5 minute read
DIVINITY ORIGINAL SIN I
Divinity’s fantasy elves are different from most, being able to see memories by consuming flesh. Mmmm, ccannibalism
PUBLISHER BANDAI NAMCO / DEVELOPER LARIAN STUDIOS / FORMAT XBOX ONE / RELEASE DATE OUT NOW / COST £49.99
Divinity Original Sin II : Definitive Edition
A CHALLENGING RPG FULL OF ENDLESS CHOICES DANIELLA LUCAS
While this might be a classic RPG, don’t expect it to be anything like The Witcher 3 or Final Fantasy XV – this isn’t the typical kind of role-playing game you’d find on console. Divinity 2 is all about creating your own adventure through endless choices rather than having a more closely linked plot like the blockbuster games you might be used to.
Set in a world where having ‘source’ magic is frowned upon due to it attracting all manner of otherworldly nasty types, you’re persecuted for your abilities and sent to a prison island where things start to go rather wrong. Just how you go about handling that is entirely down to you, thanks to a wealth of character options and numerous approaches to story beats.
The game also has a narrator who will describe and set the scene for multiple interactions for you. It works incredibly well, it’s like being told a bedtime story of your own personal adventure and helps add more detail to your interactions with others that might be missed by dialogue choices alone. It makes it feel very much like a Dungeons & Dragons campaign with your own personal Dungeon Master talking you through – an effect that is further enhanced by just how much choice Divinity 2 gives you. In fact there’s so much choice it can be overwhelming, especially in the first 5-10 hours as you figure things out. Junk hoarding
You can talk to anyone and pick up almost anything to the point where it’s hard to know what you ‘should’ be doing. The game won’t hold your hand, but that’s because it wants you to experiment with it and wander off to find your own unique path. Whatever you choose to do, be that short cut
WHAT IS IT?
An absolutely huge, classic RPG that’s been retooled for consoles.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
Like playing a lengthy Dungeons & Dragons campaign full of unexpected choices. WHO’S IT FOR?
People who like huge stories and experimenting with items and abilities. being a bastard to everyone you meet or exclusively talking to animals, your ‘Dungeon Master’ narrator will roll with it. There is no right or wrong way to do anything.
Combat has just as many choices – you start with basic skills and items you can assign to a cross bar and you take turns attacking, but things quickly become extremely tactical when you start taking your environment into account. Fighting on a boat that’s filling with water? Then electric attacks can spread through puddles. Rain spells can cause steam to rise from fire, which can then be turned into clouds of poison or thunder by placing another spell on it. It’s complicated, and often battles will turn against you quickly if you make a single misstep, but once you’ve got the hang of it you’ll constantly be looking for exciting new ways to chain attacks together.
With so many tiny things on screen you can potentially interact
FAR LEFT Fights can get out of hand quickly; look around you to see if there’s anything you can use.
ABOVE That fire could hurt you or be used to your advantage by using water spells.
LEFT The environments are impressively detailed: be sure to look out for hidden areas.
with, it can be tricky to select the thing you actually want without the finesse of a mouse, especially when NPCs sometimes wander right in front of the thing you’re after. Once we almost stole a book because the person we were trying to talk to started moving away just as we selected them, the result being that they became very unhappy with us and almost started a fight which we weren’t after at all. You can tab through items with the bumpers to select things, but that doesn’t help when the target is moving – you can’t quite duplicate the preciseness of a mouse click with a controller unfortunately, and it’s one of the areas where the game is weak. Stick shift
It’s not for lack of trying. The way the complex controls have been mapped from PC to controller really couldn’t be done any better, there’s just so much stuff to go through and so many menus to navigate that it doesn’t quite suit the format. While it excels on PC and they’ve done the best possible job they can to capture that on Xbox One, it’s just not the same experience as on its native platform. Hopefully when official mouse and keyboard support comes to the console that will no longer be an issue.
With such an impressive number of items to pick up and interact with in numerous ways you will find yourself in menus a lot trying to figure out what each object does. Foodstuffs can be cooked, potions can be brewed and weapons cobbled together from sticks and other seemingly useless junk you pick up on your travels. While that choice is great, it takes a long time to get into the swing of using it all – expect to look up some guides on your phone while playing to help navigate it all.
Divinity: Original Sin II’s freedom of choice is staggering, making it one of the most unique RPGs we’ve ever played, but the time investment it requires will definitely put some players off. While this type of game is a perfect fit on PC the restrictions of console controls means it’s not quite as compelling on Xbox One. There’s still loads here to enjoy and to get lost in and is an absolute must for RPG fans, but steer clear if you want to retain any semblance of your free time as you’ll be completely sucked in once you start testing just what the game will let you do.
CHARACTER PERKS
There are a lot of options when building your own hero. As well as classes, you can pick perks and backgrounds that will affect things like your speech choices and how strangers react to you. If you play as a skeleton people will react to the sight of your face negatively, making life harder for you. Choose the pet pal perk to be able to talk to the animals you encounter.
OXM VERDICT
A compelling stor y with a huge amount of player freedom, but overwhelming at points.
