Divinity: Original Sin II (2017)

Divinity 2 - First Impressions

Played through up to the end of Act 1. Incredible roleplaying and tactical gauntlet, offered way more freedom than I honestly thought possible in a crpg with this much good combat. Tactics are intense, full of a large variety of difficult fights, mostly serving to the knowledge wall you have to pass in terms of where enemies and encounters are but even still, strategy is interesting and fun to pull off. The elemental environment systems as well as power Action Point plays are fairly well balanced and give way to many dynamic solutions.

That appears to be Divinity 2's whole appeal, wargame roleplaying, because the other components are fairly weak in comparison. The story, for lack of any better words, seems fairly standard if not a little above standard. The characters are strong archtypes that while I can't adequately say how well they will go aren't entirely the most interestingly written. That being said, the general writing on offer serves the gameplay well and throws in some curveballs and genuinely funny moments.

Had a great thrilling time so far, looking forward to picking it back up uhhhh probably a year or two down the line idk.

Started playing this with my girlfriend and best friend. I like the new mechanics, except the oversimplification of action points. I think having asymmetry was good, and it probably could have benefited from being toned down, but removed and simplified so much, is kinda lame.

That said, I feel like the armor system and actual story/role-playing opportunities, and other systems in general, have mostly been improved so much that it more than balances out.

EDIT: Oh, the crafting system was given kind of an upgrade, in being able to combine up to 5 things and a crafting station, but then super downgraded because of not having any good way to craft more than garbage equipment. Still, that's more of a minor disappointment than anything. I do much prefer finding gear.

I started playing this on the 23rd of May. I restarted Fort Joy 5 times and put 14 hours in the game just kind of trying to figure it out before I did my final restart, installed some mods and really dived into it. I am now 15 hours into my actual save, level 8 on all my character (six of them!) and I am leaving Fort Joy. It's a SUPER frustrating game that I am playing on Classic.

This game made me do something I have NEVER done in my life before and that was change difficulty mid-game. I'm back on Classic now but I went to Explorer for one fight I just couldn't beat and I was losing my mind. So far it's been pretty great but the inventory management of six characters is a nightmare! It's been a good time though but I can already tell it will be a HUGE time sink. I hope I can finish it!

I'm maybe halfway through Arx, so I'm nearing the end, but no spoilers please!! I'm playing this on weekends with my partner. We downloaded mods so we could have 6 party members... he's a lizard lady polymorph in charge of Fane and Ifan. I'm a dwarven summoner with my girlfriends Sebille and Lohse. The game made me choose a canon gf, so that's Lohse, but I headcanon us as a triad of powerful girlfriends LMAO.

We've logged 107 hrs in this. Although at least 2 of those were just reloading our save file so we could save a dog in Fort Joy lmao. We have our priorities straight, okay.