Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Gameplay Journal - Part 10
It is on this 10th entry in the Divinity - Original Sin 2 Gameplay Journal that I completely found myself at a loss of what to do. After trekking back to Amadia to bask in the praise for rescuing Gareth, I found myself with some clear instructions but not a good sense of how to perform them.
The plan itself is simple: steal a boat to get off this island. It seems the best chance to do that is to pick up some weapons that can pacify the Shriekers guarding the harbor. Those weapons are hidden away in the tomb of someone named Braccus Rex, which was easy enough to find, but all I could find there was a blocked door, rude skeleton, and not much else to go on.
So, after quite a bit of aimless wandering I consulted a guide that led to a solution that I'm not sure I would have intentionally come across on my own. In some ways that is validating, but it also speaks to a lot of core differences between games designed for mobile vs. not. I could imagine a situation in which I'm luxuriating in Divinity - Original Sin 2's world for long stretches at a time on a huge monitor or TV where I might have spotted the trick to entering the vault. Playing in bed on a 10 inch screen in 30 minute chunks just doesn't let you experience the world the same way, and your expectations are a little different when nearly every other game on the platform you're using is (understandably) designed for even smaller screens and shorter bursts of play.
In any case, I found my direction once again shortly into the second video, put down the guide, and glided through the next challenge once inside the vault with ease. There seems to be a lot going on with this Braccus fellow, and I'm glad to see the stack of lore piling up in Divinity - Original Sin 2 has a rock solid foundation. It continues to be the most compelling aspect of the game, as the combat has once again grown a tad stale. My party all uses the same combos and without fail it proves to be effective. I have a suspicion this doesn't have much to do with difficulty either as I am taking advantage of all the skills at my disposal. Perhaps in a few more levels I will feel like I have combat options and challenge once again.
Given the delay of this entry, it shouldn't be a surprise to say it's due to my sentiments for it cooling over time. It is also growing increasingly impractical to keep on my device. To save space, I regularly offload the app, but that hardly helps with managing my iPad's storage. The "game" file you can offload on iOS is only around 2 GB, but the rest of the files for the game account for almost 16 GB that I can't remove unless I completely delete the game and re-download everything after reinstalling, which would also involve me figuring out how to maintain my save and restore it to resume progress.
Hopefully Apple can address this in the future, as Divinity - Original Sin 2 may be the most ergregious instance of a game tacking on a huge file size to a smaller core set of files, but it isn't the only one, nor will it be the last. In any case, I'll have to keep juggling my storage as I keep slogging through. Until the next entry!