Normally I wait for AC games until they get a kitchen sink patch. I don’t mean a day 1 patch, I mean kitchen sink where the game is retooled based on a large list of issues. I did not follow that advice, and decided to get it on sale (well, a coupon). I will flatly say, that it is better to wait. Why?

I have encountered at least a dozen game breaking bugs. The kind where you need to reload. Some where I needed to reload before a quest started, so it’s created a behavior where I manually save before starting any quest step. That is RPG save scum behaviour, argh!

The combat mechanics also need a retune. It attempts to replicate the parry/dodge mechanics seen in other AAA games, like Ghost of Tsushima. It doesn’t work because the indicators are orange/red, which make them difficult to differentiate. And there’s some very odd input lag, or rather, resulting lag that can cause some elastic behavior. Hell, I had one where I dodged and ended up halfway across the map in a tree.

Fix those though, and there’s a dramatic systematic improvement here compared to Odyssey. Questing is much better. Side quests are a joy, and entirely worth undertaking. Inventory management is MILES better. The skill tree is a bit-iffy, if only because of the “fog” preventing you from seeing where you’ll go. Ironically you can explore it all, reset all your points, and then make choices. The home base model from AC2 is back, and it makes for a much more consistent experience than you flitting around the map.

The storyline is so-so. I think I’m done on the “ancient civilization” model, where AC is drawing blood from a stone. I’m sure that they can make the AC model work in another game, just like AC replaced Prince of Persia. You’re effectively an invasive force, and the historical setting (rather than fantasy), makes some parts of this a challenge to work through. There are attempts to focus on the “king making” aspect where you’re working with the local population, but then you go raiding a monastery, and go “hmm”.

So let’s say you get this after the kitchen sink patch. The mechanical parts are going to be a solid improvement over previous games, but the storyline is significantly worse. I do want to take time to highlight that this game went through the final dev/QA during a pandemic. That it met its release date and frankly isn’t any buggier than previous releases is an amazing achievement. The logistics for this to have happened… I know from experience that mountains were moved to make this happen.

Guess you figured with the amount of posts ont his topic. I’ll start with non spoilers stuff for those that have not played, then get into more later on.

I guess I’ll just put this out there, but DOS:2 is the 2nd best RPG I’ve ever played. BG2 will remain in that spot for a multitude of reasons, though I will admit that personal preference is important here. BG2 has a better through story, DOS:2 makes next to no sense up until the last bits of the final act. This is only due to the sheer complexity of it all, like 90% of the game is side quests (Reaper’s Coast exemplifies this). Mechanically, I have never played a game like DOS:2 before – it’s borderline 5e rules set in the focus on action points for combat and player agency.

The world building is at another level. Nearly every single line is spoken. At least 3/4 of the entire world population has something to say. Every bit of the map has something to see. Frankly, the main character is the world, and your job is to figure out its bits and bobs, and then how you fit into it. And it has to be, because you can literally kill EVERYONE in this game. They can’t be the focus if they can be removed mid-game.

The act structure is slightly weird for an RPG. It effectively caps each zone in terms of level/challenge, and you can tell from your quest log if you’re “done” or not. I prefer the open world where you return to previous locations and find new things – like Pillars of Eternity really. I understand why, no way a game this complex could operate without clear lines between chapters… the variables would be insane. You find the ghosts of people from previous acts, and you’d need to time travel to make sense of that.

The characters are ok, though lacking the interactions of typical RPG games. They have overly long arcs that don’t really mean anything until the final step. Was kind of hoping for more bickering and dialogue, but hey, that’s a small price for flexibility.

