D:OS II

[Nail]

Played through it. I thought that it would be my new favorite game and I was right. True, the third act was short, but the writing and story was still strong, so at least the third act didn't fall apart like in D:OS1. There are still some bugs tho' and I hope they can detect and fix them. Now I will rest, because those were 138 hours in one sitting on hard. I need a rest. And sleep :D.

 

My hopes for the future of the game:

 

- More quests in the third act, so it is at least as fleshed out as Fort Joy.

- They could rebalance the last fight a bit. On paper it is better than the one in D:OS1, but it is so hard, I feel itcan't be done alone and

the support NPC's do to good a job. Lucian and Dalis are just too powerful and I felt quite impotent at their side. But I played it on TACTITIAN, so maybe the balance better on CLASSIC.

 

I've done it alone on tactician, the game is pretty easy.

And the party of two Lone Wolves will just rip the content like a molten blade through the butter.

Waiting for fixes to complete for honor.

In the third patch they've done some poor decisions nerfing Act 2 experience, and now you are getting 0 exp for killing violate and vicious voidlings, but easily over 10k exp for mere exploration. That feels wrong...

[Humanoid]

So they changed direct connections to no longer allow joining using IP address. You have to use the special code which you need to generate every time you play, because it always changes every time you launch the game, unlike your IP address. Dumb, dumb change.

[smjjames]

Is it me or does the lucky charm 'skill' seem somewhat OP? Because with just 2 or 3 points in it, you can find craploads of stuff, too much possibly, heh.

[Zoraptor]

The main balance for lucky charm is that you'd want to put it on your lead character as that's who is going to be opening most chests and containers, but that's also the character who gets into most of the triggered conversations so needs persuasion. And there are a lot of persuasion checks in the game. You can of course use one character for leading exploration and another for checking containers but I couldn't be bothered doing that consistently as you'd have to do it probably thousands of times.

 

OTOH one of the things about social skills is that most of them top out at 5, so I'm in the situation now that the lead character is getting points in lucky charm, so the last 1/3 of the game may see more loot bloat. One of the odd things about the game is that thieving skills don't top out at 5, and in order to have a proper thief you need points in both lockpicking and stealth- so unless you can find decent +skill theivery items you're stuck with a mediocre lockpicker or a mediocre hider (or both) while your lore or barter guy is already sticking points into a secondary skill.

 

I now have some decent gear and I'm crushing everything in my path again. It was an order of magnitude harder going from lvl 10->11 and 11->12 than going from 12->14.

[smjjames]

Would be nice if the final fight with Braccus wasn't so cheesy in favor of Braccus There's also a bug where if you manage to kill him (via a dialogue option) before the second part starts, it freezes into combat mode, so, there isn't even THAT out.

[Labadal]

I beat the game earlier today. It is a game that I really enjoyed and had fun with. Yet, it still has several flaws. I can't consider this an all time classic, but I do know that I want to come back and play it in the future. There will probably be enough tweaks, additions and mods to push it to "one of the greats" status. Here are my ramblings.

 

What I did not like:

The armor system. I knew that I wouldn't like this from the start. It adds an unnecessary time sink for the player and enemy to take down additional health bars. Combat becomes a competition in who can strip each other of armor and then finally use status inflicting moves. I went with a 2H warrior, crossbowman, and two mages; one summoner focused, and one buff and heal focused. I wish they change this somehow. Higher armor could mean less chance to inflict status ailments. I doubt they will get rid of it entirely.

 

How AP and initiative works is not cool. At first, I put lots of points in wits to get more AP and higher initiative, but the way the game works is not good at all. Wits is more or less useless. If I remember correctly, I utilized wits a lot in the first game. I also dislike how some enemies have way more AP than you. Or when there are summoned enemy units that directly get to attack, instead of getting added last to the combat action queue.

 

Number bloat. In this case, I honestly don't know how they thought. For each level, numbers go up significantly. Most of the time, this forces the player to explore areas in a certain order. I didn't care and forced my way through some of the higher level areas by cheesing them. This hampers some of the feeling of freedom. It also forces you to buy items often. I'd buy new items every two levels.

 

Attributes and talents weren't as interesting as in first game. In DOS, attributes feel so much more useful. They do more than just add 5% to a single area, like 5% improved weapon damage. I also miss the defensive abilities like for example, armor specialist. The number talents also seem to be less in number and usefulness. In DOS, I used several different talents depending on what type of characters I used. In DOS2, I had all characters use the same ones.

 

A mixed bag:

Combat encounters. There were some really fun encounters in DOS2. A certain fight in act 1, Radeka in act 2, and some others that I won't mention in fear of spoilers. Then we have some fights that had me scratch my head. I didn't have a huge problem winning said fights, but they were clearly set up to give the computer an advantage that I feel it shouldn't have. I am all for challenge, but do it better. Then we have fights like the one in the Black Pits. Not challenging at all for me, but oh my word, how long it took me to deal with it. Don't get me started on some of the fights in Arx. Lizard Consulate, I am looking at you. Overall, there were far more encounters I had fun with, than encounters that I disliked.

