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Divinity: Original Sin 2
From the perspective of an isometric computer RPG, it's made at the highest level with great care – no pillars, trainers, or anything else that came out in the dying genre (I don't remember what) even came close. You don't even necessarily have to immerse yourself completely or get some special enjoyment to see that this is objectively true, and that people on the internet didn't overestimate or overhype it. Excellent graphics; the gameplay is mostly puzzle-based, but not only; all dialogues are voiced; a huge amount of content; non-linearity in the walkthrough (and even in the availability of some) quests, depending on the character's build or role-playing; even a certain non-linearity in the dialogues – in many of them, of course, there is a problem of pseudo-non-linearity for the sake of creating an illusion, when you choose any option, and they all lead to the same result, but not everywhere, and there are very few dialogues in which you click through half a dozen questions and say "goodbye." In addition to this, I didn't notice any attempts by the developers to push some setting-related or role-playing agenda, when they impose certain strictly bad or good options/attitudes towards things (and they don't deliberately lean on gray morality), there are moments sometimes, but in general, everything is presented "as is" according to the laws of the setting and in the current conditions, and this is well felt against the backdrop of memories of old, worn-out role-playing games from the 2000s from BioWare and others, which were already difficult to look at from such positions without feeling embarrassed.
However, I have an unconfirmed doubt about the latter. The fact is that at the start of the game, you are offered to choose one of the pre-made characters created by the developers, with their own appearance, voice acting, lore, and background, or to create a custom one. It's enough to click on the background to feel the connection that emanates from half of them from the very first lines. Later, they are also offered to be taken into the party while they are hanging out in the starting locations. In general, I had to create a custom character and play solo, during which I felt boundless freedom of role-playing and realized that this is the right option for this game, when you are not constrained by any karma systems or the grumbling of idiots, but only by your own vision, mood for any given moment, and the correspondence of the role-playing to the form that you have defined for yourself, and not the one conceived by some random writer from the dev team. Over time, I realized that this is also a more correct option according to the plot, in which you rise from rags to riches. I just sometimes caught myself thinking in some important plot dialogue or event – how would it look if I had a full party? And the answer immediately suggested itself – it would be absurd. The same argument should be applied to battles and exploration. By a random coincidence, instinctively, I created, as it seemed to me, if not the most, then one of the most powerful possible builds, and probably the most interesting of the possible ones in this rather simple turn-based combat, which boils down to managing cooldowns and action points. The final enemies, for example, were defeated in a couple of turns and literally didn't move and didn't have time to do anything at all. Accordingly, throughout the game, we go through the plot from an outcast to a lord, while we increase our strength, solve problems to the best of our ability and role-playing, acquire abilities, acquire artifacts with unique properties, and in every possible way expand the options available to us, both in terms of combat and exploration – over time, we can start doing something more efficiently, move somewhere, where we couldn't before, and so on. As a solo character, I really felt all the new power-ups over time, it was interesting to explore some dark corners of the world, solve its mysteries, overcome obstacles, and so on. Sometimes I also caught myself thinking – how would it look with two or four fixed characters in the party? Yes, it would destroy the whole atmosphere and turn it into a tedious micromanagement. In general, at first, I thought that playing solo was an exotic thing for Original Sin, but it turned out that this is how it should be. I would not recommend the opposite to anyone. And to be clear – even as a solo character, I didn't sweat, I just played a few battles more thoughtfully, that is, it turned out not to be a form of masochism, as one might think.
Well, I'll finish with the world, since I touched on it – I liked it in terms of atmosphere and design. What I remember from the first part, which I dropped in the second act, is the bad jokes, the awkwardness, and the schizoid level and quest design, and even the plot of the second act, which is why I dropped that part when I realized that the game had gone in the wrong direction and the whole second act was feeding me crap. Here, I experienced a similar, albeit weaker, feeling in the second half of the starting location, somewhere between the tenth and fifteenth hour – at that moment I was ready to drop it, but fortunately, it didn't last long, and the game still didn't degrade to the level of the first sin. And in everything else, it was great – the level design is adequate (which is extremely important to me, so as not to vomit), the locations are atmospheric and beautiful, without tasteless excessive fantasy crap (like pocket dimensions, lava-ice biomes, portals every minute to who knows where, and other schoolboy-like fanfiction nonsense of the level of Baldur's Gate 2), cozy settlements, detailed interiors in houses, all sorts of small details – in general, it's great. And on top of all this – despite the bright sunny graphics, there are many unexpectedly grimdark moments, but not without warm, local ones. In general, as always – a good world and level design = a largely good impression.
8.8/10. In conclusion, starting with what I started with: you can put a ten for the objectively high level of everything, just in terms of the genre, in comparison with other isometric RPGs. But I can't help but lower the score for the terrible implementation of some technical moments in terms of the interface (it's disgusting), ergonomics (such a concept is unknown here), and individual moments related to them. Some actions are inconvenient to perform, some mechanics are implemented in a clumsy way, some moments work the way they shouldn't, and don't work the way they should, and throughout the game you can't get used to it, because it's not something you get used to, but something that reminds you of itself in the middle and at the end, and every time you fight this terrible technical design as if it were the first time. For this, I lower the score by even more than one whole point.
By the way, I played with two mods – for a very large inventory capacity and for a slightly higher movement speed outside of combat. I recommend them to everyone who values their time and nerves, because you have to run a lot, and because in the 21st century, struggling with an overloaded inventory (especially such a schizoid one as here) is not a challenge or a condition for immersion, but a pure form of degeneracy.
