Recent reviews by Taeljam

This game is a must play, if you are just in the slightest a fan of fantasy games! It's build like a tabletop game. Round based combat, party composition, build variety, persuasion of NPCs etc etc.

You can play this game alone, with NPC's/ heroes (which all have great storylines, worth to play them!) or with your friends! Up to 4 people can play together and create a mess. It's like your average DnD party, everything will go wrong and everything will be on fire (quite literally) if you play with friends.

The game also has a DnD map and campaign creator, if you are into online DnD.

• One of the biggest strengths imo is build variety (in any game, really), which gives any game replayability. In Divinity, you can create so many different builds. You can combine every school of magic with physical arts. Ranger with magic? Warrior with necromancy? Playing as Avatar and controlling all 4 elements? Thief with a pet demon? Everything is possible.
  
• The game is a real bargain. You can sink so many hours into this game for just 40 bucks. On sale even less of course!
  
• The sound design is wonderful, the music really sets the tone for the game and underlines everything perfectly.
  
• The world is a classic high fantasy world, filled with so many tiny details, lots of humor and enough different areas to spice things up, even more compared to Divinity OS1.
  
• The NPC Companions in this game all are great! I really recommend Lohse's storyline, so make sure to pick her up and follow her Qest!
  
• Quests are usually quite tricky and sometimes hard to figure out. But! Each quest can be solved in many different ways. It always felt like Larian Studios covered every possible stupid idea on how to solve a Quest. Props to them for that!
  
• The game mechanics are very well done. You can combine different spells to greater effects! For example; when you cast rain, everything gets wet, and receives more lightning damage or gets frozen more easily with ice spells. Set up poison fields and let them explode with fire spells, grenades or arrows for some nice damage!
  
• Puzzles and dungeons need some brain and wits. If it's too hard, then you can always google your way out of it. But everything is doable if you take your time and read the items, books and questlog. There is also a chat history, in case you forgot something important.
  
• After the tutorial, you can respec your character/ Companions whenever you want and an unlimited amount of times!
  
• Combat is very satisfying, the ui and indicators makes it very clean. A big upgrade compared to DOS1.
  
• Also crafting is very well done. Don't want to slip on ice? Combine shoes and nails. Want a bigger Health Potion? Combine 2 smaller potions. It feels quite natural most of the time. There are tons and tons of crafting recipes and books where you can learn them from.

• Inventory management, sort everything, mark them to sell etc. takes ages due to the many items you'll get. But that's maybe just me, because I picked up everything during the first few playthroughs. In the last ones, I only picked up necessary things, and threw the rest away. It's way more comfy that way and you usually swim in gold anyways (midgame+)
  
• There is one fight, which I really despise:When you see some burning lizard skelettons in a city, make sure to have Bless and Rain equipped.

• Bishop Alexander.

TLDR: This is imo the better version compared to the Classic one, because they redid some dungeons, encounters, puzzles, skill system (more balanced and choice between skills instead of having all skills in the endgame) and everything is now voice acted with some new areas to boot as well! Really good enhancing done by Larian Studios! If you loved Divinity Original Sin: 2, and you don't mind an older, more clunkier fighting system, then you will like this game as well.

Some parts in this review are copy pasted from my DoS1 Classic review, as they are the same for this version as well. If you want a small comparison, you may want to read both reviews.

• Class system and builds have tons of options and variety. You can build almost everything you can imagine. Combining pyromancy with sword, summons and witchcraft? No problem! You can create a very diverse team comp thanks to having up to 4 people in a party.
  
• The sound design and music is lovely and chill, with some epic battle music every now and then. Really sets the mood.
  
• The world design is a classic high fantasy world, filled with tiny details, lots of humor and enough different areas to spice things up, even more compared to the Classic Version of this game.
  
• The story starts from solving a murder case to saving the universe. Can't get more epic than this.
  
• Quests are well written and interesting to read through. You can just sit back and listen to the lovely accents they have given to each and every NPC (and Objects), now that everything is voice acted (there is no voice acting in Classic). My personal favourite voices/ dialects are those of Madora and Wolgraff.
  
• Game mechanics are a lot of fun. You can combine different spells to greater effects! For example; when you cast rain, everything gets wet, and receives more lightning damage or gets frozen more easily with ice spells. Set up poison fields and let them explode with fire for some nice damage!
  
• Puzzles, quests and dungeons need some brain and wits. If it's too hard, then you can always google your way out of it. But everything is doable if you take your time and read the items, books and questlog. There is also a chat history with NPC's, in case you forgot something important.
  
• Compared to the Classic, where physical weapons broke really fast, in this version this is rarely a problem. And with just 1 point in blacksmithing, you can repair all weapons an unlimited amount of times! Really good quality of life change.
  
