Recent reviews by bitMuse

10/10, been waiting for this game forever and delivered to hype. No crashes, running at least minspec.

With this review, I'm going to gloss over the details about what this game is and go straight to the pros and cons.

Pros:

* The turn-based combat is interesting; it's completely necessary to use the environment to your advantage or you will not have a good time. If you're facing a boss creature, there will often be acid or oil barrels near by to use for spells. Different chains can also be had, such as causing an exploding enemy to detonate near acid barrels and other enemies, quickly wiping the field to your advantage. This is probably one of the greatest strengths of the game in my opinion.

* Divinity has an appealing graphical aesthetic. The graphics, while bright and a little pastel, work well for the theme of the game, and shift depending on the environment that you're in. The magic's effects are stunning, and just look great with the rest of the game. The environments were probably the most attractive in appearance, and Larian really nailed it down there. Armors also have different appearances, and I enjoyed watching my character change as her equipment changed.

* Character Customization, while not deep to my standards, is deeper than many other games' customization. Talents are varied and straight out of chargen, you can change your talents, attributes, and starting skills. On my second attempt, I was able to create a rogue with Man of Arms healing abilities, which greatly helped my party. Talents offer pretty significant advantages outweighed by the fact that you only get them every few levels. Pet Pal, for instance, opened up a lot of dialogue that would have otherwise been inaccessible.

* Coop. Very fun multiplayer once you get past its initial issues. I'll go into that later. For pros, the game was practically made for multiplayer in mind. After the first ten minutes, I grabbed a friend and we went off on our journey together. There were moments of frustration as we both learned the game, but it made it fun. Especially when our characters disagreed. I loved the in-character dialogue between us.

* Aesthetic. I'm going to group sound, atmosphere, and music together here into just one category. The music in the background was never obtrusive or annoying. In fact, I actually quite enjoyed some of the music out of the backtrack. Ambient sounds were plentiful, and I did feel immersed in the game world.

Cons:

* User Interface. In none of the reviews I have seen, no one quite nailed down one of the issues I felt was core to disrupting the game. Overall, the User Interface of this game -sucks-. Pressing enter to chat only works about half the time, then you begin typing to your friend only to have combat skip your turn and open a bunch of windows. After entering a message, and sending it, focus remains on the chatbox. The maps lack indicators for points of interest, such as vendors, or what buildings are which. You cannot click on the map and have your character begin walking there (So in essence, you just have to keep watching your character walking places and guide them every step of the way.) The camera is glitchy, the hotbar is not adjustable, the journal is of no help (but they do have a dialogue log), only one character (in multiplayer) can use a vendor at a time, and it always feels like a competition to see who can talk to an NPC first (so they get the dialogue window.) Dialogue doesn't engage both players at the same time. (Also not including misclicks, accidental turn skips, scrolling jankyness, and more that I just can't think of right now.) This really burned the game for me. 2/10

* Lack of Instruction: Normally not a complaint of mine. I love complex games where you have to figure stuff out. Unfortunately, in this case it's one of the bad examples of a game without instruction. Hirelings aren't immediately visible as something you can have. So if you were like me and my friend, we rushed right into post-cyseal-town-zombie combat and were murdered immediately. You -need- a full party, or it just doesn't work. After looking up online, we found our two story NPCs, Madora and Jahan. In addition to a number of other tips the game won't tell you. Such as sleeping in a bed (any bed) will heal you. Or hirelings. Or where you need to go for your first boss (The lighthouse). Or where to find the healer who will sell you res scrolls. (Ahru, Barracks).

* Pacing Issues. When you're playing with other people, the patience for scrolling through walls of text seems to be limited. This is true here, where my friend would often scroll through walls of text and I would try to read it. While I appreciate the varied responses from NPCs, it just felt like there was way too much fluff that I honestly didn't even care about. It had nothing to do with the quest, and just obfuscated where or what I needed to do next. Especially because we just wanted to jump right back into combat to continue the story (so we both could participate). Not to mention, at times, the story feels a bit ADHD. Upon going to the murder scene, I think many people will know what I mean.

* Coop: It's extremely hard to navigate on how to operate the multiplayer aspects of the game. Like the UI con, everything is obfuscated. I'm not sure how my friend managed to invite me into his game during character creation, but he did, and so I was able to at least make my own character. How he did this is likely some black magic of a variety that I cannot fathom. Unfortunately, my progress with him is not saved on my own machine. This was likely a design choice made by the developers because of a limitation in the engine, but I really just felt that it was incredibly subpar. Including issues with only one player being able to be in a dialogue at once, as well as vendors.


The cons really drag down the pros for me, making this borderline unplayable due to the frustrations wrought by janky bugs and inconsistency. I feel a little sorry for my friend (who kept wandering off in random directions) due to the horrible pacing and one-player-at-a-time focus of the story. If you're looking for the polished game reviews make this title out to be as if it were sliced bread, I would look elsewhere. If you're willing to look past its flaws and give it a try, this game might do you well. If you know nothing about this game, and are just looking for an RPG title to play, I would not recommend Divinity: Original Sin.