and hours roaming the same part of the map searching for your next clue
    - visuals ... very good looking, but way to bright. I´d prefer a little darker/realistic visuals, not this cartoon like world. I think with the core engine, that should be possible, and there are already mods that lower the saturation etc. Characters look like toons, that´s an immersion breaker for me.
    Infuse D:OS with a little dirt and grim style of Pillars of Eternity, and it would be my Game of the year    … Expand
  59. JERupp
    Sep 6, 2014
    6
    + + Awesome graphics for an isometric game
    + Great fight mechanics
    + Surprisingly lengthy story - Truly awful inventory control - Equally awful crafting mechanics - Inconsistent crafting mechanics - ...and boring crafting results - Terrible vendor/merchant concept (this sounds tiny, but it *really* affects game play) - - Adding a new skill mid-way through the game? And with    + + Awesome graphics for an isometric game
    + Great fight mechanics
    + Surprisingly lengthy story

    - Truly awful inventory control
    - Equally awful crafting mechanics
    - Inconsistent crafting mechanics
    - ...and boring crafting results
    - Terrible vendor/merchant concept (this sounds tiny, but it *really* affects game play)
    - - Adding a new skill mid-way through the game? And with limited skillbooks for respecs? Who allowed this?    … Expand
  60. bskierys
    Jan 12, 2020
    7
    6/10 + 1 because of the perfectly executed couch coop.
    Short: The game with great combat system, but generic setting and the plot that you don't really care about. I loved levelling up, and hated music and visual style.
    Longer: What "Divinity: Original Sin" does very well is the combat system. Levelling up is slow and you rarely gain any new skill - and this was a great decision. After a    6/10 + 1 because of the perfectly executed couch coop.
    Short: The game with great combat system, but generic setting and the plot that you don't really care about. I loved levelling up, and hated music and visual style.
    Longer: What "Divinity: Original Sin" does very well is the combat system. Levelling up is slow and you rarely gain any new skill - and this was a great decision. After a while you perfectly understand every action you may take, its pros and cons. I played the whole game with my wife in a couch coop way and it was a great way to experience this game.
    However, I was expecting more from an RPG when it comes to plot and atmosphere. When playing it, I felt like I was playing a hack&slash game with turn-based combat. The atmosphere is dull, generic and the dialogs are poorly written. We either skipped through them or was bored by them. The silly tone both in visuals and in dialogues was more annoying than entertaining.
    We also hated the music that was so much anti-climatic. Especially that you have to listen to it over and over again during many many fights.
    The quests were designed in clever way, presenting many ways of solving them, using the game elemental interactions. But beware the riddles. I usually love riddles in the games, but most of them in this game, are based on finding a correct object that you don't know that you are looking for.
    Overall, it is a good game, but based on reviews I was expecting more. I was constantly comparing it to Pillars of Eternity, which I liked much more. If you want a good gameplay mechanics I encourage you to play "Divinity: Original Sin". But if you are looking for a good RPG, keep away from it.    … Expand
  61. JackPlack
    Jan 21, 2022
    6
    Few good ideas but not addictive. Addictive similar games: BaldursG2, X-Com, Xenonauts, (Pillares1 - until castle was upgraded to the max). Quests - emotionless, boring. Sometimes i felt like in Plan Escape Tournament hoping "it would be better next time" - it wasn't. Second map i was so bored, once another "point and click" quest with some barrier, and talking with mushrooms. DontFew good ideas but not addictive. Addictive similar games: BaldursG2, X-Com, Xenonauts, (Pillares1 - until castle was upgraded to the max). Quests - emotionless, boring. Sometimes i felt like in Plan Escape Tournament hoping "it would be better next time" - it wasn't. Second map i was so bored, once another "point and click" quest with some barrier, and talking with mushrooms. Dont remeber much except there was some investigation and fantasy dimension (dont like it). I hope DOS2 or BG3 are much better games with more open world tasks. Here World behind is useless and empty - cleaned from monsters. Realtime with pause was good essence of BG2. But this turn based system is better than X-Com. Moving many characters at once is with each concept little bad. I would like more if i'll control one character and rest would be AI which i could send command or design some situation plan.… Expand
  62. Pmstz
    Jan 30, 2023
    7
    Nice RPG game

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Awards & Rankings

9
#9 Best PC Game of 2014
12
#12 Most Discussed PC Game of 2014
16
#16 Most Shared PC Game of 2014

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
87

Generally favorable reviews - based on 59 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 56 out of 59
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 59
  3. Negative: 0 out of 59
  1. Worth Playing
    Dec 31, 2014
    91
    It's a conscious decision on Larian's part to resurrect tried-and-true threads that run deep into the bones of the CRPG genre. It's a culmination of those efforts and an unapologetic celebration of battle-tested concepts backed by solid co-op. Most of all, it comes together as a grand adventure that hearkens back to sleepless nights buoyed by the roll of a die and a pad of grid paper shared between fellow dungeon crawlers.
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  2. CD-Action
    Oct 22, 2014
    80
    Relatively small Larian Studios finally managed to deliver a really significant game. Original Sin is brimming with ideas on how to bring back old school RPG vibe and make it fit modern times. [Sept 2014, p.50]
  3. GameCritics
    Sep 12, 2014
    75
    As much as I loved the bulk of the game, by the end I was burning out, and burning out fast. Despite that, I'm glad that some studios are still willing to show an almost insane level of ambition in realizing the games they want to make without compromise, even if it does lead to a few dire moments here and there.
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