I just want to say that the combat in this game is almost certainly the best I’ve played in an RPG. Obviously, it’s perhaps a bit meaningless to compare the combat of a turn-based RPG to RPGs with more real-time combat like The Witcher, but for me subjectively there’s never been an RPG whose combat I’ve enjoyed as much as this one.
I’ve not finished the game (still in Act II), and I’ve read the game turns into a bit of a faceroll eventually, but from what I’ve played so far, the fights—in Tactician Mode at least—are almost like chess matches, where you really have to plan out how you’re going to approach the moves you make or you’ll lose. I’ve had so many fights that I’ve gotten wiped on without getting even close, only to have a relatively easy time once I settled upon a good strategy for the fight (whether that strategy is based around positioning of my party, what enemies to focus down first, what skills to use, etc.). It feels so satisfying to have basically solved the puzzle of a certain fight after having failed previously. I can’t think of any other RPG that has really done that for me. I think it’s mostly that positioning matters so much more than in other games, the AP system lends itself to strategic depth, and the environmental effects (surfaces and clouds) add a lot of strategy. Even in comparison to the first Divinity: Original Sin game, I think the combat here stands out. I liked that game a lot and obviously there’s tons of similarities, but I felt like CCing enemies was too easy. It wasn’t all that strategic because I basically just permanently locked down all the enemies (or at least that’s how I remember it).
One thing that really adds to this as well is the AI actually being pretty good. Quite often, the AI will focus down my weakest party member. They’ll take high ground. They use healing spells on Fane. They’ll strip magic armor quickly and then use devastating spells like Dominate Mind. They’ll make a pretty clever Nether Swap. If I clump my team together, they’ll use AOEs on them. I could go on. While there are still ways to cheese fights, the AI is good enough to actually exploit your mistakes.
I also like that it feels like each fight really is essentially hand-crafted. There aren’t many random filler fights. And, as a result, a relatively large portion of the fights have unique mechanics to them. For instance, I’m in Act 2, and just in the last couple days, I’ve come across the following mechanics in fights:
(1) the arena fight where you do it blindfolded; (2) the clay warrior fight where there’s tons of relatively easily killed enemies that spawn over time and certain enemies that can resurrect tons of them at once; (3) the mind-maggots sourcerer girl fight where the enemies have tons of armor but extremely little health so you gotta try to output piercing damage; (4) the fight against 4 undead heroes, where they basically respawn as a more powerful version once you kill them once; (5) the fight against the woman in the crypt who summons skeletons who summon more skeletons who summon even more skeletons; (6) the oil and fire voidling fight in the Blackpits. Each of these fights really felt unique, and required very different gameplans from the others.
It’s all very creative. Yes, there are also relatively normal fights against magisters or random Voidwoken that don’t have unique mechanics, but even those fights tend to have unique geography (such as important high ground to take), and are still fun.
Anyways, the point of this thread is to just give a pat on the back to Larian for the combat in this game; it’s really good.
