Writing: 3/5
Gameplay: 5/5
Art Design & Visuals: 5/5
Voices & Sounds: 4/5
Atmosphere & Immersion: 4/5

I've only beaten this once, but I've escaped Fort Joy at least five times, both solo and with different groups. That should tell you how much I enjoy the game mechanically to be excited to start the campaign over that many times on a whim, but it should also tell you how little thrust the story elements have that it took me so long to beat it just once. It's one of the only CRPGs where I'm never disappointed to see a dialogue end with combat--it's just that fun. This works especially well in multiplayer, since there's not as much pressure to save scum for the easy route when fighting your way out of a tough situation is so satisfying.

And even outside of combat, there are some fun ways to use your party's powers to solve problems. Once, we were on a quest to kill a particular man, but doing so would anger all his cohorts and start a bloody, messy brawl that we didn't want any part in. So what did we do? We used a ring of teleportation to zap him out of anyone else's sight and pummeled him in a back alley. The game is full of little things like that which most other games would script or invisible-wall you out of doing, and that's where it shines. In fact, the world is often designed with this in mind, so when you can't simply cheese your way around an obstacle, pains have clearly been taken to make it feel like a natural part of the world rather than an arbitrary roadblock or limitation. Though the dialogues and non-companion characters tend not to get very deep, they're fun and functional enough to keep the rest of the game shiny and smooth.

This, in turn, makes me a lot less interested in the capital-R Role-playing--playing as a custom character gives you strictly fewer dialogue options than the pre-made "origin" characters (think playable companions), whereas I've retained very little sense of the values, history, or personality of my custom characters--but that doesn't stop me from getting joyfully lost in its immersive-sim-esque creativity. If Larian's upcoming Baldur's Gate 3 steps up the writing and atmosphere but retains the absolutely stunning way this game latches into my brain when I play it, it'll be an all-time great. Maybe this one already is.
[edit from 2023: oh BG3 is really good lol]

I put 200 hours into this game and still didn't finish it.

I respect the game a lot because there's an insane amount of content and so much freedom in the gameplay and choices you can make meaning if you're creative enough you can do almost anything you want to. It's the ultimate D&D campaign.

However on PS4 with no mod support it's punishingly difficult and almost every battle encounter takes like an hour due to how slow everything is so the game just isn't fun at times for me and I can't tell you how many times I died and had to reload.

Still I can certainly see the appeal and why so many people consider it one of the greatest RPGs ever made, I have hope I'll be able to finish it one day.

Started over a few times but never made it past the first couple hours of act 2; Larian basically doubled down on all the annoying things from the previous game (they trust their cliché-ridden writing waaaay too much, even if it isn't as incredibly dreadful this time around) while completely reworking the formerly innovative combat system into what is essentially a glorified dps race.

Still arguably worth it if your tolerance for generic overblown "chosen one" narratives is high; mine isn't, and when it's easier to find literal gods to talk to and be sent on yet another quest to save the world by than it is to find a pair of trousers for everyone in your party, you know that the developers have gone way too far up their own asses with the "divinity" theme.

This second playthrough was done in co-op, with my brother deciding the primary direction of the playthrough. It was another great experience with this masterpiece of an RPG, full of surprise and creativity. Playing this time as a self-important, unempathetic Red Prince, I was greatly amused by a number of quest outcomes, including killing Fane's questline by reasserting my status as party leader in a moment where he needed to chime in. While my first playthrough was moving and optimistic, the game adapted considerably to accommodate a totally different emotional experience for me (while my brother simultaneously experienced the emotional fulfilment I received first-time around). It's just so, so good.

This game made me realize my love for CRPGs and Strategy RPGs and still manages to stand out as there's nothing else like it.

Its sandbox nature makes it feel as though there's endless opportunities and approaches to scenarios as if you were playing an actual TTRPG. On top of all these different play styles, playing co-op with friends brings even more fresh experiences to the table.

There's so much game here, it's incredible how polished and high quality it all feels.

Ever since it's release, Divinity Original Sin 2 has been hailed as one of the best western RPGs in recent memory, the highlight of the CRPG resurgence, and is subject to such widespread fondness that it's developers got handed the keys to make an actual Baldur's Gate 3. Which has always flummoxed me, because I played this game at launch and fucking hated it.

A degree of this is that me and the game simply have different priorities. When it comes to a game like this, I want to create a character, a person to embody, rather than being handed one of the DMs shitty edgy OCs to play as, but DOS2 disagrees, and will in fact offer a fairly substantially lesser experience (losing access to multiple sidequests and altering a number of key scenes for the worse) if you don't pick one of it's stable of interminable snarky edgelords. I know that for a lot of people, not having to make a character is actually a plus (i remember all those thinkpieces positing Geralt as proof that player-created characters should be a thing of the past) so you may not find this as immediately distasteful as I did, but I'd expect more people to agree that this game is terribly written.

