This game is something different. The cartoon style makes it really fun to play.

Get shooting but not shot...Who Loves ya Baby. I do.

This game does remind of Baldur's Gate and the likes, it has a non linear open world flow to it that gives you the freedom to go in different directions and try different opponents until you progress. An in game journal keeps track of your story, quests, recipes and so on, and personally I appreciate not having to make any notes on paper. You can also set markers on your map for future reference.

The isometric view can be rotated some, but also unlocked for full rotation when needed, and you can toggle between that and an overview camera to not miss anything. Graphics are excellent and you'll find yourself wanting to stay zoomed in more easily as it reveals some really nice details.

The gameplay is real time, dialogues switch it into sentence selecting and the battles are turn based tactical games of chess the way you move around, pick your spells and actions, and in what order you do things. The battles are incredibly well done, the entire world feels well balanced, and you'll often find yourself outnumbered having to come back to try new approaches to win. Also, your opponents never yield, you'll always have to kill the last bit of life in the last one standing every time, which could be argued.

The only real drawback of this game is the inventory system. It's open grid based and you drag and drop item by item. This is also due to the drop-on-top crafting system I guess, since you drag items back and forth to combine them into new things. As the game goes on you do get more backpacks for keeping it organized though.

This game is all about micro management. You pick what values to improve on your characters, you move around each item individually, you even repair items one by one. Your characters are made from many values that you can affect, and you don't level that much so take your time picking the attributes you want. Your main characters also have dialogues as their choices determine their morals and also their traits, which is a nice touch how your RP actually affects your game. In addition, you start out with your characters having a certain class and look, but you can customize it both regarding looks and all the numbers before setting out. The character creation and development hold its own against any MMORPG. As an example, one of my main characters started out as a witchcraft assassin but has over time evolved into a pyromancer healer tank.

Everything has been thought of and taken into account, the gameplay and stories keep surprising you with new turns, new places, new people in a way that makes you go look around just-one-more-corner. The music is excellent, nice and varied. I heard that the composer unfortunately passed away recently. The main plot and the many side stories are great and the voice acting is good, even though with a bit too much echo at times, and you'll find a nice touch of dry humour regularly in this game.

Divinity Original Sin is a quite large game and world, taking place on several maps. This review is written after 70+ hours of gameplay and I have yet to finish the game on Normal difficulty. Playing under Mavericks, the game has not frozen or had a gameplay affecting bug once.

..I absolutely had to knock off 2 stars for the annoying voiceovers with every action carried out. Bearing in mind this is a TM game which means a large amount of gathering and repeating actions you can imagine how teeth-grindingly tedious "..I'm already on the way.." gets when it's repeated over and over (and with overlap) as you send each of your 'vikings' to perform a task. If perhaps there had been an option to turn off this particular voice over but leave the sounds of actions still (like there is to turn-off the always oh so dreadful music game developers feel compelled to add to their games) then I would have perhaps been more inclined to give it a 4 or even 5 star rating... It is a solid little game with good replayability factor due to the difficulty in completing tasks on time and earning your 3 gold stars. A couple of the levels are bugged but can still be completed if you quit them as they seem to get stuck in a loop - bonus level sheep is one of these.

But thats a good thing.
Puzzles Humor and plenty of action