Divinity Original Sin II

Gods Need Prayer Badly: At the end of the game, just before the final battle

differently for players versus enemies. It seems to be that whenever a player is taunted or charmed, they willShoot the Medic First, buff enemies, and chew through their entire backpack of one-shot items. When enemies are taunted or charmed, theyll just

The Alcatraz: Fort Joy is established as one, having had zero escapes, in part due to being on an island far from anything else, making most escape attempts doomed to failure. Your job through Act One is to find a way to escape this penal colony.

After all, nobody has as many friends as the elf with many cheeses.

Fighter, Mage, Thief: The character creation and upgrade system is extremely flexible, allowing for mixing and matching as the player desires, but there are direct analogues to all three regardless. For example, there are weapon skills targeted towards one or more classes, as well as several areas that very much equate to one or another (e.g. Warfare for fighters, Marksman and Scoundrel for Rogues, and various forms of magic for mages).

Co-Op MultiplayerDrop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer: Like in the first game, co-op is a big thing here, except now you can play with three other people, rather than just one.

The Dark Side: You can quickly upgrade your Source Skills and recharge Source Points by slaughtering everyone in sight and consuming their life essence… but it has some very unpleasant consequences in a long run.

The humble bedroll. Using it lets you heal a large, percentage based, amount of health, as long as there are no enemies nearby, making after-action healing much quicker. Best of all, you can get one within a minute of starting a game.

immediately after escaping Fort Joy

Fantastic Racism: Quite a few (but by no means all) humans have a lot of dislike for, and fear of, elves, due to the fact that they eat their dead, making them worry that the elves will eat them too. Interestingly, though,dwarves dont have any particular grudge against elvesor vice versa.

The Dwarves have Celtic knot patterns decorating their architecture and often wear Nordic looking braids. Their backstory involves a warrior-king confederating many tribes under his banner through conquest and diplomacy, not unlikeAlexander the GreatorGenghis Khan. The primary influence on their aesthetics, though, isAncient Grome. Their Plate Armor sets are gilded and skirted while their cloth armors are basically decorated togas. They tend to have Latin sounding names like Marcus Miles or Justinia. Their more recent backstory, involving their Empire fracturing due to conquests by younger cultures that they view as barbaric, adds to this. They have some hints of post-Roman Renaissance Italy and Iberia, with their ornate and fancy weapons (their Axes often have rapier-like baskets around the hilts), a powerful merchant class, and a tradition of seafaring (and sea shanties of course). Less obviously, their presence in human cities as oppressed, barely tolerated, second-class citizens who often make a living as craftsman make them out to be similar to the medieval Jews.

God Is Dead: The Divine is dead, which sends the world into chaos. There is to be a new god to replace the Divine, selected from the godwoken, six or seven people (depending on whether you choose a custom character or not) with destinies that either involve becoming gods or dying.

Big Bad: At first, it appears to be Bishop Alexandar, but then its later revealed (not so subtly) to be Magister Dallis.

Another one, doubling as aBrike Jokefrom the first Original Sin: the original had an (in)famous cheese vendor well known for spounting the same decree over and over again. This is nodded to throughout Original Sin 2 but never directly invoked until you reach Arx. There, an elven cheese vendor will also sell you a selection of rare rings and amulets if you approach her with the Outlaw tag. When pressed about how she comes across this merchandise, she hints that the mice in the city bring her the wares she sells because,

tells you that, over someones life they gather source within their body, and when they die, their source goes to whatever god they prayed to in life, ensuring their survival.

Artificial Brilliance: The AI has improved

Geo Effects: The cornerstone of the combat system is, again, creating and combining different terrain effects.

Early Game Hell: Still in effect – fortunately it is nowhere near as bad as the first game.

An unusual quirk of the Loremaster stat has this happen. If your character is undead or Fane, in-universe when you are wearing a face of a living character, you look like one and this should fool virtually everyone into thinking youre undead. In-practice, the second you enter combat, enemies will somehow know the character is undead and will tossweaponised healing spellsat them despite having no real reason in-universe to think to do that.

