Divinity: Original Sin

[Bhazor]

Probably the most *interesting* western RPG in years. On the surface it is resolutely nostalgic with its isometric viewpoint, Ultima style inventory, turn based combat and a focus on wandering around looking for a quest. But beneath that veneer it is daringly new. The primary reason for this is it's unique physicality, barrels can be picked up and dropped on switches, rain spells will put out fires, poison arrows create great clouds of guff that can be ignited with a spark to make a huge explosion. A bad lad can be cut so that he bleeds as he moves, blood that can conduct electricity or frozen to create a fall trap. The second most interesting thing is its approach to roleplaying in that you do not play a single character but instead two people and you dictate both sides of their relationships, they can be friends bitter rivals or lovers. This manifests in regular arguments that are settled with the ancient game of rock paper scissors. The second character can also be played by a co-op partner. That's if you can find a co-op partner who will be willing to play for 60 hours. The third most interesting thing is its flexible quest structure. It is filled with unscripted options and room for novel thinking such as breaking into a house to steal the quest reward or complete sequence breaking stuff like just killing the murder suspect in broad daylight as they go about their daily routine.

http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/pnp95y/divinity--original-sin-features-trailer

It is not without its problems sadly, the prime problem being that it is bastard hard. The problem is that it's unclear whether this was intentional difficulty or just bad encounter/level design and an untested combat system.  It feels much like the first edition of a pen and paper rpg. The feel that numbers are being plucked from the air, combat skills and spells being made up on the spot and then jury rigged into place. Prime example being the special arrows that both you and enemies use. Arrows that can freeze your main fighter solid for three turns in the first move of a battle. Fire arrows with explosions big enough to hit your whole party and powerful enough to reduce everyone to 1/3 health. The result is that you are forced to complete every quest in each region (there are no random encounters) or else be horribly underequipped to deal with the next area. Lesser problems that nevertheless still suck include weapon and armour repairs (just why), the fact that the 100+ spell books all have the same icon so going through each shop becomes a tedious chore, theres no shared gold across the party so whenever you go to a merchant you need to dump everything onto one character and then exit and then redistribute everything among the party and then go to each member and re-equip each individual item.

Its certainly an interesting game. IF YOU'RE A NERD THAT IS OSNAP.

[Big Jack McBastard]

So then, let's see...... oh yeah: My game of Divinity Original Sin bugged out on me right near the end, I've got a bloody star stone in my inventory (unnamed) and whenever I try to put it on the ground the game crashes, fully repeatable error that, tried it all over the place with different characters, no dice a CTD or one of them crash dialogue boxes every time.

Such an bizarrely placed one too, you're supposed to stand in a specific spot for 10 seconds with a specific crappy amulet equipped and it just pops into your character's inventory and there is no clue to do this anywhere (other than on walkthrough websites) so how anyone has happened upon it organically is a bloody mystery and testament to their inability to properly manage their character's gear cos no cunt would have that thing on at that point in the game unless they were an oblivious lazy fuck.

AND this is an essential item required to finish the game for fuck's sake, what are they playing at? These games have never been amazing or owt but there's some lazy unfinished shit in there. Kickstarter funded, mmmmhh, yeah, might have been that.

There's only one bastard left to kill, my guys are tooled the fuck up but there's no meat left to slaughter except townsfolk...

Should I kill everyone else until I find a fix? It'll get me some XP and action at least. Wipe everyone all out, nick and sell their stuff on to the richest vendors until I have all their gold off em and then kill them for the same items and rinse and repeat until I have all the cash in the world and everyone I can kill is dead?

That might happen actually, I hate the vendors in the early market, the dialogue repetition is maddening in this game,

An Amazing Descoveries-voiced bloke does two hacky cheese salesman pitches
A rough woman loudly announces she has amongst other things; 'delicious dog meat' for sale
"A quiet day on the market it seems" (FUCK OFF)
A gerbily woman lists cheeses she sees.

Over and over and over and fucking OVER and CUNTING OVER, A-FUCKING-GAIN! IT'S GOT TO BE 20 TIMES THIS HAS CYCLED NOW FOR FUCKS SAKE YOU CUNTS!

Kickstarter funded. This is what you get, I could turn the volume down but fuck you.

Fuck it, they all die, the pogrom is on, no-one will be spared, let's see if I can squeeze another level out of the dregs.

It was okay-ish, I did want to play the bloody thing but it fended me off, kept me at bay, story was a bit thin and shit too.

[Big Jack McBastard]

The economy is so broken it's silly, starts out a bit of a chore to scrape money up but as soon as you realise that NPC inventories are persistent then you can just intensively sell to a couple of solitary vendors who have a lot of cash. Buy all their elemental stones and good gear while selling them huge amounts of crap and sharpened crafted weapons for about 10 straight visits, then when you think you've gotten the best out of one, kill him off.

They pop like piñatas dropping their shop inventory which includes everything you ever sold them and you've the means to be rich all over again with another sucker.