Divinity Original Sin 2 just launched. Anyone tried it yet?

[bystander36]

I also have to say there are definitely balance issues, but I'll take the time they put into making a great world and quest over more time on balance.

Spoiler

That said, the most powerful damage ability is throw shield? Summoning a pet for 1 source and 3 action points can do the same thing as a 2 source and 4 action ability direction from you....and the pet can do it again in a few turns and soak up damage at no cost. There are quire a few others that seemed off, but like I said, it was still a lot of fun.

 

[Chaotic42]

I Kickstarted it and got my first wave of rewards in today, including a 10.2" figurine. Holy crap, this thing is huge.

 

[Stg-Flame]

10.5" figurine? That's actually pretty impressive for a kickstarter reward. Most games just give you tabletop sized figurines. Had I known this was available for kickstarter, I would have tried to get this collectors edition as well.

Maybe Larian will offer up these bundles later down the road.

 

[rstrohkirch]

I've been playing this the past week and really enjoy it so far. It feels a bit more fun/polished than the first one. To me at least.

 

[Borealis7]

this game is what Borderlands 2 was to Borderlands 1, more everything!
i just started with a summoner Sebille, but i'm struggling in Classic mode in Fort Joy, so i'm going to reroll a different class. the beginning is like D:OS1, it's hard but it gets easier as you progress, one fight at a time.
everyone bitching about how hard this game is either did not play D:OS1 or they are just spoiled entitled millennials.

did anyone try to play only [ORIGIN] dialogue options throughout the entire game?

 

[bystander36]

this game is what Borderlands 2 was to Borderlands 1, more everything!
i just started with a summoner Sebille, but i'm struggling in Classic mode in Fort Joy, so i'm going to reroll a different class. the beginning is like D:OS1, it's hard but it gets easier as you progress, one fight at a time.
everyone bitching about how hard this game is either did not play D:OS1 or they are just spoiled entitled millennials.

did anyone try to play only [ORIGIN] dialogue options throughout the entire game?

I played using the majority of the [ORIGIN] dialog for Sebile and Beast my first play through. I'm half way through my 2nd play through with The Red Prince and Fane, and also using most of those [ORIGIN] options.

As far as difficulty goes, both games were tough in that you had to do everything in a particular order, or the game was very tough for the first 4-5 levels. Certain fights, getting that extra level made all the difference. That said, once you get to about level 7-8, there are a couple harder fights than anything you faced prior, and as you progress from there, the game difficulty in a few of the harder fights, continues to increase all the way to the end. It forces you to evolve your strategy from time to time. The good news is if you make sure to build well rounded characters, you can always find a strategy that works.

It's also worth noting that sticking to summoner might be tough if you don't also choose some support classes. Focused builds have a much harder time than jacks of all trades. You really need to have several classes for every character, and summoner is a good one to start with.

 

[IEC]

Beat the game recently. Biggest change to combat was the addition of physical and magic armor systems. And lack of a stat to boost AP/turn. Made it a little bit harder to exploit stuns and crowd control.

1 level, min-maxed stats, better gear - all can make the difference between a fight being unwinnable or survivable. 2 levels is a big gap due to the exponential scaling. So there were always parts of a map that were "level appropriate" and ones where you would get stomped, hard.

You will have enough levels and skill points that you can completely master 2 skill branches + a little more. I had a ranger (ranged + huntsman + scoundrel), a backstabbing scoundrel (dual wield + scoundrel + warfare), a hydro/aero, and a pyro/geo. My philosophy was to kill things quickly enough to not need a tank. Executioner for the physical damage dealers and Savage Sortilege for the spellcasters helped with that.

I did have one frustrating issue with crashing to desktop, especially in the final act, but I greatly reduced the frequency of those crashes by disabling Vsync and removing the FPS cap.

I enjoyed the first game and I very much enjoyed this one.

 

[Chaotic42]

If you play with friends, make sure none of you picks Summoner. They take so damned long to go the rest of the party will lose interest.

 

[bystander36]

I always get just enough Summoner for 1 spell, Domination.

 

[Sadaiyappan]

Need to plugin my headphones and play this through. I'm attempting to play in honor mode.

