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.

gameplay

Please share your experience with DOS2 and whether or not you have fully completed the game!

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[–] Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.de 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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!:)

[–] JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Same here

DOS 1 is also good but obviously the second one is better

[–] rambaroo@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] slumlordthanatos@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Nacktmull@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

I share your opinion about DoS2 being not intuitive and also not holding hands. I also agree that the way "forward" is often unclear when relying on the built in dysfunktional quest journal. However I disagree with your statement that there would be fights that you have to cheese to win in DoS2. The game seems to promote cheesing but it does also not require it.

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[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I could never get into it, tbh.

Me and my partner at the time figured it'd be amazing for a couch-co-op thing, but it was so chaotic around NPCs due to the spam of random interactions flying off from two interacting characters, we just gave up on it. Breaking combat was a lot of fun though.

I really ought to get back into it and just play it solo. 🤔

[–] schizohybrid@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

I think my most uttered phrase during couch co-op was «opps, sorry!» as I electrified/curse fired yet another surface by accident.

[–] CoolBeance@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

I haven't played a lot of games like this but from all of the games I've played in the past 20-ish years, this one shot up to near the top of my list. I must have dropped at least 200 hours on this game on my first playthrough, just appreciating every little detail there was and doing all of the side quests.

The gameplay itself is already amazing, but to me what really shone was the brilliant, brilliant writing. I have never read such intensely hued writing in a video game.

[–] Stereoparallax@sffa.community 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I liked the game but I was a bit disappointed that nearly every fight ends up with everything covered in necrofire. I bet that if you were to just spec into a build that likes being on fire you'll probably be super overpowered.

[–] darth_helmet@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem is that loot is random, and it takes a lot of gear support to get to the point where a character isn’t getting hurt by fire, even with the relevant perk.

Cursed surfaces in general were just a massive pain, considering how precious Source was by default. Using a mod to get Source back on rest makes things a lot more reasonable, particularly in the first half of the game.

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[–] Nonononoki@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] travysh@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] stooovie@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's great but too big and sprawling for me. I got drowned in side AND main quests in the second act and couldn't get back into it. Probably a me problem but still.

[–] Nacktmull@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The single big complaint about DoS2 I have is the horribly dysfunktional quest journal. Instead of giving the player a sense of what to do and where to go next, it just outright confuses me and makes me feel super lost. That quests don´t have a recommended character level makes this mess even worse. I worked around those issues by using Quests by Levels Guide and it worked very well - never felt lost again, always knew what quest to do next.

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[–] Sanguinius@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

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

[–] sirdorius@programming.dev 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Bazzalicious@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] cyd@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Penta@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

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)

[–] AlexisFR@jlai.lu 8 points 1 year ago

Quite slow paced and inventory management is a mess, but a very good game otherwise!

I heavily recommend the Explorer difficulty if you aren't familiar with CRPGs, on Classic the game is quite hard even in Act 1 if you don't know how to play them.

[–] curryandbeans@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] rambaroo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] curryandbeans@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I haven't! I'm going to get to it before I get BG3 for sure.

[–] tissek@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 year ago

I wish I would love it. It is a really great game but I cannot make it click for me. Looks great, sounds great, feels great.

But somehow it doesn't work for me. Half the time I feel I have no control and have no idea of how to get it, other half I'm steamrolling things. Worst part is winning fights and it feeling undeserved, like a sloppy brawl.

Still a great game.

[–] specseaweed@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] SloppyPuppy@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I really wanted to like this game. But Man it was too linear for me and also too hard. I had to google every quest to know where the fuck is X to finish it. It was just too daunting. And I like hard games. But this one was frustrating for some reason.

Otherwise its probably an awesome game. Not for me.

[–] Kerred@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Nacktmull@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Now that you say it. Item management is my second big complaint about DoS2 - right after the nearly useless quest journal - it is truly horrible and the "improved organization" gift bag sadly does not fix the problem but makes it even worse imo.

[–] Soupbreaker@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] Tangent5280@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Me and another, took so long to get through the tutorial. Neither of us could figure out the quests that ended with us outside the fort, so we both somehow learned teleport - I'd teleport them a distance to some unreachable nook, and then they'd teleport me to some other farther unreachable nook from there and so on till we leapfrogged our way out. It was a fun time all things considered.

[–] Nacktmull@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

I agree with you. DoS2 is the best RPG I have ever played. The quality and depth of gameplay mechanics, character builds, story line and atmosphere is unmatched and seems to simply be out of reach for other studios than Larian. I will definitely play BG3 - simply because Dos2 is so unique and great.

[–] claycle@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

A friend and I tried this game and enjoyed it up to a point, a particular fight we could not get past.

Finally looking online for a guide, we discovered that every guide we could find suggested cheesing the fight in various ways.

We both decided that any game that required the player to both know a fight was about to happen (when it was impossible from context to predict) and cheese the fight to win was a bad game. Even if this was only one fight, it was a fight that blocked all progress. We quit and neither of us have wanted to play the game again.

Note: We have, either together or on our own, completed other games - like BG 1-2, NWN, PoE, DOS1 - without resorting to guides, cheats, foreknowledge, or cheese.

We were, and remain, very disappointed with DOS2 because of this, and we're "suspicious" of BG3 because of DOS2 (but, charitably, perhaps Larian made a mistake in DOS2 and won't repeat it in BG3).

EDIT: Please don't ask me what fight this was, because I really don't remember as it was now years ago. We were pretty deep into the game, bopping along pleasantly and thinking we were succeeding. As I recall, we had no side-quests to do (so no way to level IF we were under-leveled - I remember looking to see if we had missed some corner and needed to quest there). We basically entered a room in some dungeon/temple with no other direction on the map to go and experienced TPK. Over and over until we finally gave up. Looking at Steam, it says we were ~~93.3~~ 118 hours into the game.

