Divinity: Original Sin II does not ease you in. It drops you on a prison island, tells you the god you believed in is dead, and hands you a magic that makes monsters hunt you. Larian Studios released it for Windows in September 2017, and it is one of the best role-playing games ever built.
Trailer, via GOG.
Fort Joy and the Sourcerer Problem
You play a Sourcerer, born with the talent to wield Source, a magic that draws the Voidwoken: monstrous creatures that attack all living things. The Divine Order, founded by the dead Lucian, created the Magisters to capture or kill every Sourcerer. The captured go to Fort Joy, a prison-town on Reaper’s Eye, an island once ruled by Braccus Rex.
The Magisters are led by Bishop Alexandar, Lucian’s son, who claims to be the new Divine, and his advisor Dallis. Your escape from Fort Joy is the game’s first act, and it is a brutal one.
The premise carries weight because it never lets you forget what Source costs. Every spell you cast is a beacon. The game builds its whole moral weather out of that single idea.
Six Godwoken, One Custom Character
You can build a character from scratch and pick stats, race, gender and background. Or you can take one of six pre-made characters, each with a backstory and a personal quest. Beast is a male Dwarf set on ending the reign of his cousin Justinia, the Dwarf Queen. Fane is an undead-looking male, the last of a long-forgotten immortal species, who spent aeons imprisoned and wants to know what happened to the rest of his kind. Ifan ben-Mezd is a male Human.
The previous game only let you play Humans. Original Sin II adds elves, dwarves and lizards, living or undead. Race changes dialogue options and how certain NPCs treat you. That is not decoration. It is the game’s engine of consequence.
A Party That Argues With You
You can play alone with one character or recruit up to three companions, who become fully playable. On the first island, only the six pre-made characters are available as companions. Later you can hire silent ones.
The pre-made characters react to your choices. They grow to like or dislike you, and that shifts the story. This is the part that separates Divinity: Original Sin II from its peers.
| Feature | Divinity: Original Sin (2014) | Divinity: Original Sin II (2017) |
|---|---|---|
| Party size in co-op | Two players | Up to four players |
| Playable races | Humans only | Humans, elves, dwarves, lizards |
| Combat | Not specified | Turn-based, action points |
The sequel is bigger in every direction that matters. It also knows what to do with the room.
Rivellon, the Veil and the Seven
The game is set in Rivellon, a medieval fantasy world, centuries after the first game. The story begins years after Lucian’s death. The Veil, a magical barrier separating Rivellon from the Void, is weakening. Voidwoken pour through, draining the Seven, the deities of Rivellon’s main religion.
A God in the Hall of Echoes reveals they saved you from drowning after a Kraken Voidwoken sank the ship Merryweather, and calls you “Godwoken.” The God urges you to ascend to Divinity and hold back the Void before it kills the Seven.
Turn-Based Combat With Room to Break It
Combat is turn-based and uses an action-point system, played from an isometric view. The class system is open-ended. Preset builds exist, but you can mix anything.
The game rewards planning and punishes carelessness. It is systematic in a way few RPGs attempt, and it holds up across a long campaign.
Co-op That Actually Works
Original Sin II was conceived as both a single-player and cooperative game. Two to four players can split the playable characters between them. The first game capped co-op at two.
That design choice shapes everything. Quests have flexible solutions. You can resolve most of them several ways, and the game rarely scolds you for the ugly one.
What Holds It Back
The game is long, and its second half drags in places the first does not. The tone swings between grim and silly without always landing. Some systems ask more patience than they return.
These are complaints about a great game, not a good one. Larian financed the project through a Kickstarter campaign that raised $2 million, then sold over a million copies in two months. None of that matters as much as the writing, which trusts you to make decisions and live with them.
Divinity: Original Sin II is the rare RPG where the freedom is real and the cost is real. It is frequently cited as one of the greatest video games of all time, and that reputation is earned. The Godwoken story is not a power fantasy. It is a story about what power asks of you, and it asks constantly.
Metacritic score: 9.3 of 10
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