Gaming

Honestly... it's not great. I would not recommend it unless you're playing with somebody who is not put off by constant bugs and general jank.

In terms of bugs, I've had several occasions where one player can no longer open the map - it just starts opening the quest log instead of the map. I've also had a few occasions of the screen just going completely white. Also, I've had a player just become locked in a dialogue with no way of exiting.

For an example of jankiness, one key aspect of the whole game, dialogues, is just completely awful:

1. Both players can begin separate dialogues at the same time, one just gets muted
2. It's impossible to automatically begin a dialogue with two players, one player has to start it, and the other has to "listen" to it as an additional step
3. It's impossible to switch control of dialogues during a dialogue. This is constantly an issue, because sometimes, dialogues are triggered when you walk past some invisible checkpoint. Basically you're forced to always have your high charisma player to walk in front and hope they end up triggering all the dialogues.
4. It's impossible to contribute to dialogues in any way as the "listening" player. Even if you have some aspect to your character that might provide an interesting line, you are just locked out.
5. If both players speak to a character in succession, the exact same dialogue gets repeated. It's jarring and completely breaks immersion.

There's more, but I'm kind of getting more and more annoyed at the game as I write this, so I think I will just stop here, you probably get the picture 😅

I think the co-op is a complete afterthought in this game, and I will probably be replaying it in single player for a hopefully better experience at some point.

My wife and I have almost finished our playthrough in split screen, and I've done a act or so solo, so let me share my experience

1. The performance can get a bit spotty - I've got a really nice rig, and admittedly I'm playing on max setting and 4k resolution, but we do have frame spikes in split screen that you don't see in solo

2. The way inventory is managed is kind of a pain, each player has their own inventory, comprised of their characters stuff, as well as whatever NPCs happen to be associated with that player, so it's not as straightforward to manage as in Solo. Also if my wife has something in her camp chest, she has to get it herself, I can't get it for her.

3. The way dialogue is handled is a mess (though I'd argue this is partly a problem for solo mode too). If both players are in separate dialogues at the same time, then only half the audio actually gets played, and which half gets played is super inconsistent, to where neither player is really having a smooth experience. Additionally, which player is in control of a dialogues is whoever triggered it, which wouldn't be so bad except you often wind up triggering them on accident

4. Combat feels slightly slower/more boring, because you're waiting for another person to make their turns, and that only gets worse if they're playing a build that has lots of minions. I often find myself taking my phone out during combat because it gets boring waiting for them to do their turns.

5. Which characters belong to which controllers gets mixed up all the time, and we're always having to fix it when we first hop on

Those gripes aside it is a lot of fun, you just have to learn to deal with the quirks. But it's pretty clear while playing that it was designed as a single player game, with couch coop tacked on top of that primary goal

It's splitscreen, so there's no down time. Both players can do everything simultaneously, they are not bound to the same environment. I surely recommend it. It will most likely be the only way I play it.

In Original Sin games there was a hybrid of split and shared screen, so you could change it on the fly. I hope they add it in this game too.

Also interested to hear! Wife and I have our own games going separately right now for our first play though but we’ve talked about co-oping. Interested to hear the couch experience!