Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Polygon's mixed review of the game

Here's the review:

https://www.polygon.com/2017/9/15/16316126/divinity-original-sin-2-review

Well, so far is the only mixed review on Metacritic. I got the feeling that the reviewer doesn't really plays CRPGs.

Her criticisms were:

1) Game is buggy

2) Quest achievements are messy and uncertain

3) Game has too much freedom (you could break your game)

About her points, the game is (was) a little buggy. I had a couple of crashes, a couple of quests that would not close, Gareth would not go back to lady vengeance , etc. I have no problem with it. It's no more buggy than Skyrim at its launching, for example.

I didn't have problems to close the majority of quests. There are 10-20% of quests that I either couldn't close or I didn't understood why they close. But I think it's more on the player than on the game design. CRPGs are usually like this, trying to emulate a pen and paper experience, I guess she was expecting ubisoft's style of quest records, where every single quest is pointed out and in your notes there is a precise description of what to do next. I don't think this is a valid criticism for a CRPG. It would be like criticizing a first person shooter for lack of character development.

Her final point is the weakest. She claims that she broke some quests by starting it in a non expected way. I had similar problems, but a lot of times if you didn't get he quest, you just don't do the quest in this play trough. A lot of times you kill a npc to discover that this guy was important for a side quest. Who cares? That's the cost of freedom. That is not something negative in a game. Its really this or false choices.

Anyway, any thoughts?

I agree with the first two points, the game has a lot of bugs. Not many of them are a big deal, you can complete the game basically no matter what; only had two crashes and one of them was caused by a bug with GA that was fixed while I got it, and the crashed just prompted me to update. The quests are definitely some of the bigger issues, many of them don't progress in their intended way, which is especially annoying when they're companion quests. Fane and Beast both get theirs partially softlocked, which probably contributes to them not rewarding their achievements appropriately. You can softlock several others, and while this rarely presents a gameplay issue there's always that sickly feeling where you spend a lot of time wondering what you've done wrong or what you've not done at all, only to realise it's because the developers just didn't finish the quest up properly. (Cattle, Mother's Worst Nightmare, etc.) I swear if just the quest logs were updated more consistently to close when completed, and lock when broken, I would be far happier.

THAT SAID, LET'S GET TO THE MEAT AND POTATOES. Point three... Surely we should all just laugh derisively for a good long 30 minutes? There's just something inherently wrong with dogging a type of game for being like their archetype. It's like saying the Uncharted games are too linear: well duh, of course they're linear, they are intended to play in a linear progression of events. Maybe if you aren't familiar with pure open world games the idea of negative consequence seems a bit tasteless? I know the Elder Scrolls series has a big deal where there are very few quests that interconnect, and you don't really have to worry if doing X will lead to Y not wanting you to complete his quest.
But, you know... That's the point. You're supposed to be worried if you're burning bridges and getting the most out of the situation. I sure didn't play Gothic back in the day, the game about being a convict in a camp full of greasy miners whose mere social structure institutionalises exploitative prostitution, murder, and extortion; so I could play the game where everyone is just generally fair and cool about things. They're not supposed to be fair and generally cool about things, that's the whole reason they exist, it's to be super uncool about everything.

In fact I think that third point is so silly that I don't believe you've conveyed it properly. I'm sure if I read the actual review, which I might, the point will be a little more complicated than it not shying away from breaking entire quest lines. Now if she means you can literally softlock your game to the point of not being able to complete it, now then we're talking. But as far as I know even Malady is expendable and she, minor spoiler, is your cab driver through the acts. But maybe she's the one essential character to the game? Maybe not? Who can you even kill that breaks the game?

Polygon is a joke. They rated a $60 microtransacation cashgrab garbage a 7.5/10

Hope this is the last one. 93 in metacritic is still good.

Did you read the review? It praises where praise is due and critizises the actual problems the game has in depth. I disagree with some points. A world that doesn't bow to your rules is a good thing in my book, but the critic of the (still to some degree bugged) quest system is actually very relevant for a lot of players.

Fun topic...;) I'll bite! Ah, yes, mealy-mouthed game reviews that pretend to authorship by the "Sages of the Universe," who understand all...;)

Always a fun excursion into mediocrity and triviality and general nincompoopishness by the Wise Ones Among Us...;)

My opinion: this game is fabulous--as good as they get. I agree with you--so much of the "criticism" of OS 2 I have read is from people who very often simply haven't learned how to play the game--and are still stubbornly insisting that it "play like the last game of its type that I played recently," etc.--hooo boy, you know you've got a humdinger when they talk like this as if it makes sense...;) "The last game of its type that I played"...(Please. Don't. Hit. Me. Again...! Stop...;))

It's the round peg in square hole syndrome--dedicated to the proposition that "Game X will play like Game Z or I'll force it to do so, eventually"--and so on. Meanwhile Game X is terrible because it doesn't "play like Game Z would play if Game Z was Game X"--a literally nonsensical statement if ever there was one.

