Since we already have a popular thread for reviewing movies, I thought it is only appropriate to have a thread for game reviews as well considering a lot of us are gamers.
Perhaps we can create a Digit forum curator on Steam and feature reviews there.
Reviews must be posted in the following format to distinguish them from comments or ordinary posts.
Notes:
- Keep reviews as detailed as possible. Anything more than two sentences should be good.
- Preferably keep rating out of 10.
- Conclusion should preferably be one line.
Title: Sekiro - Shadows Die Twice
Release date: March 2019
Genre: Action RPG
Rating: 9/10
Hours played: 86.6 hrs
Review:
I have been a huge Dark Souls fan since I played Dark Souls 1 and as such I have played all installments in the Dark Souls series, even completing them multiple times. So, when From Software announced Sekiro, I was obviously interested in seeing what Miyazaki was bringing to the table this time. The game is set in feudal Japan and follows a nameless shinobi, simply called the one-armed wolf, the eponymous Sekiro. After losing his arm in an "unfair" duel, it's replaced with a prosthetic with augmentations that allow you to enhance your already formidable combat abilities. The story follows Sekiro rescuing the Divine Heir, whom he was entrusted as a body guard since the latter's childhood. He has to make his way through Ashina castle and it's hazardous surroundings, as the Ashina clan prepares for war against an unknown enemy.
Unsurprisingly, Sekiro is very similar to Dark Souls with some major shakeup in the game mechanics. The resurrection mechanic makes a comeback. Upon death, Sekiro will respawn at the last Sculptor's idol (bonfire) he had communed with. On top of that, unlike Dark Souls, you can also choose to resurrect immediately after death a maximum of three times when fully upgraded, making it a good mechanic to de-aggro enemies if you are getting overwhelmed. This is highlighted by the availability of an in-game item that allows you to kill yourself whenever you please. Also your character has infinite stamina, therefore you can sprint indefinitely and don't have to rationing in stamina when in combat. Your primary weapon is the unbreakable katana "Kusabimaru" with the prosthetic as your secondary weapon of sorts. The prosthetic can be upgraded with tools such that allow you to shoot shurikens, an axe that can break shields, a flame thrower, a steel umbrella that can block most attacks, and many more. There is also a skill tree like levelling mechanic instead of the skill point system in Dark Souls.
One of the most major differences from Dark Souls is the combat. Since you no longer have to worry about depleting stamina, you instead have to manage only two resources: vitality and posture. Vitality being health, if this reaches zero, you die. The second is posture, which measures how much damage you block before you experience a "guard break". When guard broken, you will stagger, possibly allowing the enemy to get a free hit to your vitality. However, you can do the same to enemies. Relentlessly attacking enemies allows you to keep damaging their posture, when enemies are guard broken, you can kill them instantly via a death blow, regardless of how much health they have left. This also applies to bosses, therefore, it is crucial to keep attacking relentlessly if you want to end the fight fast.
The story is typical Miyazaki bullshit (genius?). A lot of the story is vague just as the storyline of Dark Souls, requiring you to fill in the blanks with your own imagination. Nevertheless, the story and setting are still intricately crafted. Graphics and level design is king here, as is typical with any From Software game. Levels are intricately designed with a pretty high level of detail and intuitively designed making Ashina castle and it's surrounding areas fun to navigate.
Conclusion: A must play, at least for fans of Dark Souls. Challenging combat that requires actual skill and good, if vague, storyline.
The general consensus from critics and users is that the gameplay is good and story is bad. Well I have the complete opposite opinion. To me the story is good and the overall gameplay is bad. There is also a common misconception where people believe this game is the second part of a trilogy (the first one being HR). That's not true. Just look up "Deus Ex Universe announced" on google and you'll see that this game was meant to be the start of a series of games. There is a big difference between "trilogy" and "series of games". The other misconception is that DXMD is cut in half to make the third part of the trilogy. That's not true either. DXMD does have a cliffhanger ending, there are DLCs that are part of the base campaign, but DXMD's base campaign is a full game with a self contained story and it is actually longer than Human Revolution.
