Curb Your Pride, Forget Tactician Mode For First Run

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a game I picked up after beating Baldur's Gate 3 on Honour Mode, needing to explore more of Larian Studio's magic.

I love challenging games, but this, this is ridiculous. Reminds me of starting up God of War 3 on the hardest difficulty, and getting so thoroughly spanked in the tutorial, that I didn't dare play the whole game like that. Divinity... Well I dared, because of the type of game it is, and the type of person I am.

I ran the hardest difficulty (Tactician mode on the story) and I had to restart the game 30 hours in, because I felt like I completely lost it. So I learned from my mistakes the first attempt and re-rolled my starting character and party, and all their skills etc. and that helped a lot, but still didn't feel like enough. I really do not advise going in to this game blind on the hardest difficulty. It became more frustrating than fun, I think im beating it purely out of spite now.

Seriously, Curb your pride and DO NOT start off on the hardest difficulty. Unless you are insane and have hundreds of hours to blow. I was too stubborn to turn it down, I probably would have enjoyed the game 100x more on easier modes.

That being said, it's a good enough game that even with the insane amount of frustration and loading saves WAY BACK and re-doing tons of content in different areas, sometimes multiple times... Well I made it through, one way or another, it keeps pulling me back, and I'm about to the last 3 main fights. So that's a testament to the game I suppose. Even though I have taken long breaks, purely from being overwhelmed and frustrated, I keep coming back to finish it.

Seriously, if you don't full clear everything you can do in an area, you will end up under leveled and undergeared and face impossible situations due to that, and have to load a save wayyy back, losing several hours of progress you made, or be completely stuck. (On the hardest difficulty, im sure its far more forgiving otherwise, but may still run in to this problem).

Most fights require quite a bit of cheesing, so its almost guaranteed you are going to get wiped your first time in a fight, just to figure out what you need to do, to get through it, unless you have played through on an easier difficulty first, which I recommend going the easier route. It simply is not worth it to do trial and error this much in a game, hence the 300+ hours in my first play-through.

The whole time I've felt under-powered compared to the things im fighting, and had to think really hard about strats and try out multiple things for each encounter, I typically love this. Lots of teleporting enemies as far from the fight as possible, taking advantage of cheap tricks like positioning barrels and characters Just-So, in order to have a completely unfair advantage, even then still losing quite easily.

For instance, im max level now and pretty much fully geared up, and still end up losing at least 1 character in the first turn of a fight. Normal enemies have about the same health and stats you do, the bosses have about 10x more.

There is magic shield and armor, which prevent most status effects or crowd control, so much of the game is full blasting either physical or magic damage based on what the enemy has less defense for, and avoiding or using elements according to their resistances. The goal is to nuke down their defenses ASAP and then keep them stunned, or frozen as best you can until you kill everything. Even the strongest enemies can't do squat when perma stunned. The same happens to your party though, and you will end up having to win fights with 1 or 2 of your characters while the others are stunlocked until they die, if they dont get blown up immediately.

The enemy aggressively prioritizes killing whoever is easiest, or highest value target (like summoners for instance, to also end up killing the summons). You can use this to your advantage, by making a tanky summoner, or using someone as bait essentially to get all the enemies grouped together for big AOE damage and crowd control effects.

Im giving away more strategy here than I normally would, because it's that much of a pain in the ass. I have no idea how much easier the easy difficulties are, but im assuming its like night and day, so take it with a grain of salt.

Less cinematic than BG3 if you played that first, More focused on the combat and strategy of getting through each area, with how you go about NPC interactions, and building your characters, finding things, puzzles etc... There is loads of dialogue and reading, but its not BG3, its easier to ignore. Voice acting is top notch, there were 0 bad npcs/characters that were offputting, rich that way, no immersion killing characters/voices like happens in many games, each one feels alive and real. The areas are beautiful and worthwhile to thoroughly explore. The story is good enough to make you interested in going deeper, but a bit all over the place and easy to miss lots making you feel a little out of your element as you get to the late game. Like, oh what? Ok, I guess thats a thing. Musta missed something. Lots of stuff to pick up and read, and I didnt exhaust all dialogue options that I could have, more focused on just getting through it, due to the difficulty. Though often had to backtrack and read/talk to more npcs and plotline characters to get hints for how to progress, etc. Good balance there, not overdone, I had to refer to guides very few times for select things, most of the time just exploring and talking to people/creatures, paying more attention, yielded the info I needed. Without too much hassle, or obscurity. Each area is rich, but not too big so I didnt get completely sick of them before moving on, Although playing through the start of the game fully twice from getting "stuck" made me start to hate it and was eager to move on. Some of the latter areas made me wish there was more content and felt like there should be, or that I was missing things (which Is highly likely I did).

LOTS OF SHOPPING is required, and inventory management gets out of hand if you are a hoarder. Encumbrance is a thing....

Nearly half the game is picking stuff up, moving it to another character, selling it for the best price possible, and checking in on shop-keepers for new gear to purchase every time you level up. It's imperative that you do so, to give you the best fighting chance moving forward, less you end up stuck and having to back track through saves MASSIVELY and replaying tons of content, from missing content and skipping ahead too quickly from one area to another.

I just hit the final fight accidentally a few days ago, and had to backtrack hours of progress to go find more stuff to kill, and gear up better, because there was no chance in hell I could win, and no way to escape without loading a save quite a bit back from where i was. OOPS.

f5 is the default quick save button, USE IT after you do pretty much ANYTHING, or you will get super upset when you realize you are about to lose several hours of progress, because you got yourself into an unwinnable situation.

I recommend taking the easier approach and enjoying the game, instead of beating your head against the wall until it finally breaks. Your head, that is, the Wall will be fine.

Oh, and I can't forget something important. THE F@!#ING SQUIRREL! I decided to keep it alive the whole game, and I had to restart dozens of fights I had finally won, just to realize it had died. I don't think it was worth it in the least bit. Aside from extra dialogue and an occasional gift (which you typically dont need) the squirrel is just added complexity to already incredibly hard fights. Not worth, again, unless you are insane.

Great game for strategists. But first play through on tactician mode has been soo frustrating, I nearly can't believe im still pushing through to completion. It's Making me a bit sad to finish it, but also, I can't wait to be done.

I think i've beat all the Dark Souls games in between play sessions of this one, for reference. Im coming back to finish it after a few months of not being able to get myself to start it up, because I couldn't handle replaying a bunch of content so quickly after having to backtrack yet again.

It's become a highly personal vendetta that I cannot let go of, and the end is finally in sight. Wish me luck.