Been playing co-op for maybe 30 hours now and having a great time. We're playing on hard with a party of Ranger/Wizard + the two companions.
The combat has been really great. Early on when we were only like level 3, we walked down the beach and found some level 6 orcs that I think had 4 fighters, 1 ranger, and a mage. And a bit before them there was a mine field and a stream. The first time we tried to fight them head on and get destroyed. So on our next attempt, my ranger snuck around behind them and I saw they had oil barrels. I waited until the ranger and mage were close to one and hit it with an exploding arrow that took them out in a single shot.
Then the turn based combat started up and I got the hell out of there back to my party. One of the orcs followed me while the other 3 header for the mine field to cut me off which is where the other 3 party members were waiting. We were hoping the orcs would be dumb enough to step on the mines but they avoided. It worked out though because we shot a lightning bolt into the stream which electrified it and preventing the orcs from crossing. We then teleported on of the orcs directly onto a mine in the middle of them which took out most of their health. My ranger then made it back to that part of the map and shot a poison arrow at them for damage, plus poison, plus the poison goo mixed with the fire on the ground and exploded and took them out.
With only one orc left it was a 4v1 and we took him down easily enough. Then cast rain to put out all the fires so we could investigate the orc encampment. Awesome.
But I really dislike the random loot. But then I dislike random loot in probably every game that isn't a roguelike. I mean I think the main point of Original Sin is to bring the pen&paper rpg feeling to a computer game and I think random loot is terrible in p&p rpg games as well. Being random means none of it has backstory, lore, or a reason for why we found it where we did. My current gear being based on dice rolls is very uninteresting. But the aspect that bothers me the most is crafting stuff.
The lack of some very simple crafting components seems to be an oversight with sinew being a particularly glaring bug. In the course of 30 hours I've found 1 sinew. And now that I'm seeing strong sinew I think I'm just fucked on ever crafting a bow? I've never been able to craft a bow in this game. When your main character is a ranger with 5 in crafting and you've been using the same bow for like 6 levels not being able to craft a new one ever is a really shitty feeling for the player.
But on the flip side, it is trivial to create 100 poisoncloud arrows (probably the single best arrow type in the game) with a single ooze barrel that creates a massive poison area that you can then explode and annihilate everything even on hard difficulty.
So I feel like even if you did like the general principle of random loot, you have to admit that the current balance of it is broken.
Playing co-op, I've also found it hard to be invested in the story. We are both interested in story stuff but with two people playing and trying to summarize to each other over voice chat what we're discovering you still loose a lot in information transfer. We finished the first map and I still don't really understand the whole murder mystery bit. And I feel like we also probably missed out on a lot just because we didn't talk to the right people in the right order.
A number of conversations didn't really make sense given the context of our characters and it was like we were talking to people that we weren't supposed to meet until 3 hours later. And I can't tell if that's because we didn't fill each other in enough over voice chat or because we did things out of order or missed a key conversation or I don't know. All I know is I want to know what the story and character motivations are and I don't.
I'm still really enjoying it though for the co-op gameplay, combat, and exploration.