Done! 168 hours. Started this on launch day and put off playing anything else until I finished it, so that’s about a year and half playing only one game, on and off.
Overall, I’d give it 8/10. Which is being generous, as the ending is terrible and the game deserves to lose a point for how bad the last few hours are.
I would say Act 1 is the most fun, Act 2 is the most interesting, and Act 3 is when they just said fuck it and threw the kitchen sink at you.
I think the game hurts itself by trying too hard to match the scale of an epic fantasy novel - it works in a book because you can turn the pages quickly, it doesn’t work in a game when you have to act out every small little thing and the game plays at a snail’s pace.
Fundamentally, the game is solid. But Larian’s games have been solid since Original Sin 1, and it’s disappointing to see how ambition over-ran common sense here.
Should a game be this long and have this much content? No, in my opinion.
Is the pay off worth it? No. I had no emotional investment in this game or its story, which is absolutely necessary for a game this long.
I might make another post talking about ways they could (and should) improve their next game, or how they could have improved this one, but one area they really need to look at is storytelling and characters.
I would like to go back and finish Original Sin 2 someday, and compare them properly. I would say what I played of Original Sin 2 (60 hours or so) is better than this.