Stats are a bit weird. You NEED 5 Loremaster to identify items, so either you slot those skills or keep gear aside to do so. The latter is an inventory nightmare due to lack of “gear sets”. Persuasion 5 (or even 6 if you can) opens up TONS of options. It’s a weird point where if you are not fully invested in Persuasion, then you should avoid the stat altogether. And that person should initiate all dialogue. Lockpicking 5 isn’t required exactly, but it does save a lot of time chasing clues/keys. Finally, Lucky Charm negates

Mechanically, the combat is serviceable, and this is solely due to the inherent weakness of melee. Given this is a turn based RPG, melee needs points to move, then points to attack. At the end my rogue was rocking lvl 20 daggers, had 45% crit, 60 finesse (runes and armor), and 15% more physical damage (rune). A 2pt backstab dealt less damage than a 2pt spell – and I needed to position myself for it.

Mages though, holy moley. Fine, they have limits on the spells they can memorize but my goodness are they machines. Air/Water combo and a Fire/Earth combo make for insane results, and rarely are cool downs a problem once you reach the Nameless Isle.

If I were to do it again, I’d run 3 mages and a tank with Earth/Poly (those both have STR based attacks). I can’t see anything withstanding that barrage.

It’s a solid 40 hours, closer to 60 if you decide to do every little bit. I finished at level 20, and did every little bit.

HERE BE SPOILERS

Right, character arcs. I only did 4 on my play through.

Sebille’s is really quite bad. Elves actually have a cool history, but then they all but get wiped out. Cool revenge story! Nope, you’re shown to be super important and a pawn. The whole thing gets resolved on the Nameless Isle, which is about 50% of the way through the game. Ehh. There are NPC sidequests that are more interesting.

Lohse is possessed, and you spend a lot of time figuring out who that is. Was hoping for more of that demon to show up, maybe affecting combat. No such luck. The fight against that demon is wild, 12 enemies against you and 4 turns to burn down the big bad or it’s game over. Felt more like a neat side quest than a character arc.

The Red Prince is destined to rebuild his people. Chases a princess, falls in love, they give birth to the first dragons in centuries. Dragons who are destined to burn the entire planet. The idea is sharp, and you get a neat summon at the tail end. It is woven into the God King arc, with a covenant and all. Some good potential here, and the whole lizard stuff works as a general theme throughout.

Fane. Ya know what, I won’t even spoil this. I will say that if you’re going to play DOS:2, your main character should be Fane. His background adds context and extra dialogue to every single major plot point.

There’s this weird thing about RPGs, where they tend to fall into the “you fell for the lies?!” trope a tad too often. Double crosses and whatnot. DOS:2 doesn’t really do that, instead it focuses more on redemption arcs. Sure, there are bad guys that hide behind masks (literally), but on the whole all the characters are truthful in their speech. The last bit, like really ultra last bit, gives a significant twist on the main baddies and gives you a choice – die to save the world, or condemn it. It’s a bit out of left field ya know?

Take the condemn route, you get a major battle against named NPCs, then a 2nd phase. Take the sacrifice route and jump straight to phase 2. End of phase 2 gives you a more nuanced level of choice. One where I stepped away for a bit and thought about it. I had been paying attention to the lore thus far, so this choice wasn’t completely out of left field. It was however a tonal shift. A weird twist on redemption. I made my choice, and the epilogue was quite satisfactory.

I’m still amazed at the journey.

End of Spoilers

The logical question that comes when exposed to something like this is “how does the genre move forward from here?” I’m somewhat concerned for BG3, mostly due to the fact that Larian has a much different view on RPGs than BG had in the past. If they had made something like DOS:3, then yeah, but there are clear expectations here.

If I look at the larger RPG setting, I am not sure anyone could replicate the world complexity/integration that Larian has set here. Looking at something like EA’s/BioWare’s attempts, it’s clear that this is beyond their grasp. Even in things that are quasi RPGs, like Assassin’s Creed don’t even come close. But then you get something like Disco Elysium which can manage that complexity. I do think this is going to put pressure on Bethesda, as the focus there is in player agency and world breadth- not integrated story.

