REVIEW

Divinity: Original Sin II – Definitive Edition Review

by Luke Walsh, August 29th, 2018

Travelling through giant frog invested dungeons, talking to animals for some advice or ancient chambers filled with the boney dead and constantly reviving your fallen comrades in battle are some of the tastes of exploring the world that Divinity Original Sin II – Definitive Edition has to offer.

Normally with games that are re-released as “definitive editions” are usually not much more than the base game and all DLC with some little additions, but Larian Studios have gone above and beyond to deliver a drastically better game than the original. There have been massive changes to the third arc, loads of dialogue changed with spoken parts re-recorded and the game’s battles have been rebalanced to make the difficult curve better as the previous games were known for being hard to get into for newbies.

It’s easy to see from the start that the game has been thought about and improved upon from their own communities feedback. One is a way to ease new players into the game with the tutorial boat at the start of the game. This helps you meet new characters and gets you used to the initial systems, menus and controls. As Divinity can be pretty daunting with the number of menus, systems and subsystems Larian have done a much better job at staggering each of the main ones out and then explaining others you happen to fall upon during the opening hours of the game.

The story has still been rammed with loads of high-fantasy adventures across a huge map with so much to do and even more that you can interact with. Things that you do have an effect on the overall world, even down to killing the wrong person and losing access to their quest lines, items and more. This is what makes the game more enjoyable, it likes to sit in the morally grey area allowing you to choose what is right and wrong through your choices. Think Game of Thrones-esque and what makes it more exciting, Red Wedding included.

You don’t need to worry too much if you have not played the first Divinity Original Sin as, like the non-definitive edition, the new game takes places a good couple hundreds of years in the future. A lot of the characters from that game are now a part of the overall legends of the new one which is a nice touch. Original Sin 2 talks about some important issues mainly around segregation of races and marginalisation and stereotyping which can you see some real-world influences. Focusing on sorcerers, the game persecutes this group of people where collars have been placed around their necks to protect the so-called “normal” people.

As mentioned before, the story is very rich in lore, gravitas and humour both light and dark. Larian did a great job at this the first time around but now with over 130K words of text changed there is of lore that just makes more sense this time around. Conversations flow a lot better and quest structures and dialogue just feels better than when I remember first playing the game. One of the biggest changes to the dialogue is the use of the tag system which allows you to influence your conversations based on your “tags” i.e if you are a man, women, lizard, outlaw etc.

Each of the different upbringing, personalities and everything about your character influence how others interact with you even before you speak. This can be further controlled by your responses based on different tags. It also helps that everything is fully voiced, there was not any character I came across that did not speak to me using real words, not just the written kind. Even more, Larian has spent time re-recording more lines of spoken dialogue to make it even more refined which is a really well-chosen decision considering they could have left it if they wanted.

There’s not been any graphical update, or not one that you would notice but the frame rate holds up well at 60fps for consoles. There was not any time I noticed lag or slowdown which is good for the port from the PC. It also helps the original game has such attention to detail in everything. The game is just beautiful to look at from the perspective of those who played Baldur’s Gate would be familiar with.

Settlements are filled with items, both useful and junk while the beaches are beautifully animated with the water running along them. While the forests and mountain regions have nice detail in their formations of rocks and the trees including the wildlife that if you have the Pet Pal skill can have a friendly conversation with. I really enjoyed heading into ancient tombs or dungeons where you’d see a lot of torture devices, bloodied floors and sometimes a lot of bones, giblets and corpses. It does not matter what environment you are in, Divinity Original Sin 2 has had a lot of care in the world design, right down to every room and it also helps you can interact with almost everything in some way.

Even characters have a lot of detail not just around their models but also their animations, when I met Slane the Winter Dragon it was very tense walking up to him working out if it was friend or foe. Also how his animations are tied in with his emotions, when he is imprisoned and sad from being betrayed the overall body language matches both his words and tone.

While other characters can regale you with their epic stories or even the ones which are devastating like a mother looking for her missing child or an old woman who has lost her entire family and is just happy you’ll sit and listen to her talk. The Pet Pal perk is probably the bests parts of the game, the animals offer tips, different quests but also an entire alternative perspective to the world which is fabulously written.

