Topic: Divinity: Original Sin

I would post in the old thread, but it's archived. I figured since it's a really long game I'd make a new thread for me to post my impressions rather than flood the what are you playing thread with constant Divinity. Just started this in co-op with a friend yesterday, and I'm already in love. I've tried multiple times to get into these CRPG games, namely with Tyranny, but it just never clicked. Usually it's the combat that ends up turning me off because it's confusing and overwhelming, but I didn't have that at all here. Maybe it's because I'm able to play with a friend and joke around so it's harder to get frustrated, or maybe they just really modernised it well. I'm actually having good fun with the combat here. Setting a bundh of skeletons on fire with my fire magic spell was highly satisfying!

I'm only about 2.5 hours in and we've only just really reached Cyseal. I've read a lot of the game takes place here, so I guess it's time to settle in. One minor annoyance is the constantly looping NPC dialogue. I never want to hesr about Yuthul Gor in my life again after having had to listen to that conversation more than 10 times while trading. I do really enjoy the humour of the game however, so the first time around the dialogue can be quite funny. It's also clearly filled to the brim with content. In just 2.5 hours we:

• Found a man who died by jumping off a cliff
• Helped a talking seashell called Ishmashell make his way back to the sea
• Encountered a bunch of hilarious drunken soldiers
• Did some highly lucrative graverobbing in what was a surprisingly easy dungeon
• Fought some orcs and almost blow up Legionnaires in the process
• Put out a boat on fire with a rain spell and made the town love us
• Met a talking cat who can also transform into a human

If that isn't some great content for 2.5 hours, I don't know what is. I've been loving it so far, even though knowing it's probabky a 100 hour playthrough is intimidating. Hopefully it'll stay fun for as long as the game is! I haven't looked forward to continuing a game this much in a while. I suppose I'll just use this thread to chronicle my further adventures, and of course anyone is free to jump in and discuss anything they like as well. It's gonna be a while! But first, I'm gonna have to wait a few days thanks to going away for the weekend. I always find great games at the most annoying timing!

Not in the mood for cheese?

@kyleforrester87 Haha, I don't think I've met that one yet. I'm not excited to.

I loved this game. First thing to do when you hit Cyseal is become a professional art thief.

Yes, steal everything. If they can't see you steal it! Also DOS2 is even better so keep going. My favorite isometric rpgs.

@Tjuz how can you miss the cheese seller?!

As mentioned, steal everything! Split your party into individuals, send 3 off to talk to NPCs so they are all stuck facing a corner then get your 4th guy into stealth mode so you can see vision cones and steal everything that isn’t nailed down/pick pocket what you can. Artwork in particular, it’s easy money. So much fun.

Vendors restock every level up and it’s worth buying resurrection scrolls where you can as they are hard to come by at the start.

I’ve tried playing it twice, both times got to Cyseal and was somewhat overwhelmed. Think I need to give it another go but it’s just incredibly vast.

@nessisonett it’s the absolute opposite of your Spider-Man’s/Last of Us/God of Wars. Super refreshing, but yes there is a bit of a hump.

@kyleforrester87 Yeah, I love Baldur’s Gate, Planescape Torment and stuff, I just never end up finishing my playthroughs. It’s like a mental barrier with me because I’ll spend hours and hours on side content and then completely burn out on the actual main quest. Disco Elysium’s the last isometric RPG I haven’t dropped.

@nessisonett I’d say the OS games are substantially better than the isometric D&D games (granted, I have not played them all). A lot of this is down to them being more sandboxy. You feel like you’re breaking the game and tricking the developers on a regular basis.

Side content and main content is kind of the same thing in these games too. Often you don’t feel like there is a distinction between the two. It’s just content. You can skip entire chunks of game on purpose or by accident.

Edit: and that’s before mentioning the delightfully tactical combat which runs rings around the pause and play systems in the D&D games. It’s not quite as good in the sequel, mind you.