  
  The Bad:
• Everything feels a bit slow, and sometimes even clunky, but that's quite normal for an older game. Takes time to get used to it.
  
• If you want to respec your character, it resets the character completely. He keeps his levels of course, but you need to buy all skills again from all the different vendors. And unique loot spells are lost. You don't need to min/max though to beat the game, so having some weird stats distributed is ok. I just love to min max and was a bit sad on how stupid respecing was done. Sadly this wasn't changed in this version.
  
  
  The Ugly:
• Spellcasters Armor. Could have been a bit more varied.

TLDR: If you want the best Divinity 1 experience, consider playing the Enhanced Edition!
I will still recommend this game despite it's flaws, but only if you are a big Divinity fan and absolutely need to play all there is of it.

• Class system and builds have tons of options and variety. You can build almost everything you can imagine. Combining pyromancy with sword, summons and witchcraft? No problem! You can create a very diverse team comp thanks to having up to 4 people in a party.
  
• The sound design and music is lovely and chill, with some epic battle music every now and then. Really sets the mood.
  
• The world design is a classic high fantasy world, filled with tiny details, lots of humor and enough different areas to spice things up.
  
• The story starts from solving a murder case to saving the universe. Very Epic Very Cool.
  
• Quests are well written and interesting to read through. If you don't like to read tons of text, this might be a negative for you. Could have been improved with more voice acting, but for a kickstarter game it's alright.
  
• Game mechanics are a lot of fun. You can combine different spells to greater effects! For example when you cast rain, everything gets wet, and receives more lightning damage or gets frozen more easily with ice spells. Set up poison fields and let them explode with fire for some nice damage! Spells are the most fun in Divinity imo.
  
• Puzzles, quests and dungeons need some brain and wits. If it's too hard, then you can always google your way out of it. But everything is doable if you take your time and read the items, books and questlog. There is also a chat history with NPC's, in case you forgot something important.

• Physical weapons have a really low durability. Make sure to have some extra weapons, or someone with the blacksmithing ability.
  
• Some spells are very overpowered and cheese the game, for example shield spells. They make your party nearly invincible.
  
• Sadly everything feels a bit slow, and sometimes even clunky. For example when a combat encounter is over, you need to cast healing spells a hundred times to fully heal your party or chug many healing pots. Thanks to a high cooldown even out of combat, it takes a while. And there are many combat encounters in this game. An Inn or out of combat healing options would have been nice. (But as soon as you have the elemental shield spells, you won't take any damage anymore, means no or barely any healing after a fight lol.) Targeting is also really wonky at times.
  
• You can level up stats, from strength to dexterity or from blacksmithing to pyromancy. Sadly if you want to do some achievement, and need for example pickpocketing, you need to put stats in there. Later if you want to respec your character, it resets the character completely. He keeps his levels of course, but you need to buy all skills again from all the different vendors. And unique loot spells are lost. You don't need to min/max though to beat the game, so having some weird stats distributed is ok. I just love to min max and was a bit sad on how stupid respecing was done.
  
• Some FX animation bugs which still play even though a battle is over, is common, but not too annoying. Sometimes even funny.

• You.

I'm a die hard Dark Souls Fan. So naturally, I had to play Sekiro. Yes, it is true, you can't play Sekiro like it's a Dark Souls Game. You need to parry, jump or dodge with quick reactions.

When you finally master the parrying, this game becomes untouchable when it comes to combat! Dueling with an enemy samurai or fighting a poop throwing ape feels absolutely epic when you start to parry and use your prostethic tools wisely. Each and every boss needs another tactic to beat, unlike Dark Souls, where you can chop off all heads with the same weapon and strategy.

Sekiro is unique, I can hardly compare it to any other game. The combat is amazing, the world is absolutely gorgeos and the story is very well presented. Not hidden like in Dark Souls.

This game is a cinematic and gameplaywise, masterpiece. A bit short for my taste, but that's a very minor complaint for the quality of this game.

Highly recommend it to anyone who loves an epic adventure in an gorgoes cinematic style, with amazing and challenging combat!

TLDR: Combat is amazing, Classes are very well implemented, Idea for the story is epic but badly executed. Quests can be really fun or very frustrating. In short, gameplay carries the rest of the game.

For its age, it's an amazing game despite it's flaws.

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The gameplay is absolutely amazing! Every move has a lot of impact. No other game makes classes, called vocations in this game, feel so epic and natural at the same time.

A sorcerer has to chant his spell, which takes a while, but when it's finished, you obliterate everything on the battlefield. A strider is nimble, climbs enemies and stabs their weakpoints in quick succession. Rangers have powerful arrows and can even shoot ten arrows at the same time. No ammunition needed except for special arrows like bomb or sleep arrows, which is nice. A warrior is slow but powerful, charges his slow moves and armors through enemies attacks like it's nothing. Fighter is a brawler and Assassin is a sneaky/stealthy overkill monster. You can always change your class at nearly any point in time, which is nice!