Gang Up on the Human: on occasion you might have magisters and voidwoken alongside one another.While a lot of them will help you out, (Notably at the end of Act one), they do often decide to go after you if youre close enough.

Elves vs. DwarvesAverted. Elves and Dwarves dont have very many significant interactions in the backstory one way or another. PracticallyInvertedconsidering they share a mutual hatred ofracist humans.Strangely, there

Dual Wielding: More than doable, though the weapon in your off hand gets a 50% damage penalty. Its mostly done with rogues and their daggers, though you can find a couple of mages dual wielding

Cultural Chop Suey: Each of the races has some similarities to a blend of various world cultures, detailed further underFantasy Counterpart Culture.

Anti-Grinding: You can only get so much XP in the game, as enemies almost never respawn, with a few exceptions where you dont get any extra XP when you kill them more than once. Trompdoys illusions, in the second fight with him, do provide (rapidly diminishing) XP gains when you kill them and theyre respawned, however.

she ultimately factors very little into the plot – in fact, only Fane gives her any kind of different interactions on Fort Joy

Finesse for non-rogue builds. Unlike strength, which increases carrying capacity, and intelligence, which increases spell damage (and a number of classes do dabble in spellcasting) on top of increasing their respective weapons damage,

The Ancientsare an in-universe example of this. You meet the ghosts of Dwarven, Elven, and Human Ancients.

All There in the Manual: All there in the artbook and lorebook that come with the Divine Ascension DLC, which provide in-universe, though indirect, information about various characters, as well as out-of-universe design decisions and planning for the world and said characters.

some elven npcs that seem bigotted against dwarves, but theyre few and far between, plus they sing the same tune as the aforementioned racist humans, so its less an example of this trope than it is an example of a fewprejudiced assholes.

The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Debuffs that make the characters change allegiances (temporarily) seem to work

Note that most of the people on board the Lady Vengeance are killed by Meteor Storm, and by someone who sounds very similar to Braccus Rex. In Act 4, its revealed that Dallis brought Braccus Rex back from the dead

trait – the pool of blood created by this ability provides an instant burst of healing.

One of the potential final bosses of the game is the Divine Lucian himself. If youve played

In the end shes justThe Dragonto someone even more powerful.

Divine Intervention: Your god saves you from drowning after the ship youre on is attacked by a kraken at the beginning of the game, allowing you to wash onshore at Fort Joy.

Contractual Boss Immunity: Zig-zagged.

Flunky Boss: Just about every boss you face is one of these, having three or more flunkies around to keep you on your toes. The few non-flunky bosses show why this is: a similarly leveled, well equipped, and well built party can keep the sole boss off balance and unable to attack, while wearing him down.

more mobility-enhancing abilities than before.

Outside of battle, party members will avoid hazards at all costs, even when they have enough armour to simply walk through the hazard with no damage whatsoever. This can result in them seeing a puddle of poison and then simply stand there if there is no path

Griefer: The game actually accounts for this type of multiplayer and weaves player characters conflicts into the plot.

The game has quite a bit of bugs here and there – sometimes entire quests will end up bugged.

Magister Dallis and the cloaked figure at the beginning of act two. Shes actually standing next to theTrue Final Boss.

And I Must Scream: Braccus Rex rather enjoyed inflicting these on those who challenged him. For example, you can find three brothers in a completely dry well, suffering from extreme thirst, having been there since the time of Braccus rule, as well as a man, called the Historian, whos been trapped on a pedestal,permanently on fire. Fortunately, in both cases, you can end their suffering, then speak to them if you know what to do.

Early on, you must battle an annoying spirit named Trompdoy, who at one point splits himself up into multiple targets. If you know to focus on one, the rest of themdiealongside him.

Contrasting Sequel Main Character: In

Enemy Mine: At one point, you can call a truce with Bishop Alexandar. This is entirely optional though – you can also side with the Black Ring and kill Alexandar, orside with neither.

