I have finally reached a new landmass in Divinity - Original Sin 2. I left Fort Joy, ventured through the Hollow Marshes, finished my harrowing boat journey aboard the Lady Vengeance, and am just now disembarking to explore Driftwood. As highly anticipated as this new region was, I have to say I'm a little disappointed by it.
If I didn't know any better, I'd assume I was back at Fort Joy and the Hollow Marshes. There isn't anything particularly visually distinct about Driftwood, though I guess I'm ok with new NPCs to interact with and quests to take on. There is also the main quest to follow, though that just seems to be "go find so-and-so so they can tell me where to go next." Fascinating stuff.
When I last touched Divinity - Original Sin 2, I thought I was done with my seafaring shenanigans aboard the Lady Vengeance. I was away from Fort Joy on course for Driftwood, but my journey got interrupted. This entry deals head on with this interruption, as the magisters intercepted me and wanted to bring me down.
As it turns out, the magisters came prepared. This combat encounter documented in the first video of this post is definitely the most challenging Divinity - Original Sin 2 has been to date, to the point that I failed it a couple of times before devising a strategy that allowed me to protect the NPC tasked with devising a magical escape from the fight. This is to say the fight is designed not with victory in mind, but rather one that tasks you to hold out for long enough before being whisked away further into the story. Had it been a more straightforward fight I probably would have had an easier time with it.
After such an eventful encounter on my last foray into Divinity - Original Sin 2, I'm lulling on the game a bit since I went from a huge battle and story dump to being stuck on a boat. Still, it was nice to be able to debrief with the characters we've met along the way so far on our adventure and achievements. This also seemed to be a definitive "break" point in the sense that my party was disbanded, though I could choose to have them re-join or convene with others.
The first video here does a lot of that stage-setting, informing me that our next destination is Driftwood, a small fishing village that is key to the Seeker movement, and learning more about what it means to be Godwoken as opposed to a Sorcerer. After speaking a lot with folks, though, I found myself at a bit of a loss on how to get the ship moving, so I admittedly flounder around a bit.
It also helps that I ended my last play session on a heck of a cliffhanger, with a battle against magisters being interruped by a gigantic void worm. The first session posted at the starts with fight against said worm, while my second play session revolves around just about getting off of this initial island that is mostly comprised of Fort Joy and a marsh wasteland.
It's been practically a month since my last foray into Divinity - Original Sin 2. A bit part of this was because of the directionless muddling I was doing to try and access Braccus Rex's vault, but even more than that was the strain this game was putting on my iPad's hard drive. At 17.15GB, I have to do a lot of juggling with app offloads and reinstalls just to maintain room for it.
In fact, my break came about because its file size was such a huge headache that I deleted the app entirely for a couple of weeks--which left me hoping that its cloud save functionality was actually good and would let me resume once I decided I wanted to. For the most part, this is true, but it took more effort than I was hoping for to be able to resume progress from a fresh install of the game. I had to connect my iPad to my PC and move some files around to get this done, though I understand that the latest update to Divinity 2 also allows for save syncing with Steam cloud saves, but obviously only if you own the game on both mobile and PC (I do not).
It is on this 10th entry in the Divinity - Original Sin 2 Gameplay Journal that I completely found myself at a loss of what to do. After trekking back to Amadia to bask in the praise for rescuing Gareth, I found myself with some clear instructions but not a good sense of how to perform them.
The plan itself is simple: steal a boat to get off this island. It seems the best chance to do that is to pick up some weapons that can pacify the Shriekers guarding the harbor. Those weapons are hidden away in the tomb of someone named Braccus Rex, which was easy enough to find, but all I could find there was a blocked door, rude skeleton, and not much else to go on.
The more I explore The Hollow Marshes, the more two things are evident: First is that The Divine Order is categorically evil. Second is that these marshes are confusing as all heck. In both video segments for today, I alternate between wandering around like a lost puppy and stumbling upon magisters that are doing bad stuff. At least one of those things makes me feel better about killing that blind, defenseless chap from the last entry.
The first video starts with me wandering up on some sorcerers that have been crucified, seemingly by The Divine Order. The nearby elf suggests there is nothing I can do to help them, though I find a way to seek vengeance soon enough. Not far from the brutal scene is a camp of dead Seekers that eventually leads me to the group of magisters that killed them. I didn't think twice about attacking, and feel like Divinity - Original Sin 2 has finally surpassed any point of sympathy or curiosity I might have had for The Divine Order. There's no perspective they could have that makes what they are doing seem worth it. They will continue to die by my hand as often as I can make it so.