Mechanically, it would seem obvious that environmental tactics are the future – lighting oil patches, moving into poison pits, priming and triggering effects. For all of the woes with Anthem, I think this part was one of the best things. Probably explains why so many games today are moving out of the target based melee space (just look at MMOs, where ranged/casters are the true callings).

I wouldn’t say DOS:2 is the future of RPGs, instead I would consider it a critique of our assumptions. You think you know what’s there, this is a significant shift, and it’s likely to make you think there are problems with the game. It’s a rare event where a developer is able to stick to their vision, have it different than the “norm”, and it still be an amazing experience.

I would hope most people are familiar with exponentials, especially in this current environment. The act of doubling (for example) something may seem small at first but can take off to crazy degrees very quickly. Doubling 2, 5 times gives you 32. Doing it another 5 times gives 1024. Doing it 64 times (like a chess board) is, well, too big to write down (1.8e19).

With nearly every game having RPG mechanics today, it’s a natural occurrence that scaling becomes a challenge. Now, in this regard, scaling only matters in terms of what you’re doing. God tier power on ants is meaningless. Devs go through large pains to find a balance between player power and enemy power. Normally this is done with linear increases – meaning the difference between levels 1 and 5 is the same between 5 and 10. It means the damage going in/out is relatively stable – you deal 1dmg on 5hp or 10dmg on 50hp, it works out to the same.

Where traditional RPGs struggle is in the mage problem. That of quadratic growth. In older RPGs, mages had relatively simple spells – deal some damage to a single target. Very similar to swinging a sword. They were limited in the number of times they could use the spell TOTAL in a battle (needing to rest/recharge). As they leveled up, they gained more spell slots and more powerful spells. A max-level mage had access to multiple god-tier spells and no other class could compete as they often needed to move to attack.

If you played BG2, you will see this problem exemplified. DnD 3.5 was really quite bad a this, though it took a very long time to get a mage there in the first place. DnD 4 decided to take action points into consideration, so the super amazing spells were limited in use, and even the melee folks had access to some crazy stuff. I won’t go into why Pathfinder took off because of this change (and others in 4e) but hey, it did.

Looking at modern RPGs, you see this is still the case. AC: Odyssey had no challenge at max level, primarily due to the abilities and less so the actual stats. Ghost of Tsushima by end game I couldn’t be killed and would take on 20+ enemies in a go. Abilities drove nearly all of it, as it was an action game.

Tactical RPGs are different. You don’t have defensive options, you have stat walls. You either react to damage (Cure poison), or prevent it through resistances/armor/HP. You can’t outright avoid it, at least not normally. To create that wall, you need stats, and in a linear stat game, that’s less pressing. Level 10 gear is worse that level 15 gear, but not so much to be a deal breaker.

In non-linear games, this is a problem. All of a sudden enemies 1 level higher are 1 shooting you, and you’re hitting them with a feather. DOS:2 has a scaling problem in this regard, but I’d expect most wouldn’t see it as it’s only at the tail end. See, it looks linear because to start the numbers are so small, but it’s actually a % base. Each level is about 30% better than the previous (armor/damage), which is peanuts for the for first 3/4 of the game. Most battles take 3-4 rounds to complete at that point and are a real challenge. The last quarter though, battles are over in a round, maybe 2. This makes for a larger focus on the split between a tank (lots of armor and poor attack) vs a mage (little armor and lots of damage). If my mage isn’t able to keep distance, they will be dead in a round. If my rogue isn’t backstabbing, there’s little chance I can take down the target.

I mentioned stats earlier right? DOS:2 follows the RPG model for stats, where melee care about their baseline (say, STR) and their weapon damage. Mages only care about their baseline. A level 5 wand with 2 INT/5% crit is better than 95% of any other mage weapon in the game. An ultimate sword at level 5 is beaten out by a garbage sword at level 10, simply because the damage on the weapon is more important.

