RPGWatch Feature - Divinity: Original Sin II Review

Having almost finished the game - just about to start the final battle, but don't have the energy for the slog right now - I think the review is spot on and fair. I have encountered quite a few bugs and/or inconsistencies that stop it from being a 5/5. I had a 'game breaking' one yesterday, but found a hacky way around it (thanks Internet). I also have issues with the way the mechanics work... that said, I'm still enjoying it immensely and its the best cRPG game I've played for quite awhile.

RPGFool said:

I have not requested the review score be changed. That is not my call to make. Yet various people keep claiming to the contrary. So let me be clear. I disagree with the rating of the subject review but I do not ask the score be changed. I do not believe that is my call to make.

I have tried to explain the basis for my disagreement with the final rating. That hasn't worked out particularly well.

All of this is horribly uncomfortable. I've asked Myrthos to remove my registration from RPGWatch.

I've enjoyed my years here. Have enjoyed the people and posters here. Came here to relax and believe others do the same. Will miss all of the happy days and posts.

Regards.

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I would try not to take it personal. Hell the games I love are bashed constantly here left and right. If someone really annoys me I put them on ignore. Sometimes I just avoid posting for a long time.

As one of those who disagreed with your posts I can say it was certainly not personal. I just didn't agree with it is all.

Thanks to all for your kindness.

D:OS2 is IMO a bright star shining through difficult times. A rarity deserving of all our support. IMO

As to me, I'm taking it one day at a time and do plan to drop by tomorrow; posting or not. There are lots of good things here. I will enjoy what I can as long as I can.

Just wanted to make this post to not leave your kindness unrecognized. Thank you.

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booboo said:

Having almost finished the game - just about to start the final battle, but don't have the energy for the slog right now - I think the review is spot on and fair. I have encountered quite a few bugs and/or inconsistencies that stop it from being a 5/5. I had a 'game breaking' one yesterday, but found a hacky way around it (thanks Internet). I also have issues with the way the mechanics work… that said, I'm still enjoying it immensely and its the best cRPG game I've played for quite awhile.

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See, this is why subjective reviews are important. I have had zero bugs or issues with the game, the game never crashed or caused me any problems, even the one one issue turned out to be deliberate . If an objective reviewer reviewed the game, they would take note that many people have played the game without issue and score as if their play through has no bugs. A subjective reviewer will ignore the majority's experiences and base their review completely on their experience.

That is how a review should be conducted, based on your own experiences. You can't write a review based on others experiences. You can make a side note perhaps if you are aware that others experience issues and you don't or the other way around, but it should never be based on that.

wolfing said:

See this is not something that should affect a review IMHO. Having a day/night cycle may be important to you, but to me not only it is unimportant, it's actually detrimental to my enjoyment. It's what I include in the 'suspension of disbelief', i.e. what I see on my screen is not what my characters experience. I don't see my characters peeing or eating or sleeping, that doesn't mean they're not doing it, it's just unimportant/uneventful. Same way, when I go to town and see an NPC doesn't mean the NPCs are just standing there 24/7, it just means that my characters went there, asked around and found the NPC, if it was night they waited, etc. I don't need to see all that happening as it's uneventful. In games that force me to wait doing nothing until a certain time when the NCPs leave their homes I actually hate that part.

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I didn't say it should affect the review. It's simply a personal preference. I really have a problem when a gameworld feels static, when every NPC feels like nothing more than an ATM. I want the world to feel alive, as if it goes on without me. And when an NPC that I need to speak to isn't available, I do something else. You know--roleplay. I LIKE the uneventful times. It's when I like to set out and find new things, explore, which just isn't a strong point in the Divinity games, as much as I wanted it to be.

It's just what I like. I respect your opinion, though. I'm just getting sick of the old Diablo formula in RPGs. To be fair to Larian, though, this is pretty much how they've designed all of their RPGs, which is probably why I haven't finished any of them.

Clocknova said:

I didn't say it should affect the review. It's simply a personal preference. I really have a problem when a gameworld feels static, when every NPC feels like nothing more than an ATM. I want the world to feel alive, as if it goes on without me. And when an NPC that I need to speak to isn't available, I do something else. You know--roleplay. I LIKE the uneventful times. It's when I like to set out and find new things, explore, which just isn't a strong point in the Divinity games, as much as I wanted it to be.

It's just what I like. I respect your opinion, though. I'm just getting sick of the old Diablo formula in RPGs. To be fair to Larian, though, this is pretty much how they've designed all of their RPGs, which is probably why I haven't finished any of them.

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I agree with that, as long as it's possible to "force" the time via things like sleeping. I still think the original Gothic is just about as good as it gets when it comes to feeling alive, and making you feel like you're just one, small cog and not the center of the universe.

Triggered by the debate about the rating we used, we had another internal discussion about it, which we had a few times before as well and we decided to add an extra classification of games to be able to differentiate better between good, very good and excellent games, which many of our reviewers felt was lacking in our older system.
Next to that we also wanted to get rid of the stars as it gave to much an impression of a numerical system, which was not the intention of it.

As a result we now have changed our rating categories for reviews and no longer use stars, but add a descriptive text of the category the reviewer felt the game belongs in.
in order to provide a reference, we went back to the reviews after January 1, 2016 and rated them according to the new system if we would have had that system at the time of publishing the review. For most reviews it did not make a difference for a few the extra new category was used.

Looks (very) good.

Pout. It is so much easier to just check a # (or in this case '*')
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Btw i also spend time on photozone (photography); and these debates frequently happen after lens reviews. Always someone who adamantly disagrees and starts a long drawn out debate.

Words are SO much better than stars or numbers.

Great call!