doomdoom11: Is this game better than Wasteland 2?
I didn't like wasteland 2 for number of reasons.
1) Combat sucked. My characters missed 70% of the time despite me putting points into making my gunfire effective. Also, the combat just felt limited (cover shoot/meele).
Combat in Divinity: Original Sin is much, much more elaborate and varied than in Wasteland, director's cut or otherwise.
Of particular note is D:OS' varied and over-the-top elemental magic system, that lets you influence and control the battlefield in various cool ways. Use a rain spell to create puddles, then use fireballs to turn them into a smokescreen, or ice to freeze it, or shoot a lightning arrow to stun everybody standing in the puddle. Use a teleport spell to throw an oil barrel at the enemy (No oil barrels around? No problem, your fighter can just stick some in his inventory if he's strong enough) and then more fire to create a nice big boom. Or use that same teleport spell to land the enemy in lava.
Fighters, rogues and rangers get plenty of fun abilities and toys too, some of which can synergise very well with the magic system, though the mages are the most fun.
Combat in D:OS is a real high-water mark in the turn-based RPG genre, as far as I'm concerned. It's not without its issues: some balance stuff, and eventually you kinda lose the feeling of progression, as many early-game abilities far outclass the stuff you get later for practical purposes. (The Enhanced version purports to fix this, but I'm not far enough along to judge for myself. Either way, don't assume this is still the case.)
Wasteland 2 combat, on the other hand, remains a bit of a slog, even in the DC. Not enough to ruin the game for me, but not something I'm looking forward to like I am in D:OS either.
2) The game progresses at snails pace with not that many memorable characters and interesting things happening (i'm in the prison zone).
Some people are frustrated with the pace in D:OS in that it has big difficulty spikes. Not sure how that is in the Enhanced Edition: I'm playing at a higher difficulty level that makes this hard to judge, and I already know where to go.
Otherwise, D:OS is a faster paced game. None of that truly tedious "watch your character stand around for 5 seconds to pick a lock for the 30th time in a row" that plagues Wasteland 2. (Thank god for the mod that reduces the duration of those animations.) Most of the time D:OS hits a pretty good combo of exploration, combat and dialogue for me. This is a matter of taste, though.
As for story-hooks: D:OS has a pretty good one early on, as you have to investigate a murder in the first town. Much more fun than "investigate strange radio signals." Nice bit of sleuthing and puzzling here. Later on, the plot in D:OS becomes more formulaic, but it does a much better job of sucking you in at first.
3) Story--pretty OK so far, nothing that grips me.
Same in both games. The writing in Wasteland is superior and some of the locations are more interesting in concept (though D:OS places are much, much better visually, at least if you like the cartoony look.) but neither game is that gripping story-wise.
D:OS is a lot more colourful. Both in the sense that it's cartoony, and in that it can be quite funny and silly. But you won't find any truly great characters here either.
4) Setting lacks in ambiance and characters. The world never feels alive or real so to speak from what I've played. The game clearly feels hand crafted.
I find this one kinda hard to judge. The D:OS setting is cheerful grab-bag of fantasy clichés played tongue-in-cheek. Not a pure parody, but not something you should be taking very seriously either. So the world doesn't feel alive in the same sense that a Saturday morning cartoon doesn't have a world that feels alive.
It does feel much more vibrant and fun than the wasteland world, though. It's inhabited by colourful (if sometimes annoying) characters like rhyming mages, weresheep, and quests to play matchmaker for a couple of cats. Wasteland 2 isn't without its share of silliness either, but in the big brown dustbowl of a world it's set in, the toaster-repair jokes don't really strike as much of a chord with me.
In summary: Wasteland 2 and D:OS are two very different games, despite both being turn-based party-based RPGs. I enjoy D:OS much more for its combat and colourful world, though Wasteland's writing is considerably better and I do enjoy both games for what they are. Your mileage may vary. All I can say for sure is that not liking Wasteland 2 doesn't really say much about whether you'll dislike D:OS.
