Divinity: Original Sin II is by far the best multiplayer RPG I've ever played. Not top three or top two. It takes the crown for being #1 with no other contenders even coming close.
Besides running seamlessly in co-op, I'd imagine the game is equally, if not more, immersive while playing alone. Graphics are visually stunning on the 2021 iMac (4.5k retina display, M1, 16GB unified). It surprisingly runs quite well despite the intricate amounts of detail and, well, because it's on Mac.
Great concept that is executed so well it should be considered a gold standard for RPGs everywhere. Tactical gameplay is engaging and in-depth, the story is complex with compelling character development, a remarkable class system, and the player is given almost too much freedom in an extensive open world. Wonderful music. Class and character building are highly customizable. Skill points and other attributions can be modified/redistributed mid-game with the Respec Mirror mod. Also recommend the Sprint mod given that sprinting is not offered in vanilla.
The game is very long, but there's never a dull moment. It's one of those games that'll get you hooked and have you binging for dozens of hours. Exploration is largely rewarding. High level of replayability because it's impossible to experience all of the characters, their lore, classes, and abilities in one playthrough. All RPG fans MUST give this game a go.
Besides running seamlessly in co-op, I'd imagine the game is equally, if not more, immersive while playing alone. Graphics are visually stunning on the 2021 iMac (4.5k retina display, M1, 16GB unified). It surprisingly runs quite well despite the intricate amounts of detail and, well, because it's on Mac.
Great concept that is executed so well it should be considered a gold standard for RPGs everywhere. Tactical gameplay is engaging and in-depth, the story is complex with compelling character development, a remarkable class system, and the player is given almost too much freedom in an extensive open world. Wonderful music. Class and character building are highly customizable. Skill points and other attributions can be modified/redistributed mid-game with the Respec Mirror mod. Also recommend the Sprint mod given that sprinting is not offered in vanilla.
The game is very long, but there's never a dull moment. It's one of those games that'll get you hooked and have you binging for dozens of hours. Exploration is largely rewarding. High level of replayability because it's impossible to experience all of the characters, their lore, classes, and abilities in one playthrough. All RPG fans MUST give this game a go.
Decided to give it another go after dropping at the start of Reaper's Coast, now I'm at the start of Nameless Isle and thinking about dropping it again. While I'd struggle to call it *bad*, it's a game that constantly leaves me wanting; its are peaks memorable and noteworthy, yet they overlook a sea of apathy.
To start with where it peaks, the combat is great! An engaging and thoughtful combat system compounded by character-building that affords some really stupid combos and gives you so much freedom that I'm surprised I only dipped into *six* different skill types.* Combat being a seamless part of the world paves way for some interesting consequences; a fight with a group of gatekeepers could easily spiral into fighting the whole encampment if the fighting moves too close to them, or you could send a lone party member in to a group to initiate a combat, and give your others freer room to sneak around and get their own pre-emptive attacks in while the combat encounter hangs on your turn. And while most pre-fight setup wasn't all that exciting for me, I do have one particular fond memory of blocking off a ladder with a chest I was hauling around for the past 10 hours and huddling at the top of it, while all the melee enemies sat at the bottom and growled at me (until they remembered they could attack it).
But while I enjoyed the combat, I felt that just about every other aspect of the game fell flat. For one, I found that the world, its story and my place within it was just so incredibly bland, and I couldn't get invested in it in any real capacity past the escape of Fort Joy (the very first story beat!). The Magisters are bad in such a generic "evil guy" way that's as uninteresting as the actual 'cosmic evil' Void beings, and these two are near-exclusively the only antagonistic forces I've run into. And while there's been some intrigue offered by the idea of chasing Ascension (nothing more than intrigue yet, though I can live with that for now), I don't exactly feel compelled to save this world that's struggled to offer me much more than generic bad guy types. To illustrate my disappointment in the nuance of the world, I was quite looking forward to seeing Beast's story with Lohar unfold, this multifaceted story between, Lohar's anger towards the Dwarven Queen, the Queen's attacks on the Magisters, Beast's comtempt towards both, and my own interests in this whole conflict - but it was solved as soon as it actually started, as Lohar is actually on your side and the Queen's side also pretty unequivocally the baddies in the conflict. There do still exist secrets and quests entirely detached from the tedium of the standard generic evil guys, but you have to do a lot of exploring to find them...
...which leads me to my other major issue, the one that's more actively antagonistic, exploration. Or more aptly, searching; searching and scrounging the world for every drop of exp you can find, lest you risk hitting a difficulty spike that exacerbates this very problem to a point that makes progression far too frustrating - entering Reaper's Coast at level 7 and only hitting level 9 before every quest I had seemed impossible was the reason I quit the first time. I use the word 'searching' because 'exploration', to me, implies doing it for its own sake, where the process of discovery is more of a motivator than the discoveries themselves. Feeling forced to scour the map top-to-bottom or fall behind the level curve destroys the organic feeling of exploration as I already have an explicit reason to be doing it, one that's both extremely important and, to be honest, rather boring. It also makes the discoveries themselves - usually quests - less engaging by proxy; regardless of how interesting they may or may not be, I'm doing them primarily for the exp, and it's just much harder to get into a quest when I've been conditioned to see them as exp dispensers.
I think I get why people like this game, but I'm not entirely sure what makes people love it. It's a great combat system, but one that's embellished with an RPG world that I find wholly unsatisfying, and the combat alone can't pull me the whole way through a game like this.
* Post-note edit: I like the freedom a lot, but I felt that customisation was too 'wide' and not 'deep' enough - the game felt extremely coy about giving me new tools for my *preferred* spell types (when I checked the wiki for what I was missing at the start of act 3 when I quit, there was barely anything left!) meaning I struggled to fit into any class fantasy I really wanted. Great for making the actual combat more fun, though
To start with where it peaks, the combat is great! An engaging and thoughtful combat system compounded by character-building that affords some really stupid combos and gives you so much freedom that I'm surprised I only dipped into *six* different skill types.* Combat being a seamless part of the world paves way for some interesting consequences; a fight with a group of gatekeepers could easily spiral into fighting the whole encampment if the fighting moves too close to them, or you could send a lone party member in to a group to initiate a combat, and give your others freer room to sneak around and get their own pre-emptive attacks in while the combat encounter hangs on your turn. And while most pre-fight setup wasn't all that exciting for me, I do have one particular fond memory of blocking off a ladder with a chest I was hauling around for the past 10 hours and huddling at the top of it, while all the melee enemies sat at the bottom and growled at me (until they remembered they could attack it).
But while I enjoyed the combat, I felt that just about every other aspect of the game fell flat. For one, I found that the world, its story and my place within it was just so incredibly bland, and I couldn't get invested in it in any real capacity past the escape of Fort Joy (the very first story beat!). The Magisters are bad in such a generic "evil guy" way that's as uninteresting as the actual 'cosmic evil' Void beings, and these two are near-exclusively the only antagonistic forces I've run into. And while there's been some intrigue offered by the idea of chasing Ascension (nothing more than intrigue yet, though I can live with that for now), I don't exactly feel compelled to save this world that's struggled to offer me much more than generic bad guy types. To illustrate my disappointment in the nuance of the world, I was quite looking forward to seeing Beast's story with Lohar unfold, this multifaceted story between, Lohar's anger towards the Dwarven Queen, the Queen's attacks on the Magisters, Beast's comtempt towards both, and my own interests in this whole conflict - but it was solved as soon as it actually started, as Lohar is actually on your side and the Queen's side also pretty unequivocally the baddies in the conflict. There do still exist secrets and quests entirely detached from the tedium of the standard generic evil guys, but you have to do a lot of exploring to find them...
