Divinity: Original Sin 2

Divinity: Original Sin 2

I wanted to talk about this game because it has been a huge part of my life recently, for the record if you love DnD, or tactical style games you will love D:OS2. While I loved the game there are a few problems that I had with it. It is my hope that they adjust this in future patches/expansions, or by modders. If I find the time I plan to make my own mod in an attempt to address some of these.

I love this game, the dev team put in so much extra than they needed. Everyone dialog is voice acted, almost every NPC has their own story, combat is interesting, puzzles are challenging and quests can have many different outcomes. This is all inside of the main story, to add to this the game also has a GM mode where you can take existing maps (or create your own) to play through with friends or upload for others to play. I can't stress enough have much love went into this game and how good it is. I played through the starting zone several times with different people and each time we found new things hidden and had a good time. They beginning-middle of this game is amazing.

However the character progression pacing seems to be off when it comes to the end of the game. During act 1 you have limited money and only a few spells this makes your choices impactful and you get the excitement of unlocking powerful new spells. You will still use many of these starting spells even at the end of the game (you won't be replacing ember with Flame Thrower here), however you get access to the next tier of spells at level 3 and unlock the full list of spells shortly into act 2 (level 10ish), and you end the game around mid 20s. This means that for most of the game you have already unlocked all the spells and the only way your character changes is though gear or going into another school of spells. 

It's easy to think that I am saying the game needs more spells, but it doesn't, at least not many more. Some schools only have a few high tier options and you are expected to go into at least 2-3 different schools for each character, the game has 10 different schools to choose from. (To be clear this can be expanded with mods, but I won't be talking about mods here.) Simple spreading out the spell unlocks could go a long way, or using an action point system more similar to the first D:OS. 

In the first D:OS you could have crazy powerful turns because most stats influenced the number of action points you had each turn. Extra points would carry over unless it was over your cap. Spells would cost varying amounts tied to how deep into that school you went. This had it's trade offs, on the plus side it made it feel better to put points into a non-primary stat (ex. getting HP on a dps class still helped your damage in some way). But it was a rather complex system that most people wouldn't catch onto until mid way through the game. 

In D:OS2 this was simplified so that you had 4 action points each turn, and extras would carry over to a cap of 6 (unless you had a talent). Standard spells cost 2 points, with a decent amount costing 1, and more powerful spells costing 3-4 (some spells also cost source points the cap being 3 source for a spell.). This was an attempt to simply the system, and this was needed. However this was a trade off in the how stats impacted your character. No longer could you spread points if you wanted to stay competitive. Most classes put all their points into a single stat, with a small handful being spent on Memory or HP if it was needed. An addition consequence of this is that when you hit the cap of your primary stat your damage graph starts to drop off drastically, making it so that some styles of characters simply can't compete with others later into the game. (2handers being very strong because of multipliers, and battle mages being very weak because they need to split stats.)

I think a happy middle ground can be found between these systems, where your spells cost varying amounts, but secondary stats like Memory, Wit, or Constitution grant extra action points, or increase the cap. Without a system like this picking stats when you level up might as well be automatic. 

Likely the most common complaint about the game is the physical vs magic armor system. While I don't think the system worked out I think it was a great attempt to make the player think about target selection and vary their team. I do think that in the end it worked against that second goal to often though. During the game physical attacks will deal damage to a target's physical armor, some CC (crowd control) will only effect the enemy if they don't have any physical armor left at the time they are hit by the CC, this works the same way for magic damage vs magic armor. In theory this works, but in practice it means that if the only target left has high physical armor I might as well not hit him. CC's become binary, if they have armor you won't CC them, and if they don't you are guaranteed your CC (assuming it hits, or they don't have massive resist). And if you use try to freeze an enemy and they are left with 1 magic armor they won't be frozen (not uncommon due to enemy resists being easy to miss). In the end it almost feels better to have a team that primarily use physical or magic damage, and just force your way though all the enemies. I think think this was a noble goal that just missed the mark, a simple solution might be to treat have each CC roll a check against what percentage of physical/magic armor they have left. Ex. if they have 50% of their magic armor left my freeze spell has a 50% change of success. Obviously I haven't tested this, and armor values might need to be changed, but this makes it less binary and means that if the enemy has a lot of physical armor my warrior can still help even if he can't hit the enemy health pool directly. 

This brings me to the battle mage in D:OS2. I expect this to be addressed if/when Larian releases their first major update to the game (and is already being address with mods), but there isn't a good way to build a battle mage in this game, and I have tried. From splitting points in strength and int, to dual wielding vs 2 handers, to using a staff so that my melee attacks deal magic damage and scale with int (this makes your melee attacks scale with int and do magic damage, however the melee spells still role their CC check against the enemy's physical armor, meaning that a battle mage could never CC an enemy with physical armor with melee spells without assistance). The armor system, and damage scaling simply doesn't allow for it. Again I am sure this will be addressed, and I think their are a few simple ways to do this, so I want to point out a few.

The first/simplest would be to have a talent that lets your spells scale with some percentage of your strength/dexterity. This is boring but works, It's not my ideal choice but if you need a quick fix this is the way to go.

Second would and likely another simple option would be to have all CC scale with the damage type of your weapon. Currently melee skills damage already does this, so it shouldn't be hard to make the CC checks against this too.

Third would be to have a talent that basically reads "When you hit an enemy with a melee attack you gain a buff causing your next spell to deal increased damage". I like this because it encourages you to weave between physical and magical attacks like an battle mage is expected to. 

Fourth would be expanding on the second option but rather you mark the enemy rather than buffing yourself. If these marks can be consumed by your teammates (eg you melee them to apply a debuff than an ally procs the debuff with a spell for bonus damage) you get a really interesting play pattern, but your less of a battle mage and more of an aggressive support class. If only you can proc them then you run into some problems with the UI (reading enemy debuffs isn't easy) but you get a pattern when you want to use whirlwind to hit several enemies at once then an AOE spell to proc each mark. (this is my personal favorite.)

The last option (that I am listing) would require massive changes to the game, but basically have duel scaling on all attacks, where they scale with a percentage of several stats these numbers would be different for each skill or at least be grouped in different ways. (eg. 75% per point of strength, 50% for dexterity, and 25% for intelligence.) You could also make it so that the damage and likelyhood of the CC scale differently (assuming the CC system is changed to be less binary, as mentioned above). 

There are other options, but currently battle mages feel unplayable. I tried the class in every way I could think of but my damage was laughable compared to any character that focused on a single stat or damage type. This is a combination of the stat system and lack of battle mage support, and I can't wait for this to change for my next play though. 

I feel like this post might have come across as negative, and that is not my intention. Larian clearly loved making this game, and it is really amazing. I played the starting zone a dozen times, and loved playing it with friends. They are a small team and I did play the game in early access as well as shortly after launch. I expect many of these grips to be addressed over time, and even if they don't this should not stop you from playing such an amazing game. I haven't even talked about how great their GM system is (nothing comes close to replicating a table top experience as Larian did here). The story and fights are interesting, it gives you lots of freedom within the story, and had LOADS of extra content. These are just the areas that I thought were interesting to talk about that could be improved.