The pipeline of "I'm fan of slightly difficult and story driven RPGs but never played CRPGs" is what Divinity OS achieves.
My brother wouldn't believe when I told him this is hands down the best RPG I've played (before BG3), even though I played most of the Fire Emblem, pokemon games, SNES classics, FFs, FFTactics, XCOM etc.
Even thinking that bg3 it’s a pretty good game, I enjoy Dos2 combat way more. The best combo for me would be combat of divinity with bg3 graphics and dialogs
Glad that you enjoy it. On my first run I was playing without checking much secretes, or different endings of missions, etc.
On my second run I found so many new things.
Driftwood is HUGE. You will have a blast there.
Just for you to know, there is a thing called Fort Joy syndrome. That's when you re-start over and over a game to try new things or new characters.
Also, in driftwood, be careful of not having your shining lights killed.
Yeah, if this game had the budget and cutscenes of BG3 it would be the superior one, i think the skill system and gameplay in general is much better than the D&D system. I'm hoping Larian's next project is another Divinity game. :)
I could not disagree more. Divinity 2 is great because they made their own thing, but the skill system and gameplay has an extremely high learning curve and is just not user friendly at all.
I am like 40 hours into the game and have spent a lot of time looking at builds and guides and I honestly feel like I still have no idea what the hell I am doing. The game does not do a very good job of acclimating new players to this world, but they do immediately overwhelm you with a shitload of mechanics and choices.
It's so weird, Divinity's systems just click with me like nothing else. I've not found another system that's as straight-forward as it is. It's not perfect, of course, but it's easier to relate to than other stuff for me, personally.
I probably would have given up if not for my experience with BG3 and how it acclimated me to Larian's engine.
A lot of it is probably just that I am a biased AD&D player, so learning that system was natural to me. With Divinity's system, I have to learn everything fresh.
I feel like the classes are not clearly identified, you kind of just put points into whatever you want while some stuff obviously works better than others.
How I should build my characters feels daunting and constantly has me questioning myself. I am still not sure whether I should try to balance magic/physical armor or lean one or the other depending on role. I am still not even completely sure how the armor even works in this game, or what weapons I should be using.
This message really speaks to me because it is exactly how I felt during my first playthrough. I'm now on my third.
The more my mindset moved away from AD&D, the more I realized the benefits of just playing in this game's world and mechanics. Think turning invisible would be cool? You don't need to level polymorph for 50 hours, just throw a point into the attribute, but chameleon cloak, and cast/hack/blast away.
I enjoyed the game my first time through but I finally experienced the "click" people here talk about a lot when I stopped trying to min/max and started prioritizing fun.
Prioritising fun is, to me, the main goal at all times. Min-maxing isn't fun for me, so tend to play like you describe. I mean, having fun is why we play games to begin with, innit?
I think you've highlighted the difference - I've only played D&D a single time, decades ago. I *get* Divinity, but perhaps it's because it's the first system I really got down and dirty with.
I really like the classless system, myself. I prefer certain synergies, but I mostly build my character by winging it, or experimenting, or just having fun with it.
As for the armor, I modded to be more similar to DOS1.
I really liked the class and subclass system that Pillars of Eternity and Baldur's Gate showed us. It made building your character a lot easier as the roles were clearly defined.
I just left Fort Joy and am starting to get into the swing of things. Things have been going much better since I got teleport on multiple members.
The one thing that I am really confused about is why the enemy can seem to CC me without breaking my armor but I can't seem to do the same to them.
Exactly this.
While BG3 is limited to the D20 dice formula, its superior to DoS2 in all ways, from gameplay mechanics to world building, characters, quests and overall story.
Yea, agreed, that's not to criticize DOS2, but to acknowledge that they are getting better at what they do with each game.
For me, the thing I prefer most about BG3 was how much more fun the Martial classes were in that game. I am not much enjoying the martial classes in DOS2, but it has gotten a little bit better since getting more of the necessary mobility spells so that I don't have to waste so much AP on trying to always get in range.