What does this mean in a practical sense? Honestly, it means that my air mage can cast Thunderstorm at the start of every fight (Source Vamp to fill up after the fight), which hits an INSANE area, only targets bad guys, lasts 2 rounds, and can stun – all but wiping out every single battle in that duration. God forbid my character with high initiative uses a Rain scroll…My melee meanwhile, are not able to kill a single target in their turn due to the way weapon scaling functions.

It’s a weird model, one that I hadn’t really come to terms with until the Arx chapter. It feels a bit weird where lower items are better, and melee really suffer in the long term, but this harkens back to the pen and paper days. Where weird in something like WoW, it kinda fits here, since you need to think about WHY an item is useful, rather than just as having a higher level. Wonder how BG3 will address this.

Each act in Divinity 2 has at least 1 fight that includes some really gimmicky combat, the type that makes my blood boil. There’s a reason people save scum in RPGs and this is the BIG reason for it.

In RPG parlance, these battles mean that a TPK (total part kill) is all but guaranteed, and often, there’s a OHK (one hit kill) mechanic included. The only way to beat these battles is through preparation and understanding the enemy AI for better tactics. Often this requires using skills that you would never use otherwise, and a deep understanding of game mechanics in this weird rock/paper/scissors model.

I will point out that one of DOS:2’s weaknesses in this aspect is party formation. You’re always in a tight bunch, effectively melee range from each other. Means that 90% of fights, the first move of the enemy will be an AE attack that hits everyone.

On Reaper’s Coast you can fight a witch that will OHK you if you’re not sporting some amazing fire resist. If she doesn’t do it, then the 4 fire totems will. So you can either cheese it by teleporting her away and chain stunning her to high heck, OR build a character that is a damage amplifier (reduce HP to 1 and reflect damage on caster). The damage reflect is so rare because there are so very few targets that deal out so much damage that it’s worthwhile.

A fight in a nook of Arx is similar, entirely covered by Deathfog. As the name emplies, if you’re alive and you’re in that fog, you be dead. Getting rid of it is a major pain, and only 1 spell does anything decent – Tornado. This spell deals no damage, just clears ground effects. You can imagine it gets zero use anywhere else but this single fight – and then all of a sudden you find it sticking in the hotbar.

As you get stronger, and therefore more access to abilities, these challenges are less about preparation and more about rolling with the punches. You can’t really chain stun someone at level 8, but you certainly can at level 20. Who knows, maybe one of those specific tactics becomes part of your regular rotation (rain scrolls… oh my goodness those are liquid gold).

Reminds me of the various lich and dragon fights from BG2, though those were LONG telegraphed ahead of time. Throne of Bhaal went to the deeep end on these types of fights, which felt like half the content. Even Pillars of Eternity’s “secret boss” was telegraphed ahead of time – and still required a solid 10 tries to clear.

I’m not against these fights – in fact I’m more for than against. They act as a solid challenge and change of pace from the rest, a spike of excitement. DOS:2 does an even grander job on this because it will often (I wish it was always) auto-save before hand. I’ll end up running it blind to see what I’m up against, then a reload to better prepare the more unique aspects of my builds. That they are frequent, rather than end-game activities is AWESOME.

And really, it’s a great feeling taking down a fight that originally seems impossible through trial and cunning. That it forces creativity is a great thing. That the game allows it is even better.

Or maybe it’s act 1 and Fort Joy is just a very long tutorial… but it’s done all the same.

I took my ship off Reaper’s Coast having completed everything that I found. That’s a weird metric, one that really only applies to RPGs. Action games tend to motivate you through some sort of achievement counter, like “collect all 10 glowing stones” to be some sort of special collector. RPGs tend to just give you a giant map and say “go”.

