I enjoy when things don’t take themselves too seriously. As someone with an almost pathological inability to maintain a professional attitude even in the most dire of circumstances, I love it when we manage to get a game that throws off the ultra-dark, gritty, and generally grey landscape that video games find themselves in so often. Fantasy RPGs are one of the most likely perpetrators of Operation AngerRage, with the Witcher series being a great example. Fantastic games and all, but damnit, I don’t always want to have to check myself in for counselling every time I want to save the world. With this in mind, I was delighted to see that Divinity: Original Sin didn’t have that same level of seriousness. True, it is a grand, sweeping epic with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, but it at least knows how to have a laugh along the way.

Most everything is touched by the developer’s sense of humour, from the loading screens which urge you to save often to “lower blood pressure” and advising you on the dangers associated with lava to the quests that see you helping a tomcat woo the fancy city cat down the road. There is just the right amount of humour to keep you only a few short moments away from a giggle or, at the very least, a nodding approval as you see what they did there.

However, games are not TV or film and humour without the solid gameplay to back it up won’t really satisfy most players. It is much the same problem I had with South Park: Order of the Stick. Yes it is funny, but the core mechanics are boring and tired. If I wanted to watch twelve hours of South Park, Netflix will accommodate. Fortunately, Divinity: Original Sin doesn’t disappoint. Behind the irreverence lies an excellent throwback RPG that would be perfectly at home alongside Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, or Planescape: Torment. Its turnbased combat, as I mentioned last week, is deceptively simple. Abilities, attacks, and movement all cost Action Points, which refresh each turn. Your party can move and attack as much as they like so long as they have the AP.

Pretty simple, right? It gets more complicated pretty quickly. AP can be saved across multiple rounds of combat. Do you save your turn to unleash hell on a massive scale in the next? Do you wait to force the enemy to come to you, wasting their AP on movement? Or do you attack now to prevent them from having all their characters on the field? It can sometimes be difficult to decide, but there is more to remember. Elements and the environment play a huge role in combat. Cast lightning on that large puddle and you may stun every creature standing in it, including allies. Want to give your party cover for their approach? Casting fireball on that water will create steam they can sneak through. There are a number of ways to use your environment and it becomes a vital tactic in every fight.

Why is it so important? Because one wrong move and any given fight can result in death. This is because of how the game handles levelling. Creatures your own level will provide a stiff challenge while enemies even one level below won’t cause you much difficulty. But run into a group of orcs that are just one level higher than you and you are better off running away. Remember all those environmental tactics I mentioned? Yeah, you better exploit them because the enemies definitely will. And because creatures don’t respawn, you also don’t have the option of grinding until you are a higher level than the enemies you face. Divinity: Original Sin doesn’t pull any punches – you may well die a few times as you power your way through some of the fights. Don’t feel bad. It happens to the best of us.

Another place where Divinity: Original Sin really shines is in the writing and the dialogue. Party members will chime in and comment on your various actions, either to agree or disagree. Overtime, you can even gain an amount of influence over them or, if you play your main characters as particularly pliable, they may being to have an influence over you. The mechanics are novel and fresh enough that I find myself excited every time the chance to play out these conversations presents itself. It feels organic and natural, which is welcome and rare in RPGs these days. There is a realism to it that both balances out the quirkyness of the dialogue and keeps the whole game from becoming a showcase of slapstick.

The rest of the game is just as polished and well presented as well. The graphics are simple enough that it can run at maximum settings even on my aging laptop but are good enough to get the usual “Ooo… that’s a pretty game” every time my wife glances over my shoulder to make sure I’m not doing anything untoward. The music provides a good ambiance to the game, though it is mostly interchangeable with your typical high fantasy soundtrack. The sound has a suitable visceral nature to it – the sound of weapons impacting is painful to hear and adds a small sense of danger to every combat. In all, there isn’t a particularly weak link in the game.

If you’re like me and you loved those games like Baldur’s Gate and Knights of the Old Republic and have been craving that kind of immersive RPG experience without having to replay those classics, then Divinity: Original Sin is a great game that will scratch that itch. With loads of ways to play, new classes to try, and decisions to make, it is well on its way to eating up 100+ hours of my life over the next few months.

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