Category: Xbox One

It has been a while since I have played an old school deep turn based RPG, but the lure of Co-Op, the great reviews, and a decent sale, led me to try Divinity: Original Sin.  For the Co-Op, I dragged The Paladin along with me.  I bought him a copy of the game for his birthday, very self serving of me I know.  I am not very far in to it yet, but I have to say I am liking what I am seeing.

Divinity: Original Sin starts with your main characters off to Cyseal to investigate a murder of a high ranking official to see if the mysterious magic “Source” was involved.  You see you are playing as “Source Hunters”.  A group of people tasked with keeping track of this powerful and dangerous magic.  Things get all timely-wimey after that, but lets just say there are far greater things at stake than some official getting offed.

The gameplay for the most part is standard turn based fare.  Each character gets a set amount of action points, and on their turn they get to spend those points moving, attacking, defending, or helping teammates.  Where things get different is that Larian Studios loves its environmental effects.  Your characters are always wet, hot, oiled, or poisoned, so you get to try and plan your attacks based on what is going on around them.  Is it raining?  Maybe you should freeze everyone.  It will be super effective.  Your team on fire?  Cast a rain spell to douse the flames.  Obviously if you have a good wizard they can bend the environment to best suit your group’s attacks.

Another fun addition is that unlike most Co-Op games in Divinity: Original Sin you and your friends do not need to agree on the dialog.  You see him making a decision that you don’t agree with, you can try and override him.  If you can’t come to an agreement you literally play Paper, Rock, Scissors to come to a conclusion.  It is fun to screw with your teammate every now and then, and possibly destroy a quest tree.  The Paladin had us kill some drunk guards instead of just following them to some guy to prove who we were.  It was pretty funny.

Not everything is peachy keen however.  When playing with your friends you can’t see what they are doing, so there is a lot of down time while you are waiting for their turns in combat.  Movement is kind of slow, so it feels like it takes forever to get anywhere, and most unfortunate of all, there is no quest management system.  I understand that Larian wanted Divinity: Original Sin to be a throw back, so they mostly leave you to solve the quests as best you can, but there should be some way to organize or filter your journal so can try and stay on task instead of randomly milling around in the wilderness.  Also be sure to save.  The game doesn’t auto-save.

Divinity: Original Sin is a fun RPG, and it definitely has the ‘just one more thing’ hook.  Every time I have played with The Paladin three hours seemed to just disappear, and that is the mark of a good game.  Not to mention that I can count the number of good Co-Op RPGs on one hand (not including MMOs of course).  Larian Studios is working on a sequel, if they can speed up the game a little bit, and let folks manage their quests a bit better Divinity: Original Sin 2 will be worth looking out for.

Blizzard has been promising new characters and maps since Overwatch launched, and it is finally starting to make good on its promise with Ana!  She is a veteran sniper that has decided to refocus on healing instead of killing.  That’s right she can snipe heal you!  She is also Fareeha “Pharah” Amari’s mother, so she adds an interesting dynamic to Overwatch’s great but underutilized lore.  I am not sure that Overwatch needs another sniper, but if Ana can get the army of snipers in any given Overwatch match to finally help the team then I am all for it.  It looks like she has some cool gameplay options as you can see in the video below.  I can’t wait for her to get added to Overwatch’s wonderful roster of characters soon.

Thanks to Xbox’s Games with Gold promotion I end up with a lot of games that I never wanted and will probably never play, but every now and then it is fun to start one up and see what it is all about.  That was the case with Pneuma: Breath of Life.  It is a first person puzzle game that all Xbox Live Gold members got for free last November, but I just now decided to give it a try.  It was fine, and it was a relaxing way to spend just under four hours, but not something I would enthusiastically tell people to spend their money on.

Pneuma starts out with you taking control of a being that has just now come in to existence, and since everything seems to react and be focused around him, he decides that he must be a god.  As the puzzles get harder and more devious he starts to question his deity.  I will not spoil his somewhat interesting conclusion.  Though the game seems to think the pay off is more thought provoking than it is.

First person puzzle games are all about two things: good graphics or art, and clever puzzles.  Pneuma does okay on both fronts.  The game’s Greek temple aesthetic works well for a would be deity, but there is nothing groundbreakingly pretty to look at.  As for the puzzles, they start off really easy as you learn the game’s systems, but just when they start to get difficult, the game ends.  I guess there are three hidden puzzles that I didn’t do, so I may go back and give them a shot, but I doubt it.  The game just needed a couple extra chapters to have players truly test their metal.  Puzzle games shouldn’t make players have to go find a challenge.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with Pneuma: Breath of Life, and it gave me 850 Gamer Score for very little effort, but I would have enjoyed it less had I paid money for it.  This game is worth a couple of dollars at most, so if it is on sale for $5 or less and you love puzzle games, I would say it is worth a try.  Though if you really are a puzzle gamer I don’t think Pneuma will present much of a challenge, more of a breezy walk in the park.  Much like walks in the park you shouldn’t have to play a lot for it.