❌🎮 “I’m sorry darling, I’m just not in the mood.” 🎮❌ #DivinityOriginalSin

Upon its original release, I picked up Divinity 2: Original Sin and spent thirty frustrating hours with it before uninstalling it from my hard drive and giving up.

Through a mix of glitches, difficulty spikes, strange design choices and a general sense of the game being incomplete, I chalked it up to just not being my thing and moved on to other games.

Now, eighteen months or so later, I thought I’d give it another crack as I’ve been ill for a while and just fancied cancelling all my plans and spending a weekend relaxing and getting hips deep into a full-on RPG to soak up my time. 

Upon re-installing, I noticed that I had the option of starting the ‘definitive edition’ (although my previous saves would be incompatible) and so I launched into the game from the start to see how I’d find it now.

I don’t want to spend too much time on this but suffice to say a lot of the issues I had with the initial release had now been solved:

A new lower difficulty ‘story’ mode, perfect for me as I much prefer narrative over grind or challenging boss battles

A revamped inventory and quest system (lowering the micro-management required)

And a few visual tweaks that made the game immensely more playable and easier on the eye.

Needless to say, whilst I still find this genre of game difficult to get emotionally involved in, mainly due to the fact that you are physically so far removed from the characters as opposed to first or third person games, I have stuck with it and clearly appreciate the scale and scope of the game, I’ve also caught up with my prior game in twenty hours less and my level of immersion is far higher than it was previously, it really did feel like a slog back then.

The game got pretty much top reviews all around upon its original release and I was in the minority when I found it to be a bit of a buggy, uninteresting  mess, only now does it feel as it should have been, no losing key items, micro-management or randomly failed quests this time around!

It also got me thinking, I had a similar situation when Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released, I had just come off the back of spending dozens of hours in the world of The Witcher 3 and its rightfully lauded expansions when I hurtled straight into Zelda and just felt…bored.

To be as clear as possible, there were no technical limitations with Zelda: BOTW, I just wasn’t in the mood for it and yet I still played about ten hours or so before stopping altogether and I wondered if that’s what the issue had been for me with Divinity, not the developmental quirks and bugs but just that I wasn’t in the zone. 

It doesn’t often happen to me but when it does, it’s a real shame as I can’t quite bring myself to pick up where I left off from Zelda or restart because I just never seem to be in the mood to play it which is odd because it’s right up my strasse, a third-person open world game (admittedly it’s not of Eastern European origin, but I can overlook that…I suppose).

Have there been any games that you’ve been looking forward to but, upon their release you just….didn’t feel it? 

Even when it’s a genre that you clearly love? 

How many games have we moved on from because we rolled over, claimed to have a headache and mumbled that we weren’t in the mood? 

Being in two bands, working and other things mean that I rarely have time to pump hundreds of hours into a game like Dark Souls, grinding, repeating, losing and re-trying over and over (not that I want to, anyway in that case) but time is a precious commodity and I find myself being far choosier with what I play these days, happy to give anything a try but it really has to grab me in order for me to see it through to the end. 

Maybe one day I’ll replay Breath of the Wild…maybe. 

Which ones do you see, untouched in your gaming library and glance at before shaking your head and moving on? 

Article By Britt: @BrittRecluseuk