Divinity: Original Sin 2 – Atraso brutal

Brutal Backlog es una característica semirregular en la que el equipo de JDR juega a través de algunos de los juegos no jugados en sus estantes (tanto digitales como físicos), sin tener en cuenta su edad o las limitaciones técnicas de su época. Solo los mejores títulos resistirán el escrutinio actual.

En todos los años que he pasado jugando, el único género en el que nunca he podido entrar son los cRPG. He jugado juegos de rol y juegos exclusivos para PC, pero la idea de pasar decenas de horas en una cámara cenital es algo que siempre me ha desagradado. Sin embargo, con el brote de COVID-19, inesperadamente me encontré con algunas semanas libres. Pensé que la mejor manera de matar dos semanas era con un nuevo juego de rol, así que fui a Steam Store y elegí el primer juego más vendido que aún no estaba en mi biblioteca. Ese juego es Divinity: Original Sin 2.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 lanzado en 2017 con gran éxito de crítica. Se promociona a sí mismo como un retorno a la forma para el género cRPG y, lo que es más importante, el equivalente en videojuegos de Dungeons and Dragons. Con un cursor reemplazando los dedos gordos de mi amigo y una CPU reemplazando mis dedos delgados, salté a Divinity: Original Sin 2 sin expectativas. 

Sorprendentemente, las escenas de corte “dibujadas a mano” del juego son uno de los aspectos más destacados del juego.

Día uno

Llevo menos de cinco horas en Divinity: Original Sin 2 , pero hasta ahora me gusta mucho el juego. A diferencia de los pocos juegos de rol que he jugado, parece acogedor para los imbéciles como yo. Hay marcadores de misiones, las habilidades no tienen nombres confusos y las misiones en sí tienen sentido. La falta de estas tres cosas es lo que me desanima de juegos como Wasteland 2 y realmente espero que siga siendo tan sencillo como lo es ahora.

Aparte de la simplicidad de todo lo que he jugado hasta ahora, la otra cosa que me hace disfrutar el juego es la escritura. Me recuerda mucho a Fallout: New Vegas . Hay suficiente humor para hacer entretenidas las partes aburridas, pero nunca socava la seriedad de lo que está pasando. Esto es algo que no he visto en muchos juegos, y tengo mucha curiosidad por ver si esto continúa a medida que avanza la historia. 

Muchos de los mejores diálogos del juego provienen de Sir Lora, un esqueleto de ardilla con una sorprendente cantidad de desarrollo de personajes.

The main thing that I’m not enjoying right now, however, is the combat. It may be because I haven’t played a turn-based game since XCOM 2, but it seems like I’m losing almost every fight I’m in. I’ve had to turn the difficulty down to the lowest setting to get past the first bit of the game, which hurts me on an emotional level. It’s technically my job to play video games, so I would’ve thought I’d be better at them. I hope that this is all part of the learning process instead of the game being unfair, but I’m sure I’ll figure that out as I play more.

Day Two

I’m a bit further into the game now, and not much has changed about my overall thoughts on anything. However, I’ve really come to appreciate a lot of the little things in the game and can see why people like it so much.

Respecs don’t cost anything, I can pick up items with “telekinesis” instead of manually picking them up, there’s a pre-installed mod that allows autorun and I can talk to pets. None of these things are game-making on their own, but when combined, they’ve helped me enjoy the minute-to-minute gameplay. They’re things that would’ve been added in by mods anyway, so having them in the base game means the developers know what they’re doing and that they care about their players. If the developers care, that means the game is probably going to be good, so I’m excited to see where everything goes from here.

On a less minor and more obligatory note, the graphics in Divinity: Original Sin 2 are really nice. They’re not groundbreaking or anything, but like the other minor things, they help the overall package. The game looks just good enough to keep me from looking at my phone every few minutes, which is always a good thing.

The first act of the game has some of the best visuals in the game.

Day Three

I’m halfway done with Divinity: Original Sin 2 and I’m starting to become a lot more conflicted about the game than I was before. Although most of what I said before is still true, the gameplay and the story have started to become downright unenjoyable.

The story isn’t bad (at least not yet), but it has become cliche. There’s an evil faction that attacks you on sight, an even more evil faction that is written to be the underdog and you’re the hero who’s going to save the universe. Everything is still written well, but there’s only so much writing can do to help a boring plot. I assume that the story will get better as I get closer to the final act, however.

All hope is lost for the gameplay though. Over half of the fights that I’ve played through in the past few hours have been, for lack of a better word, bad. They mostly consist of enemies that outnumber you 3:1, respawn and who stunlock my party with AOE spells. This has resulted in a solid two minutes between each one of my turns in these fights, and more often than not, me losing fights because my party was stunlocked from attacks that cluttered my screen to the point where I couldn’t target the enemy I needed to . I’ve permanently lowered the difficulty down now to get past these fights, and if it keeps up like this, I may break a cardinal rule of game journalism and not finish the game.

A prime example of a terrible boss fight, I can hardly see the outlines of my party let alone control them.

Day Four

I’ve reached the final act of Divinity: Original Sin 2 and I have really mixed feelings about that. The story’s remembered what it’s good at – humour and character development – and there’s been more puzzles instead of fighting. The final area of the game is also designed to promote exploration, which is something that I love.

I’ve also been having a ton of fun respeccing my character. I started my campaign as a necromancer, then became a tank, then an archer and now I’m playing as an Airbender. Because of this, I’ve been enjoying optional combat a lot more. 

However, the main story’s combat sequences still have the same issues as before. I just finished up a fight with a Kraken that took me over two hours to complete. He was only able to be damaged by ranged weapons and his attacks stunlocked my party in one hit. Those attacks also made for such a visually cluttered battleground that I often couldn’t see enemy which part of the Kraken I wanted to target. It’s the most frustrating fight I’ve had in a game in a long time, which when combined with similar fights previously, have made me detest the main questline.

The blood effects after an intense battle almost make up for how cluttered the battles themselves are

On a much lighter note, one of my favourite features of the game is that all of the lines of dialogue are voice acted. Like with the writing, the voice acting reminds me a lot of Fallout: New Vegas. This is strangely what’s pushing me to complete the game when the combat makes me want to give up.

Day Five

I just finished up the main storyline, and although there’s still a few more quests for me to finish up, I’m calling the game quits. Unfortunately, the final act of the game didn’t fix any of the issues I’ve been having with the game since the start. The gameplay remained frustrating and the story continued to be cliche.

Nothing got worse in the final part of the game, though. The writing of the last few encounters of the game was phenomenal, there were a ton of small gameplay quirks that made me smile and the graphics kept me glued to my screen in between battles. I also respecced my character and had a lot of fun with the fights in between boss battles, but sadly those fights were too rare to make me want to continue playing the game past the last boss.

Despite a terrible final act, this five-second walk across a bridge was really cool.

Final Verdict

As someone who’s unfamiliar with the cRPG genre, Divinity: Original Sin 2 has been an experience that I’m not sure I’ll ever seek out again. Although the game has solid writing and gameplay variety, the trite story and frustrating boss battles made it hard to enjoy. After the first few hours, I was playing the game solely to write this piece, which makes it hard to recommend to anyone who isn’t either very bored or very desperate for another game to play during quarantine.