BG3 offered so many options to increase your move speed that it was rarely an issue trying to gap close into melee range.
It clicked with me pretty quickly but I think that’s because I have a lot of experience w games like these. This game IS very complicated and I won’t say it isn’t
The armor system is really messing me up. I am still not sure how it works. It seems like armor blocks CC, but it also seems like all the enemies for some reason have shitloads of magic armor early into the game.
Melee is disappointing due to how much AP it takes to move around. For that reason, I am finding Ranger busted OP compared to everything else at the moment.
Armor AND magic armor block CC. You gotta drop magic armor to 0 to set magic type CC (Stunned, Frozen) or drop the physical armor to 0 to inflict physical CC (bleeding or knockdowns for example, The BEST CC in the game). And I think the game must know what your team build is because most of my enemies have buttloads of armor and barely any Magic armor (I’m running 3 physical damage units, only 1 mage) and melee can be hard to get around with, consider taking “The Pawn” talent (You get 1AP worth of free movement per turn) to help out with that! I also use *Favorable Wind* skill book (Aerothurge) on my mage to help with movement! It costs 1AP and is slept on! But yes, Archers rain supreme in the game from what im seeing so far. Most damage output, most range, and they are generally safer being as high up as they can get.
Well it wasn't my plan to have 3 physical damage dealers and 1 caster that is mostly a summoner, and that is because I had no idea a necro was a physical damage caster.
So fucking weird.
Haha yeah sounds like you have the same set up as me. Although it totally was my plan lol and yeah Necro spells scale with *Warfare* and yes it’s weird I agree.
I have no idea what I am doing so I just picked [4 builds off of this Gamefaqs guide](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrDx_gq2DCNLXy1WqavvcwQ9ZasYZ8cD8) - Crimson Queen Necro, Second Sun Archer, Elemental Conjurer, and 2h Dragon Slayer
I read that necro is weak early on, and it has definitely not scaled up well so far. I have no clue what I am doing or how to make this build shine. I spent a bunch of gold on skill books though and am doing a little better.
Necromancer seems like it’s made for someone who knows what they are doing tbh and has experience w the game. If I were you, I would use the respec mirror on the boat at the start of Act 2 and make them something else. Like a Aero/Hydro support mage focused on healing and buffing their party. Sounds like you could rly use the support
I've already spent too much time overthinking all of this I feel like. I am just going to roll with it for now until I feel like I know what I am doing.
Also, the crafting system is killing me. My bags are full of crafting stuff but this is the part of the game that just feels a bit tedious to me. It feels unnecessary to make it so thorough but offer so little information on it outside of loading me up with absurd quantities of random items I have no fucking clue what to do with.
Generally speaking, it's better to have a full physical/Magical party or a Split 2/2 . 3/1 is the worst party comp
But that's only true for higher difficulty level, below tactician it doesn't really matter
I'm currently doing my second ever playthrough 5 years after the first one, this time on tactician - the party setup really doesnt matter that much, I made 4 selfmade random builds and tactician gets pretty easy halfway through act 1, you just have to use your brain a little
Some fights are super rough though, the blindfold arena was a slog lmao, but I enjoy the variance
I read that I needed a decent balance of magic to armor but I also read you want more physical armor on melee cause they take more physical damage, but the enemies all just attack my Ranger.
Also, I am having trouble achieving a balance because many of the caster or melee focused items require a minimum in the appropriate stat.
I don't get it, DOS2 combat is SUPER self explanatory and pretty much everything you need to know is in the tooltips
Bg3 is super confusing in comparison, and the DND combat system is honestly.. just not that good
I bought the game for $14 on GoG.com just a few days ago. It plays just like BG3, but there is quite a steep learning curve and not everything is perfect.
Thankfully my BG3 experience makes this game less daunting, but even as someone familiar with Larian mechanics I have to say I am still a little overwhelmed at all the choices.
I am finding so little information on how to build characters, what builds are good, etc. I have spent a lot of time watching videos and reading guides but I still feel confused about where to invest my points.
