Recently I’ve discovered the joy of CRPGs, having previously only dabbled in them without spending any significant time on the genre.
With Baldur’s Gate 2 just around the corner, which I’m sure many of us are hyped for, I wanted to try a similar CRPG to get a feel for whether I’m going to want to play it. Enter DOS2; this game is made by Larian Studios, the same studio making BG2, and is an absolutely incredible game.
From the graphics, which are stunning even 6 years on from release, to the combat which makes you think about your moves in a manner similar to how you might do in a game like chess, and best of all stories which are for the most part genuinely interesting. I frequently found myself surprised at events / characters / quests I found throughout the world, even small things like hearing someone screaming nearby then discovering they had been torn to pieces by voidwoken.
I recently just finished Act I and just started Act II but wanted to share a bit of love for this game as it is an absolute masterpiece with a well deserved 95% positive rating with 144k reviews on steam.
Please share your experience with DOS2 and whether or not you have fully completed the game!
The co-op is wildly underrated. Amazing game to play together.
My wife is not an RPG player and it’s her favorite game of all time.
Only problem I have with the series is that the average battle takes around half an hour. Wish there was a way to speed that up. But fun games with awesome graphics no doubt.
I typically play video games for an hour a night. This can be woefully inadequate for DoS as all I may accomplish is a single battle.
I’m one of those who doesn’t get the praise.
It’s probably just me, but I’ve always felt like if you’re not going to hold the player’s hand, then it’s important to be intuitive. DOS2…is anything BUT intuitive; not only is the game open-ended, the way forward isn’t always clear. Some early fights are difficult enough that you might assume it’s a beef gate, when it’s actually required to proceed and you just need to cheese it.
For me, it might be because the RPG mechanics aren’t familiar to me. I picked up Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous and fuckin’ loved both of those games, but Pathfinder is a game system I’m familiar with. Maybe since Baldur’s Gate 3 uses a variant of 5th edition D&D, it’ll click for me.
500 hours in and a couple of play throughs. There’s so many different ways to progress it’s wild. Every time was different.
Trompdoy forever
It’s an incredible game, but it took me something like 20 hours just to finish the first act, and I just don’t have the patience anymore for a 100+ hour long RPG. The combat is really good overall, but I didn’t like that movement and attacks use the same pool of AP. Compared to something like XCOM, this forces you to be very static since moving is basically wasting an attack, or it makes movement abilities like jump and the likes extremely OP.
Speaking as someone who really enjoyed DOS2, I do have plenty of issues with its mechanics, with the movement ability problem you mention right in the thick of it.
Once you learn the game systems a bit, you will always gravitate towards a similar set of skills. Mobility is so important in the game that you will frequently find yourself in situations where your character’s survival depends on it (and the AI abuses these skills constantly). So everyone gets a jump skill, two if it fits the build - and many of the jump skills are just teleports with rider effects, so everyone’s teleporting around. All builds tend to gravitate towards more damage, because you can’t apply CC without nuking their armour down first, and CC trivialises fights when it comes into play. Optimisation isn’t straightforward, and skills aren’t really on an equal footing. Maximising Warfare is how you become the best Necromancer, and the best Rogue, and the best Warrior, and the best Archer. Meanwhile, all the other skills (with the notable exception of Summoning) you can generally just leave between 2-5 to unlock their respective abilities, regardless of your build.
The ultimate end-game of this is that loads of characters end up feeling very similar, even if they appear to do very different things on the surface. Once you get past much of Act 2 there’s very little variation in how you play the game and approach combat, and the story becomes the main driver for completion even as the core gameplay loop stagnates. I think I completed the game on my fourth attempt, but that was largely through my stubbornness rather than other factors.
I think the only dumb reason I stopped playing after 25 hours was just not having a convenient storage chest as I tend to be a hoarder in games.
I even went as far as figuring out how to make a mod to improve the storage chest.
My thought was to see if I could edit the ship’s chest to show a bigger screen of items and have either tabs or separaters for the name type.
Anyways if I were to replay it knowing that I shouldn’t just try to pick up every crate and scrap I see I would likely get farther.
