Divinity: Original Sin is a game in the tradition of the true classics of the tactial party RPG genre like the Infinity engine games. Perhaps still the best game of this genre (at least in many aspects) is Baldur's Gate 2 which should be known by most of you.
There are a lot of discussions about difficulty, about systems, about wishlists and about what the game should offer and which features should be included. I think it's worth to compare the game to the reference of the genre. This way we could maybe identify in which elements Divinity: Original Sin could still improve.
Of course this will be a personal assessment of my one, with my own opinions and experienced heavily involved. This should be clear from the very beginning. In the following I will try to explain which parts of Baldur's Gate 2 were exceptional and made it one of the best RPGs up to this date and how Divinity: Original Sin could benefit from similar systems and elements.
Let's start:
Combat1) One of the biggest and most important features of Baldur's Gate 2's combat system was its foundation in the ruleset of Dungeons and Dragons. The biggest advantage of the decision to base the game on this ruleset was that the systems were already playtested by thousands of people in pen and paper games. Another huge advantage of the system itself was its trancparency. Every action in D&D is based on the random result of dice throws. That's something people can relate to. It's easy to understand that a "1d6" sword has a damage value based on the random result of the throw of one dice with six sides (damage value = 1 to 6). So a 2d10 sword has a damage value based on the random result of the throws of two dices with 10 sides (damage value = 2 to 10). It's a system based on random events but also on integer numbers and not on percentages. In a system like that players don't have to perform complicated calculations to determine the outcome of certain actions.
In D:OS however, the outcome of certain actions is way less transparent or easy to understand. Many systems rely on percentages (like chance to hit or resistencies) but there is no obvious pattern or basic values to easily understand the system in each and every occasion.
2) Of course Baldur's Gate 2 offered a real time with pause (RTwP) combat system instead of a turn-based system. Both systems are imo pretty solid if well designed and it often depends on whether you like a more fast paced or a more slowed down gameplay experience. But one of the biggest advantages of Baldur's Gate 2's combat system were casting times. By using casting times players had to come up with a real strategy what to do with their mages, druids and clerics. Very powerful spells needed quite some time (or behind-the-scene turns...) to be casted, letting the caster defenseless in the meantime. Mages could be interrupted all the time and their allies and tanks had to protect them (and stay alive) in the meantime. Party combat was much more tactical in a system with casting times than in a system with cool-down times like in Divinty: Original Sin. In D:OS mages can perform their most powerful spells in turn 1. There is no reason to wait with casting the spell. Another effect of that is that mages in D:OS sometimes have rounds in which they don't have anything to do because they have to wait until their cool-down times are over. The usual pattern here is: stron spell, weak spell, weak spell, strong spell, weak spell, weak spell, following cool-down times. In Baldur's Gate mages had to really come up with a strategy when and how to use spells (defense spells, attack spells, slow-down spells, healing spells, buffing spells, support spells), all with different casting times. Another strategic layer of spells and skills was the system's reliance on resting. Resting means that your spells and skills are consumable and you can't used them more than once or twice until you've rested which usually meant that you couldn't use them more than once or twice in a single battle or in even few battles (depended on resting possibilities). That way you even had to plan more carefully which spell or skill to use in whih situation.
3) Baldur's Gate 2 offered a huge amount of spells from different categories, most or all of them based on D&D. The positive effect of that was the wide variety of spells with very unique ones not based on putting out damage as the main goal but to incapacitate players by a huge variety. BG2 offered a whole lot of very dangerous "instant kill" spells for example and dangerious spells and abilites which resulted in permanent damage to your party members (turn to stone, entomb, brain feed, finger of death,...). I like D:OS's reliance on environment spells and the combination of ground effects and spells but imo the game lacks really powerful spells to really harm or incapacitate a single enemy. Group control is almost too powerful in D:OS but one-enemy spells are lacking, both in variety and effect.
4) You were not able to save your game during combat in Baldur's Gate 2! It's one of the very foundations of a game like that imo to prevent saving during combat. Why? Well, the core issue with that is that these games are based on randomness (dice throws in BG2 and whatever is used for D:OS). That means that every action in combat can vary in results. One of the core fascinations of games like BG2 was that you managed to overcome enemies and combat situations. The possibility to save during combat really "dumbs that down". XCOM EU tried to solve that by deciding on everything when loading up a level based on the stats of the team members. But I neither like this system nor does D:Os have seperated combat level which makes that solution almost impossible to implement. I therefore guess that every action has its direct random result (like hitting chance). That means that saving and loading can "exloit" combat in the way like "I try to kill/ignite/stun/whatever this enemy with that spell. If it doesn't happen now I will reload at exactly this position until it happens due to random chances." In Baldur's Gate you couldn't even save a game if any enemies were nearby (in a certain radius). That often meant that you couldn't just heal and rest between two fights but you had to fight the way you were and with the spells and skills you had left. In D:Os you can just easily save everywhere and heal the whole party each and every two steps, waiting for all your cool-down times to be over. That discourages a huge amount of strategical and tactical thinking imo.