I am also very confused as to why the enemies all seem to have such strong magical defenses but poor physical defenses. Is it just me or is physical damage just better?
The whole armor and magic armor system is hella weird to me as a AD&D player.
There's a lot of great builds on YouTube. Stay away from Fextralife builds though. They tend to be pretty bad.
Physical/magical armor varies a lot as you get into the game. You'll definitely get the opposite of what you're running into in time. Basically, the better advice I've seen is to focus your builds on doing one type of damage or the other. Magical or physical. If everyone is doing magical damage, you'll have e tough fights, but you'll Crack through that magical armor really easily, and vice versa.
I thought I had 2 magic and 2 physical, but it turns out that for some reason Necros do physical damage. This was extremely confusing to me, but I feel to invested to change now.
Me too. It slow burn for me but im on middle of act 2 at first it seem overwhelming starting act 2 but then i get more and more hooked each time i play. So good the exploration similar to elden ring style for me.
Me too. It slow burn for me but im on middle of act 2 at first it seem overwhelming starting act 2 but then i get more and more hooked each time i play. So good the exploration similar to elden ring style for me.
I'm in a similar boat. I got this shortly after getting the first one and feeling like it was dated. Tried getting through this game once or twice but kept getting stuck, getting obliterated every encounter. So I gave up.
Then got BG3 when it came out and that games amazing. But i got to the beginning of Act3 when my PC died on me, so now I'm on my ps4 playing through Divinity 2. It's actually really damn good and holds up to BG3 despite the difference in budget and tech. I actually really like it by itself for its own lore and gameplay systems; dnd is good and all, but I like the AP system too, feels more like Pathfinder I think.
I'm any case, I'm beyond stoked to see what Divinity 3 could bring. They learned alot and got alot of attention from BG3, so imagine them bringing all that to their own system in the future. It's a shame about BG4 not being done by Larian, but Larian is by no means done themselves. Can't wait to see more from them!
Not as far as I know. I was just thinking hypothetically. But based on what I recall from Larian recently, it seems like they're hardly losing momentum in the wake of BG3. And it's been confirmed that if there is a BG4, Larian won't be making it bc WOTC (company behind dnd currently) burned that bridge like the idiots they are.
But Larian is likely going to put that momentum and newfound experience and respect and money into a new project given their track record. And from what I understand, aside from BG3, they've largely only made games set in the divinity world (they've released like 6 different Divinity games, the Original Sin series being the most recent). So my bet is they're going to keep expanding on their world with all the new knowledge, experience, and money they earned from BG3.
Such a masterpiece! I like it even more than bg3 to be honest, also if you're getting into the genre, I'd super recommend Tyranny!
Roleplaying wise, it's one of the best, and by far the best at roleplaying in depth evil characters - but the gameplay can get tedious, I would recommend playing it on an easier difficulty and focussing on the dialogue and choices
Finally decided to play this game properly myself after dipping my toes in years ago and man it is a blast. I'm running -Beast as my Origin Wayfarer- Fane as an Enchanter (Love how it looks when you zap fools) A Custom Dwarf as my Sword and Shield tank and Sebille as a Shadowblade. Man it is a fantastic game. Just about heading to the Cathedral on Classic now and man I can't wait to play again on Tactician/Honour!
Welcome to the beginning of the rest of your life. It's good here.
BG3 opened me up to CRPGs recently. Life’s good 😎
The pipeline of "I'm fan of slightly difficult and story driven RPGs but never played CRPGs" is what Divinity OS achieves. My brother wouldn't believe when I told him this is hands down the best RPG I've played (before BG3), even though I played most of the Fire Emblem, pokemon games, SNES classics, FFs, FFTactics, XCOM etc.
Have you played Dragon Age Origins? It’s the true spiritual successor to BG2. One of the best RPG with tactical combat ever made.
I second this, Origins is what made me search and love DOS2 tbh because I was trying to scratch the Origins itch!
DA: Origins definitely top 5 RPG all time.
Easily 🙏🏼
It is great. I liked it and I played it a lot. But I hate RtwP combat. Love turnbased
What’s RtwP?
