Magic should be awe-inspiring, shouldn’t it? Imagine if I shot a fireball out of my hand right now and it landed in your house – chaos. I might be trying to kill you, but I’d end up murdering your cat, destroying all your belongings, and potentially killing your family and your neighbours in the process. Whoopsie.
Most video games don’t get across the unpredictability of the arcane arts, but there’s one game that does: Divinity: Original Sin 2. Spells in most games are just a gun with flashy visual effects. It’s illusory. But Divinity 2’s sorcery is raw, untamed, and dangerous. It doesn’t discriminate, and it leaves battlefields and friendships scarred.
Related: 15 Things We Wish We Knew Before Starting Divinity: Original Sin 2
Divinity 2’s mages are the reason why none of its turn-based battles ever feel the same. I have multiple campaigns going at the moment, and they’re all different due to the wide array of magical options available. In one, myself and two friends are all undead – a battle mage, an ice mage who’s also a necromancer, and an electricity specialist who dabbles in earth magic.
Since we’re all undead in that playthrough, we can’t use healing spells. However, poison heals us well enough. Our earth mage can apply poison to the ground, giving us a healing surface to walk across, while our human, lizard, elven, and dwarven enemies take damage from it at the same time. We also all have an ability called Leech, which means we can suck up blood and heal with that, too.
I can summon a bloated corpse from a defeated foe, send it towards a different enemy, and create a red regen carpet for us to advance across. I can make the cadaver explode and splatter an entire area in blood, before our electricity mage fires a bolt at the crimson liquid and stun locks anyone who happens to be standing in it. Sometimes that happens to be our battle mage, but that’s the price you pay for unlimited power.
There is one downside to all of this healing potential, however. Poison in Divinity 2 is flammable. More times than I dare to admit, we’ve run into our healing pool while on fire and accidentally ignited an entire combat arena. You end up with battlefields that start like this:
And end up like this:
Yes, that is a poison smoke cloud to the left, which is good for any of us who managed to stay away from the ground, which is now a blazing inferno.
Every single magical element in Divinity 2 interacts with the rest. There are so many variables that you often only have a sense of what’s about to happen when you take your turn – generally, the end result is much more destructive than you anticipated. Remember in the intro when I said I might accidentally kill your cat? That’s something I did in Divinity 2 – I accidentally killed my ally’s cat. I still feel bad about it, but a man’s gotta accidentally poison an entire town from time to time.
Divinity 2 isn’t some grimdark RPG – dialogue is interlaced with humour, and characters are larger than life. That same vibe translates to combat, too. You can’t help but laugh when one of you accidentally blows up your friend. It’s funny when someone tries to do a spell, decides against it, goes to move, and accidentally attacks the floor. It’s hilarious when one of your allies misclicks on a move and accidentally sits on a stool that’s on fire, ending their turn as a human candle.
Massive RPGs like this shouldn’t work in multiplayer, but Divinity 2 gets better the more unpredictable it is, and adding other humans to the fray is the best way to ensure things remain chaotic. It also means you don’t have to manage the inventory, levelling, and equipment of four characters, which is a handy bonus. You can really settle into your role, even if that role is Inept Fire Mage Who Hurts His Friends. Hey, don’t judge my four-player campaign character – at least he’s not Guy Who Takes All The Loot, or Guy Who Robs People And Gets Us Into Constant Fights. Those guys are assholes. Anyway, it’s not my fault I’m too powerful to exist.
I wish more games learned from Divinity 2’s interpretation of magic. I want fire that spreads, blood that is electrified when hit by a spark, or entire rooms filled with flames after a mishap with an oil spill and a candle. For now, Divinity 2 is the only game that does magic justice, but you really need to play it in co-op if you want to properly experience the pandemonium of it all.
Next: Divinity: Original Sin II: All Source Masters And Where To Find Them