Gameplay
The individual gameplay mechanics have certainly been improved from HR. Controls are fluid and responsive. It's fun walking around, climbing stuff, inspecting the environment, picking up objects, etc. The level designs are amazing, have lots of verticality and are incredibly detailed. Now this is where my praise for gameplay ends.
Fans of Deus Ex would call this game an "immersive sim". Mainstream/casual gamers would look at this game as an action/FPS/stealth hybrid. While the original DX and DXHR were immersive sims, I would say DXMD has 30% of immersive sim content and 70% of walking simulator content. This is what I mean by "overall gameplay is bad". I wanted an immersive sim but I got a walking simulator. There is absolutely no challenge in the game. The most difficult encounter in the game was hilariously at the end of the tutorial level. The game lacks balance and Jensen is hilariously overpowered. You can takedown every enemy in the game with the 100% guaranteed melee takedown and without using a biocell since the energy regenerates enough for a single takedown every time. One multitool can be used to hack a Level 1 terminal or a Level 5 terminal. See the issue with gameplay balance? You encountered an electric floor? There is a vent on the left. You encountered a laser grid? There is a vent on the right. Resources are distributed around the level with no thought or calculation and they are abundant. The original DX and DXHR presented obstacles that you actually had to make an effort or improvisation to beat. In DXMD you can just cloak through the entire level.
The amount of hostiles and obstacles to "beat" are much lesser than the content such as inspecting the environment, reading emails, hacking terminals/keypads, etc. Now this is why most players found the story to be disappointing because they never played the walking sim part of the game! You need to spend more than a minute inspecting a single room rather than breeze through it in 5 seconds. Most of your time will be spent in exploring the environment. As a tip set all the HUD elements to timed fade-out in the options menu for more immersion. If you have played Life is Strange, the game highlights important objects with a text when you hover over them and the player character says something if you interact with it. Now imagine 10 times of that content but without the highlights and no reaction dialogue. That's DXMD. There's a lot of interesting stuff to find in the game and when you understand them and piece all of it together the story is actually pretty good.
Music
The music is on par with HR's but it has more of "ambient" music and less theme music. The ambient soundtracks does elevate the atmosphere and the situation you are in really well.
Graphics/Tech
They made a new engine for this game (Dawn Engine) and while it certainly needs more polish and optimization it is still very impressive. Engine uses a deferred renderer in contrast to the forward renderer used in HR (so turn off MSAA since that's basically equivalent to supersampling). There are high resolution textures and physically based materials everywhere and you could read the text on every object as tiny as a random book's page very clearly. There's lots of unique assets everywhere. There's lots of real physics objects in the levels, the ones you can actually interact with while most other games only have physics objects for fancy (non-interactable) visuals. The game saves everything including the location of the physics objects and even the ragdoll poses of unconscious/dead NPCs. Most other games just make the ragdoll bodies disappear after a while. There's real volumetric lighting here that adds atmosphere to the game's levels. While the environment is top notch, the characters and their animations aren't as great compared to other games but have certainly improved from HR.
Story
This game continues Jensen's storyline from Human Revolution so it is highly recommended that you play HR first. It's also better if you have played the original DX from 2000 as this game has a lot of references to the characters from the original DX and you'll be left wondering if you didn't. While the previous games had pretty straightforward storytelling, this game relies on the player to find clues, understand them and piece them together to really get the story in this game. You won't actually know the main storyline in the game until you finished the campaign, watched the mid-credits scene, understood it and then replayed it. The writing and voice acting are pretty good, but at your first playthrough you won't realise it, you'll have to replay it to see how good it is. Just know that when you are dealing with the Illuminati you'll have to look beyond what meets the eye. While this game takes a different approach to storytelling, overall I would say it's as good as HR's. Saying anything more about the story would be a spoiler but there is an excellent forum post that sums it up well.
