D:OS II

[Nail]

Almost made it through act 2… The game is big, very big!

80 hours in it and I think it's a half - lvl 16

Still there are some quests that stay unfinished even if they are supposed to.

 

In some cases AI is just horrible, here is an example.

Never ending ally turn

[Zoraptor]

 

The armour system is very silly..

 

 

Worse than silly, it's a stupid 'balance' fixing something that wasn't broken in the first game. Case in point, archers' special arrows are now almost completely useless. Either the enemies have bloated base hit points anyway so the special effects do little damage andor- the fundamental problem when combining the new armour system and archers- their special effects are blocked by magical armour while the arrows do physical damage. Meaning that there's almost always no point using them due to the system encouraging stacking damage types on single enemies and, per below, your characters typically having far less armour than the enemy. Single (?) exception is knockdown arrows as they are a physical effect, and to a single target rather than an area. At least magic users typically have spells that stack magical damage and magical effects rather than mixing the two.

 

The overall effect of the system is that it's a handicap against the player since you'll be vulnerable to such status effects an order of magnitude (or maybe it just seems like it) more often that the enemy will, and they can thus use them willy nilly while you either cannot or there's just no point to using them.

Edited September 26, 2017 by Zoraptor

[Humanoid]

Very early on in DOS1, I kept getting party wiped very often with my dual lone-wolf co-op party while being able to take no actions whatsoever, so I understand where it's coming from. But it's an extremely inelegant "solution" that has a net negative effect on gameplay. I haven't played long enough to be able to decide what a redesign should look like though. Unify the armour types? Give effects a proportional chance of success based on armour values? I don't really want the extra resist stats from DOS1 back, so I don't mind if armour becomes sort of analogous to it, but not in the all-or-nothing implementation of it that currently exists.

[Gorgon]

There are a few skills that  penetrate armor, but there aren't enough of them to kill an enemy that way, so what's the point really.  Armor penetration cannot make a difference.  Maybe at later levels there will be more things that set statuses through armor. 

[Zoraptor]

The armour penetration skills can be very useful against low hp enemies who are either shield wielders or have Fortify applied since you can then bypass their recharged shields to finish them off. That's a rather limited utility though, and it is 'artificial', for want of a better word.

[SonicMage117]

How is the game for single player experience? I found the first one to be best played with a human partner and the single player to be not as strong afterwards. Some rpg's with multiplayer are still better played alone. How about this one?

[Tigranes]

Yeah, basically, armour penetration only matters if you can do exclusively AP damage to kill enemies without touching their armour, but as far as I've seen, there aren't enough skills/resources for a party to actually strategise in that way. And since it's damage that penetrates armour, not effects, it's not like you can do a clever AP attack to debilitate them, that just means dude has 70/100 HP but you still now have to destroy his 100 armour. 

 

There are just so many obvious problems with the armour system while it only solves one issue (players 'stunlocking' enemies all battle with disabling spells), that it is incredible it made it through. You're penalised for mixing damage types across the party. You can't taunt someone because they are wearing heavy armour, but somehow putting oil on the ground still slows them down even while they are invulnerable to the raging flames at their feet. They need to have disabling effects have a chance of penetrating armour, or provide more robust armour-penetrating attacks for both players and enemies, or sort out how environmental effects are blocked by armour.

 

Overall it feels like the actual mechanics and combat tactics haev taken a big step backwards from DOS1, which is a huge pity, but otherwise it's still a big, solid, fun game with tons to do - almost like a turn-based action or action RPG game - and I'm enjoying it. 

[Harry Easter]

One sister started to play the game and is now fixed. The other installed it already. I'm gonna get them all for the big MP. It's fun, but it seems more stable at MP-Servers? Weird.

[HooAmEye]

Goty you say??? Wow! Even over Nier Automata, Hollow Knight and Sonic Mania???

 And House of Many Doors, Night In The Woods, Edith Finch, Little Nightmares, Wipeout Omega, Prey, Sexy Brutale, Dream Daddy, and Battle Brothers! This has been my favorite year in games in forever

[SonicMage117]

 

Goty you say??? Wow! Even over Nier Automata, Hollow Knight and Sonic Mania???

And House of Many Doors, Night In The Woods, Edith Finch, Little Nightmares, Wipeout Omega, Prey, Sexy Brutale, Dream Daddy, and Battle Brothers! This has been my favorite year in games in forever

Amen to that, nice to see indies getting love! I'm an indie guy meself!

[Agiel]

Survived an ambush by assassins that took at three retries. Sadly for my troubles their corpses disappeared in a puff of smoke.

[Humanoid]

 

Liked that the game just let me murder Alexandar while he was a prisoner. Didn't like that I couldn't tell god to bugger off. Or rather, that I could but then the game wouldn't let me leave until I changed my mind. Oh well.