Knockdown and Chicken Claw. Most forms of crowd control are easily countered, and the AI will easily remove any forms of crowd control (Or they willjust stand there if they are charmed, confused, or taunted), but Knockdown and Chicken Claw do not have any notable counters, making them the most reliable forms of crowd control in the game. In fact, theres little to noContractual Boss Immunityso you can even chain crowd-control bosses once you get rid of all their armour. You also learn abilities that can inflict knockdown from level one, whereas most others either come far later or have to use Source.

see him with a gentle, comforting presence even as he

Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The Source. While the original game initially treated it as pureBlack Magic, it eventually revealed that the Source was not always corruptive and evil and can, in fact, be used for good. Abusing it, however, is very easy and quickly leads to a lot of suffering.

, you can see how this would become problematic as this game takes place before that one. However, one ending comes from doing what Lucian asks you to do, so that ending is presumably the canon one.

. The trading interface means that theyre fully willing to do so, no matter how absurd it is for a demon or what-have-you giving you some gold for whatever pots and pans you stole from their house before you fight them.

Doomsday Device: You can find one under

You can trade with NPCs at any time in their conversation. This includes

someone takes over her voice… the same voice of those voidwoken.

Game-Breaking Bug: Its not easy to pull of if youre not trying for it (or arent a big fan of overkill) but in the final boss fight,

DuringThe Revealin the academy, most of the past events revolving around

The Lizards are primarily a blend ofArabian Nights DaysandImperial China. They live in the desert, use scimitars, have genies (in lamps, even!) and their fancier clothes involve light robes and turbans in vibrant color schemes. Theyre also an isolated and advanced empire with aloof and haughty nobles that look down on foreigners and live in a Forbidden City.

Glass Cannon: There is a talent by this name, and boy does it live up to it. What it does is it allows you to start every turn with maximum AP (six, when everyone typically starts with four), but your physical and magic armor do not protect against environmental effects, like electrified water, fire, or poison clouds. Considering how common those effects are, it makes survival a pain in the ass at times.

Canon Identifier: Players can control one of six available origin characters with preestablished backgrounds or create a custom avatar. Regardless of choice you take on the role of a Sourcerer , one able to wield magical Source, and eventually Godwoken, a Sourcerer chosen by a god to become the nextDivineand the majority of characters refer to the members of your party by one of these titles or your chosen race.

), the story follows four burgeoningSourcererson the run fromThe Orderof Divine Magisters, whose leader, Bishop Alexander the Innocent, had declared Sourcery the exclusive domain of his order and ruthlessly pursues anyone who thinks otherwise. Since being caught by the Magisters spells aFate Worse than Death, yourRagtag Bunch of Misfitsfrom across Rivellon must evade the Bishops bounty hunters and eventually take the fight to the historys greatest Sourcerer himself.

byLarian Studios. Thanks to the success of the original, Larian had enough funds to produce it on their own, but took toto attract additional funding, build up a player community early, and to signChris Avelloneon as a stretch goal. The game was originally projected for release in December 2016, but having smashed through

Braccus Rex breaks free of Dalliss control. Sure enough, the Magisters, Dallis, and Lucian, if they are alive, will actually go after him – sometimes they will even

taking Lohse with you without having completed her personal quest and killed Adrahmalihk

The Chicken Claw + Rupture Tendons combo. Not only is it hilarious incorporating Chicken Claw as crowd control, Rupture Tendons then inflicts tons of damage since they are forced to flee (and trigger movement-based damage). This combo is cheap and even in Act 2 continues to pull weight, inflicting hundreds of damage.