Breach
Breach has that one thing that the story campaign lacks - gameplay balance and challenge. I wished the story campaign had Breach's balance and challenge. It also has good music. Everything else about Breach is just bad. The biggest problem is that it requires connection to Square Enix servers which is down half the time. Fortunately when I played, it was online and I was able to get all the achievements. The second biggest problem is timed events. Basically you get a set of (3) challenges to do each day which upon completion gives you rewards. The challenge itself isn't bad but when you exhaust it you'll have to play the next (real life) day. The challenge rewards are important otherwise you'll have a hard time completing the levels. Then the (not detailed) map repeats is obviously boring. And lastly the unpolished deferred renderer doesn't go very well with Breach's aesthetic.
DLCs
There's 3 story DLCs. Desperate measures is part of the main storyline that should have been in the base game. System Rift is like a huge side quest that should have been in the base game. Criminal Past is an independent setting that happens before the events of DXMD but could work as an epilogue to the base campaign (after the credits). Out of these A Criminal Past is certainly interesting and also offers challenge if you go for the using no augs achievement.
Overall
Enjoyed the game for what it was (walking sim)
Disliked the game for what it wasn't (immersive sim)
It's hard to give this game a straight recommendation since Deus Ex was already a niche title and turning MD into a walking sim doesn't help it much. This is not a game for everyone. YMMV.
On a 10 point scale:
DX - 9/10
DX:HR - 9/10 DX:MD - 8/10
DX:IW - 7/10
Original Sin/Original Sin 2
A truly "modern" turn based strategy RPG. There is nothing like this on the market out there. This is a collective review for both games, I'm going to highlight differences between them.
These games are a spinoff from the main series (Divine Divinity, Divinity 2 : Ego Draconis), which wasnt all that popular. Apart from minor references, and sharing the same world, they largely say their own story. Also, these two games arent related to each other at all, in terms of storyline. Overview
OS1 :
You start the game off by creating two characters. OS1 is MEANT to be played in coop, with a friend. So any decisions you make, the other player can agree/disagree in dialogues. You can assign a dialogue AI to your second character in the beginning, if you plan to play alone, or just play them from both perspectives if you want. Regardless of your choice, you will be playing as a party of 4 characters (2 created PCs, and 2 companions). I played both original and enhanced edition. The changes that I have noticed in enhanced edition is that all characters are fully voiced, the main quest is slightly altered and they removed one of my favourite skill.
OS2 :
Difference between OS1 and OS2 is that you arent MEANT to create a character from fresh, you are supposed to choose among one of 6 different characters, while the others can act as companions (3 of them). You can even be an UNDEAD!.. Reason for doing so is, the companion quest of the character u choose, becomes your main quest. Yes, thats right, this game is pretty amazing when it comes to quest structures. Played both original and definitive edition, definitive edition's act 3 has been improved, apart from this no improvement.
Gameplay :
Gameplay is elderscrolls esque, do quests, roam around city, find hidden secrets, pickpocket npcs. It takes some getting used to, but overall its very well crafted world, which REWARDS exploration, unlike *cough cough* pillars of eternity *cough cough*
In OS1, you gradually unlock new areas but you can always go back to towns and cities you have already found. So its more elder scrolls like.
In OS2, each act takes place in different areas, so if you have unfinished quests, you cannot go back to finish them. This is one of my complaints as you do not have a "home" town unlike OS1.
OS2 also has a lot of improvements on the AI system, like for example You cant just steal items from vendors. If you steal something, after a while, vendors are gonna start loooking around for a suspicious person, if they find you they will demand to see your inventory, and if they find their item, you may go to jail (or bribe guards). I had a funny interaction with a coop buddy where I stole an item and put it in my buddy's inventory, he got caught and all hell let loose lol.