In any case, my fight with these magisters got cut off prematurely, so I finish it off at the top of the second video here. From there, I find a mysterious dungeon with a cursed door that has killed some greedy magisters (good), though it doesn't really do the same to me (weird). I couldn't puzzle out how to open that door, but I found some more magisters to kill in order to meet Gareth, a Seeker who is looking for weapons that will help him steal a magister boat to get off this island. My guess is those weapons are behind that dungeon door and that that's my next step in Divinity - Original Sin 2's main quest.
All that said, I spent much of the rest of my time in this play session kind of wandering. It is almost never clear to me where I am supposed to go in this game, and the map system seems horribly unclear. Perhaps it's all these years of playing mobile games but I wish at some point there was just a way to teleport to the next thing I wanted to do or an arrow that could point me to where to go. I am finding some things along the way as I wander, but some of it is equally as puzzling so it doesn't quite feel all that rewarding.
I'm really hoping that in my next entry or two I'll have these weapons and be on a ship off this island. Only time will tell though. Maybe I'll be marooned here forever. Until next time!
The Hollow Marshes continue to get weirder and weirder the more I explore them. After some much-needed character maintenance at the top of the first video, I came across my first true crossroads in Divinity - Original Sin 2 that didn't feel like a forced choice. The second video has me actually encountering a Shrieker, which was mentioned as The Divine Order's super weapon in the previous entry, before wandering up on some more Voidwoken.
In the last gameplay journal for Divinity - Original Sin 2, I said goodbye to Fort Joy as I wandered deeper into The Hollow Marshes, and I was not exactly prepared for what I found. This area is packed with new info and lore about what is happening in the battle over the Sorcerers (i.e. you, your party, and anyone blessed with magical abilities), but with all these reveals I also encounter more and more questions.
Fort Joy fades into the rear-view on this entry of the Divinity - Original Sin 2 Gameplay Journal. I finally decided to take my party right to the magister leadership and strike them down. This period of the game has been the most exciting outside of the initial boat sequence, mostly because I'm not sure what is lurking beyond the walls of the military prison.
Now that I have my quest legs, Divinity - Original Sin 2 is feeling more and more like an epic quest than a curiously rich playground. It also seems like a good sign that I'm ready to break free of the chains keeping me in this starting area to crack open this game and really see what's lying underneath.
It only took me four entries in this journal to finally advance some quests instead of just pick them up! Fort Joy has been an entertainingly complex starting area, but it always just seemed I was spinning my tires trying to find the key to moving things forward. I was getting into fights and learning things about the world, sure, but my quest log just seemed to keep adding tasks and I wasn't sure exactly how to check them off the list.
All last week I was away on a trip, which seemed like a good test for Divinity - Original Sin 2. Would it be a good game to actually fire up outside of the confines of my own home? It turned out to be a less than ideal test environment though as I did not take transit to my destination and my time away was full of programmed activities. During any downtime that I had, I preferred dipping into more familiar standbys like Genshin Impact or League of Legends: Wild Rift.
But now I'm back and the Gameplay Journal continues. This entry really highlights how deep a game Divinity - Original Sin 2 compared to basically any other mobile game (and arguably most other games in general), as I spent almost 45 minutes in a small prison area, and spending most of that time in a single skirmish. It was pretty awesome, but Divinity - Original Sin 2 still seems to go out of its way to remind you that all of its depth and potential comes with some jank.
Last week, Larian Studios dropped Divinity - Original Sin 2 onto the App Store after touting in at various stage shows as an uncompromised port of the open-world role-playing game running on smaller screens. We have been eager to dig into the game to see if it's all it was promised to be, and are compiling our findings here in our Divinity - Original Sin 2 gameplay journal!
The way it works is simple: a single playthrough of the iOS port of Divinity - Original Sin 2 documented in painstaking detail via gameplay recordings and text impressions, all compiled nicely in this here post. See our opinions on the game evolve over time and decide for yourself whether this mega-ambitious mobile gambit is worth it or not.
Posts below will be updated on a regular basis until the game has been completed. Make sure to check back regularly!
We've been continuing to plug away at Divinity - Originial Sin 2 over here, and it's been an enjoyable experience. Since it is a hefty ask for any mobile gamer to try and start playing though, we're continuing to document our time with it and post impressions as we make our way through it.
In this segment of our coverage, we've got two videos detailing the first steps you take after the prologue chapter (which you can view here). This section of the game is its first open-ended portion, though all the different quests and paths are somewhat constrained in a kind of prison camp called Fort Joy.