Critical Existence Failure: Barring status effects, as long as you have at least one health point, you will fight just as effectively as if you had full health, but when you have zero, you instantly die.

her act 4 presence, wherein she takes a sizableInfo Dumpon the player

For ranged characters, bringing Ifan along will net you a very powerful crossbow from his personal quest

Developers Foresight: This game is very

Arx, and activate it yourself, if you want to wipe out

TheCentral Themeof the game is how your origins affect who you are and what chances you get in life, which is expressed in your mainPlayer Characterorigin storyhaving massive impact on how others in the world treat you either by helping or hindering you. Gameplay-wise, the game raises the bar on the multiplayer RPG experience set by

Chicken Claw turns its target into a chicken, who then cannot attack, or use skills. It also makes them so much easier to kill, as chickens, naturally, arent very tough.

if you damage Vredeman for far more health than he has left (say with a backstabbing rogue doing ridiculous damage), its possible that he will give his dialogue for revealing himself to actually be Braccus Rex, but not actually spawn for part two of the fight, rendering it unwinnable, even if you do eliminate the other combatants who carried over, as Braccus must be defeated

If you focus exclusively on Braccus Rex in the final boss, all of his flunkies die with him.

Combat Pragmatist: Melee rogues have no concept of a fair fight.Throwing sand in the enemys eyes, rupturing their tendons making them lose heath when they walk,stabbing through their armor, and numerous other dirty tricks are all fair game as far as theyre concerned.

Gay Option: You can romance any of your living companions, regardless of your own gender, such as romancing Lohse with Sebille, or Beast with Ifan.

well liked for having all sorts of foresight in terms of the dev team, allowing all sorts of variations within how (roughly half) of the quests are completed. In fact, there is even an ending for

Fate Worse than Death: When the Divine Magisters catch a Sourcerer, they strip them of their powers, which has a side effect ofessentially wiping out their personality and individuality. Some of them are even converted intoHuman Weaponsfor the Divine Order.

11th-Hour Superpower: Before theFinal Boss, your characters get a prayer that removes the Source Cost for your skills that had before beenToo Awesome to Use.

Backlash. If youre a rogue-y type character, get ready to use it a lot – it has a very short cooldown, teleports you

bovines, when you transform them back, one of them is revealed to be a man.

finesse does is increase the damage done by finesse based weapons (bows, crossbows, and daggers), making it useless for anyone who doesnt use said weapons.

One of Fanes biggest quirks is that due to being locked inside a tomb for thousands of years, he knows next to nothing of the world he now finds himself in, or even basic concepts of what it means to be mortal. And yet, he has the scholar tag which allows him to chime in with knowledge about history and world lore. He

First is the shakedown when you enter the Fort Joy Ghetto, where one option, with Sebille and the right dialogue options at least, is to cup the thugs cheek, grab his throat, then knee him hard in the groin. This can also be followed up by breaking his leg if you feel like adding salt to the

Braccus Rex isBack from the Dead- those familiar with the previous game could even recognise his voice

Teleport – partially for the damage (that ignores armour even), but mostly for the sheer utility. Teleport can be obtained

Memory can be this for fighter-type characters – Memory increases the number of active skills you can have at a time. While skill slots are useful, fighters might not need as many since they can justAttack! Attack! Attack!. One talent, Mnemonic, essentially allows you to get away with ignoring it for a while.

via the release of a huge cloud of deathfog.

Everyone Is Bi: Played straight with the romancable party members, all of whom are available regardless of gender. The only aversion in the entire game, in fact, is Papa Thrash, who can only be seduced by a female dwarf.

If you make a ranged attack you will see a path of where your projectile is traveling as well as a visual range. Very useful in tight corridors, and when firing arrows or projectile abilities.

In general, averted. In most fights, even if you kill the leader, the rest will continue to fight.

personally slays any competitors for divinity.

The Kraken, you can tell, will be fought much later.

Final Boss- if you allowed any Magisters to survive, or even Lucian or Dallis, they will go after Braccus Rex too. This can be used to your advantage since they will eat hits and weaken theFinal Bossfor you.

Kickstarter stretch goal with over 2M in pledges, delays were inevitable. It released on September 14, 2017, almost exactly one year after the first act of the game was released to Early Access by the developers.

Cap: Combat and civil skills can only have so many points invested in each area (10 for combat skills, and five for civil skills), but this doesnt count against bonuses you can get from equipment and such, meaning you can have invested five points in thievery but have a score of seven because you have a piece of equipment that gives you two extra points in thievery, for example.

