So, if you've listened to the Bshroom Podcast, you know I've been playing Divinity a LOT. You'll also know, this game is fucking DEEP, and FANTASTIC.
If you've never played a Divinity game before, you have no idea what you're missing (except Beyond Divinity, no one should ever play that.)
The writing for the game was very much on par with what I've come to expect from a Divinity game. There's quite a bit of humor, a teensy bit of parodizing of RPG story tropes, with the characters reflecting on the silliness of it, but for the most part it's a pretty serious game, and it flows perfectly. The main story will often take a backseat to sidequest shenanigans, but even that typically gets wrapped up nicely within the main plot, so that nothing you do feels arbitrary.
The world is beautifully crafted, and it reminds you of what exactly we lost when everything went from hand-crafted, to procedurally generated. There are a lot of secret areas and ways around the map that you wouldn't expect from a RPG that would release today. Things are laid out specifically to challenge the player, or to subtly lead them to hidden treasure.
The music is as fantastic as the world is, I'm actually listening to the soundtrack right now, as I write this. If you have $10 to spare, I highly reccomend picking up the "dlc" pack on steam with the game, it includes the soundtrack, and is FANTASTIC. This, and Transistor, are the only two games in recent memory that I haven't turned sound off, in order to listen to my own music instead. That's a VERY rare thing, as I don't typically care for videogame music anymore.
Now that I've praised the eye & ear candy, lets get down to what I really want to talk about, and what everyone really wants to hear: Why am I praising this game so highly?! Well, lets get started.
There is no level scaling in this game, whatsoever. Hand-placed loot in the world is always a set level; even unidentified, random loot is within a certain level range; this means that if you manage to sneak into, oh, let's say a treasure room guarded by an oaf with a larger ego than an orc warship, you'll be rewarded with some very high level items in comparison to what you'll currently find. It's one thing you'll miss about older games like Morrowind; breaking into a treasure vault to pick up some ebony or daedric weapons at level 1? FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC. It just makes everything so much sweeter knowing you can do it.
In fact, there are so many items to snatch and places to sneak into in the first town, I probably put in roughly 20 hours before I even set foot outside of the place and started fighting enemies. This is really a game where you want to search every nook and cranny for that rare piece of loot.
Before I get into the combat side of things, I want to discuss SKILLS AND THEIR BEAUTIFUL UTILITY! Your characters have skills they use inside combat; things like teleportation, tactical retreat (a jump skill), fireballs, making it RAIN, just a plethora of things you can do to alter the battlefield. The best part of this, however, is being able to use these effects outside of battle, to help you solve puzzles, or for those of us with more sticky fingers, steal things. Early on in the game you'll come across a chest behind a rope. One of the characters even comments that powerful source hunters are being stopped by a length of rope. You can't do much more than stare at the chest, and there is no other way to it.. unless you invested in aerothurgy (air magic). You can simply teleport the chest to you! Or, you can jump OVER the rope using your archers Tactical Retreat. If you've waited long enough to be given magical pyramids? Throw one over the rope and teleport across to it! It's fantastic!
Of course, stealing isn't the only utility you have. Early on, again, there's a ship burning. The sailors are struggling to put it out with their buckets, but they simply can't keep up with the blazing flames. I happened to have a Rain scroll in my inventory at the time, and thought "surely this won't work!" but lo and behold! I conjured forth storms, and stood on the pier as mighty as Poseidon himself, commanded the waves to vanquish the flames of my foes! It was really neat, being able to alter the environment..which leads us to one of the best parts of Divinity: Original Sin.
Battlefield management.
You have such a plethora of skills, and utilities to use against your enemies in the game, (and for your enemies to use against you -- no doubt!) that it's almost overwhelming. My first few forays into combat, enemy skeleton archers would shoot a barrel of ooze next to me, releasing poison onto the ground. I watched, intrigued, as another archer nocked a fire arrow. He fired it directly at my feet -- which were of course, firmly planted in a field of poison -- and to my horror, the entire battlefield erupted. I had known from the tutorial, that oil was flammable. Poison, too, though? Oh, but it doesn't end there, dear reader. The fire not only caused the poison to burst into flames, but the poison became a POISON GAS, which ALSO exploded, and most certainly killed my character. I finally learned to not stand near barrels of any sort in combat, but that wouldn't save me -- these archers had arrows that could SHOOT POISON GAS AT ME! Something I discovered I also had access to when I progressed a bit further in the game. Now, this is very, very early in the game, one of the few first combat encounters I've had, so them throwing this level of depth at me right off the bat was mind boggling -- but it got the cogs in my mind spinning.
I eventually learned that if you used fire on a puddle, it would become steam. If you use lightning in the steam cloud, it'd become a static cloud -- stunning anyone who walked into it. I also discovered much earlier than that, again, to my dismay, that using electric against up-close-and-personal wasn't a very bright idea, if both I and my enemy were standing in the same puddle. There are a multitude of combinations, however; the longest chain you can accomplish is by creating ice, melting it with fire into water, boiling the water to get steam, and then electrifying the steam cloud. What if I put water on fire, you ask? That creates a smoke-cloud, which veils you from your enemies -- or your enemies from you.
The game is very smart about how is shepherds you, as well; you'll often run into enemies far higher level than yourself -- a good indication that you shouldn't be there yet. By doing this, it also slowly ramps up the difficulty, and keeps throwing new things at you in combat bit by bit, like enemies slowly gaining the ability to summon, or buff their comrades -- which in turn teaches you who you need to make a priority target -- and also makes sure you know that buffs are something you should be using!
One of my favorite parts of the game is how cleverly objects can interact with the world, however. A friend of mine had reached the tutorial dungeon, but didn't have any source of fire at a part that requires you to light oil on fire to damage enemies. Instead, he thought "why not" and threw a candle onto the oil -- we've been trained in games to believe that static objects are scripted to be just objects, and not have any real interaction with anything else -- except that it DID have a reaction, and the candle lit the oil. Both he and I were thoroughly impressed, and this lead to a lot of little experimentation later, that would prove valuable in my success throughout the campaign.
I do have a few little gripes, but none of them are worth bringing up, they're just minor things that will likely be patched out by the time this review even goes up. The game has come a long way, and I'm so happy that there's still a studio out there making these kinds of games. cRPGs have long since died, and it broke my heart to think I'd never get to play a classic like this again. Having Divinity: Original Sin come out -- and be SUCCESSFUL, of all things?! My faith in humanity has been restored.
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