@kyleforrester87 I just don't think I've explored there yet! The extent of our exploration so far has just been the docks. I'm sure he'll drive me to the brink of insanity when I eventually do meet him. Thanks for the tip on the stealing and resurrection scrolls. I'll make sure to put it the stealing one good use when I do find myself some more party members! I heard there's a popular one in Cyseal anyway, but his name escapes me. Can every party member cast scrolls or spells? I'm playing as an enchanter and my friend is a knight, so so far we've been giving me all the scrolls under the assumption only I can cast spells.

Interesting to hear you think Original Sin is miles above other tactical isometric RPGs. It has made me instantly interested in more of this when we do finish Original Sin. For the sake of my curiosity, what are other ones you'd recommend? I believe I've seen only Wasteland 3 as the other modern co-op option outside of the sequel, but I'm open to anything singleplayer as well. What have you liked most? I assume you enjoyed the sequel as well, even if I have seen divided opinions on preferences. Judging from your preference to OS over D&D games, I take it you might not be very excited for Baldur's Gate 3.

We were finally able to play some more today and I'm really having a blast with this. So much so that we didn't spend just "some" time, but more like an unhealthy amount of time playing it today. 80% of it was probably just exploring the inner walls of Cyseal. We only started exploring outwards in the last few hours, which was a much needed respite from the walls of dialogue! I do enjoy the combat in the game a lot, which I really would not have expected from a turn-based RPG. It's usually the thing that puts me off most from these kinds of games, so this is a total twist of fate. The fights haven't yet gotten too hard either, which is a bonus. Hard difficulty frustrates me more than anything in games. There was one enemy we had trouble with for a bit in the Twin Dungeons quest in particular, but we got her after a few attempts still. Small overview of some of the stuff we did today:

• We traveled to the End of Time to find out the entire thread of time itself is slowly evaporating
• We met a dead philosopher and successfully passed his philosophy test so he can move on to the afterlife
• We found the sheep thief and turned him over to law enforcement
• We also settled a feud between an Orc and an Elf by turning the latter over to law enforcement
• We performed our much lauded stage play called Cyseal's Genesis twice
• We successfully survived our way through linked dungeons with two highly skilled defenders
• We stole. A lot. We've become professional thieves through and through.

This game remains a total delight in its strange tone, voice acting and dialogue. The quests are lot of fun, and I especially love the mechanic where you get to talk with your co-op partner and potentially argue. The rock paper scissors screwed us over once so far, but we've been quite lucky otherwise. I'm sure it could get annoying if it starts going less your way, however. There are quite a few difficulty spikes all around us, as leveling in this game doesn't seem to be very quick. We're about 13 hours in and we're at level 4. Just the orcs on the beach are already level 6! We've been venturing north-west for the time being, where we've mostly encountered level 4/5 enemies. Other than that, we have no clue where we're going or should be going. I guess we'll just find our way eventually!

@Tjuz There are more isometric RPGs/CRPGs whatever you want to call them that I haven’t played than I have frankly, but aside from Divinity OS they have all had pause/play combat where you pause everything, order your team, unpause and let it play out. I guess it’s well suited to PC but I prefer the slower nature of combat in Original Sin 1 and 2, it suits a controller and it’s a great feeling to turn the tides in a battle with one well planned and executed round.

As I mentioned one of the good things about OS1 and 2 is that content doesn’t feel like main quests/side quests that you’re ticking off, it’s just happening organically. However they can feel a bit restricted in the sense you’re often funnelled to specific areas where enemies will be at a level you can handle.

Have you checked out Baldurs Gate 3? Made by the Divinity lot.. looks like a dream, tbh.

