Divinity: Original Sin Reviews
Overall, Divinity Original Sin is a fantastic game. There is variety in weapons and abilities, and choices in the ways you solve your problems. The world is full of life: Every corner of the world has treasure, or curiosities like a bull that can tell your fortune, or even a severed head that still speaks. The combat is fun, with elemental effects turning large battles into sort of a puzzle, with your spells and abilities being just half of the pieces. The story isn't as engaging as say, Baldur's Gate II, but it's still serviceable in support of such fantastic gameplay hooks
A potent, frustrating, demanding, amusing, tedious, exhilarating world unto itself.
Technical issues aside, this enhanced re-release of one of our favorite games of recent memory is worth a buy.
Divinity: Original Sin provides endless opportunities for you to play the game how you want. You can spend hours doing nothing but talking to NPCs, or you can venture off into the wildness slaughtering every beast you come across. The inclusion of cooperative play allows for you and a friend to go on an adventure together. At first I was overwhelmed by the complete freedom in the game, as many games tend to handhold players for the first few hours. Expect to spend well over 50 hours with your characters, and that's even without doing everything the game offers.
Divinity: Original Sin might not be an instant classic, but it certainly feels like one at times. During parts of my playthrough I felt as though I was replaying Baldur's Gate, without the terrible graphics and archaic mechanics, but I don't know if it was truly unique enough to be remembered like the games it was attempting to emulate. It's going to please a lot of experienced RPG gamers and those that love a challenge, but with virtually no hand holding and punishing combat mechanics it's going to turn off the more casual player base.
While in my opinion it has a few flaws that hold it back from true all-time-classic status Divinity: Original Sin is an excellent, beautifully designed and engaging RPG that absolutely never gets boring.
Divinity: Original Sin is an homage to a RPG style that as long since faded, with the genre now flooded with overblown storylines and photorealistic cinematics. Yet there is still a strong audience that has been clinging to the hope that a quality turn-based fantasy would reappear. Larian Studios has delivered on our wishes by providing a world ripe for discovery, and gameplay that gives as much freedom and roleplaying options as we could ever hope for.
If there's ever been a time to throw out the words "Indie" or "Developed on a budget" then now is the time. As it proves that time, effort, fan feedback, and passion, are more important than high budgets, annual recycling, scripted Hollywood aesthetics, and glorified tech demos.
Boasting a huge open world to explore, over one hundred hours of gameplay and not even the slightest suggestion how it should be tackled, Divinity: Original Sin is remarkable. Will you be the stalwart hero or rob everybody blind and sell their stuff to merchants? There are so many different ways to do so many different things, from how to solve a particular quest to how to best tackle a group of enemies.
It feels like there's a very good game inside Divinity: Original Sin, but it's hidden away behind a thousand glitches and gameplay problems. At its core there lies an enjoyable experience, and those brave enough to reach it will likely sing its praises. If you're willing to battle through obscure systems, poorly designed menus, gameplay issues, a legion of bugs and glitches, and poor support from Larian Studios, you just might find something worth playing. For most, however, it will be a different story. Video games are a form of entertainment, but unfortunately, as the problems mount and mount, this one veers more towards frustration than entertainment. Ultimately, it's difficult to recommend any game which provides more negative moments than positive ones, and that is precisely the kind of game you'll find in Divinity: Original Sin.
A game any true RPG fan should be impatient to play.
Freeform, creative and compelling, despite the odd rough edge
But such trifling concerns really don't deserve your attention. This is a modern RPG classic that screams for your attention if you have even a passing interest in the genre. Clever, in-depth, engrossing and just utterly wonderful.
If I was Swen Vincke, I'd make sure to work on this engine and release a few more games using the same exact gameplay scheme. What he has here is the basis for a very lucrative new (old?) breed of CRPG and it would be criminal to not take advantage of it. Original Sin is his masterpiece, and with it he has filled a void that a lot of old school RPGers came to Kickstarter looking for. Congratulations Larian, you did the impossible. Now make more.
An incredibly deep and engaging RPG, Larian have delivered one of the finest RPGs of the last decade in a paean to player choice and freedom, all presented with the knowing smile and cheeky wink we've come to expect from them. Divinity: Original Sin might prove a little overwhelming for some, but old-school RPG fans will absolutely adore this.
I'm not sure Original Sin has a clue what it's about, beyond "feeling like an old game." It gets more strung out as you go along, introducing towns that feel curiously bereft of quests and dungeons padded out with tedious switch hunts. There's no strong character to center it, no perspective to ground it, no consistent challenge to weight it. It's an impressive novelty, but it fades fast.
Divinity: Original Sin's propensity for the old isn't a simple case of wistful nostalgia. It's a conscious decision on Larian's part to resurrect tried-and-true threads that run deep into the bones of the CRPG genre. It's a culmination of those efforts and an unapologetic celebration of battle-tested concepts backed by solid co-op. Most of all, it comes together as a grand adventure that hearkens back to sleepless nights buoyed by the roll of a die and a pad of grid paper shared between fellow dungeon crawlers.
Suffice it to say, there's absolutely nothing arousing about this game and yet it made me stop surfing for porn – for a bit. I'd call that one hell of an achievement.
It might have its limitations, but it's still probably the best modern rendition of a classic PC role-playing game, one that is born out of love, and one that will surely stoke long-dormant passions for the genre, as well as spark some new ones.