Divinity: Original Sin II - Review

Big Boss Battle checked out Divinity Original Sin II: Definitive Edition:

Divinity Original Sin II: Definitive Edition -- Six months of a game

Even though the original Divinity: Original Sin was well renowned for being one of the toughest old school RPG's available, I somehow bested it thanks to years of experience from similar games. It's sequel, Divinity: Original Sin II took me over six months and several playthroughs to complete, so what on Earth was I doing wrong?

I went into Larian Studios latest epic brimming with confidence, such is my skill at mastering tactical RPG's. Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, both Pillars of Eternity games and even Wasteland 2 have all succumbed to my challenge, even on the hardest difficulty settings. Divinity: Original Sin II, on the other hand, is a completely different beast.

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When I began playing Divinity: Original Sin II during its first weeks on the preview program, my heart sank. The game felt punishingly hard and unbalanced, even for an experienced player, and I couldn't see the quality of the game that lay behind the first four or five hours of torturous gameplay. Fast forward months of development and an increase in my own skills and understanding, and everything has changed.

Divinity: Original Sin II is not only an exceptionally good game, it's also one that stands proud among the very finest in its class. It's a long, deep and demanding adventure that has plenty of story twists and literal dark alleys to explore, but the real backbone is the character development and combat. Fighting in Divinity II is bettered by no other tactical RPG, and nor is the players freedom to take the fight to their enemies in such diverse ways. Divinity: Original Sin II is a must have for any RPG fan; that is beyond doubt.

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I guess me and him are completely different.
I found the only hard parts of the game were how broken it was. Having to reload sometimes and go back hours if you did something out of turn as you couldn't finish that quest. ( you know how nuts it drives me to see in a my log book an unfinished quest).
I completed the game but would not be a game i put in my top games nor did I find it very hard at all…..

It has good combat, extremely difficult too.. it's so hard that you have to play it in a very linear way, which can kind of suck, it becomes a linear path of who to fight and at what level, take on someone a little bit too strong and there's just 0 chance of winning.

I love the level design, reminds me of the Ultima games a lot, very atmospheric.
Writing is quite bad and especially it's very sloppy.. e.g you get that collar off from the blacksmith, then seconds after the blacksmith goes "woah! how are you not wearing the collar?! who did that!?" also when you reply to someone it often really doesnt matter what you say, you get the same reply, sometimes it won't even fit to what you just said because they didnt bother with making the character replying to it properly.

It's basically a RPG combat sim first and foremost, the story/character RPG part is very tacked-on and it doesn't feel like they dedicated a ton of effort there. That new Divinity game they're making seems to be going more in that route, which i think is more honest, that's really what they wanted to do here but they couldn't because it's supposed to be a fullblown RPG..

It isn't a difficult game, but it certainly was buggy when I played it, and I didn't care for the mechanics with melee combat at all. I don't regret paying for and supporting the game, but I doubt it's one that I'll ever replay.

Just started playing at and I still hate the camera. It feels very claustrophobic where the vertical tilt is angled down so you can't see very far out. Found a mod to change it then a steam update applied and it stopped working.

Divine Divinity is still by far their best game.

Warhammer 40K OpenXCOM total conversion is waaaAAaay better than this many-GB junk heap!!

Originally Posted by mercy
Warhammer 40K OpenXCOM total conversion is waaaAAaay better than this many-GB junk heap!!

Alright, since you where the one who made me check out X-Piratez (Thank you!) I'll bite on this one as well. Is it playable from start to finish?

On topic, I liked DOS2 well enough, but can't say I liked the armour system, it just led towards speccing for one of the two damage types which in turn made builds less fun, at least to me. Still a great game as long as you use mods to make the numbers less bloated. Coincidentally, less bloated numbers also make the game less linear, because differences between levels aren't as extreme.

DOS2 has finish a quest in numerous ways mechanics, all you need to choose which path to use.
Whatever warhammer is, neverheard of it. I bet it's some linear bullshit from Nintendo gameboy.

Originally Posted by Saxon1974
Just started playing at and I still hate the camera. It feels very claustrophobic where the vertical tilt is angled down so you can't see very far out. Found a mod to change it then a steam update applied and it stopped working.

Yeah, it can be annoying because they've set the camera to just ALMOST be able to see ahead, but nope. There's a mod (which works for me) but it also makes things like sky and other things they haven't put into the game entirely black, so its not worth using imo. They should let you just be able to zoom out a lot more, that would have been a good trade-off for not being able to look ahead (from the character's view point).

@joxer who the hell plays games and still haven't heard of Warhammer, there must be like 80+ games from various companies in that universe… lol.. (edit: i had to check.. 89 games). Talk about living under a rock.

On tactician you pretty much have to cheese most of the fights by exploiting the terrain and the pathfinding unless your are playing in OP lone wolf mode or a particularly powerful build. I didn't find it better than the first one despite some of the maps being better. Doctor Deava was a good example, the dude can pretty much wipe out half a party in a single turn, you just had to exploit tea leaves to have a chance to take him down.

The A.I is just a ton better with the terrain than i am.. it knows exactly how to position itself to reach me but not get hit etc.. if i go in with a lot of healing potions it seems to notice and cast spells that makes it impossible for me to heal (unless i can cure that). I've seen a few occasions where the A.I has messed up the path finding completely (1-2 times in 30h), so quite rare.

It isn't that bad. I didn't even know about tea leaves until i read something way after the fact. The doctor fight is hard - but not that hard. I did use one bit of cheese though - the one that allows for cheap resurrects. So maybe it was hard. As to the other fights - the only two others I remember being esp difficult on tactian mode - the one with the witch outside fort joy and the last one.

Originally Posted by bjon045
On tactician you pretty much have to cheese most of the fights by exploiting the terrain and the pathfinding unless your are playing in OP lone wolf mode or a particularly powerful build. I didn't find it better than the first one despite some of the maps being better. Doctor Deava was a good example, the dude can pretty much wipe out half a party in a single turn, you just had to exploit tea leaves to have a chance to take him down.