Divinity Original Sin 2, at its core, is a sprawling adventure game with rich lore, intriguing characters, and captivating environments that has, undoubtedly, set a new industry standard of how modern RPGs should be made. With that being said, I regard the combat system, while a triumph of turn-based mechanics, as a subtext to these existing qualities and I wish I had realized that before playing through on tactician mode last month. Tactician mode is less of an adventure and more of a complex math equation that must be solved in order to be successful. I surrounded myself with graphs, build sheets, combat notes, and other tools of the trade all while forgetting to stop and smell the proverbial bouquet of roses the game had to offer. Adventuring was treated like the navigation of a minefield, instant death always a hair's width away. Phone alarms buzzing every five minutes reminding me to create a save file lest I step on a mine or become surrounded by hidden enemies who wipe out my party before I had a chance to say goodbye. Character interaction was daunting, never knowing when a battle was about to ensue and prompt yet another loading screen. Battles were won or lost by a single arrow (I recall making a save file before shooting an arrow with a 95% hit probability because it was THAT pivotal). The fights were full of twists and turns, enemies crashing in, events rending the world apart and it was always an “oh sh**!” instead of an “oh cool!” which detracted from the effect of the moment. Instead of just taking in the scene and admiring the events as they unfolded, my mind would automatically begin calculating the likelihood of success, lest I find myself stuck at the bottom of a long save-rabbit hole. I enjoyed every minute of this game and I DID experience spurts of pure unbridled adventuring, but, by the end of my journey, I felt like I had taken a course in complex statistics instead of jaunting around a world full of gods and magic. You only get one FIRST playthrough and you can always bump the difficulty up if you need to! I’m writing this because I wish someone had told me that I could just ENJOY this game instead of trying to conquer it. With all this being said, I haven’t had this much fun playing a game in years, and I hope many will emulate it in the future. Cheers and happy adventuring!
