Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Feedback after beating the game on Hard

Warning: light spoilers. (Good news: no heavy spoilers.)

So after numerous obsessive-compulsive rerolls trying to get my characters' builds as perfect as possible, I beat the game on Hard today. I've really enjoyed the massive amount of time I've poured into this game in the past month, and I'd like to talk about my general impressions.

The funny thing about feedback posts is that they tend to be overwhelmingly negative, filled with "fix this" and "change that." I'm going to have some of that as well, but first I'd like to talk about some things Divinity: Original Sin does extraordinarily well.

Beautiful and immersive landscapes. I bought D:OS off of a recommendation of a friend, and wasn't exactly part of the Kickstarter or beta hype. What hooked me first were the environments. They have a fantastic art style all their own, and it feels almost surreal that they're not part of cutscenes but actually playable.

In other words, the level design in this game is great. It's consistently excellent, all of the way through, which is the really amazing part. From Cyseal's outskirts all the way to a foreboding hut in the swamp, a huge amount of effort was put into making each area visually impressive, distinctive, and real.

The really interesting part of this is that, if you would have asked me about level design prior to D:OS, I wouldn't really have associated it with the CRPG genre; I might go on a rant about Super Metroid or something. Similarly, when it comes to CRPG design, I'd normally focus on things like "mechanics" first and foremost. However, this is something massively relevant to the experience and makes you realize the importance of far more fundamental game mechanics, stuff we normally gloss over so we can crunch numbers instead. This game shows the power of level design in CRPGs, and should be seen as an example of how to perform that particular task correctly within the genre.

Great soundtrack. I'm not really a music buff so it's hard for me to describe in detail, but the soundtrack to this game is amazing, and it has a real effect on first impressions and overall enjoyment of time spent playing the game. There's a lot to be said for the combination of an excellent soundtrack and excellent level design; it adds so much to immersiveness and really pulls you in from the start.

Classlessness and open-ended itemization. I know there's a small group of players out there who want this changed, but I was a huge fan of getting Intelligence on my plate armour. This was, in part, due to making a build for one of my characters combining Weather the Storm and Explode, but the point is that, if I wanted to make that kind of "non-pure" combination, the random affix system would eventually help me out. I also think the spread of vendors is fairly well done, so that by the time you hit endgame and you want to feel like your itemization is "done," you can normally find some truly amazing items for sale, for any build I managed to think up. (I suspect those complaining about these kinds of things don't know how to efficiently check the appropriate vendors at level-up.)

Now on to some things which are done well, perhaps even very well, but aren't quite exemplary.

The numerical and character creation mechanics, in general. Hey, it's another D&D 3.0 rehash instead of attributes, skills, and feats, you have attributes, abilities, and talents!

In all honesty though, this was exactly the right move to make. A lot of the game's previously mentioned strengths focus on immersion rather than The Art of the Number Crunching. The nature of character construction in D:OS is retro and familiar and not really all that surprising... which was actually the correct decision to make. Let the less immersive games (like ARPGs) tackle the high-concept mechanical systems, while CRPGs like this one focus on the quality of the world being delivered.

All I'm saying by ranking it here is that it's not something you're going to walk away from D:OS thinking "wow, I've never experienced that before." Which definitely puts it in a different category than the landscapes and the soundtrack.

Source Hunter half of story dichotomy. The beginning part of the journey with tracking down Jake's murderer is something which feels very natural. In a way it's similar to the numerical mechanics system mentioned above; it's a little stereotypical, but it gets the job done with a familiarity which gives a nice warm fuzzy retro feeling. Going through the lore on the contemporary world of Rivellon is good times, and I found myself reading many of the books.

Finally, the mandatory list of things which just didn't seem as well-done as they could have been.

Difficulty scaling. It's very clear that the first part of the game has been much more heavily playtested than later parts. During the first major battle, as the orcs land on the beach, difficulty is clearly very well-tuned, making for an challenge appropriate to each of the game's three difficulty levels. It's unfortunate that things start off so strong and then unravel over time. In Luculla, there are multiple opportunities to battle isolated enemies rather than engage the entire group at once, leading to extremely one-sided, and thus boring, engagements, even on Hard; the only interesting battles are the big, messy ones. By the time you get to the Phantom Forest your party is such a well-oiled machine that the enemies don't pose an interesting challenge even in groups. It seems that whoever was supposed to balance the encounters for appropriate difficulty essentially neglected the last half of the game; getting them to finish their work and make appropriate tweaks to the later encounters would be a welcome improvement.

The Tenebrium ability. It's been written about a lot on these forums and I don't feel like repeating it here. But it's a rage quit/reroll moment, and those aren't a good thing to have.

The Guardian part of story dichotomy. This stuff was mostly just cheesy. I understand that it's a very tough sell, but that just means that you shouldn't risk this type of story unless you think you can sell it. It would definitely be nice to see the characters - especially Icara and Zandalor - a little more grounded in the contemporary world of Rivellon (where the main characters are Source Hunters) than the fluffy stuff which Zixzax preaches. (You still need someone preaching the fluffy stuff.) Since this amps up near the end of the game, I found myself considerably less interested in story once I got past Luculla Mines (although Cassandra was nicely done).

Traits. I don't have a problem with the concept itself, just the way it was handled. This was my #1 cause of savescumming, especially prevalent early in the game. In many cases it's very difficult to determine which traits are going to be affected, and picking the wrong one can cause you to lose your trait bonus and reload in frustration. I can't fathom any reason why the dialogue choice can't simply state which trait it is which the choice aligns with, at least for high-Perception characters. Knowing this in advance would take away almost all of the "better quicksave, it's a dialogue choice" fear.

Invisibility is overpowered, especially early game. There's absolutely nothing enemies can do to protect their valuables or to guard passages against invisible players. Considering this is a high-magic world where invisibility exists, it would only make sense that there would be some way of detecting it. The game needs more "Sees invisible" enemies, including all of those Sentinels (going invisible and just walking past them makes them a joke).

Glass Cannon is too good. I didn't really want to believe this, because my normal prejudice is that particular abilities like this, with obvious built-in drawbacks, are a mixed bag, and thus I really wanted to argue against the folks saying GC is OP. But it truly is absurdly powerful, even on Hard, and although it might not quite be "OP-must-fix" on Hard, I can only imagine its unbridled power on Normal or Easy, where it would utterly break games. As it stands, it trivializes difficulty, which grants an initial feeling of power followed by a sense of boredom. This is one talent which needs to be reworked, because I truly believe there isn't any way to give a "double recovery AP" benefit on a talent which can't be broken by players.

Overall verdict: Divinity: Original Sin has perhaps the best level design in any CRPG to date. This, combined with an early several hours of genuinely well-balanced content, easily justifies the purchase price, especially for students of computer game design who want to see how well a particular aspect of gamecraft can be done. However, some stumbling blocks past the initial portion of the game stop it from being a satisfying play experience through to the end, and those who buy the game expecting to play it through to completion are likely to end up frustrated or bored at some point.