Original Sin 2 is a very human game. One that expresses even the smaller NPCs in the way that other RPGs rarely care about. Ultimately, it makes the world feel much more real both beautiful and cruel. Spending time reading books, notes and speaking with every character is something I strived to do, unlike the faced paced skip dialogue in other games. The best parts are the small moments, those found in unexpected places conversing with people who you thought was just a random robotic NPC.

The freedom of choice in the world is impressive, in conversation you can usually talk or fight your way through the world. In quests, there are multiple ways to tackle it from outright killing an enemy, sneaking up and stealing the item you need or even speaking with a close relative to get hints on how you can turn them back to the right side. One quest that sticks to mind is on the opening area of Fort Joy where you can stumble across a deranged knight, if you fight him and kill him later you’ll find his daughter who will be distraught upon telling her that you “found” her father dead and give her the ring. If you manage to talk to her beforehand though, she can tell you how much a certain flower reminds her father of her and can use it in a dialogue with him avoiding combat.

There’s also the more unconventional methods of traversing quests and the world using things like teleportation, or distracting characters. You can skip parts entirely and skill comes out the winner in the end. Creativity is rewarded in Divinity and Original Sin is no different. It does work on the flip side too, your freedom and can also affect your adventure later on. Certain characters on a freak encounter might be crucial to a big quest later on and you might have watched them die, leaving you in a tricky situation. Playing the game more than once allows you to see how well crafted the web of quests and interactions have been built and sometimes you might need to reload…a lot.

Not many games that are quite candid about locking out a lot of big parts of content if you make a certain decision. These can be choices you have made, quests you have taken or even just who is actually in your party. Even with all these variables you can still complete your main quest but that is not the “game”, there’s a whole wide world out there that is affected and a lot of it is worth making the correct choice for.

As the game is co-op, this freedom can also create some issues in your party. Your friends can run off and do their own thing which might cause some issues for a quest you could be working on if they decide to murder your quest giver. Even with items, your mates could find a decent set of armour but want it for themselves but you also have half of the set for the bonuses. Just like in the real world, your co-op pals can do what they want and you’ll need to work and agree on things together if you want it to “work”.

What you can do with your friends is the Game Master mode that works a lot like Dungeons and Dragons. You can create a set scenario for your friends to play through that creates a lot of replayability after you have completed the main storyline. Even in the main game, there is a lot of unexpected moments that you’d also find in a classic game of D&D with a game master at the helm. The online play was not available in the pre-release copy we received as the servers were populated but with the Lobby, you can choose to play with random people but for real teamwork, you probably want to stick with your friends.

A lot has been worked on but there is still quite a steep learning curve on a lot of the systems and tools you can use in the game. This is one of the drawbacks to giving players a lot of freedom it is hard to explain to them what they can do with said freedom but it is also a benefit in the long term.

Combat has been reworked in terms of the encounter difficulties, in the original game I can remember a lot of fights being impossible to beat. Whereas in the Definitive edition every encounter was hard but not impossible unless I wandered into the wrong area for my current parties level. Even with these reworks, there are still a lot of menus and subsystems that were not really explained, crafting is one of them.

You can find recipes in the world from books, letters etc but what is not clear is that you can also just guess and work it out for yourself. Got an empty potion bottle and some mushrooms? Combine them and make a poison potion even if you are not sure on the recipe. It’s also just an important the arrangement in the crating window from what I could tell. Crafting arrowheads and elemental arrows I needed to make sure that the arrow was in the correct lot or it would say “Nothing could be made”.

Further on the crafting is the correct crafting tools to use, a lot of your handmade items like arrows, potions etc can be made with your hands while more elaborate items or creating resources need a workbench of sorts. Bench Saws, cooking pots, breweries and so many more are littered around that create different things. Some you’d never guess without a recipe for it. The basic ones are great and you’ll get the patterns but like the crating system, rune working and other tools I was still unsure how to really use them until much later in the game.

Although hard, this free approach is what makes Divinity such a good game. It will put off a lot of casual gamers who want everything handed to them but even from the character creation screen at the start of the game everything can be adapted. You can play as one of the five races human, elf, undead, lizard, and dwarf then choose your traits, attributes, skills and what they look like and with the open class system your character is not locked down to anything. This does mean you need to be careful not trying to be a jack of all trades as it will get you killed in the later stages (believe me…).

