Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Planning to play whole Divinity series; advice?

I'm in love with old school RPGs although I'm relatively young.

The first ever RPG I've played was Mass Effect. Then I traced back old releases from Bioware, until I found Baldur's Gate 2 which became one of my all time favourites. Since then, I've been hunting down good old school RPGs and found most of those(Arcanum, Torment, Fallout 2, Vampire Masquerade: Bloodline to name a few. I didn't really like Ultima) immensely more satisfying the modern RPGs such as Skyrim and Mass Effect 3.

I am planning to play some previous titles of Divinity: Original Sin before playing this because I want to wait for all DLCs and patches to complete before playing. I've played Dragon Commander which I loved thanks to its humour and great writing.

There seem to be so many titles. If any of old Divinity series veterans are reading this, would you give me a recommendation as to what games are worth to play? If you could rank titles in order, I would probably prioritize using that list.

My sole focus when picking games is the quality of story and writing. Graphics doesn't matter as long as interface is easy to access. I like to read lots of dialogues/be given many choices in conversation or in quests. For reference,

some of my favourite games are:

Torment - fantastic writing and dialogue
Fallout:NV - so many choices/multiple ways to solve a quest
The Witcher 2 - great story

some of unfavourite games are:
Mass Effect 3 - so many plot holes despite great gameplay
Last Remnant - so much level grinding and too many battles
Fallout 1 - unskippable battle, mediocre writing

This post made me happy. Good on ya, young one! Always great to see people pick up the greats and enjoy them years later.

As for the Divinity series, here are my thoughts:

Divine Divinity: The legend that started it all. Seriously its a GREAT game. But it does require a lot of patience and isn't overly intuitive. That by itself may not be a bad thing for you, but there it is.

Beyond Divinity: Meh. I have to be honest that I didn't play this much. What I did play didn't match Divine Divinity. But don't take my word on it. Someone who has played more of it should give you advice on it.

Divinity II: It's actually really good (I have the Developer's cut from gog). Same type of quirky humour that's prevalent in the Divinity series. Fun gameplay, good character development. A really solid RPG.

As much as I LOVE Divine Divinity, and to a lesser extent Divinity II, they aren't as good as Planescape Torment, or the Baldur's Gate series or Fallout 1, 2, or New Vegas. (didn't like 3. LOVED NV!!!). I know that is a debatable opinion, but as you said you didn't even like Fallout 1 (HEATHEN! ), my opinions may differ to what you need to know.

I'd say both the original Divinity and the Dragon Knight Saga are worth playing.
However, both are also somewhat flawed gems.
Beyond Divinity has generally been received not so well, and I haven't played it, so I can't tell you anything about it.

DD1 and DKS are combat heavy real-time aRPGs where actual combat is a bit unbalanced and not always executed that well.
I think that both have lots of charm, plenty of Larian's typical humour and are typical examples of games that are more than the sum of their parts.

Divinity 1 has a large, open and fairly interactive world, plenty of quests but suffers a bit from some very imbalanced skills and quality declines towards the end (I think Larian said in an Interview that they never wanted to make the final area, but were forced by the publisher to put it in). Definitely has its fun moments.

In DKS you get to be a Dragon. World is semi-open (some parts are accessible only after certain quests, iirc), first 75% are typical combat-centric aRPG, last part (the original expansion Flames of Vengeance) is much more quest-heavy with more non-combat stuff. Again combat suffers from some balancing issues and was a bit too much relying on jumping around, imo. I think Larian admitted that they themselves weren't completely happy with it. Several original ideas whose execution was sometimes lacking a bit (e.g. mind-reading). Still I'd recommend it if you come across it at some acceptable (to you) price. Did I mention that you can transform into a dragon?

Divine Divinity is the game to which I keep coming back even more than 10 years after its release... It is just my favourite game (despite some flaws) of all times! There are dwarves and elves and lizards and imps and dragons... and tons of secrets... The humor is just hilarious!

Dragon Knight Saga is a very decent RPG. However, what I miss in this game is the world reactivity and interactivity which Divine Divinity has. Also, for my taste, the world is rather small. Altogether it is more of an action RPG and some things had to be dumped in order to make the game compatible with consoles...

I have not played Beyond Divinity, so I cannot really advise you on it!^^

My advice? the first one was awesome! loved it!

tried the second one recently. paid $5 or something. I could not get past 20 minutes of it. It was awkward and clumsy and frustrating. I walked away with a headache and I'll probably never touch it again.

oh forgot about dragon knight saga. that was pretty sweet too. enjoyed that.

D:OS is what I have been waiting for since BGII. I am in love with it!