Every single character in this game feels like someone's edgy OC, but not in an endearing way. There's zero earnestness here, no honest investment in this world or belief that what is happening matters, just a bunch of archly smug edgelords quipping at each other, like a cut of Drakengard directed by Joss Whedon. Lohse was the only character I had any fondness for, and even she has a bizarre edgy streak that feels totally incongruous. These eminently hateable assholes will bring up a theme, float an idea, and then stick their tongue firmly in their cheek and laugh at you for wanting to engage the idea in any meaningful way.

The thing about this game that made me angry was how it brought up incredibly heavy source material on a whim (the first act of the game is you escaping what is essentially a concentration camp and genocide is a major part of the backstory) but utterly refused to engage with it on any level beyond a Redditor smugly correcting the grammar of a post detailing the very real atrocities that exist in our world. It leverages these things purely aesthetically, draping itself in a cloak of the most rancid vibes imaginable. If you're the kind of person who writes entries on TV Tropes about "deconstruction" you probably think it's genius.

CRPGs like this have been described as digital dungeon masters, creating a virtual tabletop space that reveals it's character through what aspect of the experience it chooses to focus on. Icewind Dale focused on pure combat and dungeon delving, Baldur's Gate on the charmingly amateurish emulation of epic fantasy, and Divinity Original Sin 2 focuses on all the ugliest, most cynical, and rotten tropes and expectations that players of fantasy RPGs have come to expect. If it's a dungeon master, it's the kind of guy who describes a field of brutally massacred gnomes while lighting up a blunt.

Oh, but what about dat combat though? Yeah, it's ok. There's fun to be had in throwing a barrel of oil to set on fire, or throwing a barrel of water to electrocute, or teleporting someone far away from you, but thanks to inflated health pools and interminable turn times, all the "creative solutions" that this game's passionate fanbase eulogise about eventually yield to much more standard and predictable turn-based combat with a truly obscene level curve that drags out every single fight to absurd lengths. And even this is being generous, as after the (admittedly, genuinely good) first act the quality of encounters begins to tumble down a cliff before practically giving up entirely by Act Three. I'll fully admit that I turned the game down to easy by that point because I just wanted this obscenely drawn-out overlong game done with already. These people were going to make a tactics game??? Thank god we were spared that reality.

Oh, but it's got co-op! That's fun, that's unique! Yeah, it is, but if you think I'm going to play a story-driven Role Playing Game where only the person who clicked on a character first is allowed to have any input in the story whatsoever, you must have confused me for someone who thinks Travis McElroy's Adventure Zone is good. Co-op was definitely the most fun I had playing this, but at the same time, it did make a game that was already long, slow, and drawn-out even longer, slower, and more drawn-out, a bit like this review.

The version of this game I played was the pre-definitive edition version, so this may not be reflective of the game as it is now, but the game was already receiving comically overblown praise even before that update, so clearly I'm missing something greater than was added there. Still, my impression of the game was certainly not helped by a final act so unfinished it verged on parody, which culminated in endings that would have grated enough for their abruptness, adolescent nihilism and fascist apologia if they actually Worked. Instead every time I picked an option it gave me a different one and I had to go through each one until it actually gave me the one I wanted, at which point the game called me a fucking idiot for not comitting genocide. 93 on Metacritic.

Most of the time when I don't line up with the wider consensus on a game, I at least understand why people thought that way. I cannot understand why anyone who finished this game left with positive feelings. By the time I finished it, any positive feelings I had about this game were an easy 60 hours behind me. A complete trainwreck on every conceivable level.

This is what y'all played instead of Tyranny? shake my damn head

all that being said the sex scene is so hilariously terrible that it's maybe worth playing just for that so five stars best CRPG of the renaissance

I immensely enjoyed Acts 1 and 2, but had a lot of issues with Act 4 ranging from the game's not so good endings to the massive increase in difficulty.

Seriously, we can all agree the fight with the spiders under the city where some spiders explode into death fog is a not fun experience, right?

Also, the inventory system is bad.

This game will take you approximately 405030592309841293128318920319208048104089 million hours to complete, but it is an absolute blast of a CRPG in terms of content and opportunities to craft your own story. I found the best way to play Divinity: OS2 is with a group of at least two other friends to keep the experience fresh. You are emplored to craft your own character and create stats to fit the type of game YOU want to play, which I think is very underappreciated in the RPG genre nowadays. It feels like any playstyle can be successful if you are willing to play the fights correctly.

My biggest drawbacks are maybe that I wish money was easier to find and that objectives gave better hints.