...which leads me to my other major issue, the one that's more actively antagonistic, exploration. Or more aptly, searching; searching and scrounging the world for every drop of exp you can find, lest you risk hitting a difficulty spike that exacerbates this very problem to a point that makes progression far too frustrating - entering Reaper's Coast at level 7 and only hitting level 9 before every quest I had seemed impossible was the reason I quit the first time. I use the word 'searching' because 'exploration', to me, implies doing it for its own sake, where the process of discovery is more of a motivator than the discoveries themselves. Feeling forced to scour the map top-to-bottom or fall behind the level curve destroys the organic feeling of exploration as I already have an explicit reason to be doing it, one that's both extremely important and, to be honest, rather boring. It also makes the discoveries themselves - usually quests - less engaging by proxy; regardless of how interesting they may or may not be, I'm doing them primarily for the exp, and it's just much harder to get into a quest when I've been conditioned to see them as exp dispensers.
I think I get why people like this game, but I'm not entirely sure what makes people love it. It's a great combat system, but one that's embellished with an RPG world that I find wholly unsatisfying, and the combat alone can't pull me the whole way through a game like this.
* Post-note edit: I like the freedom a lot, but I felt that customisation was too 'wide' and not 'deep' enough - the game felt extremely coy about giving me new tools for my *preferred* spell types (when I checked the wiki for what I was missing at the start of act 3 when I quit, there was barely anything left!) meaning I struggled to fit into any class fantasy I really wanted. Great for making the actual combat more fun, though
One of the best rpgs of last gen and it has my favorite gameplay in a crpg, it's so dynamic and diverse and i'm not saying this just for the combat but the game as a whole, i don't want to spoil it so just go and play it. I didn't like story or universe that much tho.
This review contains spoilers
Games of this style generally aren't my thing, the complexity, steep learning curve and overwhelming number of things onscreen fighting for your attention made it a tough one to get to grips with. I pushed on because this was a recommendation from a friend but also because, while I definitely have a certain type of game that I tend to enjoy, I am open to new experiences because how else do you find something new to love? I didn't think I would get on with this but was really glad to come around on it.
Much to its benefit Divinity 2 is quite the unique experience, its a little rough around the edges (certainly hampered by the very poor handling on switch) but its nothing that cannot be overlooked from what is a considerably low budget title. The game seeks to deliver the same sort of feeling as playing a real tabletop rpg and executes it skilfully with many of its own ideas thrown in there - this is one of the main things that kept me going as I love a good bit of d&d. Playing solo d&d as a video game is a hard sell though because of the amount of micromanagement involved, as well as the sheer commitment needed not just in terms of time investment, but in terms of attentiveness too.
For certain kinds of players, the awareness that Divinity 2 demands is a fantastic and immersive experience, constantly calling back to things that have happened in the universe and presenting so much information to the player, from thousands of world building texts to massive, lore soaked environments. For me personally this is a difficult thing to navigate and immerse myself in because after just a few days of taking a break from it, many of the smaller (but important) details are lost and not everything is journaled to be caught up on. Quests are constant, they often overlap and can be completed in many different ways, countless characters and names are thrown around and telling factions of people apart was a big task. It made sense eventually but you're very much thrown in the deep end. For all this I find that Divinity 2 rarely ever 'insists' on itself however, it has an amazing story to tell but it never feels forced or out of your control, you always have a part to play and a decision to be made and that is the games' greatest strength.
Eventually I gathered that I was making the game harder for myself by trying to understand too many things at any one time and darting between quests and areas before I really took the time to understand where I had been. Once I started playing at my own pace and doing quests one at a time as much as possible, it clicked! Distracted by its complicated systems and the daunting nature of managing multiple characters and shaping their storylines (I know having 4 party members is optional but I feel like it wouldn't be as fun and would be significantly harder), I never properly appreciated the sheer quality of Divinity 2's writing & presentation, nor the value it places on player expression. It is a game committed to both tell a great story, and help you shape your own stories - doing both almost flawlessly. From a pure writing and presentation perspective, this game is incredible, with one of the most compelling casts of characters i've seen in quite a while.
It is presented like one big storybook which etches itself as you progress, boldened by its extraordinary soundtrack, voice acting and narration. I fell in love with the Red Prince who is now one of my all time favourite game characters, there's something about vain assholes who turn around and become your closest, most trusted friend that I never get tired of. Even the way he is introduced had me cackling, for a pompous and arrogant royal he actually has a kind heart and an undeniable charm. Lohse is one of my other favourites, I love her down to earth attitude, her upbeat personality and compassion for others. The scene where you bring her back from the brink of being completely overtaken by the demon inside her head was done so well, as was the sequence where you snuff out the countless candles (representing the souls of others whom the demon has taken over). DoS2 is filled with moments like this that feel genuinely emotional and impactful. Some sections of the game can be cheesed pretty easily but there are other times where you can use the games' mechanics and systems to outsmart a situation like finding an alternative route, positioning yourselves smartly in combat, getting creative with teleportation etc - these all feel so good, finding your own way and making your own decisions is absolutely fantastic. There's countless ways to escape fort joy for example and at one point in the game I snuck into a sourcerers' private chambers because I did not trust him and I picked the lock on his desk to find his diary, which revealed that he was actually hunting my people and I turned on him, that felt like an amazing, personally crafted moment using the games' systems and that is just fucking awesome.
As for combat, the game is meticulous in how it seems to try to replicate the feeling of d&d what with the importance of positioning, the management of resources, knowing your enemy, having a well rounded party etc. This works to its benefit in many ways such as the flexibility for player expression and strategy. There is an endless number of ways to approach combat and get creative with things like the environment and elemental effects and I love that. The part I find slightly more frustrating is that the methodical nature really slows it down and too often it grinds combat to a halt. The computer has hundreds of possible actions to consider at any one time and you spend a lot of time waiting on it to make its move. At least 10 hours of this 50-60 hour game is a combination of waiting and watching slow animations - that does get old pretty fast. By the late game there is so much stuff onscreen that the switch simply could not handle it, what with all of the elements, all of the characters interacting with each other and all of the numbers to keep track of. Even a strictly turn based system could not keep combat from turning into a clusterfuck of onscreen visuals and data which does end up being a good bit of fun to be fair. This said it is a super satisfying challenge and every encounter is intentional, meaning there's no real 'grind'. There are areas and encounters that are intended for certain levels but you're never outright locked onto one path, there is a critical storyline but never any sense of urgency and more games should do that. Combining very intentional writing and world building scenarios crafted by professional devs and writers with a players' own personal experiences (and even their own interpretations!) has never been done this well; as far as I have seen anyway.
Divinity 2 sold me with its amazing story, characters, world and awesome level of customisation and decision making. Unfortunately i'm not as convinced when it comes to 'crpgs' as a whole genre so I don't have much if any desire to try out more, I loved my time with DoS2 but I would not want to do it all over again because it dragged on and does have its share of low points, plus I think i'd lack the patience now knowing how the story ends but that's ok! This is an excellent experience overall and one that even I could get to grips with and i'm the clumsiest, most easily overwhelmed person I know!
8/10
Much to its benefit Divinity 2 is quite the unique experience, its a little rough around the edges (certainly hampered by the very poor handling on switch) but its nothing that cannot be overlooked from what is a considerably low budget title. The game seeks to deliver the same sort of feeling as playing a real tabletop rpg and executes it skilfully with many of its own ideas thrown in there - this is one of the main things that kept me going as I love a good bit of d&d. Playing solo d&d as a video game is a hard sell though because of the amount of micromanagement involved, as well as the sheer commitment needed not just in terms of time investment, but in terms of attentiveness too.
