Divinity: Original Sin II Review

Larian Studios built a role-playing game that says yes. Rain a room, then electrify it. Freeze the blood you spilled and watch an ogre fall on his own axe. Speak with the dead because you happen to be undead, teleport an archer off a ledge before initiative is rolled, or skip a set-piece boss entirely by shoving him into his own oil slick. Almost none of that is a scripted exception; it is one system of surfaces and statuses applied everywhere, which makes every encounter feel authored by the player rather than survived.

The armour rules give tactical combat a real spine, since crowd control only lands once the right bar is stripped, so each turn becomes an honest math problem. Then there is the party. Four origin heroes arrive with their own histories and their own claim to divinity, so a co-op session curdles into negotiation and betrayal the way a good tabletop night does. The writing is funny and enormous, the voice acting complete, and the third act sags under its own ambition. Nothing else that decade improvises this freely.