(Sorry by the way, I am pretty rubbish at replying but it is fun to read your impressions of one of my favourite games)

@kyleforrester87 No worries! I'm not a star at replying myself as you can see. Previous turn-based combat I never seemed to really get into, so I don't know what Divinity is doing differently! Maybe it's the slower paced combat like you say, and the spells descriptions and such not being too... hardcore RPG-y. You can pretty easily figure out what a spell does and how, where in other games it can get quite a bit convoluted. And yeah, I can relate to the great feeling when a battle turns tides out of nowhere! We've definitely cheesed a battle here and there. The fight with Evelyn in particular we used, I think, three resurrection scrolls on myself while my friend tanked and kept fighting. The battlefield was a total mess with area of effect everywhere and summons. It's really a battle we shouldn't have won, or at least one we should've given up on a long time before. In the end, after many grenades and scrolls, we still somehow managed to win, and that was a great feeling.

I agree with the quests too. It's very satisfying to see many a quest be checked off by going to one place or doing one simple action. A lot of them are very intertwined and you'll come across them naturally in your exploring. I'm glad I took the Pet Pal talent first thing too, because that's resulted in quite a few fun interactions and quests! The restriction does feel a bit weird since this game was always advertised to me as "do anything"! People always say quests have tons of different ways to do it, but I don't find that that's really the case. Or at least, it's not noticeably more so than any ol' RPG. Maybe Divinity: Original Sin 2 is more like that if you can attest to it, because it seems to be the one everyone's played while D:OS1 gets the shaft from many.

I have kept my eye on Baldur's Gate 3! It was one of the first things I started looking into once I realised I was really getting into D:OS. I probably won't start playing that until it comes out for real instead of Early Access, but luckily we still have the Divinity games to tide us over until then. I've also kept my eye on Wasteland 3 which looks like it has a co-op campaign. My friend is a big fan of Fallout, so I'm sure he would appreciate a post-apocalyptic setting. It's just a shame I won't have my magic! We probably won't get to that until after at least D:OS2, though. That said, I saw D:OS2 also has some Game Master mode where many people have created custom campaigns for you to play? Sounds like we'll have a lot more content in that game besides the main game too. There should be some good stuff in there, I'm sure!

We've still been playing the last few days and having a blast. We finally ran into Braccus Rex yesterday, which is where we ended our session. We're 28 hours in I believe, and this is only the end of Act 1? This truly is a RPG. Braccus Rex managed to kill our party in one shot. To say I'm looking forward to this fight later today is to admit I'm lying. We did a second attempt where only one person survived, so I guess we'll have to position our characters a bit further away from each other. I don't know if this is really gonna be doable, even though we are the same level as Braccus Rex (lvl 9). It seems like a lot and maybe it's better to be overleveled for this. That said, I don't think we have many places left to explore to level up still. In fact, I'm, pretty sure we've explored everything there is to explore in Cyseal at this point. Time to go to one of the THREE other maps soon! We already made acquaintance with Hiberheim through our good friend Wally Wellington McWishingWell. Some other stuff we've done over the last few days:

• We met and beat an undead strongman at destroying an orb the fastest
• We reunited a regretful dead man with the dead wife he murdered and encouraged her to not forgive him
• We managed to destroy a failed experiment from Arhu and the Fabulous Five took all the credit and rewards for it
• We found the two guards who caught an Orc dead after we told them to not kill her
• We met a Sourcerer guarding Evelyn's hideout and killed him, as well as everyone inside
• I got murdered by an explosive trap after a ghost warned me of it, because I didn't believe him
• We reunited good ol' Headless Nick with his head, who then assisted us in defeating Pontius the Pirate
• We facilitated a wedding between two cats after we found a collar for Sam so the gold-digging Maxine would love him
• We met a very multi-faceted criminal in the graveyard, who we suggested should seek judgment
• We helped a dog kill the wolves who stole his property
• We came across the trapped graveyard where a Graveyard Madman summoned many Explo-Skeletons, only for all of them to kill themselves walking into fire

Another eventful few days, really. I'm assuming Braccus Rex is the final boss fight of Act 1, considering the sudden difficulty spike. I'm excited to get into Act 2 and get out of Cyseal. To see what else the game has to offer us! And to close off with another classic repeated line... where is my pepper? Ah, there it is. ACHOO!