For certain kinds of players, the awareness that Divinity 2 demands is a fantastic and immersive experience, constantly calling back to things that have happened in the universe and presenting so much information to the player, from thousands of world building texts to massive, lore soaked environments. For me personally this is a difficult thing to navigate and immerse myself in because after just a few days of taking a break from it, many of the smaller (but important) details are lost and not everything is journaled to be caught up on. Quests are constant, they often overlap and can be completed in many different ways, countless characters and names are thrown around and telling factions of people apart was a big task. It made sense eventually but you're very much thrown in the deep end. For all this I find that Divinity 2 rarely ever 'insists' on itself however, it has an amazing story to tell but it never feels forced or out of your control, you always have a part to play and a decision to be made and that is the games' greatest strength.
Eventually I gathered that I was making the game harder for myself by trying to understand too many things at any one time and darting between quests and areas before I really took the time to understand where I had been. Once I started playing at my own pace and doing quests one at a time as much as possible, it clicked! Distracted by its complicated systems and the daunting nature of managing multiple characters and shaping their storylines (I know having 4 party members is optional but I feel like it wouldn't be as fun and would be significantly harder), I never properly appreciated the sheer quality of Divinity 2's writing & presentation, nor the value it places on player expression. It is a game committed to both tell a great story, and help you shape your own stories - doing both almost flawlessly. From a pure writing and presentation perspective, this game is incredible, with one of the most compelling casts of characters i've seen in quite a while.
It is presented like one big storybook which etches itself as you progress, boldened by its extraordinary soundtrack, voice acting and narration. I fell in love with the Red Prince who is now one of my all time favourite game characters, there's something about vain assholes who turn around and become your closest, most trusted friend that I never get tired of. Even the way he is introduced had me cackling, for a pompous and arrogant royal he actually has a kind heart and an undeniable charm. Lohse is one of my other favourites, I love her down to earth attitude, her upbeat personality and compassion for others. The scene where you bring her back from the brink of being completely overtaken by the demon inside her head was done so well, as was the sequence where you snuff out the countless candles (representing the souls of others whom the demon has taken over). DoS2 is filled with moments like this that feel genuinely emotional and impactful. Some sections of the game can be cheesed pretty easily but there are other times where you can use the games' mechanics and systems to outsmart a situation like finding an alternative route, positioning yourselves smartly in combat, getting creative with teleportation etc - these all feel so good, finding your own way and making your own decisions is absolutely fantastic. There's countless ways to escape fort joy for example and at one point in the game I snuck into a sourcerers' private chambers because I did not trust him and I picked the lock on his desk to find his diary, which revealed that he was actually hunting my people and I turned on him, that felt like an amazing, personally crafted moment using the games' systems and that is just fucking awesome.
As for combat, the game is meticulous in how it seems to try to replicate the feeling of d&d what with the importance of positioning, the management of resources, knowing your enemy, having a well rounded party etc. This works to its benefit in many ways such as the flexibility for player expression and strategy. There is an endless number of ways to approach combat and get creative with things like the environment and elemental effects and I love that. The part I find slightly more frustrating is that the methodical nature really slows it down and too often it grinds combat to a halt. The computer has hundreds of possible actions to consider at any one time and you spend a lot of time waiting on it to make its move. At least 10 hours of this 50-60 hour game is a combination of waiting and watching slow animations - that does get old pretty fast. By the late game there is so much stuff onscreen that the switch simply could not handle it, what with all of the elements, all of the characters interacting with each other and all of the numbers to keep track of. Even a strictly turn based system could not keep combat from turning into a clusterfuck of onscreen visuals and data which does end up being a good bit of fun to be fair. This said it is a super satisfying challenge and every encounter is intentional, meaning there's no real 'grind'. There are areas and encounters that are intended for certain levels but you're never outright locked onto one path, there is a critical storyline but never any sense of urgency and more games should do that. Combining very intentional writing and world building scenarios crafted by professional devs and writers with a players' own personal experiences (and even their own interpretations!) has never been done this well; as far as I have seen anyway.
Divinity 2 sold me with its amazing story, characters, world and awesome level of customisation and decision making. Unfortunately i'm not as convinced when it comes to 'crpgs' as a whole genre so I don't have much if any desire to try out more, I loved my time with DoS2 but I would not want to do it all over again because it dragged on and does have its share of low points, plus I think i'd lack the patience now knowing how the story ends but that's ok! This is an excellent experience overall and one that even I could get to grips with and i'm the clumsiest, most easily overwhelmed person I know!
8/10
On the one hand, it's a robust and functional (local) co-op RPG with some addictive skill development and entertaining (if sluggish and occasionally buggy) battles. On the other hand, it's a monumentally immature, painstakingly insincere, blood and sweat drenched ode to edgy humour and apathy. It is completely enamoured with the aesthetics of violence, but has nothing of note to say about it, and though bold in the face of gore, it seems desperately afraid of feelings. If it were a person, I would stay far away. As it's a game, however, I do feel safe returning to it every now and again with my partner, just to stare, and shake my head (and this time try out being an inquistor or a rogue or etc etc blam heck yeah critical hit)
What an amazing game, I didnt have such high expectation for this and i totally loved it.
Love the soundtrack, the details of the world is nice to look at, the origin characters are interesting to know and the dialogue is engaging. This also has the best turn based combat gameplay for any rpg imo. Best game of 2017 by far and one of the greatest rpg games of all time.
Love the soundtrack, the details of the world is nice to look at, the origin characters are interesting to know and the dialogue is engaging. This also has the best turn based combat gameplay for any rpg imo. Best game of 2017 by far and one of the greatest rpg games of all time.
come for the solid gameplay and old-school crpg feels, stay for the uncomfortably explicit lizard romances
Minus half a star for not being able to bang Malady and for Fane hating me :(
Amazing game. Took a while and a couple of restarts and Baldurs Gate 3 hype for this game to click with me, ironically.
It's just so deep, could probably spend 50 hour exploring the starting area...
It's just so deep, could probably spend 50 hour exploring the starting area...
Finally, a game where you can have sex with a skeleton who's an absent father.
It's a great game, I am really interested in the story. The gameplay itself is also great, it is complex and really fun.
I hate when two identical games are separate entries here, I wish I could copy my review automatically. Anyway this game is incredible, I have hundreds of hours into it and I'm not even close to done. I love it. Five stars.
(Old review)
Divinity: Original Sin 2 has been an utter delight from start to finish.
I use no hyperbole when I say this is the best RPG I've played thus far.
Pros
Fantastic score. Whether it be running around Fort Joy, taking in the sights on the Lady Vengeance, or amid an intense battle, the music sticks with you all the way through. I've been listening to some tracks repeatedly since first hearing them.
One of the deepest RPGs in terms of choice. A task such as escaping an island ends up having a plethora of options for you to achieve your goal. Want to sneak through a secret dungeon guarded by fire slugs? Sure why not. Want to get out simply by taking a boat? Go for it! Oh what's that? You want to cheat the system and simply teleport yourself and party into various edges until you manage your way out? You got it!
Wonderfully engaging story; filled with plenty of characters that are hard to forget. Don't forget the pet pal perk to talk to all of those animals around you! (Beware, you will be sad a lot of times talking to them.) Off-put by the concept of reading a ton of dialogue? (Why are you buying this...) then worry not! Every single character (and animal) is fully voiced with some amazing VO work. However, the story did let me down in a few small ways, but I'll get to that soon.
Mods mods mods! The community has been excellent at coming up with some very inventive and fun mods to use throughout your adventure. Anything from new classes, new spells, revamping certain systems, and if you're a glutton for punishment - mods that make the game even harder.
Cons
Remember how I mentioned how amazing the story was? Yeah, well that’s for the majority! As some others have mentioned, going into the final act and ending, there are some definite inconsistencies with the quality of writing and apparently attention to lore. (I've never played any other Divinity games; I was unaware until doing further research.) For a game that boasts such a wide range of choices and how they really matter; the ending(s) seemed largely basic and almost unrelated to your adventures throughout the game.