Don't know how many "criticisms" and "Bug reports" I've seen written by people who do crazy illogical things like not finishing quests and then wonder why they weren't awarded XP--they played it *wrong* and think that they should have been awarded with XP, anyway, because *in their minds* they had finished it correctly...;) What follows is paraphrased but true, and only the names have been changed to protect the innocent NPCs and game developers--who are not responsible for the stupidity of the player:



In reality, there was no quest bug at all--except in the mind and Modus Operandi of that particular player. Had he simply talked to mother and child after the fight to inquire as to their health, to see if there was a reward, or even just to talk to the child who gave the quest in the first place--he'd have been awarded his XP, known where mother and child were off to, and *then* he could have begun his next stage which apparently was to steal everything he could find in their home. He simply never completed the quest rationally or logically--so he got no XP. Just the same as with any other game quest that isn't completed. But he chalked it off to a *game bug*...! Too funny...;) All too familiar, sadly.

Then there are all the innumerable little bits that various players/reviewers call "bugs" because the way the features work in the game doesn't correspond to the way the player imagines those features should work, and so the player/reviewer concludes that the "glitched" features are *bugs* in the game. The reality is that the "glitches" were simply holes in the player's understanding of how to play the game--not *code bugs.* No amount of developer code fixes can debug a player's misapprehensions and misunderstandings about the game or the way it must be played--in this game or any other game, as well. No game of any kind can be played satisfactorily without a thorough understanding of the *rules of the game* and the knowledge of how to play that game...;) Scrabble to O Sin2--it's all the same.

Are there bugs in OS 2? Of course there are--there always are in any game the size and scope of this masterpiece. The read.me's that Larian has published in its version Change Logs attest to the number of bugs that have so far been fixed in the game--a good number of bugs fixed so far.

*However,* those fixes can only be compared with the total size and complexity of the game itself, which means that those bug lists are a tiny fraction of the total amount of code in the game that *could* be bugged but isn't! This is a huge game. To illustrate how huge it is, I note with some surprise that out of all the bug fixes Larian has stipulated "fixed" that in now some ~100 hours + put into the game so far (I'm still in Chapter II wrapping up believe it or not!), that I have encountered not one of the bugs Larian lists as fixed in the patches to date...not a single one of them! And I started playing a week before the game was formally released on 9/14.

Sometimes I think game reviewers these days lack a lot--a lot of perspective and experience, mostly. Old hands like me, though, are not going to miss the quality of this game to date--especially compared to many, many others we could all discuss if we were crazy enough to do so..;)

Review scores aren't relative to other review scores, and reviews are written by individuals, not institutions. One reviewer can appreciate a game more highly than a different reviewer appreciates a different game.

When I was working on a commercial RPG, we had a lot of positive, mixed, and negative reviews. Quite frankly, I liked the mixed reviews the best - because they were critical about a wider variety of issues and that feedback was useful to the team. Glowing positive reviews are nice to see, but whether they had any impact on sales was uncertain and there was no feedback we could use from them. Negative reviews tended to be single-issue opinions about things beyond our control, generally written in Russian, so there was very little we could take away from them to make our game better.

Don't tell me point 3 isn't wrong. Look at withermore questline.

Do any of you ever played alpha has any idea how to close the quest? freaking no. Because the quest log is wrote one way, and the actual quest gone the other way.

Many of quests in DOS2 is inherently stupid and questionable.

You can heartily disregard outlets like Polygon, but it's a shame the issues with the game are so entrenched and glaring that even they can pick up on them.
I still don't know how the game got released with the Quest Log in it's current state.

Off the top of my head, in Act 1 alone (spoilers tagged):

Every Mother's Nightmare - this quest appears to only have one solution:



This quest is received and resolved so quickly that it feels like cut content. You are given a figurine to find Erma, implying that



Withermore's Soul Jar - this quest does not close when you release Withermore's soul. You have to go to



I fluked these steps but I know several people who didn't and have no idea why the quest will not close.

The Arena of Fort Joy - this was a bugged quest that was retroactively fixed in the first patch. Talking to Thola would not trigger the final journal entry stage, leading some people to suggest that it continues in Act 2 as there is more than one arena. I was in Act 2 when the first patch was released but loaded an Act 1 save to confirm.

