Tactics are absolutely vital for success in Larian’s new game, as much as they were in the previous one, due to its unforgiving and unrelenting difficulty. You see, unlike most of these turn-based affairs, if you end a turn early you will effectively bank that unused AP to add them onto your total for the next turn. You’ll find yourself wondering how they have enough points to do all this in one turn, but the answer can sometimes be as simple as storing AP from a previous turn. Sometimes enemies do seem to abuse this feature though, when they use ability after ability as they deal murderous damage to your struggling team. This isn’t as clear cut as having six points, spending three to move and then being able to attack three times, because each ability costs a different amount of AP to use. These play out in the same turn-based way as the first game, with each character and enemy having a certain number of “action points” that determine how many moves they can make in a given turn. Your story decisions are always important, but you will need just as much focus during the numerous battles in Divinity: Original Sin 2. Marketing spiel often claims that your decisions affect the outcome of the game, but for once it really is true. Two characters can unknowingly be on entirely different sides of an argument, and if they’re both in your party at the wrong time, things could get real ugly, real fast. That’s only scratching the surface of the intelligent use of choice in Original Sin 2. I mean, I still got the item I was after, but damn, Sebille. Eager to stay on the elf’s good side, I consented, only to witness her brutally murder the poor fellow in cold blood. During one of said quests, she requested that she talk with a lizard alone, before I began my line of questioning. In one such moment early on, I had met a wonderfully angry elven lady by the name of Sebille and convinced her to come along with me on whatever crazy quests I could find. Or whether you consent to an ally speaking to an NPC privately or not. You see, encounters can differ completely simply by virtue of who is in your team at the time. To the point of being almost impossible to ever see them all in one lifetime of playthroughs. This clever writing even extends to the design of every narrative choice in the game, of which there are many.
I don’t mind saying that I laughed a lot during my time with the game. That’s even before we get to the Narrator the well-spoken Englishman that chimes in during every encounter, describing intimate details of the interactions between characters, however minor, and often chucking in his own views masquerading as the player character’s own thoughts.
The script is one of the finest I’ve ever known in a game, with characters spewing lines laced with wit and intelligence, the voice acting combining perfectly with the tone of the dialogue. Remember the days of Minsc and his miniature giant space hamster, in Baldur’s Gate? Well, that’s the kind of daft character type you’ll meet during your time with Original Sin 2, and the writing suits it down to the ground. Religious fanatics torturing and murdering an entire subset of people? Heard that one a few too many times, but luckily Larian knows that such a potentially dangerous subject needs to be tackled with care. Naturally, torture and experimenting come soon after for a worryingly large number of these poor people. Since magic basically killed a beloved god, the magic-users known as Sourcerers are now enemies of the Magisters, who like nothing more than to stick collars on these folk, suppressing their magic, and imprisoning them. The game starts aboard a ship, ferrying prisoners across the sea to Fort Joy an ironically-named internment camp of sorts, for Sourcerers. A sequel was inevitable really, and here we are with the imaginatively titled Divinity: Original Sin 2. The game was a huge success, even being ported to console a little later, to the delight of a reasonable number of folk. We’re talking gangbang levels of hardcore.
#Divinity original sin 2 switch review series
The Divinity series I knew was never particularly amazing, nor did I remember it being that popular, so why were people so excited for this new addition to the series? Of course, it probably had more to do with it being at a time when hardcore RPGs were making their comeback, and Original Sin sure was hardcore. When the Kickstarter campaign for the first Divinity: Original Sin was wildly successful, raising over $1million, I’ll admit to being a bit perplexed.