Divinity: Original Sin 2
| Developer: Larian Studios | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: Larian Studios | Sound: |
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| Year: 2017 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Role-playing game | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 to 4 alternating | Rating: |
7/10 | |
This review covers the definitive edition, released in 2018, featuring numerous balance adjustments and interface improvements.
Remember Divine Divinity? A “rustic” RPG, inspired by Diablo and Baldur’s Gate, infamous for being nearly unfinishable due to countless bugs. That game spawned several sequels set in the same universe (Rivellon). For instance, the character of Lucian the Divine, whom you’ll hear about often, is the hero of the first game. This series allowed the studio to experiment with different styles: one playable character, then two, then a team of four; real time action, active pause, turn-based combat; isometric view, third-person perspective…
As for their most ambitious project to date, Divinity: Original Sin (2014), they landed on turn-based combat in an isometric view and turned to crowdfunding. The game met with great success thanks to its polished execution. However, it left me with a bitter taste, for three reasons:
- The two main characters you’re stuck with are uninteresting, and the plot is as flat as can be.
- In my opinion, chance plays far too large a role in how battles unfold. Especially depending on whether a “debilitating” or elemental spell is resisted or not.
- The final boss fight is one of my worst gaming memories ever! We were playing exclusively in co-op with a friend, with just the two heroes. An NPC character, supposedly there to help us, was stuck in the middle of the melee and kept getting killed repeatedly. This led to a game over. Our experience, level, powers, equipment—none of it mattered. We were overpowered, but this nitwit kept forcing us to start over ad nauseam.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 retains most of the mechanics from the previous game (four characters, turn-based combat, an isometric view, and an almost identical presentation). A plus for the polish on both games, by the way—very few bugs, a clean interface. I’m quite sensitive to that. The voice acting is also decent, even if it’s clear they didn’t have a huge cast.
The main innovation is this controversial system of physical and magical armour, designed to reduce the role of luck… I’ll come back to that in a bit. Let’s start with the story!
The Story:
The world of Rivellon, populated by humans, elves, dwarves, bipedal lizards, and who knows what else … is steeped in magic. Practically everyone you meet can cast spells. Yet, there’s another form of magic, a primal force called Source. Its few practitioners, the Sourcerers, are severely oppressed. The order of Magisters accuses them of unwittingly attracting dangerous monsters. This bears a strong resemblance to the plot of Dragon Age 2 (2011). You have forbidden magic that produces abominations, around which two factions revolve: authoritarian zealots seeking control, and rebel mages seeking freedom. Incidentally, the “original sin” mentioned at the end of the game will likely remind Bioware fans of the Tevinter Empire’s incursion into the Black City…
Anyhow, you and your companions are captive Sourcerers, on your way to Fort Joy, a prison island where layabouts of your kind are sent to be “cured”.
I found the story fairly conventional but brilliantly staged, at least at first. The characters are likable and well-written (especially the Red Prince). The atmosphere is darker and “grittier” than the previous game, though it doesn’t take itself too seriously. There’s a solid underlying plot, an interesting mythology (Braccus Rex, the divine Lucian…) and opposing factions with believable motivations. I enjoy the black humor in the dialogue and narration, which tackle heavy themes like slavery, torture, and genocide; and maybe it’s just me, but what happens at Fort Joy inevitably brings to mind Nazi extermination camps.
Charming atmosphere, right?
Unfortunately, the main story gradually dilutes itself, starting in the second act, amid the monotony of side quests. I felt a definite loss of momentum from the third act onwards. The likable characters go quiet. The mythology that added so much depth to the universe starts feeling like a cheap storytelling device when you realise, by the end, that all those “distant and illustrative” characters are actually closely linked and directly involved in the events. It leaves an impression of smallness. And the final reveal really does bring to mind an episode of Scooby-Doo. You know, when a character takes off their mask…
Oh, and I almost forgot—there are also (non-graphic) romances, and they’re painfully cheesy…
The Exploration:
Allow me to spoil the magic right away. The core of the game is exploring a vast area from top to bottom, crammed with characters who’ll offer you dialogue or quests; not to mention the endless “containers” (chests, drawers, barrels, jars, tree trunks … usually empty). Once you’ve scoured the area, you’ll get a little narrative token (the main story will inch forward), before being served a pristine new area … and doing it all over again. A true Sisyphean task.
Why does it work in the first act? Because you have an excuse to talk to everyone and rummage through everything. You’re a prisoner inside a fortified camp and looking for a way to escape. But once you’re out, why should I bother combing through the area, exactly? Oh right, I’m hunting down “Source masters” to level up my powers… But, do I really need to explore this spider-filled cave then? That’s the challenge with an “outdoor” RPG: justifying the effort to turn over every stone. I think there are too many side activities and not enough story to connect them. And by story, I mean real development.
For instance, at the beginning of the second act, we’re told we need to get to the city of Arx “urgently”, but naturally, the game won’t let you go until you’ve cleared all the zones, in an order determined by the level of enemies you encounter. This way, the main story gets put on hold for dozens of hours. It feels more like piecing together a puzzle than living an adventure; or like visiting a theme park, given the density of side quests per square metre. And the non-player characters just wait there dumbly to play their scenes, like actors waiting for the director’s cue. At times, it’s laughable when these dolts are stuck in a “frozen” emergency. The static world, the minimal interaction with your companions, and the sheer number of distractions that have nothing to do with the “main quest” detract from the player’s immersion. You feel buried under a pile of tasks to the point of forgetting what you’re even doing there. You get bored. You leave the game aside for months… That was my experience.
Dragon Age: Origins did a better job of creating the illusion that you were under pressure from dramatic events, or that the world was evolving. The player was more directed, the environments were significantly more contained, and they were tackled one at a time. It was manageable.