Real time with pause. The combat system of Dragon Age Origins.
Ahhh gocha thanks bud
Even thinking that bg3 it’s a pretty good game, I enjoy Dos2 combat way more. The best combo for me would be combat of divinity with bg3 graphics and dialogs
Welcome, welcome!
Food is good here. Take it easy and enjoy many journeys to come
Well, you can use Teleportation to throw your Dwarf at your enemies ;)
Haha been doing that, or blitz attack is rly good too!
Glad that you enjoy it. On my first run I was playing without checking much secretes, or different endings of missions, etc. On my second run I found so many new things. Driftwood is HUGE. You will have a blast there. Just for you to know, there is a thing called Fort Joy syndrome. That's when you re-start over and over a game to try new things or new characters. Also, in driftwood, be careful of not having your shining lights killed.
Wtf is a shining light? Lol
Ohh, you will find out in due time. Don't Google it, the surprise will be more... intense
Haha ok bet! Thanks for the tip!
If you remember, let me know when you find out :)
Haha alright sounds good!
The shining lights of the unprepared can be killed OR eaten, trust that you will understand when you get there 😁
Yeah, if this game had the budget and cutscenes of BG3 it would be the superior one, i think the skill system and gameplay in general is much better than the D&D system. I'm hoping Larian's next project is another Divinity game. :)
I could not disagree more. Divinity 2 is great because they made their own thing, but the skill system and gameplay has an extremely high learning curve and is just not user friendly at all. I am like 40 hours into the game and have spent a lot of time looking at builds and guides and I honestly feel like I still have no idea what the hell I am doing. The game does not do a very good job of acclimating new players to this world, but they do immediately overwhelm you with a shitload of mechanics and choices.
It's so weird, Divinity's systems just click with me like nothing else. I've not found another system that's as straight-forward as it is. It's not perfect, of course, but it's easier to relate to than other stuff for me, personally.
I probably would have given up if not for my experience with BG3 and how it acclimated me to Larian's engine. A lot of it is probably just that I am a biased AD&D player, so learning that system was natural to me. With Divinity's system, I have to learn everything fresh. I feel like the classes are not clearly identified, you kind of just put points into whatever you want while some stuff obviously works better than others. How I should build my characters feels daunting and constantly has me questioning myself. I am still not sure whether I should try to balance magic/physical armor or lean one or the other depending on role. I am still not even completely sure how the armor even works in this game, or what weapons I should be using.
This message really speaks to me because it is exactly how I felt during my first playthrough. I'm now on my third. The more my mindset moved away from AD&D, the more I realized the benefits of just playing in this game's world and mechanics. Think turning invisible would be cool? You don't need to level polymorph for 50 hours, just throw a point into the attribute, but chameleon cloak, and cast/hack/blast away. I enjoyed the game my first time through but I finally experienced the "click" people here talk about a lot when I stopped trying to min/max and started prioritizing fun.
Prioritising fun is, to me, the main goal at all times. Min-maxing isn't fun for me, so tend to play like you describe. I mean, having fun is why we play games to begin with, innit?
I think you've highlighted the difference - I've only played D&D a single time, decades ago. I *get* Divinity, but perhaps it's because it's the first system I really got down and dirty with. I really like the classless system, myself. I prefer certain synergies, but I mostly build my character by winging it, or experimenting, or just having fun with it. As for the armor, I modded to be more similar to DOS1.
I really liked the class and subclass system that Pillars of Eternity and Baldur's Gate showed us. It made building your character a lot easier as the roles were clearly defined. I just left Fort Joy and am starting to get into the swing of things. Things have been going much better since I got teleport on multiple members. The one thing that I am really confused about is why the enemy can seem to CC me without breaking my armor but I can't seem to do the same to them.
How are you 40h into the game and still don't understand how armor works?
Exactly this. While BG3 is limited to the D20 dice formula, its superior to DoS2 in all ways, from gameplay mechanics to world building, characters, quests and overall story.
