I’d say this story and its writing is much worse than Divinity Original Sin. So, i can’t hold a candle to something like Pillars or the first Dragon Age.
There’s a lot of very uninteresting fantasy politics and hamfisted allegories. For the real world social issues that have been done to death. Also, you have to have a very narrow kind of sense of humor to enjoy the game overall. If you were really into the “What Does the Fox Say” music video. Or wish that Amanda Palmer would co-write a Neil Gaiman high fantasy story, you’ll love this game.
Everyone else is probably going to be kinda meh. What bothers me the most? The fact that there’s a pretty good character creator, but there is a system that encourages you to play a pre-made character over a custom character. I don’t know if this is a placeholder system. Almost all of them are intensely unlikable, especially if you pick them up as companions rather than playable characters.
You get to choose either a racist lizard noble that speaks in Victorian english and makes references to Shakespeare to demonstrate how cultured he is, a drug addict serial killer, a cannibalistic Elven princess who treats others like food, and a schizophrenic psychic medium.
With better writing, they’d be interesting in Divinity Original Sin 2. Unfortunately, they just come off with highly questionable bonds. The incentive to play as one of these people is that they’ll have unique dialogue or story options. None of which I found compelling enough to use. Often the unique dialogue options are counterproductive. For example, like having a villain character talk to a depressed or sick person gives you an option. “I sense your looming death, this pleases me.” Obviously that line shuts down the sidequest or puzzle solution or whatever that NPC had as they don’t want to deal with your crazy shit any more.
I got it as a kickstarter reward and I’ve put in about 5 hours split between a multiplayer game and a single player game and here are my thoughts:
So far I really like the story in Divinity Original Sin 2. I don’t think the first games story was bad, but it got really repetitive at points. This game is written by Chris Avellone. The game’s setting seems pretty bleak and depressing so far.
They have fairly drastically changed the combat. Also, action points have been reworked and it’s much more ability focused. I honestly don’t think the actual quality has changed that much.
I think the races have a really good flavor to them. They aren’t just bland reskins, they actually have unique traits (elf for example, can eat body parts and can get memories from them).
They need to change the default online settings as its far too easy for someone to connect, murder your party with one of your own characters, and disconnect.
There are a couple of key features that aren’t in the game right now such as DM mode and a companion dialogue system.
I’m going to hold off playing through more of the game until there’s a full release, but the early access version certainly has me interested.
