As the silken voice first clutches you in its warm embrace, the narrator’s soft interjections ease your adventure into motion with a delicate push. This is the Definitive Edition of Divinity: Original Sin 2, and from the moment that those soothing tones envelop you, the richness of the fantasy and its alluring mythos cushions your every step. The world of Rivellon is in peril, succumbing to the decaying touch of the devilish Void and its demonic thralls. You’re not in a hurry, though. For it’s with a contented consideration that your journey truly commences, your ascension to the mantle of Divine a secondary thought as you pilfer every pantry and recount every piece of dialogue available. 

Even as the game’s early goings gradually introduce players to each and every system that comprises its whole, the scale of Divinity 2 remains quite overawing. It’s deceptive, in a way. Boiled down to the most minute details, the game’s environments feel like dioramas carved into life by the blade of a knife. Piece by piece, they exude personality and thoughtfulness at every angle – stacks of books adorn the lavish red and gold drapery of royal halls, while the dimly-lit grotto home to a band of outlaws is shoddily cobbled together plank by wooden plank. In its isometric viewpoint, your character feels like a figurine dotted around the map at the behest of a hasty game-master.

But Divinity’s appeal isn’t simply in the design of the space that your character inhabits. As the camera pans out to its highest perch, you’re left with a sense of the scale of your adventure, as towering oak trees become mere shrubs and oceans recede to the size of ponds. In the grand advances that lay ahead of you, Divinity conjures aspirations of a fantasy steeped in the same decadence as its aesthetics. Though it’s in a combination of its every individual form – character building, quest pathing, item crafting – that the game is able to remain remarkably substantial as ten hours with it effortlessly becomes one-hundred.

With the Void at their borders, the inhabitants of Rivellon do what they can to survive. Divinity colours into life several different blends of antagonist, with the villainy of many clearly set in stone. But in times of strife, the deceitful street beggar or the torturous kitchen-hand can make for much more potent evils than even the monstrosity spewing venom from its mandibles. However righteous your intentions may be, you are still capable of being outwitted, and still susceptible to having your kind nature exploited. Mercy is a very honourable trait to practice, but it isn’t the only option available when it comes to achieving the desired outcome of a particular quest. Impressively, every interaction you have in Divinity feels as though you’re dealing with an individual who has their own desires and agenda. Some will respond to intimidation tactics with force, while others cower at the mere sight of a sword clasped to the hip. As the characters you interact with each bear the marks of their environment, the robust dialogue system allows you to treat them all in distinctly different ways from one another. As a result, the diversity of every character’s creed and intentions allows for a sense of intrigue to pervade every scrawl of dialogue, with branching quest paths allowing for a fulfilling conclusion to every interaction, however you may choose to handle it.

COOPERATIVE PLAY OFFERS A NEW DYNAMIC. AS A TEAM, YOUR EVERY MOVE IS A DEMOCRATIC DECISION

The direction of Divinity’s story depends largely on the player’s decision making, with the plot structured as such to respond and adapt to your choices over time. Rather than simply painting targets and having the player eliminate them one-by-one, much of the story’s progression hangs on the whim of the player-character explicitly, with many important choices along the way not necessarily needing to be cast in blood. Several of the larger game-altering choices do read as if they were two sides of the same coin, but Divinity’s success when it comes to quest direction is best evidenced by the way in which it passively moulds your character. Along the path to godhood, it’s the breadth of choice available in dialogue that allows for the game’s pen-and-paper influence to flourish, with players becoming more invested in the fate and motives of their chosen character as they dictate their morality. As your decisions may affect the way in which inhabitants of the world perceive you, any single act never amounts to their complete condemnation. Instead, errant choices become part of how they grow, and how your own decision making sharpens so that you’re able to anticipate the consequences of the game’s wonderfully clever writing.

