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Just reading the guide a bit more - so, tell me I'm wrong: single handed skills are useless if you use a shield? That's what it says but that makes about as much sense as trying to kill a piece of steel.

You spend skill points which are rare to begin with in comparison to what it can be used on to get a very small chance at a back stab? Well, at least I see why OS makes it a passive addition to any melee attack depending on SP level.

Really, a fine game and a decent story but not near as good as either DD or OS (I haven't played the others yet). I just get the feeling that this game was very much rushed and not well thought through, ie, it has more potential then what we got. Well, can't win them all. I suppose the game was modded to death to fix it's issues - I'll have to look into that.

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In my search for mods, I found exactly none. What I did find shocked me. Was this game really as poorly received as it seems from reviews, forums, etc? Doesn't seem all that buggy - all minor ones with the exception of one. Appears Larian fixed it rather well. My nerves weren't grated by the death knight's voice (the second voice - never heard the original unless that little part where the DK's voice changed looking for the loose tile prior to going to the academy was the original). I guess many agreed with me concerning the battlefields concept though. Sure, I doubt few would disagree that BD isn't as good as DD but those posts! I'm just glad I didn't read them prior to playing as I may well have developed an attitude.

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It has been called all sorts of things and does indeed seem to have been poorly-received, which is a pity as it did see quite a number of improvements over DD. I think a lot of the criticisms were highly subjective and the quality of the voice acting was probably the major one: clearly they learnt from that as the voices in Divinity 2 were way better than its predecessors, but other than the infamous Death Knight I'm not sure the overall VA wasn't that different to DD.

For me personally the main reason I didn't play was aesthetics: I like my fantasy game worlds to be verdant, pretty-looking places (yeah I know, even if they are filled with psychotic wildlife that wants to kill me at every turn) and for the most part BD just looked a bit too uninviting and alien: to jaggedy and to grey-and-black for my taste. Even Morrowind which wasn't as severe just being the sea of greige that it was I heavily modded to have it covered in grass, trees and flowers.

I know I'm kinda the one missing out but it did bother me enough that I only played about halfway through it. I guess I view games as a major part of escapism for me, especially being the agoraphobic sort, and I didn't really want to escape to a dungeon dimension!


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You're not alone; another poster in one of the forums also mentioned liking the greenery and was disappointed that it was mostly missing (the poster liked one of the BFs, though for it woodsy feel).

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I think that may have been me. biggrin I'm the person who disagreed with the complaints that Oblivion wasn't alien enough after Morrowind because I just liked frolicking about in the nice green forests, at least when bears and goblins weren't trying to eat me.


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I have a couple of names myself. Never regarded them as defining so I often made up a new one when joining a new site. I had actually considered that it may have been you.

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Oh, in that case it might've been someone else: I'm pretty much always vometia wherever I am (and yeah, some post gets delivered to me using that name: I think the postman has long since given up bothering about it seeming a bit odd) so it's kinda cool that there's another person out there who agrees!


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The game did well enough that Larian didn't go out of business (see the Developer's Journal in the Divinity Anthology), and was able to make Divinity 2.

As much as some people complained loudly, I thought much of the criticism of BD was overblown or invalid (easily avoided issues, etc), and in many cases more about the game just being different than DD in some aspects.

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A lot of players hate that: "but it's not identical to the previous one therefore it sucks!" Argh. I mean one needs look no further than the ire OS2 is getting from some quarters...


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A sequel to a game rated as one of the ten best RPGs in history is always tough and will always have detractors because it is different in some respects. I haven't played it yet so have been avoiding that part of the forum so this is news to me.

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That is definitely true, though as a rule it seems to generally be the case with any game that's made an impact. Unless, that is, its main impact was to be remembered as "the one that's wasn't as good as its predecessor because it was different", in which case almost anything will be seen as an improvement (Oblivion to Skyrim, for instance, and especially FO3 to NV).

But yeah, since my personal "gaming renaissance" 15 years ago I've seen Doom 3 compared unfavourably to Doom (I actually prefer D3), Half Life 2 the same compared to Half Life (never liked HL, even at the time, but HL2 was an instant hit with me), the interminable "Oblivion isn't as good as Morrowind!" wars which are still ongoing in some places and still with the same clichés and fallacies (I actually love both and am glad they're different; I do worry I did the same with Skyrim as I adored Oblivion and thought Skyrim was dull), Dragon Age 2 compared to Oranges (it had its faults, but it's actually a really good game that improves on the original in some respects) and more recently Fallout 4 compared to NV (again, I like both, but FO4 has the edge for me: I know some people consider it sacrilege to prefer Bethsoft over Obsidian just on moral grounds!)

And of course none of this is new either, though when I was younger it seems that most of the wars were over the platform of choice, which was a lot more competitive than the PC-vs-consoles thing we have these days. I had a Dragon 32, as I periodically mention, because 35 years later I still smart slightly at how rubbish its graphics and sound were!

Edit: wow, that's more brackets than a Wikipedia article.

Last edited by vometia; 15/01/18 01:19 AM.

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