[–] dfc09@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Without knowing what fight you stopped at it's hard to really talk about your experience, but I promise you don't need to know a fight is coming or cheese the fight. There's a point where the fights just click for you and become easier. There's also plenty of content you can go to instead to level up, if you're under leveled.

There's only 1 fight I can think of that's balls to three weeks nuts (the Blackpits) and my brother and I still beat it legitimately, just took like 6 attempts.

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[–] Nacktmull@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

You are wrong, you can cheese in DoS2 but you don´t have to. It is an option, not a requirement. Source: I (as probably many others did too) finished the game without using any cheese once.

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[–] let_it_gogh@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which fight was this?

I knew getting into the game that the combat was punishing - especially in Act 1 before you built your team. But I don't recall having to cheese a fight to get pass it.

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[–] iAmTheTot@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wife and I couldn't even finish act one. Hated it, don't get the praise.

[–] Nacktmull@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

DoS2 is a truly outstanding RPG - many CRPG nerds say the best ever - but that is ofc only after getting into the game. Unlike most games that are developed today. DoS2 is not at all a casual game, on the contrary, it´s pretty complex and to make it worse for new players, the game also does not explain much. The consequence is a relatively high threshold to get into the game and an extremely steep learning curve, that can be truly overwhelming for new players, especially those who are not familiar with "hardcore" CRPGs - like me before playing DoS2.

The fact that you could not finish act 1 simply means that you didn't get over the threshold to get into the game, otherwise finishing act 1 would not have been a problem. It took me 2-3 attempts to finish act 1, because there was still so much to learn after the first try. What I mean is that you are missing out on one of the greatest RPGs of all times and that you should consider giving yourself another chance to actually get into the game. I very much recommend using guides, at least on your first playthrough.

To not gimp your chars, use class guides by this guy (DON`T use fextralife builds!) https://steamcommunity.com/id/teesinz/myworkshopfiles/?section=guides&appid=435150&p=2

The one big weakness of Dos2 is the dysfunktional quest journal, it regularly leaves the player without any information about where o go next. To not get lost, simply use this quests by character levels guide (thank you Lost Sinner, you are amazing <3) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1139237003

I highly recommend using a two person party and giving both the lone wolf talent on your first run. It is significantly easier to learn (and beat) the game this way than with a full four person party.

Another key factor for a successful first play through of DoS2 is to not split your damage imo. This might be counterintuitive but the dual armor system in DoS2 heavily rewards parties that deal only physical or only elemental damage. I recommend a phys dam only party for the first playthrough.

tldr: Yes, the game has a high threshold to get into - that is naturally the case because it is a deep and complex game - it is very much worth to get into - don´t make yourself miss out on it.

[–] iAmTheTot@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Nacktmull@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Each to their own, fun is different things for different people. Naturally every game has a certain threshold to get into. The more complex a game is, the higher that threshold becomes. Some games have a threshold that is so low you wont even notice it. Enjoy what you like best and glhf mate!

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[–] hotwarioinyourarea@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I want to go back to this game so bad. I played for about 15 hours and loved it but got distracted with something else. Ive tried to start over a couple of times but I just can't get into it again in the same way. Once I've finished Pikmin 4 I might try again.

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[–] Ketram@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago

I still think DOS2 is one of the best games I have ever played, and I played it on release when 80% of the 4th act just broke for me. It gives a ton of freedom, interestingly written characters, and once you get the hang of the combat system it's easy to dominate even with weird builds.

I understand why people aren't it's biggest fans, but giving this one a chance is worth it. Overall, I would say BG3 (played a ton in early access) might be the more accessible game. It's less weird, more cinematic etc. Though, I would expect it to be exceedingly buggy on release so keep that in mind.

[–] forgotaboutlaye@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I started playing D:OS2 in 2020, but eventually got distracted around 15hrs in. I started a new playthrough to test out the gameplay again, and have really fallen in love with it all over again. I'm really terrible at the combat, but everything surrounding it is extremely engrossing.

I do plan to pick up BG3, and I've read that the combat is a little more quick-paced and hopefully forgiving, so I'm really looking forward to the release this week.

[–] yA3xAKQMbq@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

I do plan to pick up BG3, and I've read that the combat is a little more quick-paced and hopefully forgiving, so I'm really looking forward to the release this week.

Mh, I don’t know. So I’m what’s (rightfully so) considered a filthy casual, I suck at builds, and I suck at strategy and tactics. I played D:OS2 on easy mode, and loved it. BG3 only has one mode at the moment, and I loved the main plot until here, especially since you can sneak around or negotiate with people to avoid direct conflict and still get the mission done. I feel D:OS2 had much more fighting than BG3.

That being said, there was one fight where I did not find any another solution outside of outright violence, and what initially was just my party against a similar sized group rather quickly escalated into a stand-off that had us outnumbered at least 3:1 and took hours. It was nice, everybody made it through, but it was a bit tedious tbh.

[–] ExcessivelySalty@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I enjoyed DOS2 quite a lot even though I didn't make it out of the first act, I should probably try playing it again although I don't really have the time or patience for 100+ hour games anymore.

That being said I'm pretty hyped for BG3.

[–] dan1101@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

It's a great game, very cool and crazy interactions can happen. But I never got totally invested in the map and story. That may be because I was playing coop. The difficulty is a bit tricky, at one level constantly retreating and throwing barrels is the only way to barely win. Go one notch down on difficulty and I never lose a battle.

Also it irks me that physical armor prevents me from knocking someone over.

But even thought I may never finish it, it's a very unique game.

[–] Nioxic@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I have the first game and ... ive only played through the combat tutorial. I guess its a bit too slow paced for me. But maybe i should give it a whirl at some point

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