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Yeah, I just finished the game, and inventory management was probably my number one gripe. Hours were spent micromanaging all the luggage. I had the same experience with the gift bag. If I had it to do over, I’d go Lone Wolf, just to simplify the logistics.
One of my favourite games and the only reason I purchased the Early Access of Baldura Gate 3.
Wish I could play it for the first time again. Have fun!:)
Wife and I couldn’t even finish act one. Hated it, don’t get the praise.
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I didn’t say we were bad at it mate, I said we didn’t like it. A game shouldn’t have a “threshold” to get into it. It should just be fun. We stopped playing because it wasn’t fun.
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I mean, you did say you hated it and “didn’t get the praise”. I don’t know how else to interpret that than calling it bad.
But also, I disagree that games shouldn’t need a threshold to get into them. Some games simply have depth that can’t be instantly expressed as soon as you start playing.
Speaking of CRPGs, I just played Baldur’s Gate 1 for the first time, funnily enough. It was a great game which is not exactly a controversial opinion but I wasn’t expecting it to be so fucking funny also. It was very very very hard though.
I also downloaded DOS2 but it felt like I needed a breather after BG so I’ll get to it when I can commit some time to it.
Have you tried BG2 yet? It’s on another level entirely. BG1 is more of an action RPG. BG2 takes same amount of action and throws on a great story, much more developed characters, and some of the best side questing in any CRPG
I like BG1 and all, and it has some great moments, but in my opinion it pales in comparison to the second. Just don’t be put off by the length of the starting dungeon.
Irenicus is one of the best video game antagonists ever and David Warner put in an all-time great VA performance, too.
I haven’t! I’m going to get to it before I get BG3 for sure.
3 friends and I played this. They all liked it I did not. It felt like a shopping simulator.
How quickly gear became obsolete in DOS2 is a super valid criticism. No loot, no matter how unique, ever felt special because you knew as soon as you leveled up there’d be better at the merchants.
Since Baldur’s Gate 3 is built on a framework of D&D 5e, however, there should be a lot less shopping - upgrades are rare in 5th edition and almost always found while adventuring instead of bought from stores. Good news for anyone who hates shopping!
It’s not just the shopping part of it but also the way unique items with unique effects get deprecated so fast you barely get any use out of them. It’s a damn shame.
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Both of my playthroughs were completed before that feature was added.
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Gonna have to wait until after BG3!
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I wanted to like this game but I found the combat to be really tedious and the story felt dull. I hope BG3 takes it to another level.
Having just finished DOS2, and played a ton of early access BG3 as well, I think BG3 really does take it to another level. It does a better job with immersion, I think, which engages you more in the story and characters. Based on what I’ve played so far, they’ve managed to do that without sacrificing any of the complexity of DOS. We’ll see how fleshed out the rest of it is soon, but I’m uncharacteristically optimistic.
I love CRPGs and was excited when I got recommended this game - it got a lot of praise. Unfortunately, I found it to be tedious and overall uninteresting. That wouldn’t be worth mentioning if this game wasn’t on every top-rpgs-of-all-time list… I honestly don’t get it and I am confused.
Personal taste is always a factor. I’m curious, though - which CRPGs do you consider less tedious/more interesting?
I enjoyed both Baldur’s Gates, Planescape Torment, Pillars of Eternity, Arcanum, Gothic, I don’t know, pretty much RPGs across the board I think.
That’s a solid list, though I’m surprised to see Pillars up there. Gave both 1 and 2 really serious tries, tens of hours each, and just couldn’t get through them. Flat characters and uninspired world, I felt. I even like Critical Role but found their performance in PoE2 phoned in.
Yes I put it there to point out that I enjoyed even more mediocre games like Pillars more than Divinity. Thus my confusion.
I liked the first game more. The introduction of armour bars in DOS2 made each fight a huge slog; I understand the intention of promoting strategic thinking, but it just felt un-fun to me. Also, I liked the light hearted nature of DOS1’s story more.
For me it was the other way around, I liked the combat in 2 a lot more, because 1 felt way more random. In DOS2, status effects are more predictable, in 1 you can get really lucky or unlucky with status effects hitting or missing, leading to more reloading and “save-scumming” (or maybe we were just bad lol)