Combat :
Yes, combat, the thing that puts off most non turn based players.. Like it or not, OS/2's combat is probably the most polished turn based combat, I've had (apart from FireAxis's XCOM).
OS1 : Each character gets assigned a number of action points (which is determined by your dex stat), and you gain action points per each turn. You use these action points for movement, for basic attacks or for casting skills. There are many ways to utilize your action points to the best potential, like for example :
backstabbing rogue, where movement speed is priorty, increasing the speed attribute provides more movement, per action point.
In this game, each character can gain skills in 8 different schools, as well as a bunch of other skills that gives passive bonuses. Typically you want to have all 4 of your characters complement each other, so having a good party composition is key. They should balance each other's strengths and weaknesses.
Elemental damage plays a major role in this game, and each element's interaction in the environment can change the tide of battle. Example :
Eg1 If you see a fire skeleton, and you cast rain, to make them wet, then cast lightning to stun them (which has increased chance since they are wet), or you can cast chilling wind to freeze them, again since they have increased chance of being frozen because they are wet. Casting a fire skill is a bad idea because the skeleton already has fire resistance and being wet gives them even more fire resistance, effectively making your skills heal them!
Eg2 If your archer strikes a bandit and they are standing on top a blood puddle, you can cast lightning on the puddle to electrocute him, or heat up the blood puddle through fire and make vapors and cast lightning on the vapors to make lightning cloud (AOE electrocution !)
There are many many such interactions possible and it can get overwhelming if you dont take it slowly. But it gives a strategic depth like no other game. Game is well balanced and you will have a lot of fun playing it.
OS2 : Now this game, its very different (for the worse IMO). The armor stat has been completely removed. Now each character has Health, Physical Armor, and Magical Armor. The latter two basically acts as shields. So your Physical attacks will always deplete your enemy's physical armor, only after that its' health will go down.
Why the developers did this ? They said it adds even more depth to the game. IMO ? It completely destroys the balance in the first game. Until you have depleted the armor, you cannot cast any Crowd control spell on the enemy. So essentially, you will have to keep basic attacking enemies until their armor is down, only then u can CC. Now since enemy has 2 different armors, you have to target either physical or magical armor, you should never try to do both! Add to the fact that Physical CC is different than Magical CC. The inclusion of this, makes the above elemental interaction in Original Sin 1 essentially useless because as long as magical armor is depleted, you cannot strategize like above. Mixed damage party is essentially playing the game in hard mode, because you will have to attack two different armors, which SUCKS imo.
Bosses in this game have ridiculous 2000 physical armor, 2000 magic armor. 1000 health, while you have like 200 Magic armor, 200 Physical armor. This game is much more difficult than OS1.
One new addition to combat compared to OS1, is source points and source skills. You gain source points by casting source vampirism on a dead body or a spirit, or you can steal it off other enemies if their magical armor is zero. You use source points to cast source skills which are very powerful "Ultimate" type abilities (similar to Dota 2 character R skill).
I recommend following a build guide from fextralife as being a jack of all trades (like in other RPGs) means a death sentence. Im currently playing as Eternal Warrior
Music :
Nothing to say here, both games have their own style of music. OS1 was made by Kiril Pokrovsky (who died shortly before OS2 went into production). Some tracks are very good, they have the same style of music as Divine Divinity. Unfortunately the enhanced edition has deleted one track that I really liked (Link here).
OS2 music was composed by Borislav Slavov. Has it's own style, very good. Favourite track here.
fitting final battle music !!
StoryLine :
OS1 : Has a pretty laid back storyline, can get serious at times. You are a source hunter who is investigating a town for the murder of a councillor. What I liked about the game was the pacing, you get bits and pieces of clues which gradually reveal the true intent of characters. Plenty of gray areas in this game. Companion quests are pretty small, they learn from your decisions and may even go rogue if pushed too far, but essentially they behave like robots throughout the game.