5) Baldur's Gate offered a party size of 6 members at the maximum while in D:OS only 4 regular members are supported. Imo 6 members were the optimal size for a party consisting of members of different professions. You often used 2 tanks (warriors, paladins, clerics, rangers,...) for melee control and defense, a ranger for support, one rogue for trap finding and shadow attacks and two spell casters (mages, wizards, druids, clerics,...) for attack, defense and support spells. Playing with 6 members offered tactical depth. Playing with only 4 members reduces tactical depth by a big margin. Of course you can also summon two additional members but atm these additional members can only engage in melee or with one single spell. And they disappear very soon. Often they are just used as distraction instead of as a full pary member. The problem with 6 party members is that you really need a solid systemic foundation which was given with BG2 and D&D. To make such a system for 6 party members from scratch is obviously pretty hard and needs a lot of work and skill. So, playing with 4 players in D:OS is nice, but it never reaches the possibilites or tacital depth of a bigger party like in BG2 (or for example XCOM EU).
Role-playing and decision making
Well, the comparion here should be pretty obivous. In Baldur's Gate you had extensive well written dialogues with a massive amount of decision-making. I mean real decision-making. Most of the stuff you chose in dialogues led to different results. Some answers led to combat, others not. Some led to party member leaving your party, some led to love stories. Some were just there to increase atmosphere. In my whole playthrough of the actual beta content of Divinity: Original Sin I can't recall more than a few real decision-making situations. Often you only have to choose between two answers or there is no decision to make after all. That is, actually, pretty weak for a role-playing game. Of course there is also the co-op aspect, which is pretty unique and a core feature of the game, but even the co-op dialogues only offer two answer options, often two extreme positions, probably both not fitting the way you want to roleplay your character. Compared to the massive amount of decisions and answer possibilites in Baldur's Gate 2 that's something Larian could or should improve on imo.
Story, quests presentation and lore
Baldur's Gate 2 is known as a game with a huge scope and an amount of well designed quests that is almost impossible to make today. D:OS can't offer that. But the quests offered in D:OS are often well written and presented with the quite typical Larian humour which is a rarity in western RPGs and highly appreciated. But it's pretty sad that right now there is almost no lore in the beta. There are no lore books, there are no unique items, there are no backstories. An RPG lives by and through its lore and its backstory. The main story and quests are of course important but you have to establish a real world. Personally, I really miss unique items with a back story. Stuff like that adds personality and atomospere to the game. Actually, the Divinty games have a pretty solid lore but it isn't shown or presented in the game so far. I hope something changes here soon. The main story itself wasn't that important in Baldur's Gate 2 once reached the main city. But that wasn't because it wasn't interesting but because of the richness of other quests and things to do. In D:Os however I somehow missed the golden thread, what the main story is all about. The beta of course only consists of perhaps 25 or 30% of the game but that can't justify for that imo.
Graphics, sound and design
For its time Baldur's Gate 2 offered one of the most lovely looks possible in a 2.5D world. The world was crafted by hand and every room and every place on the map had its purpose or felt at least naturally. And thanks to mods the game also aged quite well compared to other games. The soundtrack is one I still remember today, fitting the situation in which the player was. The soundtrack of D:OS is great as well, thanks to Krill Pokrovsky. Graphics and art design are pretty good as well (at least since the latest beta) but there is a typcial "fantasy game design problem": proportions and internal logics don't always match. The most obvious example should be a town only consisting of five houses but with many more inhabitants and places which would only exist in much larger town. Baldur's Gate 2 successfully prevented that by just offering slices of the whole world, distinctive levels which felt natural. With a 3D world this is much, much harder to achieve, no question. That's of course the price you have to pay for 3D (even if you don't really use the strenghts of 3D like in D:OS with an isometric view and limited camera rotation...)
SummaryBoth Baldur's Gate 2 and Divinity: Original Sin are great games and I like both. But it should be pretty obvious that D:Os is miles away from the pure scope, richness of content, depth of gameplay and elegance of execution of Baldur's Gate 2. Divinity: Original Sin shines in areas like humor and ideas and it's co-op aspect, but for all the other "traditional" aspects there is still much to improve. It's a nice and fun game, but it lacks depth and scope (for whatever obvious or less obvious reason of course) and it's nowhere near Swen's overall hope to once make "the RPG to dwarf them all". Maybe Larian should take the inward turn once and think again what makes former classics of the genre the landmarks they are. Not everything can be achieved but some systems and elements and design decisions are imo worth to (re)consider. Nevertheless I would recommend Divinity: Original Sin to everyone who likes isometric party RPGs.
And why the hell are there no toilets in the game?