Technical problems. Any game of this size will be bound to suffer from some technical issues, I completely get that. Overall, it was nothing major - apart from one game breaking bug I encountered causing some invisible enemies to 1 hit KO me, but luckily, I had a save from not long before that I managed to get back to and the problem seemed to have fixed itself. While the bugs weren't outright angering - in the final act I did find myself getting increasingly peeved by the buildup of several small bugs affecting my experience. At times enemies will take AGES to take their turn - leaving you to simply sit there and watch them and their idle animation until they finally realize they should be doing something.
Tech probs cont. The camera and reticule would at times completely spaz out and throw itself in a random direction and would continue to do so whenever trying to target certain areas or enemies. This may have been due to some mods interfering with the code, but at times my journal would be completely wiped of all data - leaving me to have to remember what quests I still needed to do.
In the end though, I loved this game and every single minute I put into it. Some problems did irk me enough to ever-so-slightly lower my score, but ultimately, I'm marking this game down as one of my favorite RPGs of all-time.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 has been an utter delight from start to finish.
I use no hyperbole when I say this is the best RPG I've played thus far.
Pros
Fantastic score. Whether it be running around Fort Joy, taking in the sights on the Lady Vengeance, or amid an intense battle, the music sticks with you all the way through. I've been listening to some tracks repeatedly since first hearing them.
One of the deepest RPGs in terms of choice. A task such as escaping an island ends up having a plethora of options for you to achieve your goal. Want to sneak through a secret dungeon guarded by fire slugs? Sure why not. Want to get out simply by taking a boat? Go for it! Oh what's that? You want to cheat the system and simply teleport yourself and party into various edges until you manage your way out? You got it!
Wonderfully engaging story; filled with plenty of characters that are hard to forget. Don't forget the pet pal perk to talk to all of those animals around you! (Beware, you will be sad a lot of times talking to them.) Off-put by the concept of reading a ton of dialogue? (Why are you buying this...) then worry not! Every single character (and animal) is fully voiced with some amazing VO work. However, the story did let me down in a few small ways, but I'll get to that soon.
Mods mods mods! The community has been excellent at coming up with some very inventive and fun mods to use throughout your adventure. Anything from new classes, new spells, revamping certain systems, and if you're a glutton for punishment - mods that make the game even harder.
Cons
Remember how I mentioned how amazing the story was? Yeah, well that’s for the majority! As some others have mentioned, going into the final act and ending, there are some definite inconsistencies with the quality of writing and apparently attention to lore. (I've never played any other Divinity games; I was unaware until doing further research.) For a game that boasts such a wide range of choices and how they really matter; the ending(s) seemed largely basic and almost unrelated to your adventures throughout the game.
Technical problems. Any game of this size will be bound to suffer from some technical issues, I completely get that. Overall, it was nothing major - apart from one game breaking bug I encountered causing some invisible enemies to 1 hit KO me, but luckily, I had a save from not long before that I managed to get back to and the problem seemed to have fixed itself. While the bugs weren't outright angering - in the final act I did find myself getting increasingly peeved by the buildup of several small bugs affecting my experience. At times enemies will take AGES to take their turn - leaving you to simply sit there and watch them and their idle animation until they finally realize they should be doing something.
Tech probs cont. The camera and reticule would at times completely spaz out and throw itself in a random direction and would continue to do so whenever trying to target certain areas or enemies. This may have been due to some mods interfering with the code, but at times my journal would be completely wiped of all data - leaving me to have to remember what quests I still needed to do.
In the end though, I loved this game and every single minute I put into it. Some problems did irk me enough to ever-so-slightly lower my score, but ultimately, I'm marking this game down as one of my favorite RPGs of all-time.
evet abi
So far, there are a lot of things that just result in your death. Talk to this guy, boom you die, walk over there, boom you die.
I'm loving the world and I'm loving when the game is going at full speed, but I'm exhausted by these trial and error choices that just make us explode
I'm loving the world and I'm loving when the game is going at full speed, but I'm exhausted by these trial and error choices that just make us explode
What a gem! The only problem is that I won’t enjoy exploration in any other game anymore. The amount of details is mind blowing, loved the lore/storytelling and how my choices could have a serious impact, I spent countless hours just to try different choices. For the gameplay, It might be a bit complicated at first, but once you master it’s soo interesting and enjoyable.. Not to mention the perfect voice acting and amazing soundtracks :’)
Incredible role playing game with the apex of turn based combat
I enjoyed this so much more after lowering the difficulty to get used to the combat, I can’t wait to properly play with friends now that I’ve experienced the story.
Divinity é bastante livre, o que é no mínimo irônico já que começamos como prisioneiros, desde a criação do personagem, podemos personalizar tudo, desde a origem para desbloquear novas opções de dialogo com npc's, até as habilidades que podem ser mescladas permitindo classe totalmente personalizadas, além de que cada raça tem sua própria habilidade. A história é dinâmica, permitindo o jogador tomar decisões que mudam o rumo da historia, ter bons relacionamentos com npc's que lhe renderam bons descontos em itens vendidos, ou até mesmo ajuda em batalhas. Cada companheiro npc do seu grupo terá sua própria missão, e ele se junta ao grupo por seus próprios interesses, não é algo vazio, que ele entra para o grupo porque o jogo definiu que ele precisa. O mundo parece muito vivo, se jogarmos água no fogo, ele se torna fumaça, raio na fumaça vira uma nuvem eletrificada, que por sua vez causa mais dano a inimigos molhados. Esses detalhes tornam o jogo um tesouro, principalmente pelo multiplayer, que pode ser jogado em splitscreen ou online se ambos tiver o jogo, podendo transferir até mesmo um jogo local para o online.
Divinity OS2 foi o primeiro CRPG "normal" que joguei após descobrir que gostava do gênero com Disco Elysium, e não esperava que fosse ser tão absorvido na experiência que esse jogo proporciona. Joguei mais de 5 horas por dia durante semanas e não sentia o menor sinal de cansaço pois explorar cada mapa, descobrir seus segredos e progredir nas diversas (e muitas) side-quests era maravilhoso. Algo que não esperava, mas que acabou ocorrendo, foi passar a me importar pra valer com alguns personagens como Fane e o Príncipe Vermelho, pois embora eles sejam "hérois" ainda possuem comportamentos problemáticos e uma moralidade cinza oriunda de sua história de "background", afinal ambos são personagens que podem ser selecionados como protagonistas caso assim o jogador queira. Quanto ao combate, é desafiador e muito divertido devido a isto, existem diversos confrontos realmente difíceis e a manipulação do cenário, seus elementos e arquitetura são essenciais para obter a vantagem necessária para vencer, ou reduzir a desvantagem na qual você se encontra, é muito bom. Não há como não recomendar este jogo para qualquer fã de rpgs, especilmente crpgs.
Any game gets an immediate +2 on its score out of ten for allowing you to play a skeleton.
Já tinha virado um dos meus jogos favoritos quando eu joguei a campanha solo, mas ficou ainda mais consolidado quando joguei em co-op.
É um jogo tão bom que faz esquecer a UI de inventário dele que causa dor física ao ser usado.
É um jogo tão bom que faz esquecer a UI de inventário dele que causa dor física ao ser usado.
I think I might really like CRPGs after this one - this slaps pretty hard. The story wavers a little bit between kinda hokey and pretty compelling, but I think a lot of the characters are pretty fun and I liked a lot of the voiceacting. The combat is super fun - the elemental surface/cloud system leads to a lot of interesting thinking and there's some pretty cool systems-driven stuff going on here. Outside that I have some minor gripes with some of the scaling or the quest progression but overall this was a really fun way to spend 100(!) hours with some friends.