Personally, I stuck with the premade main characters as they come with origin stories and even more custom dialogue options. My main was Sebille, the elf who was thrown into slavery and unlike Lord of the Rings, these elves are seen as cannibals that can eat human remains to gain memories of their meals and in some instances skills.

Others such like Fane who was one of my faves alongside Sebille is an undead character who is very old known as an Eternal who is looking for a human face and standing out can be a “bother”. Not any old mask though, he needs your help to find a device that can rip a face from someone so he can wear it. I liked him because he has a well-spoken but warped sense of humour and perception of humans who heals via poison rather than traditional positions.

Each of the main characters has their own goals and loyalties, The Red Prince searches for Dreamers to help build his empire. Sebille is looking for revenge, Fane is searching for more Eternals. Sometimes these differences can cause havoc if you are not careful, let Sibille talk to the first Dreamer before the Red Prince and she’ll kill him making the party morale not all that great. It makes learning to safe often a reflex as with the combat, the unexpected can set you back a few hours if you are not careful.

I liked how races also get special traits that make sense, the undead can pick locks without needs lockpicks due to their bony fingers, Lizards can dig up treasures without a shovel thanks to their claws, Dwarfs have a bonus to their defence thanks to their stocky build. Humans are the only ones who get the loose end of the stick really, getting you +1 to Bartering and +2 for Initiative with no “skills” like the others.

Freedom, stories and quests are not the only good parts of the game as the combat is an impressive piece to the overall puzzle. It is a brilliant turn-based tactical RPG that makes you want to think strategically but also be creative in your approaches. You are limited by Action Points that are expanded for different actions like movement, attacking, using items or spells. Even minor actions like equipping or sneaking can be done if you have enough points which adds a lot of layers to the combat.

It’s even more complex as the environment takes a big part of the stage, height advantages give you more range and extra damage. While the floor you stand on or the barrel your enemies are next to can cause elemental damage or set you up for a powerful assisted environmental attack. For example, you could spill and oil barrel to slow down your opponent making it harder for them to reach you and then use a flaming arrow to set it ablaze causing massive additional damage and damage over time for burning.

Some items also help in combat like the Teleportation Gloves that allow you to move people around the combat space. Extremely useful to throw enemies on to fires or poison traps or just lining them up for your next attack. You can do so much more from freezing enemies standing on water or hurting the undead by healing them with spells. The combat is one of the few areas of the game you can pick up easily compared to the other systems. Once you get the basics of combat, it won’t be long until your able to piece together elaborate plans and tactic to win your way through. One I liked to pull off was keeping some characters out of a battle and having them “sneak” into it without triggering them for battle until I was able lineup Fane my “Assassin” who got bonus damage for backstabbing.

More combat after end-game can also be found in the Arena mode which works a lot like PvP in MMOs. You play against other characters with your team and can fight until your heart’s content. Which can be great to find new, smarter ways of winning combat that is not just the AI.

A lot of the bugs I played on the PC version were ironed out in the console version and was a relatively bug-free playthrough. A small one was a cat skill that swapped your player with them would not cancel if you were too far from the player you were trying to trade places with. While a major bug was a complete freeze when opening chests or sacks. It always seemed random and would not a complete restart to fix the issue which did happen to lose an hour or two of progress. It is also annoying as the item attributes are random so a reload might give the item you want slightly different stats.

Those bugs aside though, Divinity Original Sin 2 = Definitive Edition has been remade for consoles in the best possible way. It takes a lot from age-old RPGs that a lot of RPG gamers and tabletop gamers will love to play. There is so much content, so much flexibility and so many systems, that although daunting have been better explained this time around. All these things make for a very believable world, filled with content you want to take time to read, find and use for your own progression in the game. It is rare for me to want to read the actual text, i.e books and other dialogue but this game makes you want to.

Even after about 50 hours I still want to continue playing, there is still much to discover and even more so I have started another game to try things differently. There have on two separate playthroughs so much chaos happened by accident and moments that I could not recreate even if I tried has made it one of the most memorable games I have played.

Divinity Original Sin 2 is one of the best games of this decade and now console gamers are able to enjoy it too and you will, it’s better, bigger and more refined.