Divinity doesn’t shy away from its traditionalist derivation, with this ethos extending far beyond just the game’s quest structure. When it comes to creating the character that you will guide across this world aflame, there are an almost overwhelming amount of classes and combinations vying for your attention. Unlike many other RPGs, your role isn’t determined specifically by the weapon you wield. Instead, you’re given a choice of several different archetypes to choose from which you are then free to alter in order to suit a preferred play-style. Central to every build are the six attributes you will increase each time that you gain a level. Strength, Intelligence, Constitution, Finesse, Wits & Memory form the basis of every character, and it’s through a combination of the six or even just by picking two or three to focus on that your adventurer comes to fill a particular role.

Outside of the six primary traits, you’re also given a host of skill schools to invest in as well as civil abilities and talents. As there are only so many inhabitants in Rivellon, experience points are in a limited supply. Levelling your character is a rarity, a boon, and thus you’ll likely be scrutinising the placement of every attribute point several times over. It’s incredibly rewarding to achieve outcomes only possible because you were proficient specifically in bartering, or aptly silver-tongued when it came to your persuasiveness. Though a more unkempt character build may prosper just fine, the game’s underlying emphasis on balance denotes that a party of four all sitting comfortably in their defined roles is paramount when it comes to turning over every stone. There’s a tremendous satisfaction that accompanies your team’s growing cohesion as different abilities mesh together in and out of combat. And as they continue to progress level by level alongside you, a thriving sense of unity as you and your allies achieve a mastery of cooperation at the expense of the game’s toughest challenges.

SURFACES CAN BE MANIPULATED IN YOUR FAVOUR – FLAMING PYRES & OIL SLICKS ALL HAVE THEIR USES

Free to overhaul your build at any time following the conclusion of the first act, experimentation in the magical arts is actively encouraged. Divinity’s arsenal of offence is positively bursting at the seams, with a tremendous level of individuality distinguishing each particular skill school and the plethora of unique abilities within. As the Hydrosophist school may focus on the magical manipulation of water and the Huntsman school the conjuring of arrows, their variety isn’t without depth, allowing for a broader usage of the skills to be very easily reduced to a more niche interpretation. It isn’t particularly difficult to track down and unlock every skill in the game; vendors sell the majority of them, and they even replenish their stock when you achieve a new level. Though only after acquiring a full repertoire does the process of consolidating your abilities begin. Some may seem unnecessary beyond the walls of the game’s starting location, Fort Joy, while others were perhaps not the best fit for your chosen role. Being well-versed in your abilities comes with experience. When Magister Knights become superseded by the gargantuan horrors of the void, understanding the greater potential of your move-set could very well be the difference between a victory of attrition, and a complete decimation of your party.

Combat in Divinity is unforgiving, though much of that has to do with the rather steep learning curve that comes with understanding it. As with its predecessors, Divinity: Original Sin 2 employs a turn based system, where allies and antagonists move around the terrain in sequence, trading blows and reacting to each other’s advances like pieces on a chessboard. Any action in combat is executed using ‘AP’, or ‘attack points’. Starting your turn with between 4 and 6 attack points, you can choose to move into a better position, cast skills at an enemy or use an item from within your inventory. Anything that may be deployed in combat has an AP value attached to it, meaning that battles in Divinity can change on a turn-by-turn basis as momentum shifts and carefully planned stratagems unravel. Taking a turn to move a unit a significant distance while also guzzling a health potion means that you will lack the points required to attack, and without considering it, may have moved into the range of an entirely new foe. With so many things to consider like enemy positioning, enemy resistances, party health and environmental hazards, many fights devolve into joyously chaotic collisions where the bleeding and the burning bludgeon one another into submission. Despite the chaos inherent to Divinity’s combat, there’s never a sense that any fight is outright unfair. Enemies are their own unique characters, constructed using the same means as your protagonist and drawing from the same pool of available skills. If your armour becomes no more useful than a shawl of wrapping paper against a particularly menacing swordsman and sorcerer, then you need only return a level or so later. If you find that your party is unable to overcome the scalding touch of acid or the dazzling shock of electrified water, then a little more pre-fight deliberation wouldn’t go amiss.