OS2 : Dialogue occurs in 3rd person for the Main Character instead of first person, in First game. Story is the prime focus in this game, you start off as a sourceror, who has been captured by the Divine Order and sent for execution to Fort Joy. You can see the prime influence of Chris Avellone (lead writer for many hit games like KOTOR2, Dragon age, fallout NV etc) in this game. The choices in this game impact everything, very similar to New Vegas. Companions have a lot more interactions, they may even compete against you in a certain section of the game. There are a lot of factions crucial to the story : The Magisters, The Paladins, The VoidWoken, The Demons, Black Ring, Elves, The Shadow Prince..
How each faction views the other, its damn fascinating and it slowly starts making sense, as you go with the storyline.. Its very similar to New Vegas.. Every choice has consenquence. Infact, I would consider OS2's storyline to outrank my most favourite story RPG (Dragon Age Origins)
Last Words :
Play both, seriously.. I have a lot of hours sunk into these games. Its more fun in coop with a friend.
Verdict :
OS1 :
Story : 6.5/10
Combat : 8/10
Gameplay : 8/10
Music : 8.5/10 OS2 :
Story : 9.5/10 (rank 1 in terms of story for me, 2 belongs to Origins)
Combat : 6.5/10 (maybe I need to git gud)
Gameplay 9/10
Music : 8/10
The general consensus from critics and users is that the gameplay is good and story is bad. Well I have the complete opposite opinion. To me the story is good and the overall gameplay is bad. There is also a common misconception where people believe this game is the second part of a trilogy (the first one being HR). That's not true. Just look up "Deus Ex Universe announced" on google and you'll see that this game was meant to be the start of a series of games. There is a big difference between "trilogy" and "series of games". The other misconception is that DXMD is cut in half to make the third part of the trilogy. That's not true either. DXMD does have a cliffhanger ending, there are DLCs that are part of the base campaign, but DXMD's base campaign is a full game with a self contained story and it is actually longer than Human Revolution.
Gameplay
The individual gameplay mechanics have certainly been improved from HR. Controls are fluid and responsive. It's fun walking around, climbing stuff, inspecting the environment, picking up objects, etc. The level designs are amazing, have lots of verticality and are incredibly detailed. Now this is where my praise for gameplay ends.
Fans of Deus Ex would call this game an "immersive sim". Mainstream/casual gamers would look at this game as an action/FPS/stealth hybrid. While the original DX and DXHR were immersive sims, I would say DXMD has 30% of immersive sim content and 70% of walking simulator content. This is what I mean by "overall gameplay is bad". I wanted an immersive sim but I got a walking simulator. There is absolutely no challenge in the game. The most difficult encounter in the game was hilariously at the end of the tutorial level. The game lacks balance and Jensen is hilariously overpowered. You can takedown every enemy in the game with the 100% guaranteed melee takedown and without using a biocell since the energy regenerates enough for a single takedown every time. One multitool can be used to hack a Level 1 terminal or a Level 5 terminal. See the issue with gameplay balance? You encountered an electric floor? There is a vent on the left. You encountered a laser grid? There is a vent on the right. Resources are distributed around the level with no thought or calculation and they are abundant. The original DX and DXHR presented obstacles that you actually had to make an effort or improvisation to beat. In DXMD you can just cloak through the entire level.
The amount of hostiles and obstacles to "beat" are much lesser than the content such as inspecting the environment, reading emails, hacking terminals/keypads, etc. Now this is why most players found the story to be disappointing because they never played the walking sim part of the game! You need to spend more than a minute inspecting a single room rather than breeze through it in 5 seconds. Most of your time will be spent in exploring the environment. As a tip set all the HUD elements to timed fade-out in the options menu for more immersion. If you have played Life is Strange, the game highlights important objects with a text when you hover over them and the player character says something if you interact with it. Now imagine 10 times of that content but without the highlights and no reaction dialogue. That's DXMD. There's a lot of interesting stuff to find in the game and when you understand them and piece all of it together the story is actually pretty good.