Everyone Calls Him Barkeep: The Red Princes only given name so far is… The Red Prince. And its not a lizard thing, as you can meet lizard folk with names like Saam and Stingtail.

Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga

The leveling of items is cited as one of the few issues with the game. This is made apparent during the Artefacts of the Tyrant quest line, having you traipsing around Fort Joy for the hidden armor of the Source King, Bracchus Rex. Each piece has a curse on it that can only be removed by wearing the whole set. After completing this complicated quest chain and suspending the curse, the feared armor of the Source Kingstill whispered of in fear, 1000 years after his deathwill be noticeably worse than bog-standard gear by level 9.

early via a glove (or even a skillbook). Players will most likely find themselves using it into the late game either to bring squishy casters or rangers over, or to send annoying enemies

Groin Attack: Can be done on a few occasions:

Gameplay and Story Integration: When the final phase of theFinal Bossbegins,

Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The humans have a generalMedieval European Fantasyaesthetic while the other races haveCultural Chop Sueygoing on:

The game typically autosaves when youre entering an area where there will shortly be a really difficult fight and/or big decision. If you dont like how things went down, you can reload the save and possibly go somewhere else first.

Combining crossbows and bows into a catch-all Ranged.

Decoy Antagonist: Windego, the old lady who destroys the boat you are on with source magic at the beginning, seems set to be a major antagonist, even the fact that she is the narrator of the prologue and part of the ending. However,

If you learned a skill, you dont have to re-learn it, you actually remember it but can only use a set number at a time based upon your Memory stat.

Party members can also get stuck on or behind ladders, which can only be traversed by one person at a time. And sometimes they can get stuck on a few objects and lag behind.

The Ghost: Braccus Rex. Those who played the previous game killed him (or not), but since the first act is set on aPenal Colonythat used to be one of Braccus Rexs strongholds, expect to hear him a

Death of the Old Gods: Sort of… You see, the old gods all gave up half their magic to the divine (who they call the usurper) a long while back, and since the death of the divine, theyre slowly losing the rest of it to the void, thus slowly dying. Its a bit closer to terminal illness of the old gods.

Cast From HPFlesh Sacrificethe Elf racial. Though in actuality its more of aMaximum HP Reduction.

Convection Schmonvection: Downplayed slightly, in that you get the warm status effect if you go near lava, but, aside from that, you can get as close as you want to lava, and as long as you dont touch it (which is instant death), be perfectly okay.

. Particularly notable is the fact that it deals piercing damage, which ignores armor.

Towards the end, youll lose count of the number of times theNP Csget a free opening salvo fireball or similar effect that pretty much destroys the Magic Armor of half of your team, and the next enemy or so in the initiative will start doing Crowd Control effects like Madness, Charm, or Terrified.

The AI in general has been described as playing a tabletop game against someone who is metagaming, with AI behaviours that seem blatantly out of place within the games context. Part of this is due to the fact that the AIexamines you with loremaster before their turn, meaning they know all your resistances and whether or not youre undead, and theres no visual or even in-game indication they are doing this, so they come off as psychic.

Deader Than Dead: Depending on how far the player cares to take it, Sebilles revenge against the Master can take the form of killing him, exploding his corpse, eating his heart, and then

This is implied even before that in the Blackpits, during the meeting with the Eternal Aetera, a member of Fanes species sealed away for her beef with the gods.

since the previous game – if for example, you walk through a fiery field, your party members will break formation and follow you to avoid the damage. However, it goes both ways – tanks are considered to be worthless in this game because taunts dont become available until later, and enemies willignore them and go for the obvious mage, making them reduced to just dealingScratch Damagewith a one-handed weapon.

Eternal English: Characters trapped for three millennia speak the exact same language as your characters despite almost certainly not having had any contact with anyone in the intervening time.

tone remains deathly calm, even as he discusses

Dem Bones: Undead are walking, talking skeletons. You have the option of playing as one of any race.

other players to take control of yourcompanions(each with their own origin) and to play with youbothcooperatively, andcompetitively. The developers promise to make the world and the story reactive and flexible enough to accommodate any playstyle. The much praisedTurn-Based Combatsystem of

, you played as Source Hunters. In the sequel, you play as the Sourcers on the run from the hunters.

