Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Diamond in the rough.

Wow, so the thing is, I really want to like this game. But everytime I fire it up I realize that it was released in an absolutely shocking state.
Firstly, the bugs, oh the bugs, everwhere, some serious, some not. The problem is that Larian's approach to questing is so vague it verges on obtuse so you end up with no idea if a quest is bugged or if you are just buggered.

Secondly, Larian's encounter design and levelling is completely broken, it's been dealt with at length on some other threads, so I don't want to rehash anything except to say: Scaling is a major problem. It also means that you have to meta the game - playing this game without a walkthrough is not enjoyable, neither though, is having to use one in order to know which area you can go to without getting wiped. Even that dosn't work that well because in some of the lower level areas there are ridiculously difficult fights.

The plot and writing is a mess, though sadly, still much better than the first game.

Overall it comes across as a very rough draft of a game - where they just couldn't be bothered to go any further. It needed to be delayed by at least 6 month to get it working, as it is currently it's simply the worst big name game I have ever played on release.

Which is sad really, because I love parts of this game, and in spite of everything I want to try and finish it at least once. But as it is, it's like dropping a diamond into a latrine, sure you know the sparkle is there, but you need to wade through tons of shite to get there.

All true

Eh, I find not knowing where to go is not such a big problem. I can just wander into an area and see the levels of the enemies well before I get within combat range... unless there's an ambush. If the level is too high, that's the wrong place to go, and I look elsewhere.

"F5 is your friend". I've learnt that sometimes you just need to come back later; admittedly I learnt it the hard way and swore an awful lot, though that was quite a few games ago. The matter of enemy scaling is never going to please everyone: too much scaling to your level makes any sort of progression unrewarding, whereas a complete lack of it can cause this sort of thing. I'm reminded of my somewhat tardy late-coming to RPGs, and having just done Oblivion, which is very much the former, I then played Morrowind, which is leaning towards the latter: I got very seriously pwned in the first random cave I tried to explore. It's horrid dice-roll system where I'd always roll a 1 didn't really help matters.

What if a lot of quests aren't bugged and we just won't accept we don't easily know how to handle them? I've definitely let some go, I didn't necessarily looked at them as bugged, but just not resolved to what the game expects them to be. Perhaps I screwed the pooch along the way unknowingly, we do that in real life all the time. Perhaps I just am missing something. You see, I'm just as open to me making the mistake vs it being a bug, not that there aren't any, just it would be hard for me to say without seeing their Quests trees in full. Now if you want to counter the game is too vague and directionless, that I think is valid and a preference. Some like markers, some don't. The game has some, it doesn't have an arrow pointing you the whole way from A to Z. To me it should be a toggle, to maximize different tastes and Larian's bank account. But their designer see's it another way.

The quest log definitely has some gremlins: the beggar and his dog isn't the only example of something that was recorded entirely differently to what actually happened. I admit I'm hardly the mistress of cryptic crosswords, but some of these things aren't so much cryptic as capricious.

The problem is there is not one issue or problem. It's everything, the encounter design, the level scaling, the bugs, the quest design, the inventory, the plot holes. It's just a mess. Which is really unfortunate because it has so much potential. It literally was released at least 6 months to early. Which is unacceptable for what it cost. And for Larian to fix the game, well there is no quick fix, it's going to need an enhanced edition. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement. And no, I'm not a newbie, or a casual player. I like challenging rpgs as much as the next person. But this is shocking. Ah well, at least I can look forward to Deadfire. And scratch Larian off my list.

For people with this view, hope there is a EE version then. It was a really nice improvement to the original release of DOS1.

There were things I liked about both DOS and its EE; I guess much the same with the difference between D2 and DKS, and in its case I slightly preferred D2 even if it did have the odd bug and I kept getting pwned. In the case of OS2, there's a number of annoying quest bugs but other than that it's been one of the more stable releases in my experience. Perhaps not as polished as Witcher 3, but then again what is? Certainly not the earlier Witchers, nor the TES games, Fallouts, and most other things I've played have had problems, often worse. Not that I'm being blasé and saying that problems should just be expected of software (God knows I've ranted about Microsoft for lowering people's expectations to the point where brokenness is just expected) but to an extent bugs are inevitable and other than a few gnarly journal problems, OS2 seemed comparatively good for the most part, at risk of saying "it worked okay for me."

It seems many have disliked Larian's style of game making. They chose to make a video game that was reminiscent of a tabletop RPG and this was what we got.

While I've encountered some problems (most frustrating of which was improper Steam Cloud save syncrhonization resulting in needing to disable this feature to play) and some annoyances regarding the UI, none of it has been deal-breaking for me. Mods and the ability to mod exist so you can change things more to your liking. Make posts in the relevant forums to provide specific suggestions or bug reports.

They should has stayed with DOSEE combat mechanic and enhance it with source instead of create a new one.

Create a new one = more bugs = more time spend fixing than creating = a mess = DOS2.

Should just focus on story as the new combat mechanic isn't that much better than DOSEE (i blow everything off at level 15 tactician a.k.a overloaded same as late mid DOSEE).