You might say we’re not required to do everything, to talk to every inhabitant of every village… But actually, we are. It’s absolutely necessary to “work” in order to earn experience points, gold coins, and gear, all of which are indispensable to keep up with the expected level and survive upcoming confrontations, especially in “Tactician” mode (the hardest difficulty). I was even tempted to kill off all remaining villagers before leaving an area, just for those precious experience points!
Another detail that broke my immersion was the occasionally “artificial” reaction from my companions. For instance, it’s said that one of the four heroes would become “Divine” and rule over the world, alone. Before starting the ritual, they discussed who would be the best candidate, for humanity’s sake. My character was Lohse, a sorceress possessed by a powerful, highly dangerous demon, and it had been repeatedly revealed that she was incapable of controlling either her body or her mind. She’s absolutely the last person you’d entrust with cosmic powers! Out of curiosity (or wickedness), I suggested Lohse as the candidate. Immediate and unwavering support from my three companions! I had completed all their personal quests, after all. So, the fate of the world…
And the end of the game is confusing. Apparently, I’d gotten into a deadly feud with Ifan because some guy I thought I’d killed five minutes earlier ended up on the throne after my intervention. Oh, really? I recall teleporting the dude into the deathfog, that’s all…
The Combat:
A constant for me in old Japanese RPGs, especially on the Super Nintendo: I’d try “status” spells (or debuffs like sleep, petrify, charm…) once, they’d always fail, and then I’d never touch them again for the rest of the game…
In Divinity: Original Sin 2, attacks and spells are divided into two types: physical and magical, and they’re “absorbed” by the corresponding armour: physical (grey bar) or magical (blue bar). When one of these bars is depleted, any remaining damage is transferred to the health bar of the targeted character (represented in red or purple), and any potential status effect is applied. If there’s any armour left of the same type as your status spell, the spell fails. There’s no longer any luck involved. This makes the flow of combat more predictable and improves the strategic dimension, in my opinion. However, it becomes much harder to immobilize or weaken an enemy at the start of a fight, because almost all of them come with both types of armour, which have to be reduced to zero first.
Strangely, the teleportation spell isn’t subject to this restriction. It’s one of the many ways to exploit the system. I love teleporting enemies to the feet of my bruisers, or right in front of an “unfriendly” monster, or even into a blazing fire…
I admit this system has its flaws, and I wouldn’t want it to become a standard. Still, I find it refreshing for a single game, and I appreciate that they tried to reduce the luck factor. There’s still a small chance of missing a target, around 5%, but this can easily be minimized by raising our “accuracy” stat. Moreover, being able to attack twice, even three times per turn, greatly lessens any resulting annoyance. Finally, the ability to save unused action points for the next turn or to delay one’s turn provides interesting tactical options.
Overall, I find the combat mechanics easy to grasp and highly flexible. Plus, every character is fully customizable—from stats to spells to social skills… There aren’t any hard-set classes in this game, contrary to what the character creation module might imply.
On the downside, I’d mention a recurring targeting issue. In turn-based combat, time stops, but the enemy keeps wriggling around, and their “clickable surface” keeps shifting. It’s not uncommon to click just next to my target and then watch my archer trot over to them instead of shooting. For this reason, it’s wise to aim at the (stationary) enemy portraits at the top of the screen instead.
The difficulty is fairly high at first, since it takes time to acquire good gear, and you’re up against higher-level enemies. The temptation is strong to “cheat” by shamelessly pickpocketing, overusing explosive barrels, certain necromancy spells, telekinesis, or by teleporting everyone mid-dialogue… Not that I’d ever stoop to such tricks, of course! But aside from a few sporadic difficulty spikes, things smooth out continuously on normal mode.
On Tactician mode, the difficulty remains high until the very end. Don’t forget to eat! Cooking in this game provides substantial bonuses. Still, I felt penalized by the finite amount of experience points. I reached Arx at level 18, equipped with a level-18 archer armour set that I didn’t dare replace until the game’s end. I suffered badly.
Random Rants:
Now’s my chance to gripe about everything and anything. It’s cathartic…
There’s a crafting system, cooking recipes, blueprints, and components to collect. This means interacting with menus. I find the process tedious. Neither better nor worse than other games. In fact, I can’t name a single game that’s made crafting fun, except maybe Minecraft?
This leads to a chaotic inventory. You’ll spend most of your time gathering mountains of items you’ll never use, then trying in vain to organise your stuff. If you don’t keep up with this eternal housekeeping, your character will eventually be too weighed down to walk.
And here we come to my personal trauma, which has forever clouded my view of this game. I can still feel my hands shaking…
Like other games, this one prompts you, on your first playthrough, to create a “profile”. This is usually to keep users separated when multiple people in the same household play on the same computer. I created a profile, then a character within that profile. I made it to the end of Act 2…
Then, a friend suggested we try the multiplayer co-op campaign. We started a new game together. I created a second character within my “profile”. We played all weekend with no issues…
The following Monday, I couldn’t find a single save from my solo playthrough. Everything had been wiped without warning because only the last thirty saves per profile are retained! Apparently, I should have created as many profiles as I had new playthroughs, which makes the very concept of a profile redundant.
To wrap up, even back in 2017, critics were holding up Divinity: Original Sin 2 as a shining example against a declining “AAA” industry obsessed with lootboxes and other microtransactions. It’s the same spiel being trotted out for Baldur’s Gate 3 six years later. That line’s starting to get on my nerves. Who’s forcing you to buy and play trash games anyway?
Divinity: Original Sin 2 isn’t the messiah. It’s a polished but conventional RPG… And by the second half, let’s be honest, it’s only slightly more entertaining than scraping your lower back with a brick!
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