THERE’S APPLICATION IN EVERYTHING – EVEN PIZZA MAY HELP YOU STAVE OFF A KILLING BLOW

However small the battle may have been, outlasting your opponents and being ceremoniously declared the victor remains spectacularly gratifying. In the diversity of battle locations, enemy types and ways to approach individual conflicts, the success of your adept thinking becomes as much a reward as the loot-laden corpses from which you take your spoils. In Divinity, no battle is the same as the last, with consecutive skirmishes pitting you against anything from undulating Void agglomerations to nefarious reptilian necromancers. Such is the unpredictability of the way in which a battle will pan out, that failure becomes less of a frustration and more of a recurring prerequisite for success. After engaging and conceding to an enemy archetype that suffocates you with detrimental crowd-control attacks, then comes the opportunity to plan accordingly. Prior to the first blow being struck, the battlefield is completely at your mercy. Moving ranged characters into elevated positions and slicking the ground with water in order to make your team less susceptible to fire are just some of the ways that you can stack the odds in your favour. The ability to plan the fight ahead constitutes an important dynamic of Divinity’s combat, though it’s the moment-to-moment action specifically that sees many battles live long in the memory as spectacular triumphs. There is no strict ruleset to abide by or a way to play that’s decidedly more profitable than any other. Just as your enemies seek to impair your movement and blight you with negative afflictions, so do you endeavour to return the favour. And they will do so by casting all manner of attacks and incantations, processing your advances and responding to them in frightening flourishes of blood and steel. Beneath its layers of pre-planning, environmental destruction and positioning is an intuitive core that reciprocates considered thinking with an enjoyable, responsive challenge. Figuring out the most efficient way in which to surmount that challenge is where its tactical nous lies, with the loosing of arrows and conjuring of spirits representing two different paths to the same objective.

The return of the Void has detrimentally impacted Rivellon, twisting and reshaping it with an indiscriminate touch. In its environmental design, Divinity paints an unmistakable image of a once quaint and peaceful land gradually rotting away with little resistance. And as the Void maintains its stranglehold, the game’s darker themes are underscored decisively, with no farmer, mother or soldier left unscathed by its influence. Broadening the scope of its tale through character dialogue and acquirable tomes, the environment of Divinity tells a story all its own. Battered fortresses leave downtrodden villages bathed in shadow, the seas glow with the tinge of spilled Deathfog, and once prosperous marketplaces fester amidst the presence of the Divine Order.

Littering the landscape are stories told outside of the bounds of quests too, stories that begin and end with the discovery of a scene of ruin, or a letter pinned to a gnarled corpse. Halls of golden trusses and ancient libraries brimming with magical essence tie together Divinity’s menagerie of fantasy, bridging the broken and bloody with the beautiful. Rampant are the ills that plague Rivellon, and generous are the ways in which you come to understand every unique scourge, gradually connecting the dots as an inconsequential roadside ambush hours prior begins to suddenly hold more relevance. Condensed into Divinity’s several segmented maps is a wealth of information on the state of the world, but more impressively, an even greater amount of substance.

In its definitive form, Divinity: Original Sin 2 is an immaculate experience that represents an incredible achievement in storytelling, design and roleplaying. From top to bottom, the game is unapologetically lavish, with a pervading richness that ensures each quest undertaken, enemy culled and location visited has a purpose within its rotten world. Like a playing field of miniatures painted into being and a thickset almanac detailing their every facet, Original Sin 2 plays like a product of tremendous dedication, where no speck of paint or tuft of grass lay out of place. An emphasis on traditionalism at its heart, Divinity is a tabletop RPG for a modern age, one that embraces both its past and its present in order to create an adventure that’s wonderfully broad yet deeply interactive. And across its fetid forests, crumbling castles and ethereal realms, it was a fantasy that never faltered, its every moment unforgettable.