Music
The music is on par with HR's but it has more of "ambient" music and less theme music. The ambient soundtracks does elevate the atmosphere and the situation you are in really well.
Graphics/Tech
They made a new engine for this game (Dawn Engine) and while it certainly needs more polish and optimization it is still very impressive. Engine uses a deferred renderer in contrast to the forward renderer used in HR (so turn off MSAA since that's basically equivalent to supersampling). There are high resolution textures and physically based materials everywhere and you could read the text on every object as tiny as a random book's page very clearly. There's lots of unique assets everywhere. There's lots of real physics objects in the levels, the ones you can actually interact with while most other games only have physics objects for fancy (non-interactable) visuals. The game saves everything including the location of the physics objects and even the ragdoll poses of unconscious/dead NPCs. Most other games just make the ragdoll bodies disappear after a while. There's real volumetric lighting here that adds atmosphere to the game's levels. While the environment is top notch, the characters and their animations aren't as great compared to other games but have certainly improved from HR.
Story
This game continues Jensen's storyline from Human Revolution so it is highly recommended that you play HR first. It's also better if you have played the original DX from 2000 as this game has a lot of references to the characters from the original DX and you'll be left wondering if you didn't. While the previous games had pretty straightforward storytelling, this game relies on the player to find clues, understand them and piece them together to really get the story in this game. You won't actually know the main storyline in the game until you finished the campaign, watched the mid-credits scene, understood it and then replayed it. The writing and voice acting are pretty good, but at your first playthrough you won't realise it, you'll have to replay it to see how good it is. Just know that when you are dealing with the Illuminati you'll have to look beyond what meets the eye. While this game takes a different approach to storytelling, overall I would say it's as good as HR's. Saying anything more about the story would be a spoiler but there is an excellent forum post that sums it up well.
Breach
Breach has that one thing that the story campaign lacks - gameplay balance and challenge. I wished the story campaign had Breach's balance and challenge. It also has good music. Everything else about Breach is just bad. The biggest problem is that it requires connection to Square Enix servers which is down half the time. Fortunately when I played, it was online and I was able to get all the achievements. The second biggest problem is timed events. Basically you get a set of (3) challenges to do each day which upon completion gives you rewards. The challenge itself isn't bad but when you exhaust it you'll have to play the next (real life) day. The challenge rewards are important otherwise you'll have a hard time completing the levels. Then the (not detailed) map repeats is obviously boring. And lastly the unpolished deferred renderer doesn't go very well with Breach's aesthetic.
DLCs
There's 3 story DLCs. Desperate measures is part of the main storyline that should have been in the base game. System Rift is like a huge side quest that should have been in the base game. Criminal Past is an independent setting that happens before the events of DXMD but could work as an epilogue to the base campaign (after the credits). Out of these A Criminal Past is certainly interesting and also offers challenge if you go for the using no augs achievement.
Overall
Enjoyed the game for what it was (walking sim)
Disliked the game for what it wasn't (immersive sim)
It's hard to give this game a straight recommendation since Deus Ex was already a niche title and turning MD into a walking sim doesn't help it much. This is not a game for everyone. YMMV.
On a 10 point scale:
DX - 9/10
DX:HR - 9/10 DX:MD - 8/10
DX:IW - 7/10
I kind of didn't like MD as much as HR. Though I do like that making it a smaller map give it more depth but the overall story is still not on par with the Human Revolution.
Original Sin/Original Sin 2
A truly "modern" turn based strategy RPG. There is nothing like this on the market out there. This is a collective review for both games, I'm going to highlight differences between them.