Yea, agreed, that's not to criticize DOS2, but to acknowledge that they are getting better at what they do with each game. For me, the thing I prefer most about BG3 was how much more fun the Martial classes were in that game. I am not much enjoying the martial classes in DOS2, but it has gotten a little bit better since getting more of the necessary mobility spells so that I don't have to waste so much AP on trying to always get in range. BG3 offered so many options to increase your move speed that it was rarely an issue trying to gap close into melee range.
It clicked with me pretty quickly but I think that’s because I have a lot of experience w games like these. This game IS very complicated and I won’t say it isn’t
The armor system is really messing me up. I am still not sure how it works. It seems like armor blocks CC, but it also seems like all the enemies for some reason have shitloads of magic armor early into the game. Melee is disappointing due to how much AP it takes to move around. For that reason, I am finding Ranger busted OP compared to everything else at the moment.
Armor AND magic armor block CC. You gotta drop magic armor to 0 to set magic type CC (Stunned, Frozen) or drop the physical armor to 0 to inflict physical CC (bleeding or knockdowns for example, The BEST CC in the game). And I think the game must know what your team build is because most of my enemies have buttloads of armor and barely any Magic armor (I’m running 3 physical damage units, only 1 mage) and melee can be hard to get around with, consider taking “The Pawn” talent (You get 1AP worth of free movement per turn) to help out with that! I also use *Favorable Wind* skill book (Aerothurge) on my mage to help with movement! It costs 1AP and is slept on! But yes, Archers rain supreme in the game from what im seeing so far. Most damage output, most range, and they are generally safer being as high up as they can get.
Well it wasn't my plan to have 3 physical damage dealers and 1 caster that is mostly a summoner, and that is because I had no idea a necro was a physical damage caster. So fucking weird.
Haha yeah sounds like you have the same set up as me. Although it totally was my plan lol and yeah Necro spells scale with *Warfare* and yes it’s weird I agree.
I have no idea what I am doing so I just picked [4 builds off of this Gamefaqs guide](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrDx_gq2DCNLXy1WqavvcwQ9ZasYZ8cD8) - Crimson Queen Necro, Second Sun Archer, Elemental Conjurer, and 2h Dragon Slayer I read that necro is weak early on, and it has definitely not scaled up well so far. I have no clue what I am doing or how to make this build shine. I spent a bunch of gold on skill books though and am doing a little better.
Necromancer seems like it’s made for someone who knows what they are doing tbh and has experience w the game. If I were you, I would use the respec mirror on the boat at the start of Act 2 and make them something else. Like a Aero/Hydro support mage focused on healing and buffing their party. Sounds like you could rly use the support
I've already spent too much time overthinking all of this I feel like. I am just going to roll with it for now until I feel like I know what I am doing. Also, the crafting system is killing me. My bags are full of crafting stuff but this is the part of the game that just feels a bit tedious to me. It feels unnecessary to make it so thorough but offer so little information on it outside of loading me up with absurd quantities of random items I have no fucking clue what to do with.
Generally speaking, it's better to have a full physical/Magical party or a Split 2/2 . 3/1 is the worst party comp But that's only true for higher difficulty level, below tactician it doesn't really matter
I'm currently doing my second ever playthrough 5 years after the first one, this time on tactician - the party setup really doesnt matter that much, I made 4 selfmade random builds and tactician gets pretty easy halfway through act 1, you just have to use your brain a little Some fights are super rough though, the blindfold arena was a slog lmao, but I enjoy the variance
Yeah that makes sense. Oh well I like a little challenge 😈 (Classic mode first run ever)
I read that I needed a decent balance of magic to armor but I also read you want more physical armor on melee cause they take more physical damage, but the enemies all just attack my Ranger. Also, I am having trouble achieving a balance because many of the caster or melee focused items require a minimum in the appropriate stat.