Absolutely incredible game. Full of some of the best stories I’ve seen. The combat was great, but weird difficulty spikes meant I ended up finishing on the story mode, and even then I was stuck on the final boss for three days.
playthrough started: march 2020
My history with RPGs doesn’t involve many traditional CRPGs, it mostly begins and ends with BioWare games. Being a console focused gamer I never got into the legendary RPGs due to barriers of entry for me which included overly complex menus and gameplay systems, real time combat always bugged me in these party based games with cooldowns, and I don’t like keyboard and mouse. KOTOR basically began the process of consolelizing (new word) that kind of RPG. I loved those BioWare games but I always wondered could I ever play the really hardcore ones. Recently there has been a resurgence in the indie scene bringing back that classic isometric deep cRPG and these developers are keeping the console player in mind making their games accessible for all while not sacrificing the complexity. Divinity Original Sin 2 stood out as the best of these recent RPGs so I wanted to give it a shot and thank the maker I did because it’s instantly become one of the best games I have ever played.
Why does DOS 2 work so well for me? For one it works perfectly with a controller and it was adapted for consoles, that said I played on a PC but the second the controller is activated it enters a TV mode so the game looks and plays perfectly for that comfortable controller setup. Accessibility is another big one, it’s a deep game that doesn’t overburden the player with countless tutorials but still manages to slowly explain and develop all their systems naturally through gameplay. I never felt overwhelmed with the multiple gameplay systems, very well paced game.
Best of all though, the one key aspect that absolutely lend itself perfectly for me is the turn based combat system. Oh how I love turn based, it becomes a chess match where I have as much time as I want to survey the field, know who goes next and I know exactly how much AP I have for actions that turn. I can properly develop strategies without worrying about parts of the fight going on without me when I’m not focused on them that moment. It all makes sense and has set rules so that I am in complete control of my team during a battle. This game feels to me like fantasy Xcom (minus the bullshit RNG), almost every fight was a joy to strategize and figure out how to defeat enemies in always varied locations and situations.
Lets backtrack a bit so I can describe the game a bit more. The story is standard fantasy stuff, you pick a main hero from the usual grouping of fantasy characters like an elf, a dwarf, a lizard man, an undead skeleton, generic human dude, and a female mage. You create a team of four out of six, you can’t switch them after the first act which is kind of wild to me but hey now I have reason to play this again. Your group goes on a grand adventure to pursue divinity and become a god to battle evil forces that threaten the world, yadayadayada, cool shit happens. You have maps that actually aren’t that big, this is NOT an open world Bethesda game. Each area is packed with detail and a load of quests to do, no space is wasted. So while you don’t really explore a vast fantasy world you are not wasting time, every location in these maps have a purpose and a good story to go with it.
The game is divided into multiple acts and after said act that location is left behind for a new one, no going back to finish old quests, so it’s kind of linear in that regard. There are pros and cons to this, for one the story is always moving forward and great content is constantly flowing. The downside is I miss the feeling of exploring a magical world and discovering things off the beaten path. This game has loads of side content but the maps are so small the path is never hidden. You will level up, develop your characters and ultimately get into many many battles with all kinds of enemies.
Which brings me back to the combat, oh the glorious combat! To me this is up there as the best RPG combat system I have ever played. Like I said the Xcom type of strategy and pacing makes flow of the battle so much fun and there are so many moments of “nooo don’t you dare do that you bastard!” where a plan goes to shit cause the enemy pulls out some crazy attack and ruins your strategy. The enemy AI is fantastic, they pull from the same pool of skills the player can have and they know exactly how to exploit any deficiencies your team my have. There is a perk you can add to a character that gives them max AP each turn but leaves them defenseless to all status effects, a risky perk to be sure. Well when I used that on my mage,Lohse, I might as well have put a gigantic sign that said “please attack me with status effects!”, my god the AI was relentless.
These battles are so interesting, almost all of them are great. Imagine a game where there are no junk mobs, every fight makes you commit and pay attention. Plus Larian studio made sure to constantly vary up the battle scenarios to keep fights fresh 130 hours in. I can’t tell you how floored I was by the sheer creativity of some of these fights; for instance ones where you are up on a oil rig and below an army of oil monsters keep rising up, one ignition of fire and the entire battle arena lights up like an inferno, which then leads to an invading army of fire blobs that get healed by fire turning the battle on its head. Fighting enemies that are constantly healed until certain conditions around the map are met. Battles that are set in trapped filled rooms, some that combine vastly different enemy types which require your team to be adept for any kind of monster and so on. I could not get enough of these fights, they kept surprising me to the very end.
Part of why combat is so great is how the magic system works and how interactive the entire game world is, it’s the kind of level of freedom and detail I expect from an MGS game, not a RPG. You got your basic stuff like if you use a fire spell on an oil surface it will explode and cover the area with fire. Cast rain on an area and use lightning and the water will conduct the electricity, or use a freeze spell and it will freeze enemies and create ice surfaces. These mechanics on their own are great as you can create all kinds of great strategies around them but that’s just scratching the surface. If a player really wants to get creative they can use teleportation and the ability to move items around to create elaborate traps. In a mansion I was in there were these massive paintings that basically can serve as gigantic walls. So I organized four of them in a square to basically make a prison and teleported an enemy into the middle of it to essentially take them out of the battle (so long that enemy didn’t have any teleport spells of it’s own). I never did this but I read others filled empty barrels with heavy items and them teleported that barrel on top of enemies to crush them. Experimentation if encouraged, the gameplay systems work so beautifully that it feels like the player is in full control and not limited to a rigid combat system.
Divinity 2 has a combat system that is heavily focused on armor, this system is different but has some drawbacks. Every character has physical and magical armor numbers that is provided by the gear you have on. To take actual health damage one must eliminate one of the armor categories and then attack with that trait. Magic attacks take down the magic armor, once it’s zero you can then damage their health using magic. If you use physical attacks you must remove the physical armor first then your attacks damage them. Status effects are tied to this system as well as all status effects will be blocked by the type of armor that defends it. So this leads to battles where certain characters will have distinct advantages over certain enemies; in most battles you will have enemies with large physical armor and some with large magic armor. My team would then split up and focus on the enemy they are best suited for. It adds a strategic element but it also really reduces the effectiveness of magic until this armor is removed. At the start of a fight most of your status effects won’t even land. I also hated when enemies move around and all of a sudden I have a magic character surrounded by enemies with super high magic armor but really low physical armor and this mage has pitiful physical attacks so it becomes a sort of wasted turn.
This resulted in me making my characters have attacks for every situation. I still specialized them to be a mage, the tank, the ranger and so on but I would make sure to invest in one or two skills that would provide them with an attack that is not their focus. Speaking of builds this game offers tremendous freedom to make your character into whatever you want. There is a respec mirror that allows you to change most every stat in the game so you are never locked into a choice if you chose to pivot. Any character can learn any skill/spell as long as you invest points into that skills tree. There are perks that can add some really good rule breaking effects like being able to induce status effects even when they have armor. There are some killer builds that can be made exploiting the traits and potions that provide extra buffs, again it’s a game that allows freedom to experiment and create your own style.
Spells come in different spell trees, each with increasing complex spells. There is more than enough ability slots to have many spells from multiple trees which can create some creative combinations. For instance necromancy focuses on spells that can alter the dead, one shields you from death for three turns. One spell allows you to chain your life to that enemy so if you take damage they take damage which is resistant free. Say you have an enemy with high resistance to spells, ok chain them, then activate the death resist spell and attack your own character, free damage on the enemy. There are all kinds of interesting strategies to be had and the AI will come up with some of their own that would surprise me.
Because the gear is so important to the combat system, loot is hugely important and sadly one of the negative aspects. For some strange reason loot is RNG, yes there are still premade rare sets of armor and weapons to earn from quests but they scale to your level and often times a random armor you find gets a good roll and has stat perks that are better. It’s just weird to find a better piece of armor from a random kitchen cabinet than a reward from a mage you saved. While I didn’t do this, you can just save the game, pick up the loot and look at the perks it provides (say strength +3 and necromancy +2) and if you don’t like it reload the save and those perks would randomly shuffle into something else. As I mentioned it all scales to your current level, the only exceptions being rare armor sets that do provide cool unique powers and quests to earn them. The majority of the time though you will be mixing and matching a bunch of random gear you find from all over. The game has a great sense of progression where the level scaling works so that difficulty stays at a manageable level throughout but it does remove that aspect of making finding a rare armor feel like some special achievement.
