Divinity: Original Sin II is a role-playing video game developed and published by Larian Studios. The sequel to 2014's Divinity: Original Sin and the fifth main entry in the Divinity series, the game was released for Microsoft Windows in September 2017. The player controls a "Godwoken" (or a group of Godwoken), a Sourcerer who can harness and use a powerful magic known as Source, and becomes a pivotal figure in the fight against the Voidwoken, monstrous creatures who wreak havoc in the medieval fantasy world of Rivellon.
Divinity: Original Sin II features turn-based tactical RPG combat played from an isometric perspective. The game focuses on character development, exploration and interactions with non-player characters (NPCs), allowing players to make decisions that impact the story and the world. A flexible quest system enables various approaches to resolving quests. Original Sin II was conceived to work as both a single-player or cooperative multiplayer game, and players can play alone controlling a party of one to four Godwoken, or in a group of two to four players dividing the playable characters between them.
Financed via a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter which raised $2 million, Original Sin II was a commercial and critical success, selling over a million copies in two months. It is frequently cited as one of the best role-playing games of all time, with significant praise given to its writing, story interactivity, combat system, cooperative multiplayer, and music. Divinity: Original Sin II - Definitive Edition, an enhanced version featuring an expanded storyline and improved gameplay, was released on Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2018, and on macOS, Nintendo Switch, and iPadOS during the following years, with Bandai Namco Entertainment acting as publisher for all versions except on Windows.
Gameplay
Divinity: Original Sin II is a role-playing video game played from an isometric perspective. As with Divinity: Original Sin, players can play alone or in cooperative multiplayer, although Original Sin II allows a party of up to four players, while the first game only allowed two. Six pre-made characters with backstories are available to players, who can also choose to create a custom character and choose their stats, race, gender, and background at the start of the game. Although the origin story of a custom character will give them specific dialogue options, the six pre-made characters have dialogue options unavailable to any other character, as well as one sidequest for each involving unique events and interactions over the course of the game. While only Humans were playable in the previous game, Original Sin II also allows players to play as elves, dwarves, and lizards, all either living or undead; each variation gives occasional unique dialogue options, and influence the behavior of certain NPCs towards them.
Although players can play the entire story solely with the character they picked at the beginning of the game, they can recruit up to three NPCs to assist them as companions, becoming fully playable. On the first island of the game, only the six pre-made characters are available as companions, but the player can hire silent companions afterwards; conversely, the pre-made characters when acting as companions will react to the player character's actions and choices and grow to like or dislike them, which also influences the story.
While Original Sin II offers a wide variety of preset class builds, it has an otherwise open-ended class system that allows a high degree of flexibility. Combat of the game is turn based and uses an action-point system. During each turn, the player may perform multiple actions until they run out of action points. Enemies can be fought using skills from as many as ten different families, many of which can also be used out of combat. Different skills, when used in combination, can cause significant damage or unique effects. Both the player and enemies can utilize high ground and environmental elements such as water, ice, oil and fire to their advantage. In addition to health, characters may also be protected by physical and/or magic armor, which will negate incoming physical or magical damage and block negative status effects. Once the armor is fully destroyed, a character becomes vulnerable to direct damage on their health as well as status effects. A skill crafting system allows players to mix and change their skills.