These games are a spinoff from the main series (Divine Divinity, Divinity 2 : Ego Draconis), which wasnt all that popular. Apart from minor references, and sharing the same world, they largely say their own story. Also, these two games arent related to each other at all, in terms of storyline. Overview
OS1 :
You start the game off by creating two characters. OS1 is MEANT to be played in coop, with a friend. So any decisions you make, the other player can agree/disagree in dialogues. You can assign a dialogue AI to your second character in the beginning, if you plan to play alone, or just play them from both perspectives if you want. Regardless of your choice, you will be playing as a party of 4 characters (2 created PCs, and 2 companions). I played both original and enhanced edition. The changes that I have noticed in enhanced edition is that all characters are fully voiced, the main quest is slightly altered and they removed one of my favourite skill.
OS2 :
Difference between OS1 and OS2 is that you arent MEANT to create a character from fresh, you are supposed to choose among one of 6 different characters, while the others can act as companions (3 of them). You can even be an UNDEAD!.. Reason for doing so is, the companion quest of the character u choose, becomes your main quest. Yes, thats right, this game is pretty amazing when it comes to quest structures. Played both original and definitive edition, definitive edition's act 3 has been improved, apart from this no improvement.
Gameplay :
Gameplay is elderscrolls esque, do quests, roam around city, find hidden secrets, pickpocket npcs. It takes some getting used to, but overall its very well crafted world, which REWARDS exploration, unlike *cough cough* pillars of eternity *cough cough*
In OS1, you gradually unlock new areas but you can always go back to towns and cities you have already found. So its more elder scrolls like.
In OS2, each act takes place in different areas, so if you have unfinished quests, you cannot go back to finish them. This is one of my complaints as you do not have a "home" town unlike OS1.
OS2 also has a lot of improvements on the AI system, like for example You cant just steal items from vendors. If you steal something, after a while, vendors are gonna start loooking around for a suspicious person, if they find you they will demand to see your inventory, and if they find their item, you may go to jail (or bribe guards). I had a funny interaction with a coop buddy where I stole an item and put it in my buddy's inventory, he got caught and all hell let loose lol.
Combat :
Yes, combat, the thing that puts off most non turn based players.. Like it or not, OS/2's combat is probably the most polished turn based combat, I've had (apart from FireAxis's XCOM).
OS1 : Each character gets assigned a number of action points (which is determined by your dex stat), and you gain action points per each turn. You use these action points for movement, for basic attacks or for casting skills. There are many ways to utilize your action points to the best potential, like for example :
backstabbing rogue, where movement speed is priorty, increasing the speed attribute provides more movement, per action point.
In this game, each character can gain skills in 8 different schools, as well as a bunch of other skills that gives passive bonuses. Typically you want to have all 4 of your characters complement each other, so having a good party composition is key. They should balance each other's strengths and weaknesses.
Elemental damage plays a major role in this game, and each element's interaction in the environment can change the tide of battle. Example :
Eg1 If you see a fire skeleton, and you cast rain, to make them wet, then cast lightning to stun them (which has increased chance since they are wet), or you can cast chilling wind to freeze them, again since they have increased chance of being frozen because they are wet. Casting a fire skill is a bad idea because the skeleton already has fire resistance and being wet gives them even more fire resistance, effectively making your skills heal them!
Eg2 If your archer strikes a bandit and they are standing on top a blood puddle, you can cast lightning on the puddle to electrocute him, or heat up the blood puddle through fire and make vapors and cast lightning on the vapors to make lightning cloud (AOE electrocution !)
There are many many such interactions possible and it can get overwhelming if you dont take it slowly. But it gives a strategic depth like no other game. Game is well balanced and you will have a lot of fun playing it.
OS2 : Now this game, its very different (for the worse IMO). The armor stat has been completely removed. Now each character has Health, Physical Armor, and Magical Armor. The latter two basically acts as shields. So your Physical attacks will always deplete your enemy's physical armor, only after that its' health will go down.