Since this is a fantasy game we all know what everyone’s favorite past time is, questing! Oh such glorious quests, quests all over, quests upon quests that interconnect with one another. You can’t walk a few screens without being handed a quest. As I mentioned pbefore every corner of this world has something of value from interesting NPCs to some magical puzzle to solve for rewards, there is something to do and see. With the amount of quests given I thought these would get boring or be fetch quests but this game is almost devoid of any of that. Some how the game is packed with well designed quests that never get boring even 130 hours in, it’s a remarkable achievement.
The openness of the game also applies to the way quests can be completed. Most every quest can be approached in a multitude of ways and have various outcomes that many times influence future quests. Sometimes I learned of a quest by reading a letter on a fallen soldier that gave me insight into some secret terrorist plot, because I knew that info I then could get extra information from an NPC that was implicated in the letter and from their learn where the base is. But you don’t need to do any of that, perhaps you are a thief and uncovered a secret locked door that you were able to pickpocket and find a back entrance to said base before you even knew what was lurking inside. Quests have so many ways to beat them like the brute force way, persuasion to talk your way out of sticky situations, sometimes putting enemies against each other and just standing back and watching the fireworks.
There will be quest lines between two warring factions that directly conflict with one another, how you navigate who to side with how to approach it will change what characters might side with you later on. Choices are paramount to this game as the story has many tendrils that branch out and directly effect storylines for future acts. The main quest is not really highlighted any differently than the side quests, it’s all high quality stuff but I will say the main quests do have some stand out moments. During your travels you will go deep into “dungeons” often times filled with puzzles and traps. I loved the amount of puzzles this game had, it’s no Zelda but it’s more than most RPGs have. My favorites involve riddles and some odd contraption that must be solved to complete a quest.
Optional quests can range to silly fun ones to optional super bosses that will test your skills. Each character you have on your party will also have their own major quest line that stretches across the entire game, I found these to be among some of the best the game has to offer. What’s wild is because you can only pick four of six characters to take with you that’s two major storylines everyone will miss their first go, that’s not to mention the crazy way your choices can change what quests you can do. It’s staggering to think of the amount of variations the quests and storylines can take.
My biggest negative with the game and why it’s not at the top top of my favorites is how surface level the story seemed. Gaming isn’t exactly known for its really deeper nuanced storylines but in recent years games have reached almost movie quality acting and performances from digital characters. Clearly seeing this is a small indie game it doesn’t have great graphics so I don’t expect it to do that but I do expect it to at least try to create meaningful relationships between the team members and try a bit harder to really nail the emotional moments. Don’t expect BioWare level writing here, while I did grow to really care for my squad I found their relationships to be flimsy at best. They say all the right things “in our time together you have grown as a great friend” but that is kind of just said rather than organically achieved. You can talk to your team members but the dialogue options won’t really change until some major story moments and even then you get like five lines of dialogue explaining how they feel. There is no getting to know them with long sessions of conversations, no real in game moments where you feel the emotional weight of the events transpiring. I had a love story between my main and Lohse that was so quick to happen; maybe I picked a flirting line once or twice but all of a sudden in the middle of the game they are professing their love for each other, totally unearned.
The story is told through voice acting mostly with a narrator explaining the scene as if you are watching an audio book because these little character models don’t emote at all. The power of writing can illicit great emotion but it’s kind of standard fantasy fare what you get here. There are some great twists and turns with the story, some shocking revelations and interesting moral conundrums to work through but I never felt completely emotionally invested in the situation.
Compounding the issue is my disdain for the persuasion stat, a garbage stat that needs to go away from every RPG. Because I decide to invest a few points into a magical stat all of a sudden I get a WIN button for everyone situation, it’s absurd. The evil villain is ready to murder an important NPC, wait let me see if a clear a persuasion check, oh look I have an arbitrary number tada I convinced him not to. MAJOR storylines that can drastically alter the story are all decided on whether you have a stupid number in a stupid stat. A few conversations do have a non persuasive option where you have to navigate dialogue in a smart manner to get what you want (the way it should always be) but the majority tie getting a good outcome only to this stat. The very worst part came where this pivotal moment between my entire team arrived, the game had been building up to it and instead of some dramatic emotional sequence where relationships are tested I passed a persuasion check “all good, let’s move on”, just like that. From a storytelling perspective the game could be better.
Graphically the game is extremely basic, character models are like tiny action figures with zero emotive capability. The world of Rivellon is well crafted with varied locations that are memorable like a blood island, a forest of elves, it’s great stuff. I think the lore is well fleshed out, the different races and enemy types have great designs. Voice acting is average, a few characters do have some big emotional scenes to work with but it’s few and far between. The narrator has the most work to do, he sounds like a British scholar telling a humorous fantasy tale. Larian knocked it out of the park with the musical score, there are theme songs that are now etched into my brain. Great catchy tunes, big epic fantasy themes that capture the feeling of adventure.
The sheer breath of content Divinity 2 has is staggering, especially when I consider its impossible to see it all in one go. I easily put 140 hours into this game, I did do every quest I came across and still never tired of playing. So many games of this length I hit a sort of wall and need to take a break, not so here. Part of it is the great pacing and how well balanced it is, so many RPGs ruin character growth when you do too many side quests, here it’s almost required because this game will kick your ass if you don’t level up and never will you feel overpowered (unless you employ certain cheesy strategies). I did reload some story moments to kind of get a sense of what could have changed if I tried a different outcome and I was shocked at some of the possibilities, I’m pretty sure you can kill basically anyone including your own party members and the story will adjust. Oh and there are extra modes that I didn’t even touch, an arena combat mode where you can create your own custom battles and even play them online. Plus a game master mode that lets you create an entire game if you want, I am sure there are user created stories to try out, it’s wild. And ALL of this is playable online with a friend, which I did not do but it’s a great option for some. Now to be fair I did play the Definitive Edition so I had a polished complete game with all DLC added in (like the great Sir Loras, my undead squirrel knight companion) this is basically the only way to buy the game now so I highly recommend to do so.
Divinity Original Sin 2 is a masterpiece of a game that offers the best in class combat of nearly any RPG I’ve ever played. It’s gameplay systems allow for so much improvisation which fulfills that gameplay itch I have, it’s a joy to interact with this world. If only the presentation and story allowed for bigger emotional impact this game would probably be my favorite RPG, thanks to look forward to in the future I suppose. As it stands it’s a remarkable game with fantastic quests, great combat, memorable moments, just everything that makes for a compelling gaming experience.
Score: 9.6
Why does DOS 2 work so well for me? For one it works perfectly with a controller and it was adapted for consoles, that said I played on a PC but the second the controller is activated it enters a TV mode so the game looks and plays perfectly for that comfortable controller setup. Accessibility is another big one, it’s a deep game that doesn’t overburden the player with countless tutorials but still manages to slowly explain and develop all their systems naturally through gameplay. I never felt overwhelmed with the multiple gameplay systems, very well paced game.
Best of all though, the one key aspect that absolutely lend itself perfectly for me is the turn based combat system. Oh how I love turn based, it becomes a chess match where I have as much time as I want to survey the field, know who goes next and I know exactly how much AP I have for actions that turn. I can properly develop strategies without worrying about parts of the fight going on without me when I’m not focused on them that moment. It all makes sense and has set rules so that I am in complete control of my team during a battle. This game feels to me like fantasy Xcom (minus the bullshit RNG), almost every fight was a joy to strategize and figure out how to defeat enemies in always varied locations and situations.
