Divinity: Original Sin

A bit of preamble, I've never played the original Original Sin, nor the much more famed and talked about Original Sin 2, so this was my first experience with the franchise. How that effects this review is up to someone who is more well versed in these games than I currently am, but I thought it was worth saying. Read below each segment for TLDRS if you don't want the ramble.

Character Progression And Choice
As it's the first thing you are often faced with in a CRPG, and one of the most important parts of the genre, it shall be covered first. The character creation in divinity is pretty alright. I went with a paladin-cleric type as my first PC, and my second was a full spell caster. However, due to my inexperience with the system, these two often were outmatched in combat by my chosen companions, their a few to choose from, early on in the game, and they are easy to play with and level up. The ranger-type and the pure two-handed warrior I went with were predominant the heavy hitters. Their is a respeccing system quite far in to the game, but honestly, I blame myself for my poor choices in the system more than the game.

Where the system ended up being really frustrating was the nightmarish loot system. I am not one for randomised loot pools as is, but this one could so easily be patched up a little bit. Encounters drop a metric ton of loot, and often gear is unequippable behind use of the "Loremaster" skill to figure out it's stats. Here's the thing though, this skill is so easily bested by the plethora of others in the game, and you can buy a trader out to decipher stats anyway, so it just doesn't invoke the usage of the semi-scarce skill points you are alloted. This just ends up with you lugging about crap-tons of gear across 4 characters, and the real kick in the teeth is that there is no easy way to compare your equipped to your stowed, so you have to figure out the maths most of the time. Not a big issue on it's own, but with everything else, loot felt less reward more chore.

The player-choice is an odd one, however. There certainly was some player-choice, and it was quite featured among the games side-quests, but it never really blew me away. It was just a feature that occasionally came up. Your two PC's are often allowed a binary view on certain happenings in the world, and while this is a neat feature, I often felt it hard to use this to craft characters out of my pair, maybe it would be easier if I were to play co-op, but on solo, it just ended up being "What do I agree with more." The values assigned to you just end up being fairly meaningless from what I saw any whom. Nothing I did really felt like it effected the characters and the world all that much, until end-game.

TLDR: Progression is decent, choices are there, but largely not that big of a deal, looting is painful.

Combat, Puzzles And Exploration
To focus on something more positive, the combat is really excellent. Skills are easy to understand and satisfying to use, elements are encorporated in a way that makes them easy to understand and satisfying to master, and best of all, it is satisfying to get a kill. Hell, the combat was really the driving force that got me to keep playing, although encounters occasionally soured on me at the end. The Knight fight pre the void dragon in particular was very frustrating Movement and targeting could be a bit janky at times, leading to some mishaps, which is especially frustrating in a game the focuses on battlefield hazards. All in all, it was by-far the most enjoyable part of the game, and may even be worth nabbing the game for. Depends on how much you like TB combat really.

Puzzles were eh. Nothing special, and often just there for the sake of it. They serve a purpose but I never particularly felt satisfied after solving them. I wouldn't blame someone for consulting a guide to solve them most of the time, they can serve as a frustrating break from the gameplay that most stick around for.

Exploration is another highlight, I found the games enviroments to be very enjoyable, and even regarding side-quests, it was fun to fill out each map, and it was nice to find encounters of the beaten track too. Not much to say but praise it really.

TLDR: Excellent combat, puzzles are not worth it, exploration is great.

Story, Sound and Sights
I'll be brutally honest. I didn't really care much for Original Sin's story. To sum it up without spoilers, it starts of well, and quickly breaks it's boundaries and becomes too much. Honestly though, it's servicable. It kinda got boring in my end, but I could still follow it even skimming through dialouge, which is honestly commendable, there is detail for those who want it, and an easy tale for those who don't. To cover in more detail... Tha story around Cyseal is really decent. Finding the murderer of councillor Jake is an engaging and largely freeform adventure which embraces what I love about CRPG's and runs with it in a way I really liked. It stayed real, kept the creepy and supernatural to the caves, and held it's punches until it needed to throw them. The homestead and Zixzax story-telling is easy to phase out, and is just kinda confusing. Again, it just comes to early. Keep your mysteries grounded, then when we figure out the conspiracy, you can expand it to a cosmic level. The sudden expansion of concept and tension in Lucalla Forest is just too much for me. I couldn't stay involved with the pure number of silly fantasy plots that were suddenly involved, and it kinda stayed that way to the end. Not much more to say on the subject.

Sound design was pretty decent. The VA's were pretty cool. Enjoyed the voices that my characters had, and the companions were solid too. Honestly, not a complaint really. Music was really good early on, and kept on as good, not gonna lie though the Silverglen tavern music really annoyed me, way to whimsical. Earlier on though, it had a great foreboding vibe to it.

The visuals were fantastic for a game of this calibre, great scene setting and 3d enviroments, no complaints, beautiful setpieces.

TLDR: Original Sin has a mediocore story, that simply does the job to carry it's other elements, and great audio/visual elements, that are a great delivery method for the games finer aspects.

Overall
It's worth it sure. The elements I enjoyed slight outweigh the parts I did not, but the worse parts are certainly sticking points. Buy cheap for a solid week or two of content.

Divinity Original Sin is such an incredible WRPG. It does so many things well. First, the turn based combat system makes the fights really enjoyable. I wasnt expecting the game to be all that good in the combat department (as most wrpgs arent), but this game nails it down. It encourages the player to find the best party composition in order to take full advantage of environmental artifacts and spell combos. I loove the lag when a big explosion occours, which usually means im doing a good job (except the times where an ally got caught in the middle of the blast). The loot is great as well, and a really important step in making a good team.

Apart from the combat, the world is openish, since you are free to go anywhere, but due to high level enemies there is clearly an optimal path to take, particularly in the beginning of the game. The humours writing is very charismatic, and the sort of world it builds is the sort of world where anything can happen (even meta comments about the genre) and it still feel tight together. The story itself does fall a bit flat towards the end, but i didnt find that too much of a problem. Visually it offers a sort of timeless cartoonish style, which will hold up very well. Its a colourful game, which reflects its brand of humour.

There are however a few flaws. Some of the puzzles and quests are simply too obtuse. Some puzzles in particular ask you to press hidden switches which are only highlighted when the cursor hovers over them. Even with guides i found finding some of them hard. This is a long game, and did play the majority of it with the hellp of a guide in case i got stuck, and its little issues like this that can make people give up on the game. Which would be a mistake, since this is the best game of 2014 i have played so far. Its just one of those you can feel all of the passion placed into the work. Lets hope larian studios gets another shot at this brand of game.