 

Companions and writing. I'd put this above the first game, but I do not consider the writing in this game to be masterclass. It's serviceable and a step in the right direction for Larian. There are places where I really enjoyed it and at some points, all I could think to myself was: You don't play Larian games and expect Planescape: Torment. It was interesting to see how things would unfold and companions were mostly decent. I don't have much to say in this area of the game. It works, and it shows that they put some effort into it.

 

Items. You feel no real joy when you get new items after a certain point. Oh, new item, okay then. Why? Because there is an overabundance of them (especially with Lucky Charm). The numbers bloat also makes it a must to renew your gear. A big shame is that unique items often are worse than random items that you get. There are a few exceptions, but I could probably count them on my fingers. Why is this in the mixed bag section and not in the negatives section? A part of me loves loot, and I must have it.

 

What I did like:

Exploration. While the game tries to keep you away from certain areas, due to higher level enemies, beating said enemies when you're not supposed to do, is a great feeling. In general, I liked to explore the world and meet NPCs, then help or fight them. The actual game world isn't very believable, and by that I mean that the game world is more of a playground packed with content, than a world that makes sense. There is always something to do or find.

 

Quests. While the quest journal seemed to be broken beyond all repair, I actually had fun with them. (They probably repaired it, didn't they?) I had persuasion maxed, and managed to avoid combat sometimes. There were straight up "go fight this" quest, "talk to people" quests and investigation quests. Some of the quests you get seems to end up the same way and have no real choice, no matter what you do, but others seem to have very different outcomes. I need to replay the game to confirm.

 

Skills. I liked the skills the game had to offer. Maybe not as many as the first game, I don't remember, but they were mostly all useful. Warfare and Huntsman, I used all the time. There weren't many skills in the schools I used that I didn't find a good use for in different situations.

 

Combat system. While I did complain about some encounter designs and AP points, I love the combat system. There aren't many games in recent years that I have had as much fun with that uses a turn-based combat system which uses a party. Only game that really comes close is Blackguards. I like the fact that there is no grid. You can plan how you want to move, you can queue up moves. It is possible to separate your characters and initiate combat with some characters, and then jump in with the others as you see fit. You can position your characters by spilling them up. The only negative is when there are surprise attacks. Not that there should never be any.

 

Music. I had some fears about this, but I must say that Kirill has a worthy successor. I really enjoyed the soundtrack. Kept some of the Dvinity, yet did its own thing, too. Loved the music in the final battle.

Edited October 15, 2017 by Labadal

[Tigranes]

The main balance for lucky charm is that you'd want to put it on your lead character as that's who is going to be opening most chests and containers, but that's also the character who gets into most of the triggered conversations so needs persuasion. And there are a lot of persuasion checks in the game. You can of course use one character for leading exploration and another for checking containers but I couldn't be bothered doing that consistently as you'd have to do it probably thousands of times.

 

OTOH one of the things about social skills is that most of them top out at 5, so I'm in the situation now that the lead character is getting points in lucky charm, so the last 1/3 of the game may see more loot bloat. One of the odd things about the game is that thieving skills don't top out at 5, and in order to have a proper thief you need points in both lockpicking and stealth- so unless you can find decent +skill theivery items you're stuck with a mediocre lockpicker or a mediocre hider (or both) while your lore or barter guy is already sticking points into a secondary skill.

 

I now have some decent gear and I'm crushing everything in my path again. It was an order of magnitude harder going from lvl 10->11 and 11->12 than going from 12->14.

 

You don't really need thievery above 5 for the vast majority of locks and even pickpockets, and with many gloves offering +1 Thievery usually you can stay on top of climbing requirements.

 

I'd say Labadal's thoughts are on point. Good game to romp around and get into some fun fights show off zany skills; not really for any kind of quality writing or moral dilemmas or tactical complexity. I enjoyed my time with it plenty.

Edited October 16, 2017 by Tigranes

[Humanoid]

It's weird, everyone reckons the writing is better this time and I can't objectively disagree. But I can't say I'm enjoying the writing as such, maybe it's because of how wildly it swings between their off-the-wall humour schtick and the newfound Darker and Grittier additions. I'm suffering some sort of mood whiplash as a result.

[Zoraptor]

You don't really need thievery above 5 for the vast majority of locks and even pickpockets, and with many gloves offering +1 Thievery usually you can stay on top of climbing requirements.

 

I'd say Labadal's thoughts are on point. Good game to romp around and get into some fun fights show off zany skills; not really for any kind of quality writing or moral dilemmas or tactical complexity. I enjoyed my time with it plenty.

