I did a similar topic more or less one year ago, about the original Divinity: Original Sin, and now I would like to add some more about the Enhanced Edition changes.



1. Things I liked:

• The new crafting system is a vast improvement. Being able to access the recipe book and quickly craft recipes we had already learned is very practical, especially when making items used often like arrows and grenades. It still has room for a lot of improvement, though. Things I would have liked to see:
o Show us the stats of the items we have already crafted once. It took a while to memorize which stat the Skull Amulet increases as opposed to the Starfish Amulet. After a recipe has been learned, this kind of thing could be shown in the recipe window when mousing over the item that will be crafted.
o Crafting should look inside bags. Currently, crafting only considers what’s in the inventory outside the bags, which makes inventory management even worse than it was in the original game – now we have to keep crafting materials outside all bags, which makes inventory a complete mess.

• The new area near the end of the game was very well done. It’s fun, has some interesting puzzles, and it’s nice to take a look back at the beginning of the game.



2. Things I’m indifferent about:

• Voice acting. IMO, adding voice acting to all dialogues in the game was not necessary. I have seen multiple games that have less dialogues in the game because they insist on voicing everything, and so have to cut expenses. The voice acting added in the Enhanced Edition isn’t bad, but it doesn’t really improve the game, IMO.

• Grenades and wands: grenades strongly feel like a poor man’s arrows. They do less damage, don’t have an associated skill to increase their damage, are harder to craft (because they require more specific materials) and thus are used mostly because they do an inferior thing to what arrows do without requiring a bow. They are not a bad addition to the game, just feel a bit redundant. Wands, in other hand, feel like they are better than staves – they have a skill to increase their damage, can be dual-wielded (which means, they give twice the bonuses since staves give the same bonuses as a single wand), have a 100% hit rate, can be used more than once per turn unlike staves’ ranged ability, and grant the use of a magic spell. It feels like they make staves redundant.

• The changes to the main quest: honestly, few changes were very significant. A few were amusing – the one to keep Arhu stuck in human form was an improvement over the one about killing him –, a few were grating (Arhu appearing everywhere to guide us got old fast), but overall it didn’t really change the game too much.




3. Things I didn’t like:

• The new skill system. Really, it got a lot worse. Being allowed to use all skills at rank 5 was the main advantage of dedicating so many points to a single ability. Now, the only difference between rank 4 and rank 5 is being able to use one extra master skill, but the great majority of master skills are still very underwhelming (and a few are suicidal, even). Being limited to a specific number of skills per category feels very unpolished – we can learn 6 novice water spells, but there are only 5 of those… - and it leaves little room for skills that only useful in very specific situations. The skill system would have to be reworked so we have less niche skills, but the game actually went in the opposite direction: we lost the skill that could teleport things without damaging them (no, it being available through the Air Elemental doesn’t really fix this), and instead were given a very underwhelming and far more niche spell that switches the position of two characters (and it’s a Master spell, even).

• More bugs. I have seen more bugs in the Enhanced Edition than in the original game; I got even a game-breaking bug that made me lost a few savegames. I didn’t find something similar in the original.

• The changes to the Source Temple Entrance. IMO, it has a very bad flow. We go from an area with no combat and a lot of puzzles – the entrance – to, after a small boss fight, an area with no combat and a lot of puzzles – inside the temple itself – to another area with no combat and a lot of puzzles – the nightmare (until the boss fight at the end). This leaves the endgame somewhat boring, since it’s basically puzzle after puzzle, while one of the best aspects of D:OS, the combat system, is almost forgotten. At that point in the game, near the end, some of the things Larian keep using in puzzles begin to feel grating – the massive use of traps, pixel hunting to find switches on the walls, etc. The old entrance to the Source Temple, filled with small boss fights, had a much better flow.

• The epilogue. It’s very underwhelming, after how polished the new nightmare zone. Seeing an entire new area with a couple of old NPCs isn’t really that interesting, especially after we have just met a lot of old NPCs in the nightmare. The epilogue would have been far better if it had been in Cyseal, showing us the impact of some of our early decisions.

• Many of my issues with the original D:OS are still there, and some were made worse. Inventory management is still a mess – dying bags please? – and it got worse after the change to crafting. The Master skills are still often underwhelming, and this became worse with the new skill system. This is the kind of thing I would have liked to see updated in the Enhanced Edition.



4. Conclusion: honestly? I prefer the original Divinity: Original Sin than the Enhanced Edition. A few changes were nice, many didn’t really do anything for me, and the bad changes are really, REALLY bad.