*Darth Vader* I find your lack of filler and grind refreshing...

[Aron Times]

I've had the game for almost a week now, and I must say that the lack of filler and grinding in this game to be very refreshing. There are just way too many games which try to artificially extend play time without adding real content. Nowhere in my playthroughs did I feel that I was just grinding through 198473947393 different mooks just to get to the end.

 

The original Divine Divinity is probably the worst case that I've ever played. Most of the game gives you a tremendous amount of freedom to explore. However, the endgame is absolutely terrible. You gain a new set of awesome powers, but all of the mooks you encounter from this point forward are resistant or outright immune to them. I think Larian realized how crappy the endgame was and made Ghostform mandatory for finishing the game. Without it, you die instantly if you try to approach the bad guy's territory, but with it, you get to skip more than 90% of the endgame (not even exaggerating, you get to skip many tough mooks who give very little XP to you at this point).

 

Divine Divinity's terrible endgame is the reason why I never picked up another Divinity game, despite hearing very good things about Divinity: Original Sin.

 

I also almost stopped reading the Wheel of Time series due ot the sheer amount of filler. While I am grateful for Robert Jordan for creating Randland, I feel that Brandon Sanderson was the best thing that happened to WoT. Sanderson made the series fun to read again.

 

And don't get me started on Neverwinter Online. The game used to be nowhere as grindy as other MMORPGs, but Perfect World learned early on that making the game frustratingly grindy and then selling ways to bypass the grind resulted in a lot of extra revenue.

 

Anyway, thank you, Obisidian. And thank you, Kickstarter, for freeing Obsidian from the stifling influence of big name publishers.

[Eggnog]

Hear, hear.

[DIIscIIple]

If you like 'High' fantasy series that last forever I heartily suggest the Malzan book of the Fallen.  I like it MUCH better than the Jordan series, which was the daytime TV of Fantasy novels. 

 

There's also a lot less connection between novels so you don't have to feel like you need to read 15 odd books in a row.

[scrotiemcb]

The funny thing is that even though your suspicions about Divinity Original Sin are actually correct - the encounter difficulty rapidly drops as you go from "Act 1" to "Act 2" and is a joke by end of game... I still think you'd be nuts not to try it. The first third of D:OS, with the latter parts left unplayed, is arguably a better game than PoE.

[DIIscIIple]

I didn't think that the stories in D:OS were very involving despite the fanstastic gameplay.

[Gallenger]

My problem ultimately with D:OS was that the game started out hard as hell, then you discover your sad error; that you just need 3 mages, and the game immediately transforms into a cake walk.  I'm ok with games having janky systems that cause things to be easily exploited - I mean, I love Arcanum, but if you buff your dexterity from the start, you'll become a virtual God in short order.   But the game had enough other stuff going for it, that I was able to look past that design misstep, and play through several times a year for the last... decade+ lol. 

 

D:OS just didn't have enough to keep me engrossed once I started smashing everything they set up for me - because the game seemingly only consisted of additional smashing of things.   I still feel bad about not giving it more of a chance... sometimes...