Divinity: Original Sin

I really didn't know anything about this game when it came out. I saw a friend of mine playing the game on steam one day and asked him about it and he didn't say much other than it was fun. I looked it up online and it looked great. I liked that it looked like the original Fallout. I know that players today prefer the updated Fallout 3 and 4 , but I still love the Original Fallout 1 and 2. They had really immersive worlds, and I found the turn based combat really intense.

So I was interested in the game after that. I wasn't willing to spend $50 on it though because other than playing a bit of Divinity 2: developers Cut, I had no experience with the series and this looked very different than Divinity 2. Luckily the game went on sale on GOG.com and I ended up paying about $20 for the game. I am very glad that I did. This game ended up keeping me hooked. I found myself staying up late to play the game and while to most gamers that's a regular thing, you have to know that at the age of 34, with a family and work and so on, its not easy to do that anymore. Finding gaming time is a lot harder for me than it was when I was in my 20's.

I say that because when a game hooks me like this and I go out of my way to find the time to play it for more than an hour at a time, then to me its a game that is more interesting than the droves of so called AAA Mcgames that are constantly being pushed out at us.

OK so about the game. When you start up the game, you are taken to the character creation section. You are shown two characters who are by default a male and a female. I kept them male and female, though I am sure that you can change it so both are male or both are female.

Cosmetically, you have  a very limited amount of choices between different faces, hair styles, hair colour and skin tone. You can change the names of the characters to whatever you like which is a nice  touch.

You can select a class for each character from Cleric, Enchanter, Fighter, Knight, Ranger, Rogue, Shadowblade, Wayfarer, Witch and Wizard.

I chose Fighter and Ranger for my playthrough and that combination worked well for me, but on my next playthrough I want to choose two different classes to try out.

When you're content with your characters, you start the game. It gives you a bit of background on what your purpose is, which in short is to investigate a murder and to hunt Source, which is in this world, the worst thing  out there.

The game drops you onto a beach and after a bit of exploring you come across your first enemies which are easily taken care of and presented with a bit of a tutorial dungeon which you can go through to get the very basics of the game which shows you how to disarm traps, pick locks, use scrolls and to use and how to use elements that affect the ground in the game. By that I mean that some barrels in the world contain oil, poison or are explosive. So if there are a bunch of enemies ahead and there are oil barrels around, you can shoot the barrels and spill their contents. Oil alone will slow enemies or allies who walk into it, but if you ignite that oil with a fire arrow or fire spell, then the oil ignites causing burn damage to anyone in that area.

After this great tutorial (which doesn't feel like the usual boring tutorial from most games) you come across a battle between Orcs and Humans and even in this very early battle you can get killed easily if you aren't careful. Survive though and you can look the bodies and move on to the first town in the game. This is where the story starts. You talk to all kinds of NPCs and do a bunch of side missions for them as is the norm for an RPG. You take on story and side quests which get tracked in your journal and update the journal as you progress.

Like you'd expect, you have merchants throughout, who offer different items for sale. Some have potions and scrolls while others have weapons and armour. I found that stocking up on revive scrolls and health potions was essential while buying weapons and armour wasn't necessary because you always find better equipment on missions anyway.

Characters gain experience from killing enemies and when you level up you gain an attribute point and skill points. Attribute points can be put into things such as strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Speed and Constitution, while skill points get put into skills such as one or two handed weapons, bow, or crossbow, shield specialist skills, magic skills, charisma, crafting, blacksmithing, lockpicking, loremaster (which helps you identify items), sneaking and pickpocket.

Tank characters will need points in strength, Rangers will want dexterity, mages will want intelligence to be more effective in combat.

Every few levels you can get a perk point as well. Some perks have a benefit along with a detriment, such as poison heals you but regular healing don't work on you, or enemies tend to ignore you but you smell bad so people don't like you. Others are just straight up perks, like leach, which heals you when you stand in blood, or the perk that lets you talk to animals which I would recommend because it gives you more solution options in the game.

You can also gain two more party members. I chose to add a mage and another ranger to my group and in my game I didn't even meet with one possible group member that others did in their games. There was a glitch though which has not ben patched yet where near the end if you have a certain party member in your group , they betray you and you have to kill them. When you do, the game wont let you replace them with another person because it still registers that you have 4 characters and wont let you add another member. I hope that gets patched or is patched in the Enhanced Edition.

Speaking of the Enhanced Edition: This version was free to PC players who already owned the original version of the game. It was designed for release on consoles but was a great touch that we were given the game for free. My next playthrough will be on the Enhanced Edition.

The game offers many different ways to take on enemies and you can get creative if you want, or you can just jump in and hack away if that's what you prefer. Some battles are really tough and I would save before the fight and try various ways to take it on if one way didn't work out in my favour.
You could have your spell caster make it rain in the area so that enemies are more susceptible to being frozen , or he can litter the area with oil or poison and you can ignite it and set a bunch of targets on fire at once. If you're having trouble being picked off by an enemy who keeps their distance you can teleport them into the middle of your group and then tear him or her apart.

Not only are there many ways to take on the many battles, but there are usually more than one way to solve quests. Sometimes you can charm your way into a more peaceful resolution. Also in some cases you have to decide who you think is telling the truth or is guilty of a crime and must make the call on who to blame for it. Some decisions had me re-reading my journal and taking my time to decide who to send to jail or accuse. There are also some places where I found a locked door that I couldn't lockpick.... So I used my sword and smashed the door open. That didn't work all the time so other times I was able to have my magic user teleport me to places I couldn't normally get.

There is a crafting system in the game but I didn't spend much time on it. Other than upgrading my main weapons stats a bit and making a couple weapons from some weird ingredients that I only knew about because of guides online , I didn't really bother too much with it. You can improve your armour and weapons, you can create scrolls and you can create potions. I hope to do more with it in the Enhanced edition.

There are some really cool looking armour designs in the game but they never go over the top. Different armour will alter your characters look and many weapons have distinct looks to them as well. I loved making a jack o lantern helmet using a knife with a pumpkin and it having a 20 percent chance to inflict fear in enemies. Along with helmets, body armour, boots, shoulder armour, gloves and belts, you can also equip two rings and an amulet which help boost your stats depending on what you need at the time.

So, I would definitely recommend this game to anyone who likes a good change of pace from the constant bombardment of call of duty and assassins creed and likes a good challenge and lets you take your own approach to a game.

The sequel is on kickstarter right now and looks great so far. I was very pleasantly surprised with the quality of this game. As for bugs, other than the one I mentioned earlier I didn't run into anything game breaking and I cant recall running into any issues with the game in terms of how it ran.