You can respec in act 2 and for free.

There is a rare status effect that turns you into a cow. On the Reapers Coast, you can find two people who have been transformed this way. They will give you a quest to get them back to normal with a witchs brew. Better yet, even though theyre both

Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Even if you persuade a character to join you, they wont join you if you have four already in the group.

Dysfunction Junction: Pretty much everyone you can invite to your party (barring custom characters) has some sort of dark past that still affects them to this day, ranging from Ifan, who unwittingly unleashed death fog on an unsuspecting elven settlement while trying to save them; to Sebille, who was made a slave and forced to kill her own kind; to Lohse, who has a powerful demon inhabiting her body. Each characters quest is basically about resolving their issues or punishing those whose fault it was that these things happened.

Fog of Doom: Death fog, which instantly kills anyone who enters it. Its apparently also mass manufactured, storable in crates and barrels, and a large shipment has gone missing…

If Fane is in your party and you talk to Windego,

Its fortunately aSkippable Bossthough.

a great scholar before he was imprisoned, but it is odd that he can be a big source of historical knowledge of the present while also knowing nothing about it.

Chainmail Bikini: Elves of both genders dress this way. Notably, all races have their armor in their own racial style, so equipping Chainmail Armor that looks like a full surcoat on a human will inexplicably become a literalChainmail Bikiniif an elf puts it on.

more forgiving with the movement than the previous game. You get less action points than before, but it costs

bosses are immune to crowd control effects, but

You can even have sex with Fane much earlier than any of the other characters, which he uses as an excuse to do research on this mysterious concept of sex.

. Note also that the Provoke skill when used by a player has to have that enemys Physical Armor breached first, whereas the Computer canautomatically provoke your guys even fully buffed. The different effects uponP Csvs.NP Csjust add insult to injury.

The Elves are a bit more all over the place. They have hints of Gaelic culture in their druidic lifestyle, and their status as refugees from lands conquered by a larger imperial power gives them some Native American parallels (The casting effect for Flesh Sacrifice, the Elven racial ability, resembles a Dreamcatcher pattern). Elven-style axes are Aztec style obsidian-studded clubs. The way that their culture involves treating cannibalism as an integral part of their code of honor gives them a slight Maori feel.

The games prologue and the playable part of the epilogue take place on a ship, as well.

Boy Meets Ghoul: Any romance involving an undead character, whether it is your character or Fane as an NPC.

Back Stab: A game mechanic, though exclusive to those wielding at least one dagger (read: rogues). It automatically grants a critical hit if it connects, and includes a helpful cone behind the enemy to determine where the backstab range is (plus theres an ability that automatically puts you in backstab position and all dagger based abilities can backstab).

Artificial Stupidity: That said, its still possible to break the AI for a few encounters. Some enemies either wont attack going out of range, or will get stuck trying to move past other enemies in the way.

Act 1 begins and ends on a boat full of Sourcerers.

Most creatures outside of the games main playable races are incapable of using ladders. This doesnt, however, prevent them from standing uselessly right in front of a ladder and preventing their own allies from climbing it. If you have one of the temporary NPC follower animals with you, sometimes youll end up with your entire party lagging way behind because theres a chicken standing in front of the ladder.

has his hands, eyes, and tongue removed and lives in agony for an unknown length of time. An Elf character can inhabit these memories by eating flesh of his remains.

If you have a rogue, killing a certain boss inside the Fort Joy Prison will cause him to drop his daggers that can inflict mute or bleeding. In the same area, there is a particularly strong bow hidden behind some (skippable, with a certain item or Pet Pal) dogs.

The Peace of Mind spell only costs a single AP to cast, lasts for an impressive three turns, provides significant initiative and attack buffs, and protects against a variety of otherwise potentially devastating status conditions.

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