Which is one of Divinity’s absolute greatest strengths and weaknesses. I’ll use a simple quest as an example – a guy you meet in the tavern says he was ambushed and would like you to try and collect his lost wares. Typical fetch quest in most games, with some sort of combat along the way, right? Well, you CAN do it that way, or you can use ghost goggle vision (TM), find out the guy actually killed his partner, who is royally ticked and wants revenge. But how to get revenge when he’s sitting at a table surrounded by goons? Behind the tavern are some outhouses, knock on one and they tell you about some bad stew and how to make more (why?). So you make some, feed the guy, he goes out back, and you take him out – and take his head. Side note – elves in this game eat body parts to learn memories, so guess what I did? Anyhow, back to Mr Angry Ghost and he says “thanks, take my stuff that’s over there behind the giant troll”. Uh, thanks?

The guy in the tavern is found a found relatively early in your quest. The battle location has you going through half a dozen other events. Ghost goggles can take even longer to figure out. It’s not like it was a linear event, or maybe 3 side quests aside here.

I was running more like 20 active side quests at any given time. And these quests have characters that overlap, and non linear order. Lohar is in like 5 of them, and you can kill him at any point, or ally yourself with him. Maybe you read a book in some other sidequest’s hidden dungeon that unlocks a passcode for a giant vulture. Maybe it’s a special rock, or an amulet. Maybe you don’t pass that persuasion check and close off big option. Maybe you let the lich take more lives for the chance of sweeter loots.

This flexibility makes for some complex and often un-hinged dialogue options. The devs somehow had to keep track of all potentials and write/record dialogue from the NPC/Story perspective. The end result is that there’s no unifying drive – you cannot ever recall what the main quest is actually about. There’s no actual villain that’s twirling a moustache, just the search for the location of the new area to explore. This applies even more so to the pre-written NPCs who never have anything of note to say in relation to what you are doing. You’re a walking god, effectively applying the Highlander mindset, and no one says anything. Their own side quests are 1, maybe 2 steps within a larger map. It’s not for lack of setup either! My 3 companions are:

Fane – An ancient undead, practically immortal. Recently awakened, trying to figure out what the heck has gone on in the centuries of slumber.

Lohse – possessed by some sort of demon who makes her go wacko in scripted events. Zero gameplay impacts (so far).

Red Prince – Destined to his dream woman, according to the fates. A fallen prince from a race of slave takers.

The more I think about it, the more this is like Fallout 4. The characters you met were frankly meaningless, and the urgent quest you were on took 60 hours of building settlements. The world itself is the character, and you’re just a piece of decoration in that larger story. (Which, in my opinion, F:NV did a better job on both fronts.)

This may seem like a complaint, but truly it is not. When I started I was expecting something more akin to the tight storyline of BG2. This is different, and a good different. I really didn’t think this type of RPG was possible.

With few exceptions, I play RPGs once and only once. And I play them. Every little quest gets done, every nook examined, every bear slain. For most RPGs, this means you get to see about 80% of the content, cause there’s always stuff that’s set behind key decision points that can only be seen after replays. Chrono Cross exemplifies this – and yes, I did replay it 3 times to get everything. Long story short, I took a very long time to clear the intro zone in Divinity 2, checking every tiny bit. And for nearly all of it, colour me impressed.

Melee vs Ranged

I was thinking maybe this would be different, but there’s no bullplop here, ranged attacks dominate melee. This is for a few reason: most ranged attacks are area effect, ranged attacks are mostly elemental with effects, caster damage is barely tied to equipment, ranged attacks have much better scaling, ranged attacks barely need to move, and they have the same action point ratio/cooldown as melee.

Not saying Melee is useless, I do enjoy the rogue build, yet it’s 1 target a time. My Geomancer/Pyrokinetic (earth/fire) mage simply destroys everything. Plus he can spec into any other casting spec (there are 7 total) with no penalty since they all use INT to scale. My rogue can either dual wield daggers or use a bow since they are the only ones that use FIN.

This breadth of choice is both amazing and very limiting. It’s entirely possible to make bad builds, especially if you don’t understand all the various elemental interactions. Compared to something like D&D (or Pathfinder), there’s no hand holding here. If you think it will work, odds are it will – but will lean heavily towards ranged.