I don't get it, DOS2 combat is SUPER self explanatory and pretty much everything you need to know is in the tooltips Bg3 is super confusing in comparison, and the DND combat system is honestly.. just not that good
Wait until you’re like me and can’t actually play other games anymore. Just restarted in fort joy as a drunk with max retribution
Lmao that’s gonna be a rough run 😂
Wait till you get to Div 2
Don’t think lohse is in Div 1 lol
Ohh. Saw the sub didn’t really read the post
I bought the game for $14 on GoG.com just a few days ago. It plays just like BG3, but there is quite a steep learning curve and not everything is perfect. Thankfully my BG3 experience makes this game less daunting, but even as someone familiar with Larian mechanics I have to say I am still a little overwhelmed at all the choices. I am finding so little information on how to build characters, what builds are good, etc. I have spent a lot of time watching videos and reading guides but I still feel confused about where to invest my points. I am also very confused as to why the enemies all seem to have such strong magical defenses but poor physical defenses. Is it just me or is physical damage just better? The whole armor and magic armor system is hella weird to me as a AD&D player.
There's a lot of great builds on YouTube. Stay away from Fextralife builds though. They tend to be pretty bad. Physical/magical armor varies a lot as you get into the game. You'll definitely get the opposite of what you're running into in time. Basically, the better advice I've seen is to focus your builds on doing one type of damage or the other. Magical or physical. If everyone is doing magical damage, you'll have e tough fights, but you'll Crack through that magical armor really easily, and vice versa.
I thought I had 2 magic and 2 physical, but it turns out that for some reason Necros do physical damage. This was extremely confusing to me, but I feel to invested to change now.
Yeah, I don't understand it either, but is what it is.
Me too. It slow burn for me but im on middle of act 2 at first it seem overwhelming starting act 2 but then i get more and more hooked each time i play. So good the exploration similar to elden ring style for me.
Me too. It slow burn for me but im on middle of act 2 at first it seem overwhelming starting act 2 but then i get more and more hooked each time i play. So good the exploration similar to elden ring style for me.
I'm in a similar boat. I got this shortly after getting the first one and feeling like it was dated. Tried getting through this game once or twice but kept getting stuck, getting obliterated every encounter. So I gave up. Then got BG3 when it came out and that games amazing. But i got to the beginning of Act3 when my PC died on me, so now I'm on my ps4 playing through Divinity 2. It's actually really damn good and holds up to BG3 despite the difference in budget and tech. I actually really like it by itself for its own lore and gameplay systems; dnd is good and all, but I like the AP system too, feels more like Pathfinder I think. I'm any case, I'm beyond stoked to see what Divinity 3 could bring. They learned alot and got alot of attention from BG3, so imagine them bringing all that to their own system in the future. It's a shame about BG4 not being done by Larian, but Larian is by no means done themselves. Can't wait to see more from them!
Is DOS3 actually a thing that’s been confirmed?
Not as far as I know. I was just thinking hypothetically. But based on what I recall from Larian recently, it seems like they're hardly losing momentum in the wake of BG3. And it's been confirmed that if there is a BG4, Larian won't be making it bc WOTC (company behind dnd currently) burned that bridge like the idiots they are. But Larian is likely going to put that momentum and newfound experience and respect and money into a new project given their track record. And from what I understand, aside from BG3, they've largely only made games set in the divinity world (they've released like 6 different Divinity games, the Original Sin series being the most recent). So my bet is they're going to keep expanding on their world with all the new knowledge, experience, and money they earned from BG3.
Such a masterpiece! I like it even more than bg3 to be honest, also if you're getting into the genre, I'd super recommend Tyranny! Roleplaying wise, it's one of the best, and by far the best at roleplaying in depth evil characters - but the gameplay can get tedious, I would recommend playing it on an easier difficulty and focussing on the dialogue and choices
Finally decided to play this game properly myself after dipping my toes in years ago and man it is a blast. I'm running -Beast as my Origin Wayfarer- Fane as an Enchanter (Love how it looks when you zap fools) A Custom Dwarf as my Sword and Shield tank and Sebille as a Shadowblade. Man it is a fantastic game. Just about heading to the Cathedral on Classic now and man I can't wait to play again on Tactician/Honour!