The world of Divinity: Original Sin II is one of complete and total freedom. It asks an ambitious questions, What if roleplaying games had a chance for a renaissance?
Divinity: Original Sin II is much more than a renaissance. It is an absolute reincarnation of what it means to be a computer role playing game.
Every single quest in the game offers a level of unparalleled freedom that I've never seen in a video game before. There's at minimum two ways to do every single quest in the game, and there's substantial consequences to every decision you make.
Some make your life easier, others make it more difficult.
Taking the reins as one of many pre-built characters, central to the story, or making your own heinous abomination is all on the cards in Divinity: Original Sin II .
The roleplaying engine and system behind this game are superior many times over to the architecture of Dungeons and Dragons. There's classes, skills, attributes, items, armor, weapons, and civic skills, and it all combines in a glorious way - whether you're bartering with townsfolk, or wealthy merchants alike.
Then there's the combat. The combat in Divinity: Original Sin II is exceptional. There's an unfathomable amount of tactical depth, and a very welcome system around Armour - you must destroy your foes armor (be it magical or physical) before you can actually wound them.
The benefit of this system sees Dungeons and Dragons combat systems fall apart. No more will you see a common ranger do damage to a knight in full plate armour using their tiny, hand held dagger. At best, they'll scratch the sheen of that armor, before the knight unleashes a vicious counterblow.
Whether you're playing an assassin, a necromancer (like I did),a ranger, a melee character, or something else - there's a role for everyone to play, and they're all extraordinarily useful in every scenario.
Skills are small in number, but have huge amounts of utility, and can be used outside of combat to solve puzzles.
There's lots of puzzles in Divinity: Original Sin II - and they are built on you paying careful attention to the scrolls, books, tomes, and world around you. These are sophisticated puzzles, and sophisticated references - the book doesn't say "do exactly this", but rather forces you to infer the outcome of the puzzle.
At some stages, you may feel like you've genuinely dead-ended yourself due to a stupid decision you may've made when interacting with NPCs, but I can say the next sentence with confidence.
There are no stupid decisions in Divinity: Original Sin II. Everything you can possibly do has a sensible outcome that continues to drive the story forward. Even if you kill a really important NPC, or they die through other means, there's someone else there, a "we thought of that too" moment that constantly pulls you, the thread through the story, with your actions driving the needle forward.
The narrative fabric of Divinity: Original Sin II is absolutely and outrageously complex from from every angle - cast, setting, themes, and lore - it is high fantasy at its best, and exceeds the literary quality of many actual novels that I've read in the past.
This is no mean feat, given the quantity of text and the degrees of freedom that game affords to you.
Voice acting from the main cast of characters is appropriate and delivered with clarity, and background music doesn't age throughout the 55 or so hours I spent campaigning through he world - on a single play-through.
There's loot and rabbit holes galore that you can explore if you go off the beaten track, and there's plenty of secret chambers, dungeons, and places that you just ... really shouldn't be in. Stumbling into areas intended for future parts of the story isn't bad, but it can give you the impression that you've made progress when you haven't really intended to do so.
For me, stumbling across one of the main story elements of the game in a forest was a huge surprise, as I thought what I'd just witnessed was an epic side story.
This is due to the fact that the quality of narrative outside of the main bits of the story is exceptional. There's world building, conflict, and real characters along every single step of the journey.
That is a phenomenal outcome and achievement in the context of such an expansive and sprawling game.
Divinity: Original Sin II is the new masterpiece of the role playing game genre. Step aside Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. Move along, Planescape Torment and let a new king sit on top of the throne.
Larian Studios have done a wonderful job reinventing what can be possible in the role playing game genre. Baldur's Gate III now rests in their capable hands, and we'll have to wait and see what these wizards are capable of next.