The Burning Pigs - This quest is very illogical from a design perspective as there are multiple points where the player cannot reasonably be expected to have the forethought or the tools necessary to finish it. When you approach the village, the nearest pig triggers an auto dialogue. To cure the pigs you need to



This is a problem because the auto dialogue ends with you having to



All of this before you can respec. Upon curing a pig, Feder spawns off screen near Slane. Why does Feder spawn here? No idea. You can unknowingly ruin the outcome of this quest if you went to the Sanctuary first which leads to



There is plenty of scope for criticism in the quest structure of act 1 alone. I understand that some things in the game are beyond the player's ability to control. On second playthrough however, all of the above examples are clearly within the player's ability to control, but only with the benefit of hindsight.

You have to know there is no alternative choice. Or that if you do a, b, c in this order and avoid talking to npc x, then you save npc y. Or this quest is meant to be open because I still have to go interact with an object on the other side of the map for narratively inconsistent reasons, whereupon quest dude appears and my journal entry completes.

Criticism is not the same as a review, although a review may incorporate criticism. Nevertheless, the conclusion of a review implies a value recommendation. Is the game good or bad? Is it worth buying or not? The value recommendation is often summarized as a number between 1 and 10, which is disappointing as the number itself is arbitrary and carries disproportionate weight in aggregator sites like Metacritic. This in turn strongly influences the popular perception of the game.

It is perfectly possible for me to criticise this game and love the hell out of it. This is how Joseph Anderson can do an 80 minute video finding every flaw in Bloodborne despite it being one of his all time favourite games. This is not inconsistent with the function of criticism. Then again, he doesn't do reviews or review scores so his analysis does not form part of a recommendation (to play the game or not).

However, I must also acknowledge that I didn't know anything about this game and expressed no interest until word of mouth forced me to pay attention. As much as I don't like it, the metacritic score carried weight.

I figured that if a bunch of industry insiders rated the game this highly despite being an obscure, early access, crowdfunded, turn based adventure sequel with a word salad title, then it must be good.

I think the game deserves a much higher score despite its shortcomings. But she is not wrong and her criticisms are valid. Reviews are subjective and she gave the game the score she felt it deserved. That's kinda how reviews work. And it's not like 7 out of 10 is a bad score. It's just not as high a score as some of us would give it.

I don't want to get into any crazy discussion about things like this but I just wanted to point out how the above directions being given to the complaining player is pretty contradictory to the game's design.

"Had he done this, he would not have had such trouble" is a moot argument considering the game advertises itself as open and player choice driven. The game should've accounted for the player immediately getting into the house and stealing things and come back out. The game should've either forced the player into a conversation with the mother and/or child, or it should've simply updated the quest log with something like "the mother and child fled the scene and decided to go back to spot X".

The rationale or logic you speak of is really I think linearity which you expect the person to abide by so that the quest properly updates itself and gives him exp.

Ironically, such an expectation of the player in a game like Divinity: Original Sin 2 is really the one that's quite illogical and irrational.

to be fair; reviewer isn't totally wrong.

My playthrough got ruined in act 3 because suddenly ghosts decided to ignore everyone. (i can use source vampirism on them but not talk with them ; the chat bubble cursor wouldn't even appear when i hovered over ghosts.)

To add to the reviewer's point ; i'm pretty sure that issue happened because i didn't exactly follow the path the game would expect you to take. Probably broke a chain of event somehow.

Anyways just because your playthrough went smooth going with normal choices/order of events ; doesn't mean it's the case for everyone.

*questionnable zero xp encounters
*reactive shot broken as hell
*ghosts bugged on nameless isle
*killed npcs/companions respawning jsut for the sake of the story
*immersion breaking speeches sometimes
*some voiceovers out of nowhere have low volume/quality just for one line out of a whole conversation
*a couple fights went really weird in nameless isle, camera focusing on black areas of the map where the fog of war is still on.

I think it's actually the most sincere review i've seen yet. others seem to have very low standards, or stopped at the end of act 2, or went with standard-normal-expected choices.

I did expect these kind of issues though ; given the type of game it is.

I will agree 100% there - It is seriously under-developed.
The game overall though, is pure genius.

Lets see what this weeks patch brings

Pure genious? The core of the combat system is totally dumbed down, what is genious there? That is just good joke.

Probably because the new mechanical changes came out of nowhere and were not justified by the dev team.

Most of the issues on the forum are valid. People like Stabbey bring up a lot of them; here, you can search his thread history yourself. He's not the only one.

This game has a lot wrong with it, but also a lot right with it. You blame user error, but quests like Withermoore's Soul Jar requires you to go to a tower that has absolutely nothing to do with Withermoore to complete, nor has he mentioned anything about it.

But, whatever. You can keep calling it a "mastapiece, bby!", but just know it's super cringe and there's an incredible laundry list (GreatGuardsman, 10/9/17) of stuff that made the game horribly bad.