3 friends and I played this. They all liked it I did not. It felt like a shopping simulator.

Meh, D:OS2 is a great game until the latter 1/4th in my opinion. Act 1/2 are fantastic, act 3 drags a bit and act 4(arx) is the absolute worst in my opinion. I sincerely hope BG3 doesn't have the same problem, since D:OS1 had a similar issue where it was great until the very end for me(scavenger hunt.) Sadly i dislike the latter parts of each game enough i'm just not inclined to ever replay them. It really soured the whole experience for me unfortunately.

Arguably the definitive edition makes D:OS2 worse too, since it makes side quests damn near mandatory or else you'll be constantly underleveled.

Its a great game, its funny trying to break it as its quite arbitrary at some places. Also it needed a few more QOL passes as things like an invisible oil spill will randomly slow your character down and ruin the turn.
Also the ending was very unsatisfying. All this talk about being divine, then it just ends with a book reading.

This is a game for which the developers said "you have to cheese it, we made it that way intentionally".

You have to do fights trying to cheese it as much as possible, guess the correct order based on your level as well and often end up in situations that are impossible to resolve unless you do something that doesn't make sense.

And let's not forget the "kill everything that moves to get the most xp possible" because that's the way it's intended to be played.

If it was just a straight up "combat - cutscene - combat" I would agree with the "great game" opinion because the game only shines for the combat system.

Everything else is below average when not straight out broken.

I only played it for 2 hours or so, but wasn't at a time where I can play long hours on PC so I dropped it..

Now with my steam deck arriving, time to give it another go..!

I do recall things being hectic as others have said in here tho..

I still think DOS2 is one of the best games I have ever played, and I played it on release when 80% of the 4th act just broke for me. It gives a ton of freedom, interestingly written characters, and once you get the hang of the combat system it's easy to dominate even with weird builds.

I understand why people aren't it's biggest fans, but giving this one a chance is worth it. Overall, I would say BG3 (played a ton in early access) might be the more accessible game. It's less weird, more cinematic etc. Though, I would expect it to be exceedingly buggy on release so keep that in mind.

I love CRPGs and was excited when I got recommended this game - it got a lot of praise. Unfortunately, I found it to be tedious and overall uninteresting. That wouldn't be worth mentioning if this game wasn't on every top-rpgs-of-all-time list... I honestly don't get it and I am confused.