Divinity Original Sin 2: Game Mechanics

Hello folks! If you were interested in my review from a day ago and want some more information about Divinity Original Sin 2, this may be the post for you. I've spent a bit more time with the game and all I can say is that it is HUGE. It has so many things one can do and explore. Today I'll talk about some of the more basic game mechanics and how things work. 

  

Character statistics

As in any RPG game your character has statistics that you can raise up as you progress through the game. You have Main Attributes, Combat Abilities, Civil Abilities, Talents and Tags.

Your attributes come as they do in every other Dungeons and Dragons like rpg system.

Strength increases your physical damage.

Finesse comes in place of Dexterity for rogues and rangers.

Intelligence makes your spells more powerful.

Constitution increases the characters vitality.

Memory is usually known as Wisdom in Dungeons and Dragons - it allows your character to learn more spells.

Wits increases your critical strike chance.

All of these attributes are sometimes needed in conversations to take a certain action. You'll have to pick one that is right for the situation and that your character could pull up (For example you can threaten someone with your strength if your strength is high enough).

Your combat abilities are separated in three sections - Weapons, Defence and Skills.

Weapons boost your output with certain types of weapons.

Defence is a bit different:

Leadership boosts the party members stats around you (giving them bonus resistances and dodge chance).

Perserverance restores Magic Armour after you recover from Frozen or Stunned, and restores physical Armour after knocked down or Petrified.(not really worth it)

Retribution is a skill that reflects damage off of your magic and physical armour which is quite dope.

Your Skills are what actually make the character. No matter what class you pick, these define what type your character actually is since they allow you to learn abilities from different schools and give different passive bonuses. Being a fighter doesn't mean you need to just pick Warfare and Two-Handed or Single-Handed skills. On the contrary learning more skills that give you mobility, ways to heal yourself and support party members, as well as some crowd control options are very very useful. I usually use around 3 skills for all my characters.

Civil Abilities give you bonuses that aren't related to combat (except Sneaking I guess.. but then again you try to avoid combat with it).

Bartering is quite important since it lowers the cost of goods you buy from vendors significantly as well as boosting the selling price of your items.

Lucky Charm increases the likelihood of finding extra treasure whenever loot is stashed.

Persuasion helps to convince characters to do your bidding in certain situations.

Loremaster gives you the ability to identify some items that come unindentified and also examine enemies, revealing all of their stats and abilities.

Telekinesis allows you to move items around without considering the weight. More points into it increase the range of telekinesis.

Sneaking is kind of self explanatory - more points decrease the sight of NPCs so you can hide better.

Thievery is awesome! This is the money making machine! It improves lockpicking and pickpocketing skills.

Talets are special abilities you pick for your character. 2 of them are already preset depending on the race you play but from then on you get 1 every now and again when you level up. The higher level you are the more levels you need in order to get a new one to a total of 10 at level 33. There are loads of these and some are defensive, some offensive, some give you extra ability or combat points. They give pretty decent bonuses if picked right.

Last your character has Tags which give you different options in a lot of dialogs. You get some of these as you go with depending on the decisions you make - if you do a heroic deed you get the Hero one, or if you complete a certain quest like beating the Arena and so on. Some NPSs may be triggered by a line from a certain tag.

  

Trading and Crafting

Trading is quite simple but it gets a bit annoying since you can give more or less to the trader depending on your bartering skills and there is only a slider to set the price. They really need to put a way for players or I'm just too dumb and haven't found it yet. If you buy an item that costs 1000g for example but you give the trader 1020g, this will give you favour. This further increases the discounts this merchant gives you for future purchases as well as boost the prices of the items you would sell to him. If you are going to use a certain merchant for long it is a good way to grab some discounts. As you level up, merchants will start selling items for your level so gear constantly upgrades in their inventory. Pick pocketing merchants is one of the best ways to make money in the game but you can do without it if you buy sensibly and use bartering and high favour. 

The crafting system is pretty straight forward. You find books as you go along which teach you recipes when you read them. Alternatively you can try combining certain items to see the effect it gives you. Some are easy to figure - dip an arrowhead into a poisoned barrel and you have a poison arrow.. others aren't that easy and need a bit more than common knowledge. You can create almost anything - from potions, magic runes to armours and weapons. You can also use this tool to cook food which would make it give you different bonuses when consumed other than just restoring your health. You may need a cooking pot to be able to cook most foods though.

  

Combat System

Unlike other old school games like Baldurs Gate or Planescape Torment, where you pause the battle every few seconds in order to control what is happening, Divinity's combats are turn based. This means that each character and monster has initiative points that determine how fast they act. The higher initiative will start first and the rest will follow until the lowest initiative participant in the combat acts. This finishes 1 turn of combat. Different skills and abilities take certain amount of turns to recharge. 

Characters have 3 types of bars determining their defences - Physical Armour, Magic armour and Health. All of these you either get through gear or character stats. Physical attacks will first break physical armour, then influence the health bar, but ignore the Magic armour. Magic attacks will do the opposite. There are certain abilities that ignore these and go straight for the vitality of a character (these are assassins skills usually). Because of this system it is best to have a party that is specialised in physical damage or in magic. Hybrids of 2 magic and 2 phys characters can work out too. 

Once the combat starts there are a lot of things you can do around with the environment. Problem is your enemies will use it too so you have to be cautious of your surroundings. For example a wet surface as in the picture above can be electricuted by lightning or frozen by a spell that chills.

These enemies have some kind of tainted blood so whenever you damage them they make the water tainted.

In this last picture that cloud is an electric one that the monsters created. Combined with the water around it stuns my characters and deals lightning damage to them when they move around. It was unavoidable since the monsters popped out of water and were creating pools around them. Some enemies will cast ice underneath your feet which will make your characters slip when they move (knockdown=skip a turn). There are so many ways to play with the environment or with spells using these tactics. You can cast rain which has huge range and then a spell that chills targets in a big area, freezing them because they are wet. Keep in mind that if the target has physical armour or magical armour some of these may not work since they will resist it. 

And of course after you've won a fight it is time to take the sweet sweet loot. 

After combat they've made our life a lot easier by introducing bed rolls to the game. You can use these to rest with your party while there aren't any enemies around - instantly healing your group. This was a pain in some games from before because you had to wait for your healer to heal everyone and for the spell to recharge multiple times. 

  

I've played for I've no idea how many hours and I'm still in the beginning of act 2 (apparently there are 4). Some battles could be quite challenging and I reloaded multiple times until I find a tactic that would work. Once you finish act 1 you get the option to customize your characters as much as you like - changing their stats and abilities as well as their looks. This is great because there isn't an undo option for anything before that. Another tip I'd give is to use that quick save button often! You don't want to get stuck in a place where you can't get out of and then replaying an hour because you get to a battle that's too hard. That said the game does some smart auto-saves before hard battles. This is all for today.. the post got quite long. Hope you find this useful!