Game called Divinity: Original Sin 2 has pulled me in

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About 10hrs in of playing Divinity: Original Sin 2…

You begin your adventure as a prisoner on-board ship full of sorcerers sentenced to be cured of the source. As you spend some time talking to other passengers, you realize that ability to use magic is referred to as the “source”, and the ship you’re on is on its way to an island prison at which your powers will be removed. In the meantime, you also notice a glowing collar around your neck that serves as source suppression.

As you progress throughout the story, you quickly realize that Divinity borrows story ideas from many other games; like Conan the Barbarian MMO and Dragon Age. To be fair, when it comes to fantasy games it would be hard not to sound like any other and I’m okay with that. I’m sure lore buffs will enjoy custom dialect options and different NPC interactions; however, I am all about combat gameplay.

What about the setting? What kind of characters can I play as?

Imagine a medieval world influenced by magic, Lizard people, man eating Elves and Undead characters that can heal by poising themselves. These are just some examples of different creatures you will encounter in your journey. Sure, we have Humans and Dwarves but that can be said for majority of fantasy role playing games.

Story aside, I really like the combat in this game…

For some reason, in this world, the environment is constantly covered with either water, oil, poison, or blood. I’d imagine the reason for this is to provide opportunist strategical elements in this game.

What do I mean by “opportunist strategical elements”? I’m glad I asked… 🙂

As you know, this game is turn based meaning all actions are determined by initiative order which is commonly found in such games; however, this game also provides the ability to take advantage of different environment conditions which can turn tides of battle very quickly.

So, let’s say you are standing in some water…you’ve guessed it… I can use my shock spell to target the water and shock everyone in it. Same goes for oil (fire), blood (shock/freeze). Some elements can be very combustive, like poison will explode if attacked by fire… very cool indeed.

Yes, there are many other side effects that are caused by any of these elements. Think about oil for second… If you are simply standing in oil it will cause you to slow down, but oil can also be set on fire, blood can be frozen, and many other combinations that I’m probably still not aware of.

What about classes?

Divinity: Original Sin 2 has many different classes and if you are interested in playing all of them, you certainly can. Let me explain…

When you start the game you can choose a premade character or create a custom one.
Below is a list of different classes to start with:
Battlemage
Cleric
Conjurer
Enchanter
Fighter
Inquistor
Knight
Metamorph
Ranger
Rogue
Shadowblade
Wayfarer
Witch
Wizard

As you can see there are a lot of different options, but fear not! All of your companions later added to party can be anything you choose. If you’d like to have a tank/healer/dps in the same party you can do that. The Holy Trinity as some might call it… If you’d like all DPS characters in your party, you can do that as well because some gear can grant you an ability to cast healing and various other spells.

Not only are you able to have up to 4 additional classes in your party, but you can also learn multiple schools of magic. So, any of your characters can be many things. For example; you can create a paladin like character by having your Knight learn healing spells… or is it holy spells…learning healing could make him an armor wearing cleric… oh, crap! I got lost in thought… You get the idea. 🙂

My starting character is a Conjuror because I like the idea of summoning things. In my case, I can summon totems and a creature that fights for me and can serve as an awesome bonus to party numbers.

Oh boy! There is so much to write about and with only 10hrs in, I only feel comfortable talking about my first character.

Let me tell you what I know about Conjurer…

Remember how I talked about different environments with oil, water, blood and such? Guess what? When I summon a totem or my creature it will have an affect on it as well… Yes, anything summoned by a Conjurer will take on attributes of environment in which it’s summoned in. Also, your creature gains an additional ability based of this condition. Fire=fire dmg plus an ability to cast a fireball. This is super cool.

One time, I’ve decided to summon a totem inside of already electrified water and my totem turned in to something unexpected. When summoned in that spot, it became an electric totem… The first time I realized that this mechanic goes beyond normal conditions I was shocked.

How about difficulty?

Divinity: Original Sin 2 difficulty may come as a bit of surprise to players of first Original Sin. In Sin 2, armor makes a huge difference and comes as the number one priority if you wish to survive, even on normal difficulty.

Here is the thing; all armor can have two stats that you can consider as important as your health points.

For example, 3 Physical, 10 Magic Armor on pants
1^st stat is Physical Armor.
2^nd stat is Magic Armor.

When you take physical damage it will go through your armor first and then penetrate your health. In other words, 3 Physical armor will go down to 0 before your health is damaged.

When you take magical damage it will have to go through your magic armor first and then penetrate through your health. In other words, 10 Magic Armor will go down to 0 before your health is damaged.

This mechanic also dictates whether your will take damage from bleed attacks, crowd control or elemental status attacks such as burning. If you have enough of Physical Armor you will not bleed or if you have enough Magic Armor you will not burn. Similar to resistance gear that becomes weaker during combat.

Of course there are many other cool aspects of this game and my 10hrs of gameplay have only scratched the surface. I will return with an update after 20+hrs of gameplay. So far, so good…

As a side note, this game does have online play which is very welcomed. In addition, something new to this series is “Gamemaster Mode” which lets you create your own campaigns. How cool is that?

If you don’t like turn based RPG games then this game is not for you. However, if you are a fan, Divinity: Original Sin 2 is delightful. Just don’t rush in to battle without armor. 🙂

ps. as one of the passive abilities that anyone can acquire is “leech”… get it as soon as you reach level 2… you will thank me later.

For PC version of this game you can buy through Steam for 44.99 or as a gift for someone who likes video games.