 

[Borealis7]

i'm playing on Classic, and the beginning was rough but after level 4-5 it becomes much easier (now 8-9, starting the mainland).
i don't think playing Tactician or harder would make the game more enjoyable, it would just force me to have chickening/teleportation/knock-downs on more characters.

my 2 melees are polymorph/warfare and one magic school (one necro, one aero). i found that necro spells are useful at close range. but the main strategy remains "drain physical armor, chicken/KD, repeat step 2 until victorious".
in that respect, i don't think the combat has become more complex, quite the opposite in fact.

 

[bystander36]

i'm playing on Classic, and the beginning was rough but after level 4-5 it becomes much easier (now 8-9, starting the mainland).
i don't think playing Tactician or harder would make the game more enjoyable, it would just force me to have chickening/teleportation/knock-downs on more characters.

my 2 melees are polymorph/warfare and one magic school (one necro, one aero). i found that necro spells are useful at close range. but the main strategy remains "drain physical armor, chicken/KD, repeat step 2 until victorious".
in that respect, i don't think the combat has become more complex, quite the opposite in fact.

I found that you need your characters to be able to do fast physical and magical damage. Some enemy will have a lot of magic armor, and low physical armor, and visa versa. Necromancer is a great magical way to bring down physical armor.

The big difference for me, compared to the original, is that the original let you go directly into crowd control, and avoid it immediately. Now you have to protect your armor, and bring theirs down in a hurry, or the hurt comes.

The game still favors builds which can do it all, like the first one.

 

[rstrohkirch]

I'm level 20 on classic finishing up the last few questions in Arx. I've personally found it's easier to not switch between damage types. When all 4 of my characters are doing the same damage type things die faster. I focus on physical damage and just make sure to knock them down when their armor runs out.

 

[bystander36]

I'm level 20 on classic finishing up the last few questions in Arx. I've personally found it's easier to not switch between damage types. When all 4 of my characters are doing the same damage type things die faster. I focus on physical damage and just make sure to knock them down when their armor runs out.

My first time through, I had all my characters have a physical damage type. I used huntsman, warfare and scoundrel, but they all had some magical abilities too. There are times where it takes very little to knock out magic armor, while impossible to drop the physical armor in 1 turn. Once crowd control starts, then they all usually finished the target with physical.

My 2nd time through, I focused on magic, but still gave everyone warfare as a means to knock down targets and drop physical if the magic armor was super high. This also worked pretty well, though you need to have several magic schools learned, as the cool downs makes it hard keep doing magic damage every turn. This type of build also worked well with Polymorph's ability to use spells without source points for 2 turns, and reset cool downs.

 

[Sadaiyappan]

Gme is hard! I'll have to play again later, I need to go back and finish persona 5.

 

[rogerdv]

Does somebody knows if this game uses an AI middleware or is it a custom engine? Im impressed how good is the combat behaviour, the NPCs throw your party into the fire, attack the weakest character, make a wise use of skills... as a developer, I would like to do something similar in my game.

 

[Chaotic42]

Does somebody knows if this game uses an AI middleware or is it a custom engine? Im impressed how good is the combat behaviour, the NPCs throw your party into the fire, attack the weakest character, make a wise use of skills... as a developer, I would like to do something similar in my game.

I believe they wrote it in house and were surprised themselves. This is from a Kickstarter update email I got in early February:

AI 2.0 won’t just blow up barrels: it will manipulate existing surfaces to make combat much more challenging, it will use your statuses against you, it will use spells and abilities in ways that even we never imagined, and- frankly if we’re not careful, it may be well on its way to world domination.

The way this AI has been using our combat system has already caused us to take a step back and have another look at how some of the unintended uses our skills and spells can have. Because it considers every possible outcome, we’ve seen AI 2.0 take advantage of things that we thought were relatively insignificant and using them deviously to fit the situation they happened to be in at the time (such as healing people on full health because the want the “Well Rested” status that the First Aid skill gives you, or passing up the opportunity to do a small amount of damage in order to create an oil surface to slow you down and remove your “Haste” status.)

AI 2.0 has proven so devious that we’ll probably have to disable it in the easier game modes, but those of you that want to take it on will have to step it up a notch to survive. However, if you do learn how to defeat our new, ruthless AI then you'll be equipped with an impressive set of combat skills. And of course if the campaign isn’t providing enough of a challenge, then you can always step into the arena for a pure combat experience. And speaking of the arena...