I received a free Steam key for Divinity: Original Sin from one of the Kickstarter backers, who asked me to review the game. After playing the game for a good number of hours, here are my thoughts.

Divinity: Original Sin is in many aspects a classical single-player role-playing game. You can presumably also play it cooperatively with two players, as there are two main characters. But the pace of the game is a lot slower than an action RPG, with combat being turn-based and there being a lot more exploration and dialogue; so I'm not sure how well this would work with two players without somebody getting bored. I haven't tried that.

Divinity has a certain old school feeling, which starts with you being presented a million options on how to build a character before you have any idea how the game works. Fortunately there are some presets, with one character in some sort of melee fighter role, and the other as a spell-caster. But it is likely that at some point you'll want to start over when you know what all those options actually do. Me, I looked up a build on the internet, and found that it worked quite well. Part of the old school charm is that the game isn't necessarily balanced, and you can go for some decidedly overpowered options like Zombie and Leech. And some skills, like invisibility (walk in shadows) are very hard to get in the game, so taking them at character creation is also very powerful. There are no fixed character classes, you can combine all sorts of skills and talents to an individual build, and develop it further as the game progresses.

As I said, combat is turn-based. You start with a certain number of action points, and each spell or attack costs action points. There is no mana, the game doesn't really make a difference between a fighter special attack and a wizard spell. In that respect Divinity resembles 4th edition D&D. Combat is very tactical, with a lot of environmental effects. Elements react with each other: You can electrify water, or ignite a poison cloud. As there are barrels or water, oil, and other stuff conveniently placed pretty much everywhere, you can toy around. It is very satisfying to sneak up on a group of enemies and cast a fire spell on the oil barrel next to them, starting the fight with them already half burned to crisp.

Then again in the first part of the game there isn't actually all that much combat, at least not if you are a completionist and feel you have to explore every nook and cranny of the city of Cyseal. You came to town to solve a murder, so you have a lot of people to talk to, and evidence to find. Items and containers in the game are either free for the taking, or they belong to somebody. But if they belong to somebody you can still take them, as long as nobody sees you doing it. Really. You can steal the paintings of the painter in the market place while invisible, and then sell them back to him without problem. You only get in trouble if your sneaking or invisibility fails just when you are taking the item. The same thing is true for murder, you can do it as long as nobody sees you. Invisibility is great for grabbing just about everything, especially every single painting on every wall in Cyseal. But searching everything takes many hours, and a lot of the things you find are not very valuable. Some locations are hard to reach, requiring you to find keys (which you can find by pressing ALT), secret switches, or other ways of entry. For one location I had to use a smokescreen arrow to enable me to sneak and then pickpocket a key. Other locations are trapped, and you need to find out how to avoid the traps. Overall you will run around a lot, but there are some waypoints to which you can teleport.

The inventory system has one good side, in that it doesn't appear to be limited at all in the number of items you can carry. Only the weight limits you. But of course that means that your inventory quickly becomes very messy, and the sort options aren't all that great. Especially annoying is that if you want to sell something you need to open a trade window to an NPC, and that is unsorted, regardless how you arranged your inventory before. Trade is part barter, so you can get that skill book you want in exchange for a bunch of paintings. Not every NPC has money, and the amount of money is limited, so you sometimes need to sell loots all over town if you prefer cash. You can also combine items in your inventory to craft things. But that is mostly trial and error, although you can find books that give hints on recipes. Other items are useful for other actions, for example a shovel enables you to dig, which is quite useful. Most things you find are random, and the content of chests is determined only when you open them. Which can be abused for some cheating if you save your game before opening the big valuable treasure chest to assure that you get items you can actually use.

During dialogues you sometimes need to make decisions. This has been designed for a cooperative two-person game, so both characters state their opinion on how to proceed, and if they don't agree they have to play a game of rock-paper-scissors to decide. Which is a bit annoying if you are playing solo and end up holding dialogue with yourself. Interestingly decisions frequently result in a trait point on various scales. For example you can be either compassionate or heartless. Either one gives you a bonus, but a different one, so your dialogue decisions have some effect on you. The overall story is told in bits and pieces through the various dialogues and written documents you find. I'm not going to spoiler the story, but let me say that I did like the more regular fantasy part of it, and didn't like the end of time part so much. But I guess I'm more of a fan of low fantasy than of the universe saving high fantasy kind.

Overall I am enjoying Divinity: Original Sin quite a lot. The game sure has its rough edges, as you would expect from a Kickstarter-financed indie game. But there are also a lot of innovative and fun ideas. And I especially like the tactical combat, which makes me want to experiment with various character builds and such. Recommended!