Divinity: Original Sin 2

Landmark on arrival, still a mountain you can't route around

Wind the clock back to its debut and Original Sin 2 walked out to a standing ovation. A 93 on Metacritic, a Mighty 92 on OpenCritic, a flat 10 from GameSpot, a 9.6 from IGN, a 9.75 from Game Informer — this wasn't one outlet's crush, it was the near-unanimous read of the entire critical floor. It was written into "one of the greatest RPGs ever made" lists the year it shipped, and that verdict has barely faded since.

The awards column is almost absurd. It took the BAFTA for Multiplayer and PC Gamer's Game of the Year, while Game Informer handed it Best Turn-Based Combat, Best Side Quests and Best PC Exclusive in one armful, for over 160 industry awards all told. These aren't decorative medals; they're a ledger recording that it hit the top tier on combat, narrative and co-op simultaneously. A game that wins any single one of those has succeeded — this one bloomed across the board.

Seen from today, its place is even more interesting. Developer Larian went on to make Baldur's Gate 3, the game that swept The Game Awards, and Original Sin 2 is the hinge on that evolutionary chain: origin characters, identity tags, turn-based freedom — almost every design gene that later sanctified Baldur's Gate 3 has its prototype here.

Trace the line back further and it runs all the way to the first Original Sin in 2015, the game that established the elemental interplay and two-player co-op this sequel then perfected. So Original Sin 2 isn't a standalone hit. It's the middle chapter of a studio teaching itself, in public, how to build the kind of reactive RPG nobody else was attempting — required reading for anyone trying to understand how Larian got where it is.

Who should buy, who should walk, and which version to grab

Start with who it's for. If what you want is high freedom, the willingness to own every choice, and a taste for grinding on tactical builds, this game is practically tailored to you. The elemental battlefield of chain-reacting water, oil, fire, electricity and poison, the dual physical-and-magic armour break, the twelve skill schools you mix freely — that's a strategic sandbox deep enough that nobody has reproduced it. Add six origins each carrying a complete character script, plus up to four-player drop-in co-op where you can stab each other in the back, and its longevity has no real ceiling.

But it will genuinely lose some people. If you find turn-based pacing slow, won't read mountains of text, and only want immediate, punchy combat feedback, this system is a burden rather than a pleasure. The isometric view plus those sprawling skill schools makes the UI information-dense, and the early on-ramp for newcomers is a real one; the armour-break rule also rewards committing to a single damage path, so mixed physical-magic squads stall and the build forgiveness runs thin. None of these are fatal, but all of them are worth settling in your head before you dive in.

On versions there's nothing to agonize over: the Definitive Edition is the standard. As a free upgrade aimed at everyone, it folds in the Act 2 rewrite, the 150,000-plus re-recorded voice lines and a Story difficulty built for the narrative crowd, dragging a barrier once treated as hardcore-PC-only down to something far more people can clear. Late in 2025 it landed on PS5, Xbox Series and Switch 2, with load times and frame rates stepping up again. Whatever platform you're on, lock onto the Definitive Edition — it's the most complete and most welcoming shape this game has ever taken.