Elemental Interactions

This is a weird thing for casters, as some things overlap and trigger. Fire makes poison explode, so you have to put them in the right order. Water can freeze or stun people. You can blind, bleed, slow, knockdown and what seems a half dozen other effects.

It’s entirely possible to make the entire screen go BOOM with 2 spells. Earthquake puts our 8 puddles of oil, that oil can explode and most likely chain to other oil puddles. There were quite a few battles that were not going in my favour and I just decided to HAM the fight and things turned out well. The last fight on the jail island is a darn good example of this.

And the environment itself is a stage for a fight. Every single battle has a vertical aspect, where height makes a difference in potential damage, and prevents some elemental effects from spreading. Quite a few battles have things just lying around, waiting to explode or extinguish or block your best laid plans. It is both a great feeling to lay down a river of electric stun as it is to get caught in a puddle of slow-moving and burning oil.

I should mention an interesting talent for casters that reduces the AP cost of spells if you’re standing in that element. Extremely easy for water, quite easy if you’re undead and have poison. Fire is often manageable. That AP cost usually means another powerful spell can be cast, which dramatically speeds up fights. It’s effectively a focused haste.

Status Effects

I think this particular topic bears some mention across all RPGs and is directly balanced against damage. There’s a reason that old school RPGs have turn based combat, P&P battles could take hours to resolve. You needed to lock-down or disable enemies in order to survive for that long, since your damage attacks could rarely strike down a target in 1 turn.

Look at MMORPGs, where 10 years ago status effects mattered, and today everything is a DPS race. We’ve moved the needle closer to FPS models, where power is measured in time to kill (TTK) speed increased vs. survivability. Even modern “active” RPGs are like this, D&D 4e is all about a lot of small battles.

So there’s an old-school approach to managing all the types of status effects, broken down between damage, disabling, and full-on turn losses. Some fights (like a troll that can 1-shot anyone) are entirely focused on the ability to disable them in order to succeed. It’s a refreshing complexity. I will say this puts an even larger focus on movement abilities in order to avoid environmental status-effects (slipping is hilarious).

Focus Fire

Enemy AI here is solid enough. They generally will target the healer or lowest armor/health target. It isn’t exactly focus fire though, or perhaps that’s more a difficulty modifier I have not enabled.

Combat focus from a player perspective is similar to all other RPGs, take out the most dangerous target first and have 1 person focus/control on the scraps. There is some math work here, as there are so many effects possible, it’s entirely possible a target dies while taking a step and you’re better off using an attack against another target.

The D&D Model

Most of my D&D experience is from the 3.5e model. I played a few games with 4e, which felt more like a video game as it focused (to an extreme) on combat and cooldowns, with a dramatic streamlining (some would say limiting) on class choice. A rogue only ever had access to rogue skills in 4e. 3.5 was much more horizontal than 4e. I have not played 5e, but I understand it tries to merge both models. I won’t go into the history of all this, Tobold is much better equipped than I.

Divinity 2 feels like the right balance between combat structure and horizontal choice. It doesn’t feel as obtuse as multi-classing, and there are rarely any complicated pre-requisites for any build choice – have rank 3 in fire skills and get access to all rank 1-2-3 fire skills. You don’t need to be a high elf who has ancient orc blood and cherishes the 2nd moon to get +2 damage. You can make bad choices but they are entirely reverse able on the next level up. You can’t reverse a multi-class, or a specialization in a weapon you’ll never use in a couple levels.

I think this is why Baldur’s Gate 3 seems such a question mark to me. I don’t quite see how Larian’s model can fit into the D&D mechanics. The EA reviews appear rather consistent in this challenge, and I’m quite curious as to how it plays itself out over the next year.

For now, and likely the next couple weeks at my pace, Divinity 2 is scratching a heck of an itch.