Lets backtrack a bit so I can describe the game a bit more. The story is standard fantasy stuff, you pick a main hero from the usual grouping of fantasy characters like an elf, a dwarf, a lizard man, an undead skeleton, generic human dude, and a female mage. You create a team of four out of six, you can’t switch them after the first act which is kind of wild to me but hey now I have reason to play this again. Your group goes on a grand adventure to pursue divinity and become a god to battle evil forces that threaten the world, yadayadayada, cool shit happens. You have maps that actually aren’t that big, this is NOT an open world Bethesda game. Each area is packed with detail and a load of quests to do, no space is wasted. So while you don’t really explore a vast fantasy world you are not wasting time, every location in these maps have a purpose and a good story to go with it.
The game is divided into multiple acts and after said act that location is left behind for a new one, no going back to finish old quests, so it’s kind of linear in that regard. There are pros and cons to this, for one the story is always moving forward and great content is constantly flowing. The downside is I miss the feeling of exploring a magical world and discovering things off the beaten path. This game has loads of side content but the maps are so small the path is never hidden. You will level up, develop your characters and ultimately get into many many battles with all kinds of enemies.
Which brings me back to the combat, oh the glorious combat! To me this is up there as the best RPG combat system I have ever played. Like I said the Xcom type of strategy and pacing makes flow of the battle so much fun and there are so many moments of “nooo don’t you dare do that you bastard!” where a plan goes to shit cause the enemy pulls out some crazy attack and ruins your strategy. The enemy AI is fantastic, they pull from the same pool of skills the player can have and they know exactly how to exploit any deficiencies your team my have. There is a perk you can add to a character that gives them max AP each turn but leaves them defenseless to all status effects, a risky perk to be sure. Well when I used that on my mage,Lohse, I might as well have put a gigantic sign that said “please attack me with status effects!”, my god the AI was relentless.
These battles are so interesting, almost all of them are great. Imagine a game where there are no junk mobs, every fight makes you commit and pay attention. Plus Larian studio made sure to constantly vary up the battle scenarios to keep fights fresh 130 hours in. I can’t tell you how floored I was by the sheer creativity of some of these fights; for instance ones where you are up on a oil rig and below an army of oil monsters keep rising up, one ignition of fire and the entire battle arena lights up like an inferno, which then leads to an invading army of fire blobs that get healed by fire turning the battle on its head. Fighting enemies that are constantly healed until certain conditions around the map are met. Battles that are set in trapped filled rooms, some that combine vastly different enemy types which require your team to be adept for any kind of monster and so on. I could not get enough of these fights, they kept surprising me to the very end.
Part of why combat is so great is how the magic system works and how interactive the entire game world is, it’s the kind of level of freedom and detail I expect from an MGS game, not a RPG. You got your basic stuff like if you use a fire spell on an oil surface it will explode and cover the area with fire. Cast rain on an area and use lightning and the water will conduct the electricity, or use a freeze spell and it will freeze enemies and create ice surfaces. These mechanics on their own are great as you can create all kinds of great strategies around them but that’s just scratching the surface. If a player really wants to get creative they can use teleportation and the ability to move items around to create elaborate traps. In a mansion I was in there were these massive paintings that basically can serve as gigantic walls. So I organized four of them in a square to basically make a prison and teleported an enemy into the middle of it to essentially take them out of the battle (so long that enemy didn’t have any teleport spells of it’s own). I never did this but I read others filled empty barrels with heavy items and them teleported that barrel on top of enemies to crush them. Experimentation if encouraged, the gameplay systems work so beautifully that it feels like the player is in full control and not limited to a rigid combat system.
Divinity 2 has a combat system that is heavily focused on armor, this system is different but has some drawbacks. Every character has physical and magical armor numbers that is provided by the gear you have on. To take actual health damage one must eliminate one of the armor categories and then attack with that trait. Magic attacks take down the magic armor, once it’s zero you can then damage their health using magic. If you use physical attacks you must remove the physical armor first then your attacks damage them. Status effects are tied to this system as well as all status effects will be blocked by the type of armor that defends it. So this leads to battles where certain characters will have distinct advantages over certain enemies; in most battles you will have enemies with large physical armor and some with large magic armor. My team would then split up and focus on the enemy they are best suited for. It adds a strategic element but it also really reduces the effectiveness of magic until this armor is removed. At the start of a fight most of your status effects won’t even land. I also hated when enemies move around and all of a sudden I have a magic character surrounded by enemies with super high magic armor but really low physical armor and this mage has pitiful physical attacks so it becomes a sort of wasted turn.
This resulted in me making my characters have attacks for every situation. I still specialized them to be a mage, the tank, the ranger and so on but I would make sure to invest in one or two skills that would provide them with an attack that is not their focus. Speaking of builds this game offers tremendous freedom to make your character into whatever you want. There is a respec mirror that allows you to change most every stat in the game so you are never locked into a choice if you chose to pivot. Any character can learn any skill/spell as long as you invest points into that skills tree. There are perks that can add some really good rule breaking effects like being able to induce status effects even when they have armor. There are some killer builds that can be made exploiting the traits and potions that provide extra buffs, again it’s a game that allows freedom to experiment and create your own style.
Spells come in different spell trees, each with increasing complex spells. There is more than enough ability slots to have many spells from multiple trees which can create some creative combinations. For instance necromancy focuses on spells that can alter the dead, one shields you from death for three turns. One spell allows you to chain your life to that enemy so if you take damage they take damage which is resistant free. Say you have an enemy with high resistance to spells, ok chain them, then activate the death resist spell and attack your own character, free damage on the enemy. There are all kinds of interesting strategies to be had and the AI will come up with some of their own that would surprise me.
Because the gear is so important to the combat system, loot is hugely important and sadly one of the negative aspects. For some strange reason loot is RNG, yes there are still premade rare sets of armor and weapons to earn from quests but they scale to your level and often times a random armor you find gets a good roll and has stat perks that are better. It’s just weird to find a better piece of armor from a random kitchen cabinet than a reward from a mage you saved. While I didn’t do this, you can just save the game, pick up the loot and look at the perks it provides (say strength +3 and necromancy +2) and if you don’t like it reload the save and those perks would randomly shuffle into something else. As I mentioned it all scales to your current level, the only exceptions being rare armor sets that do provide cool unique powers and quests to earn them. The majority of the time though you will be mixing and matching a bunch of random gear you find from all over. The game has a great sense of progression where the level scaling works so that difficulty stays at a manageable level throughout but it does remove that aspect of making finding a rare armor feel like some special achievement.
Since this is a fantasy game we all know what everyone’s favorite past time is, questing! Oh such glorious quests, quests all over, quests upon quests that interconnect with one another. You can’t walk a few screens without being handed a quest. As I mentioned pbefore every corner of this world has something of value from interesting NPCs to some magical puzzle to solve for rewards, there is something to do and see. With the amount of quests given I thought these would get boring or be fetch quests but this game is almost devoid of any of that. Some how the game is packed with well designed quests that never get boring even 130 hours in, it’s a remarkable achievement.
The openness of the game also applies to the way quests can be completed. Most every quest can be approached in a multitude of ways and have various outcomes that many times influence future quests. Sometimes I learned of a quest by reading a letter on a fallen soldier that gave me insight into some secret terrorist plot, because I knew that info I then could get extra information from an NPC that was implicated in the letter and from their learn where the base is. But you don’t need to do any of that, perhaps you are a thief and uncovered a secret locked door that you were able to pickpocket and find a back entrance to said base before you even knew what was lurking inside. Quests have so many ways to beat them like the brute force way, persuasion to talk your way out of sticky situations, sometimes putting enemies against each other and just standing back and watching the fireworks.