 

I've run into a couple of skill 6 locks even on Reaper's Coast. To be fair, they were both 'short cut' locks where you'd get the key eventually if you kept playing (eg the door to the lich under Mordus's house where you get the 'key' in the Mordus battle anyway), but you don't even have optional persuasion 6 checks since the skill won't go that high.

 

I haven't finished but I'd agree 90% with Labadal's comments as well, most of them wholeheartedly. I really couldn't list skills as a positive though. The root problem is largely the shield system*, that's a given- indeed, I'd presume a party with only one physical damage character would have the reverse problem to mine- but the fact is that status abilities relying on your parties' minor damage type are almost entirely deprecated while buffs and especially summoning (root skill and any sub abilities including those in different schools) retain their utility across almost any party build and any encounter; making them disproportionately useful. Warfare is also the key utility skill on the physical damage side, but that's way less extreme.

 

*I'm still decidedly grumpy about it even after more than 3 weeks. I said it at the beginning and it's still true, that fix is far worse than the problem of DivOS1 combat results depending a lot on who got their status effects off first.

[Nail]

For some reason I just don't want to accomplish all achievements for D:OS 2 anymore...

I'm a bit frustrated seeing how many bugs there are without good fixes, fixing first braking second and so on...

[Humanoid]

I praised the game earlier for allowing you to kill a seemingly important NPC early in the game. Well I withdraw that praise because apparently the game just Deus Ex Machinaed him back to life in a very literal sense so his role in Act 3 is unchanged. Bleh.

 

The magic has wearing off pretty quickly in the last few play sessions, and not just because of things like the above. Bloodmoon Isle was a frustrating mess of obtuse quests with a couple of Guide Dang It moments, and it prompted me to just end the act without tying off all the loose ends because it was seriously turning into a mess of unresolved issues. But the first few hours of Act 3 have been pretty aimless too.

[Gorgon]

If you want magical damage it's Intelligence and one or two other options, thieves get a single skill that benifits from Agility and damages magic armor, rangers have an elemental arrow ability, but it's not enough really. I wound up having four multi class characters and re-specing them constantly to find out what worked.

 

The power gamer's choice will be all magic, since they can deal both physical and magical damage with necromancy, and summoning, simply because having a powerful summon, well, up to four really that can deal either physical or magical damage depending on what surface they are summoned on is a huge boon. 

 

Enemies have varied armor so having options is always better.

 

I turn to walkthroughs if I get frustrated, no shame in that. Bloodmoon, you would have to get lucky to figure that one out on your first go. Similar quest near the end. You would be banging your head to figure out how to open specific doors without caving in and looking it up. 

 

Also, don't worry about maxing out a particular skill, the highest requirement is level 5 for any spell or skill and the extra damage payoff is very small for limiting yourself to only one or two and if you factor in cooldowns it's just unadvisable. 

[Gorgon]

 

Played through it. I thought that it would be my new favorite game and I was right. True, the third act was short, but the writing and story was still strong, so at least the third act didn't fall apart like in D:OS1. There are still some bugs tho' and I hope they can detect and fix them. Now I will rest, because those were 138 hours in one sitting on hard. I need a rest. And sleep :D.

 

My hopes for the future of the game:

 

- More quests in the third act, so it is at least as fleshed out as Fort Joy.

- They could rebalance the last fight a bit. On paper it is better than the one in D:OS1, but it is so hard, I feel itcan't be done alone and

the support NPC's do to good a job. Lucian and Dalis are just too powerful and I felt quite impotent at their side. But I played it on TACTITIAN, so maybe the balance better on CLASSIC.

 

I've done it alone on tactician, the game is pretty easy.

And the party of two Lone Wolves will just rip the content like a molten blade through the butter.

Waiting for fixes to complete for honor.

In the third patch they've done some poor decisions nerfing Act 2 experience, and now you are getting 0 exp for killing violate and vicious voidlings, but easily over 10k exp for mere exploration. That feels wrong...

 

I got it on the first go. The secret is those massive cost AOE spells, blood storm, electrical storm or whatever they are called. If you got all the right quests done, they will have all have a source cost of 0. That way you just have to stay alive long enough for them to passively kill everything. 

 

I don't recommend going lone wolf. It get's too easy after a while and you miss out on party member quests. 

[Nail]

For some reason I have no desire to come back to D:OS II

[Hurlshort]

For some reason I have no desire to come back to D:OS II

 

Yeah, I petered out during the 2nd act, just like I did in the original. Still, I had a blast with it for about 30 hours and will probably try and get back into it eventually.

[ShadySands]

 

For some reason I have no desire to come back to D:OS II

 

Yeah, I petered out during the 2nd act, just like I did in the original. Still, I had a blast with it for about 30 hours and will probably try and get back into it eventually.

 

Same, still haven't had the urge to get back to it.