You can play each class in different styles, thanks to many spells and abilites.

There are even 2 quite special classes: Mystic Knight, which is something like a paladin and Magick Archer. You shoot magical arrows which chase enemies and they even bounce off walls (really nice in tight corridors) and much more. Every class has many skills for many situations.

The battle system in general is extremely well thought out. You throw a bottle with oil, the enemy is tarred, and thus easily set on fire. If the enemy stands in water, summon lightning for heavy bonus damage etc etc. You get my point.

There is also a pawn/companion system. You can create your own pawn to your liking, which travels with you. You can also summon pawns from other players, friends or randoms.


Story. While the general idea of the story is really cool with a small twist, it's very badly executed. If you are heavily into story telling, then Dragon's Dogma doesn't offer too much. The game is sadly unfinished in this departement. They wanted to implement more, but had dev time cut, so they did what they could, but sadly the outcome was still very bare boned.

Quests. Kill 10 wolves, Collect 20 Totems etc... No one likes those quests. It's important that if you want to do those quests, just collect them at the bounty board, but don't actively hunt those things. In time you do all of those Quests passively.
Some Quests are only available during certain chapters of the story, and if you progress too far in the main story, older Quests automatically fail and can't be completed anymore, except in NG+. I really don't like such systems.


If you are a completionist, then collecting all armors, weapons and Pawn Knowledge (Pawns have something like a bestiary and travel knowledge) might be very overwhelming. It's RNG if you get the item out of a chest or not, and you are forced to save scum if you want everything. Of course it's not something everyone is into, but as a completionist myself, it wasn't the best experience in that niche departement.

Annoying Backtracking. I really don't mind backtracking, in fact I really dislike linear games which force you into one direction. But: In the very early game, there is some backtracking which let's you visit the same 2 places mutliple times. Until you get some teleport location stones (Portcrystals, you can place them anywhere in the world) and the eternal ferrystone (stone which let's you port to mentioned Portcrystals), it can be a bit annoying. But if you are a bit of a roleplayer and want to travel far and wide, then this is nothing to be worried about ;D


This is an endgame dungeon, which is an absolute masterpiece. New strong enemies, maze like dungeon, epic fights and a nice bonus story which was done better than the main story, is to be found there. Sadly it's only really doable in the endgame. If you find the core game a bit boring due to many same enemy encounters, maybe endure it for a bit longer just to do this dungeon!

Despite the fact that it had some developement problems, Dark Souls 2 still came out as a very good game and I highly recommend playing it, if you like the series. At first it feels a bit clunky compared to the other 2 games, but you'll get used to it, quite fast imo.

New Game is beginner friendly if you are new to the series, thanks to many healing items and very strong early game weapons. The bosses in the Core Game are also not too hard. NG+ and higher gives a good challenge if you are a Souls vet. There are many entertaining build possibilities for veterans, which are a bit more rare in DS3 and aren't as prominent in DS1 either. Plus there are many weapons with special effects which are really fun to try out.

The DLCs are really great! Challenging Bossfights and cool new spells and weapons awaits you there.

Truly, like it's predecessors, a masterpiece. If you love challenge, fluid combat, amazing world building and Dark Fantasy, then this game is for you! Thanks to many different weapons and spells, the game never feels the same if you decide to try out a new build and play it again. Nowadays it's rare to find a game with this much replayability. Also fun as a co-op game with friends!

It has some small flaws, but nonetheless is Dark Souls 2 a very good game and I highly recommend playing it, if you like the series.

New Game is quite beginner friendly if you are new to the series, thanks to many healing items and very strong early game weapons. NG+ and higher gives a good challenge if you are a Souls vet.

If you haven't bought DS2 yet, consider buying the Scholar of the first sin edition. They improved enemy placements quite a bit, plus it includes all DLC's and some visual updates.

A gem amongst gems! Lovely crafted world and characters, challenging content, amazing artstyle and fluid gameplay! I never was really into Metroidvanias, but Hollow Knight surely is an exception!

I really recommend this to anyone who loves fun boss fights, dark, sometimes funny worlds and characters with no hand holding. Exploration and backtracking is a given. Progression through new spells and moves, no levels. It also has build varieties like spellcaster, 'Nail' sword fighter, focus on defense/heal or even Minion Master. You can mix and match too!

For this low price, it has immense value!

It also has a Steel Mode (No Death) and Speedrun Mode (Quite forgiving). If you're a completionist like me and need to 100% all games, be ready to git gud!

This masterpiece single-handedly transformed my perspective on video games as a whole. Well implemented difficulty in games has become something I'm absolutely addicted to now.

While you may find yourself dying frequently in this game, the excitement of conquering whatever challenge you were struggling with will make you feel more alive than ever!