To be perfectly honest, I haven’t finished Divinity: Original Sin yet. My characters are level 18, approaching 19, and I’m in the final chapter of the story. Still, I feel ready to write this review. In fact, I’ve felt ready for a while now. I’m slowly pushing myself to finish the game, and I think that says a lot about my experience. Divinity: Original Sin is an original IP by Larian Studios. While Baldur’s Gate 3 is also made by Larian, that game is based on Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. Divinity, on the other hand, uses its own systems, which I find refreshing and really cool. It uses an action-point economy and gives you a lot of freedom with spells and builds. I also really appreciated being able to create two main characters right at the start, which added an extra layer to both combat and story. The dialogue and characters are interesting at times, though those moments can be pretty few and far between. What really carried the experience for me was the magic system. The rest of the game struggled to hold my attention, but I found casting and combining spells consistently enjoyable.

Let’s talk about the combat, which you’ll spend a lot of time doing. I don’t want to sound too negative, but the game is hard, brutally hard. I usually enjoy challenging games, and to its credit, this one forced me to think tactically and use every tool available. In that sense, the difficulty was a highlight. However, I don’t want to go into every fight feeling completely outmatched, like I’m going to die no matter what. Having to hard-reset my save after almost every encounter gets old fast. While Baldur’s Gate 3 had tough fights, I never felt like I was getting completely stomped in every encounter. I also felt more in control of my options there. In Divinity, every enemy seems resistant to most of the elemental magic types. If you’re not built to exploit one specific weakness, it feels like you’re out of luck. If I have a poison weapon and my enemies are immune to poison, I’m stuck wasting action points switching to something else. If I don’t have anything else, I’m out of options. It feels like the game expects a very specific party composition. If you’re not using the right setup, you’re punished. I ran two fighters, one healer, and one aerotheurge, and it just didn’t work well. You can’t respec easily, so you’re often stuck with builds that don’t match the encounter design. That made the combat feel clunky compared to the smoother flexibility in Baldur’s Gate 3. To be clear, I don’t think the combat is bad. I probably just didn’t master it. If I played a second or third time, I’m sure I’d understand it better.

Now, on to exploration. The game encourages you to explore, and you’re rewarded with gear and XP, which is great in theory. But in practice, the lack of guidance is frustrating. You have a journal, but it doesn’t really help you figure out where to go or what to do next. You end up wandering aimlessly until you stumble onto something important. That kind of trial-and-error exploration isn’t fun when it feels like progress depends on blind luck. I had multiple moments where I felt completely stuck. For example, I found a locked temple but had no idea how to get inside. Later, after exploring everything else in the region, I finally found a hidden goblin behind a box in the corner of the map. He gave me a key I needed. That kind of design is irritating. It doesn’t feel satisfying to discover secrets when the path to them is so convoluted and poorly signposted.

Finally, I want to talk about the story. Coming off Baldur’s Gate 3, and knowing how talented Larian Studios is, this story just didn’t hit for me. It’s interesting in concept and has some layers, but overall, I found it boring. The characters aren’t very deep, and the plot gets hard to follow. At a certain point, I realized I had no idea why I was fighting half these enemies anymore. I just knew there was a final boss somewhere, and I was working my way toward it. The world feels empty between objectives. The side quests and companion stories lack the life and depth that Baldur’s Gate 3 delivered so well. I’ve heard good things about Divinity: Original Sin 2, and I’m definitely planning to continue exploring Larian’s games. However, this first one fell short of my expectations.

Despite my criticisms, I don’t regret playing it. The spell system and tactical depth had moments of brilliance. However, the pacing, character writing, and exploration design really held it back for me. I’d rate Divinity: Original Sin around a 5 or 6 out of 10. A decent game with some standout features, but far from my favorite.