Sunday, September 4, 2016

Enhanced sinning or enhanced divinity with: Divinity Original Sin: Enhanced Edition

The Basics: Action RPG toybox with complex systems

Previous Time Spent: 30 minutes
Expectation of learning Curve: high
Why I bought this: Rave Reviews, especially from Rock Paper Shotgun

First Impressions: The game opens with character creation for a couple of travelling adventurers and gives me a sort of World of Warcraftish feel with big hands, big characters, and a sort of cartoony, larger than life feel. There's a traditional display of D&D derived classes, with a clearly complex and interesting skill system. Me being me, I chose a fire and ice wizard, and got started. My first impression of gameplay was sort of Baldur's Gate meets Diablo in a very colorful tropical setting.

My 3 hours:I played through a sort of tutorial dungeon, and then moved on to just scratching the surface of the main plotline before hitting the three hour mark. 

I really enjoyed the tutorial dungeon, and found it to be a great example of the sort of goofy interplay of systems that makes this game tick. There were plenty of environmental puzzles and traps that corresponded to various types of magic, and could be countered using spells or objects found in the environment. Objects can be moved and destroyed, and there's a gleeful sense of experimentation and hijinks to the whole thing. Generally I felt like if I could think of something to do in the system, it had a response. 

Once I was out of the tutorial dungeon, I'll admit to feeling a bit overwhelmed by choice, which is ultimately a mark in the game's favor. I spent some time investigating main plot stuff, some kind of murder, some problems with the undead, etc. I found myself struggling a bit when it came to these systems, and being happy that this game allows a lot of choice and doesn't hold the player's hand as much as I'd expect in a fairly modern game. I got the sense that I was just scratching the surface of the game system, and that if this had come out during a summer break in my teen years, I'd have dedicated countless hours to mastery. 


My Highlight: Wandering out of the starting town, expecting standard low-level foes, and running into fights that grew to overwhelm me. The need to actually consider fleeing is not something that always comes up in modern games, especially RPGs, and it warmed my crooked little heart to see these cartoonish/beefy heroes falling to overwhelming odds.  

My Verdict: Divinity Original Sin is great, but probably not really in my purview due to it's complexity. I'd recommend it for someone who wants to learn the intricacies of it's system, and see the bizarre antics that can come out of the interplay of magic and other factors. 

Next post will be on September 11th, where I'll be stepping out of my schedule to review Age of Decadence, a Roman themed RPG in the mold of Fallout 1 and 2. 

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