 

 

Anyway, glad the free respec exists. It's probably a bit controversial with traditionalists, but frankly it was turning into a slog with my magic having essentially no interaction with any of my teammates' abilities. Might not be so crippling when fighting cannon fodder, but it's a big handicap with the tougher targets where we essentially have to expend twice as much collective effort. Going to experiment with both damage approaches during act 2: first as a fighter+archer duo, then the all-out magic spam. Might see if any mods exist to help with the issue as well.

 

EDIT: Might have to do some economic exploitation to get back on my feet after spending all my gold on spellbooks for abilities which I can no longer use.

 

EDIT2: Also came unstuck by a silly scripting oversight. One random book in a room containing a dozen random books is required to progress. But reading it doesn't trigger anything and the player is left none the wiser that that particular book is the important one. No, you have to pick up the book (which magically updates the quest log but otherwise is completely non-magical) to progress because reasons. Books being worth a measly 1 gold each encourages the player to read them where they are instead of picking them up, which becomes a bit of a trap.

Edited September 28, 2017 by Humanoid

[Gorgon]

My game was killed by exactly the same bug as the reboot. I had something called a Glowing Idol of Rebirth in my backpack. If you do that, if it's away from the normal inventory screen, you become immortal and a spent inactive idol spawns in your inventory every time you die while the active one in your backpack is not removed.

 

So I went from the game being very difficult to not being able to lose a fight. My last untainted save is back on the beginner island. 

 

Don't feel like going back that far.

[Tigranes]

Had the same bug, right click, send it to your ship, done.

 

Your game isn't killed.

[Gorgon]

Regarding the armor system, as far as I can see your party should be uniform, all capable of physical damage output or magical, or both, but no one mage who can only do magical damage as he will struggle to reduce magic armor fast enough. Except for Necromancy because it has a lot of skills that wear down physical armor,

 

Point being you don't want your party to be working at reducing both bars simultaneously. 

[Humanoid]

Fortunately (and not necessarily intuitively), Summoning has zero interaction with the intelligence stat and as such is a true hybrid skill tree. Just need to remember to cast your summons on either blood or bare ground if you're running a physical damage team, or on any element if you need magic damage.

 

On the other hand, the Warfare skills apparently do with magic weapons, which is good to know until you realise that the status effects likely won't work, so in playing this kind of hybrid you're reduced to mostly damage effects. Sounds like it'd be a really fun build if not for the armour system, what a shame.

[Gorgon]

I noticed that the armor bars are often quite different, which would suggest there would be benefit from having an all magic+physical hybrid team. Of course you will lose approximately 50% damage output because you can't max any stats and you will need more invested in memory for the extra skills. 

[Nail]

Finished the game on tactician.

Must admit - it's good.

Still waiting for some hotfixes to complete "for honour".

 

A bit disappointed in arena mode though - due pre generated characters only.

I would like to try out my own builds, maybe there will be something in workshop soon...

Edited October 2, 2017 by Nail

[Nail]

Some final stats of my char... Using 2 hander

[FlintlockJazz]

Plan on getting this game at some point, money issues and getting time to finish the other games I got have put it on a back burner for now.  However, am interested in if anyone's tried creating their own adventure modules or GMing a game for friends yet and how they found it? 

[Tigranes]

Finished it. 

 

Very good, very solid, very fun game, but the main changes from DOS1 are questionable and overall is not really a step forward. That's a pity, but like DOS1, it remains a very enjoyable game for me.

 

Basically, it's a game where you run around a theme park world talking to chickens to get quests, getting into chaotic turn-based fights setting the whole place on fire and teleporting people this way and that, all the while supported by what is mostly a very solid, smooth, technically sound 'big fat RPG' experience. That's the appeal. 

 

What the game isn't for: The writing, while improved, is nothing memorable, though if you previously loved Larian humour you'd probably like it again. The combat has no tactical complexity, and plays more like a frenetic turn-based action game where you don't generally lay elaborate tactical plans but keep responding on the fly as the whole place goes up in flames. As I say, it's fun, so it depends on what you're looking for. There's some trappings of reactivity, faction politics and choices/consequences, but not really - the whole world is so silly, and the factions are mostly one-dimensional dudes who all double-cross each other anyway.

 

Looking forward to cool mods/modules/GM stuff cropping up, but I've only tried bog standard single player so far.

Edited October 4, 2017 by Tigranes

[Agiel]

Some final stats of my char... Using 2 hander

 

Tactician too easy. Even a moron with 5 in INT can beat it 

[Gfted1]

With that high of a poison resistance, does poison damage actually "heal" the character?

[Vaeliorin]

With that high of a poison resistance, does poison damage actually "heal" the character?

Yes. Anything over 100 heals. I'm guessing that character is either undead or has the zombie talent, which makes you heal from poison (and be hurt by normal healing, iirc.)

[SadExchange]

Might I ask what level you were when you finished the game?