There will be quest lines between two warring factions that directly conflict with one another, how you navigate who to side with how to approach it will change what characters might side with you later on. Choices are paramount to this game as the story has many tendrils that branch out and directly effect storylines for future acts. The main quest is not really highlighted any differently than the side quests, it’s all high quality stuff but I will say the main quests do have some stand out moments. During your travels you will go deep into “dungeons” often times filled with puzzles and traps. I loved the amount of puzzles this game had, it’s no Zelda but it’s more than most RPGs have. My favorites involve riddles and some odd contraption that must be solved to complete a quest.
Optional quests can range to silly fun ones to optional super bosses that will test your skills. Each character you have on your party will also have their own major quest line that stretches across the entire game, I found these to be among some of the best the game has to offer. What’s wild is because you can only pick four of six characters to take with you that’s two major storylines everyone will miss their first go, that’s not to mention the crazy way your choices can change what quests you can do. It’s staggering to think of the amount of variations the quests and storylines can take.
My biggest negative with the game and why it’s not at the top top of my favorites is how surface level the story seemed. Gaming isn’t exactly known for its really deeper nuanced storylines but in recent years games have reached almost movie quality acting and performances from digital characters. Clearly seeing this is a small indie game it doesn’t have great graphics so I don’t expect it to do that but I do expect it to at least try to create meaningful relationships between the team members and try a bit harder to really nail the emotional moments. Don’t expect BioWare level writing here, while I did grow to really care for my squad I found their relationships to be flimsy at best. They say all the right things “in our time together you have grown as a great friend” but that is kind of just said rather than organically achieved. You can talk to your team members but the dialogue options won’t really change until some major story moments and even then you get like five lines of dialogue explaining how they feel. There is no getting to know them with long sessions of conversations, no real in game moments where you feel the emotional weight of the events transpiring. I had a love story between my main and Lohse that was so quick to happen; maybe I picked a flirting line once or twice but all of a sudden in the middle of the game they are professing their love for each other, totally unearned.
The story is told through voice acting mostly with a narrator explaining the scene as if you are watching an audio book because these little character models don’t emote at all. The power of writing can illicit great emotion but it’s kind of standard fantasy fare what you get here. There are some great twists and turns with the story, some shocking revelations and interesting moral conundrums to work through but I never felt completely emotionally invested in the situation.
Compounding the issue is my disdain for the persuasion stat, a garbage stat that needs to go away from every RPG. Because I decide to invest a few points into a magical stat all of a sudden I get a WIN button for everyone situation, it’s absurd. The evil villain is ready to murder an important NPC, wait let me see if a clear a persuasion check, oh look I have an arbitrary number tada I convinced him not to. MAJOR storylines that can drastically alter the story are all decided on whether you have a stupid number in a stupid stat. A few conversations do have a non persuasive option where you have to navigate dialogue in a smart manner to get what you want (the way it should always be) but the majority tie getting a good outcome only to this stat. The very worst part came where this pivotal moment between my entire team arrived, the game had been building up to it and instead of some dramatic emotional sequence where relationships are tested I passed a persuasion check “all good, let’s move on”, just like that. From a storytelling perspective the game could be better.
Graphically the game is extremely basic, character models are like tiny action figures with zero emotive capability. The world of Rivellon is well crafted with varied locations that are memorable like a blood island, a forest of elves, it’s great stuff. I think the lore is well fleshed out, the different races and enemy types have great designs. Voice acting is average, a few characters do have some big emotional scenes to work with but it’s few and far between. The narrator has the most work to do, he sounds like a British scholar telling a humorous fantasy tale. Larian knocked it out of the park with the musical score, there are theme songs that are now etched into my brain. Great catchy tunes, big epic fantasy themes that capture the feeling of adventure.
The sheer breath of content Divinity 2 has is staggering, especially when I consider its impossible to see it all in one go. I easily put 140 hours into this game, I did do every quest I came across and still never tired of playing. So many games of this length I hit a sort of wall and need to take a break, not so here. Part of it is the great pacing and how well balanced it is, so many RPGs ruin character growth when you do too many side quests, here it’s almost required because this game will kick your ass if you don’t level up and never will you feel overpowered (unless you employ certain cheesy strategies). I did reload some story moments to kind of get a sense of what could have changed if I tried a different outcome and I was shocked at some of the possibilities, I’m pretty sure you can kill basically anyone including your own party members and the story will adjust. Oh and there are extra modes that I didn’t even touch, an arena combat mode where you can create your own custom battles and even play them online. Plus a game master mode that lets you create an entire game if you want, I am sure there are user created stories to try out, it’s wild. And ALL of this is playable online with a friend, which I did not do but it’s a great option for some. Now to be fair I did play the Definitive Edition so I had a polished complete game with all DLC added in (like the great Sir Loras, my undead squirrel knight companion) this is basically the only way to buy the game now so I highly recommend to do so.
Divinity Original Sin 2 is a masterpiece of a game that offers the best in class combat of nearly any RPG I’ve ever played. It’s gameplay systems allow for so much improvisation which fulfills that gameplay itch I have, it’s a joy to interact with this world. If only the presentation and story allowed for bigger emotional impact this game would probably be my favorite RPG, thanks to look forward to in the future I suppose. As it stands it’s a remarkable game with fantastic quests, great combat, memorable moments, just everything that makes for a compelling gaming experience.
Score: 9.6
This game is what finally helped me understand fantasy RPG as a genre.
Great CRPG, certainly one of the best even among the "golden classics" on the Infinity Engine. It is also an improvement over Original Sin 1, which I enjoyed in terms of battle system (those elements combination and interaction with the scenery never get old), but it didn't click with me in other aspects. There are more interesting lore elements, plot with more fun twists, way less bland dialogues (some of them genuinely made me laugh, which is an achievement for a video game writing), more appealing area design. As an overall package it is pretty hard to think of better game in the genre (except, potentially, BG3, but I will check it later). If you compare it story wise with other games, there are better alternatives for sure. The story is relatively straightforward, but still was pretty entertaining to follow.
As cons I will mention several things. DOS2 can be dragging sometimes in terms of pacing, especially in the last act. I expected a bit more with "pre-made" characters story quests, they do make experience more engaging, they are still a bit lacking (I still recommend everyone to start the game with them, you can customize their builds however you want anyway). The game sometimes seems a bit restrictive due to necessity to find areas more appropriate for your current level. Also some fights can be too frustrating without cheese tactics.
Nevertheless, still amazing CRPG, which helped to revitalize the genre (I remember everyone being doomsayers during Mass Effect days, these are in the past).
As cons I will mention several things. DOS2 can be dragging sometimes in terms of pacing, especially in the last act. I expected a bit more with "pre-made" characters story quests, they do make experience more engaging, they are still a bit lacking (I still recommend everyone to start the game with them, you can customize their builds however you want anyway). The game sometimes seems a bit restrictive due to necessity to find areas more appropriate for your current level. Also some fights can be too frustrating without cheese tactics.
Nevertheless, still amazing CRPG, which helped to revitalize the genre (I remember everyone being doomsayers during Mass Effect days, these are in the past).
This game is simply phenomenal.
The stories and subplots are fantastic and numerous. Every time I start a new game I find new story lines and characters I hadn't noticed before.
The Voice acting is just superb.
The game-play mechanics are fluid and easy to understand but the addition of surfaces makes spell-casting and non-magic action a much deeper experience with so many combinations and so much versatility.
10/10 would play, and would play again
The stories and subplots are fantastic and numerous. Every time I start a new game I find new story lines and characters I hadn't noticed before.
The Voice acting is just superb.
The game-play mechanics are fluid and easy to understand but the addition of surfaces makes spell-casting and non-magic action a much deeper experience with so many combinations and so much versatility.
10/10 would play, and would play again
I WILL NEVER FINISH THIS GAME BUT YESS SO FUN I LOVE U BEAST