Why the developers did this ? They said it adds even more depth to the game. IMO ? It completely destroys the balance in the first game. Until you have depleted the armor, you cannot cast any Crowd control spell on the enemy. So essentially, you will have to keep basic attacking enemies until their armor is down, only then u can CC. Now since enemy has 2 different armors, you have to target either physical or magical armor, you should never try to do both! Add to the fact that Physical CC is different than Magical CC. The inclusion of this, makes the above elemental interaction in Original Sin 1 essentially useless because as long as magical armor is depleted, you cannot strategize like above. Mixed damage party is essentially playing the game in hard mode, because you will have to attack two different armors, which SUCKS imo.
Bosses in this game have ridiculous 2000 physical armor, 2000 magic armor. 1000 health, while you have like 200 Magic armor, 200 Physical armor. This game is much more difficult than OS1.
One new addition to combat compared to OS1, is source points and source skills. You gain source points by casting source vampirism on a dead body or a spirit, or you can steal it off other enemies if their magical armor is zero. You use source points to cast source skills which are very powerful "Ultimate" type abilities (similar to Dota 2 character R skill).
I recommend following a build guide from fextralife as being a jack of all trades (like in other RPGs) means a death sentence. Im currently playing as Eternal Warrior
Music :
Nothing to say here, both games have their own style of music. OS1 was made by Kiril Pokrovsky (who died shortly before OS2 went into production). Some tracks are very good, they have the same style of music as Divine Divinity. Unfortunately the enhanced edition has deleted one track that I really liked (Link here).
OS2 music was composed by Borislav Slavov. Has it's own style, very good. Favourite track here.
fitting final battle music !!
StoryLine :
OS1 : Has a pretty laid back storyline, can get serious at times. You are a source hunter who is investigating a town for the murder of a councillor. What I liked about the game was the pacing, you get bits and pieces of clues which gradually reveal the true intent of characters. Plenty of gray areas in this game. Companion quests are pretty small, they learn from your decisions and may even go rogue if pushed too far, but essentially they behave like robots throughout the game.
OS2 : Dialogue occurs in 3rd person for the Main Character instead of first person, in First game. Story is the prime focus in this game, you start off as a sourceror, who has been captured by the Divine Order and sent for execution to Fort Joy. You can see the prime influence of Chris Avellone (lead writer for many hit games like KOTOR2, Dragon age, fallout NV etc) in this game. The choices in this game impact everything, very similar to New Vegas. Companions have a lot more interactions, they may even compete against you in a certain section of the game. There are a lot of factions crucial to the story : The Magisters, The Paladins, The VoidWoken, The Demons, Black Ring, Elves, The Shadow Prince..
How each faction views the other, its damn fascinating and it slowly starts making sense, as you go with the storyline.. Its very similar to New Vegas.. Every choice has consenquence. Infact, I would consider OS2's storyline to outrank my most favourite story RPG (Dragon Age Origins)
Last Words :
Play both, seriously.. I have a lot of hours sunk into these games. Its more fun in coop with a friend.
Verdict :
OS1 :
Story : 6.5/10
Combat : 8/10
Gameplay : 8/10
Music : 8.5/10 OS2 :
Story : 9.5/10 (rank 1 in terms of story for me, 2 belongs to Origins)
Combat : 6.5/10 (maybe I need to git gud)
Gameplay 9/10
Music : 8/10
I kind of didn't like MD as much as HR. Though I do like that making it a smaller map give it more depth but the overall story is still not on par with the Human Revolution.
The overall story is that the Illuminati (De Beers to be specific) controls Jensen and is using Jensen to get to Janus. That is what the whole game was about.
The original DX does have some very great moments in story but most of it is just cheesy and more on the funny side of things. Whereas HR and MD's storytelling are consistent and more on the serious side of things. I had similar (and much more intense) impact by DXMD's storytelling as watching the movie The Sixth Sense.
The original DX is pretty serious as well. Most of the humor comes either from JC's one-liners or from the somewhat dated graphics/anims.
But JC had some damn good one-liners.
Hi Guest we just wanted to alert you to a major change in the forum. We will no longer be allowing the posting of outgoing links. Please use the attachment feature to attach media to your posts.