From the perspective of an isometric computer RPG, it's made at the highest level with great care – no pillars, trainers, or anything else that came out in the dying genre (I don't remember what) even came close. You don't even necessarily have to immerse yourself completely or get some special enjoyment to see that this is objectively true, and that people on the internet didn't overestimate or overhype it. Excellent graphics; the gameplay is mostly puzzle-based, but not only; all dialogues are voiced; a huge amount of content; non-linearity in the walkthrough (and even in the availability of some) quests, depending on the character's build or role-playing; even a certain non-linearity in the dialogues – in many of them, of course, there is a problem of pseudo-non-linearity for the sake of creating an illusion, when you choose any option, and they all lead to the same result, but not everywhere, and there are very few dialogues in which you click through half a dozen questions and say "goodbye." In addition to this, I didn't notice any attempts by the developers to push some setting-related or role-playing agenda, when they impose certain strictly bad or good options/attitudes towards things (and they don't deliberately lean on gray morality), there are moments sometimes, but in general, everything is presented "as is" according to the laws of the setting and in the current conditions, and this is well felt against the backdrop of memories of old, worn-out role-playing games from the 2000s from BioWare and others, which were already difficult to look at from such positions without feeling embarrassed.
However, I have an unconfirmed doubt about the latter. The fact is that at the start of the game, you are offered to choose one of the pre-made characters created by the developers, with their own appearance, voice acting, lore, and background, or to create a custom one. It's enough to click on the background to feel the connection that emanates from half of them from the very first lines. Later, they are also offered to be taken into the party while they are hanging out in the starting locations. In general, I had to create a custom character and play solo, during which I felt boundless freedom of role-playing and realized that this is the right option for this game, when you are not constrained by any karma systems or the grumbling of idiots, but only by your own vision, mood for any given moment, and the correspondence of the role-playing to the form that you have defined for yourself, and not the one conceived by some random writer from the dev team. Over time, I realized that this is also a more correct option according to the plot, in which you rise from rags to riches. I just sometimes caught myself thinking in some important plot dialogue or event – how would it look if I had a full party? And the answer immediately suggested itself – it would be absurd. The same argument should be applied to battles and exploration. By a random coincidence, instinctively, I created, as it seemed to me, if not the most, then one of the most powerful possible builds, and probably the most interesting of the possible ones in this rather simple turn-based combat, which boils down to managing cooldowns and action points. The final enemies, for example, were defeated in a couple of turns and literally didn't move and didn't have time to do anything at all. Accordingly, throughout the game, we go through the plot from an outcast to a lord, while we increase our strength, solve problems to the best of our ability and role-playing, acquire abilities, acquire artifacts with unique properties, and in every possible way expand the options available to us, both in terms of combat and exploration – over time, we can start doing something more efficiently, move somewhere, where we couldn't before, and so on. As a solo character, I really felt all the new power-ups over time, it was interesting to explore some dark corners of the world, solve its mysteries, overcome obstacles, and so on. Sometimes I also caught myself thinking – how would it look with two or four fixed characters in the party? Yes, it would destroy the whole atmosphere and turn it into a tedious micromanagement. In general, at first, I thought that playing solo was an exotic thing for Original Sin, but it turned out that this is how it should be. I would not recommend the opposite to anyone. And to be clear – even as a solo character, I didn't sweat, I just played a few battles more thoughtfully, that is, it turned out not to be a form of masochism, as one might think.
Well, I'll finish with the world, since I touched on it – I liked it in terms of atmosphere and design. What I remember from the first part, which I dropped in the second act, is the bad jokes, the awkwardness, and the schizoid level and quest design, and even the plot of the second act, which is why I dropped that part when I realized that the game had gone in the wrong direction and the whole second act was feeding me crap. Here, I experienced a similar, albeit weaker, feeling in the second half of the starting location, somewhere between the tenth and fifteenth hour – at that moment I was ready to drop it, but fortunately, it didn't last long, and the game still didn't degrade to the level of the first sin. And in everything else, it was great – the level design is adequate (which is extremely important to me, so as not to vomit), the locations are atmospheric and beautiful, without tasteless excessive fantasy crap (like pocket dimensions, lava-ice biomes, portals every minute to who knows where, and other schoolboy-like fanfiction nonsense of the level of Baldur's Gate 2), cozy settlements, detailed interiors in houses, all sorts of small details – in general, it's great. And on top of all this – despite the bright sunny graphics, there are many unexpectedly grimdark moments, but not without warm, local ones. In general, as always – a good world and level design = a largely good impression.
8.8/10. In conclusion, starting with what I started with: you can put a ten for the objectively high level of everything, just in terms of the genre, in comparison with other isometric RPGs. But I can't help but lower the score for the terrible implementation of some technical moments in terms of the interface (it's disgusting), ergonomics (such a concept is unknown here), and individual moments related to them. Some actions are inconvenient to perform, some mechanics are implemented in a clumsy way, some moments work the way they shouldn't, and don't work the way they should, and throughout the game you can't get used to it, because it's not something you get used to, but something that reminds you of itself in the middle and at the end, and every time you fight this terrible technical design as if it were the first time. For this, I lower the score by even more than one whole point.
By the way, I played with two mods – for a very large inventory capacity and for a slightly higher movement speed outside of combat. I recommend them to everyone who values their time and nerves, because you have to run a lot, and because in the 21st century, struggling with an overloaded inventory (especially such a schizoid one as here) is not a challenge or a condition for immersion, but a pure form of degeneracy.
My sword, my trusted ally, unphased by my aspect.
