14 DAY TRIAL // Next up in our Softpedia Game of the Year 2014 series is the winner of the PC Exclusive category, Larian Studios' Divinity: Original Sin.
Larian struck pure gold with their classic role-playing game, delivering a product well beyond my conservative expectations. It's thrilling, it's fun, and best of all, the writing is very witty and full of flavor.
Of course, Larian does have the extensive experience from previous entries in the Divinity series to fall back on, so it's not like Divinity: Original Sin is their first timid step in the realm of gaming. The company held a very successful Kickstarter campaign and then got to work, and boy, did their creative juices flow.
The game is hands-down the best classic role-playing game in years, and if offers much more content and of much higher quality than a lot of recent entries in the genre.
Granted, it demands a lot of your time, patience and brain muscle flexing, but it's completely worth it.
The outstanding tactical combat and the myriad of interesting characters and quests you will find while playing it will make you feel like you're playing Baldur's Gate 3 on steroids.
It's simply that good. It doesn't hold your hand, it doesn't insult your intelligence like recent titles that make you press a key to pay your respects and don't leave you enough room to breathe, busily shoving you into one rollercoaster ride after the other, it lets you set your own pace, and best of all, lets you figure everything out on your own.
In addition to being a veritable modern game, complete with a functional and pretty handy interface and some great graphics, from scenery and vivid colors to particle and spell effects, the game also has a robust physics system that lets you interact with the elements in quite a novel way. See a fire? Make it rain and it'll put it out. Did an opponent just step into something flammable? Great, now you know where to aim your next fireball.
A wealth of outstanding content
Divinity: Original Sin offers you complete freedom over the choices you make, from who you help to how you settle disagreements between your party members, and your actions influence where things are going.
You can also steal everything that isn't nailed down, but if you are caught, it will affect people's opinion of you, and you can murder almost every non-playable character you meet, but there are always consequences for your actions.
The game rewards exploration, as there are no exclamation marks or anything of the sort over any NPC's head, so if you don't pay attention to your surroundings, you can completely miss vital pieces of information, or clues that might help you in your quest.
Combat is brutal if you're not prepared, as you don't start off too strong, and it takes a while to learn how to best use your abilities, but as the game progresses you get a real feeling of growth, and it's especially gratifying when you manage to be smart about it and emerge victorious from encounters that should have spelled your doom.
The main focus of the game is to gobble up your time in a very satisfying manner, such as helping a poor common cat earn the affection of a noble whisker wearer and reading through a few novels' worth of brilliant dialogue.
It's gorgeous and diverse and it's created out of love for the genre, which you can easily see while playing. It has a ton of unique content created not because somebody thought it would increase sales, but instead to provide a meaningful journey through the unknown.
It's made to please die-hard fans, and not to reach a wide audience or to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It's created to be discovered, step by step, take you by surprise and impress you. It's like a world where there are no Michael Bay movies.
The biggest impact Divinity: Original Sin had was to prove that there is still a market for classic role-playing games, and that it's still worth it to invest in crafting a high production value video game in the genre.
Alongside Dragon Age: Inquisition, it's a very strong reminder that great single-player experiences can still be successful. And you can also play it in drop in / drop out cooperative multiplayer.
If you want to learn more, check out our review of Divinity: Original Sin.
