Amazing RPG by a small studio that can easily compete with the best and biggest RPGs out there. (DA:O comes to mind)
This game has it all: It's very much old school RPG and it has all of the necessary ingredients. There is Diablo-like loot and inventory system, slotted items, alchemy, enchanting and a fully open class system with dozens of skills to upgrade whether you want to be a ranger, mage or warrior, or mix it all up. Everything RPG needs and it has it implemented nearly perfectly.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The world is absolutely huge and every nook and cranny holds an item you might find useful, might it be a key to open a locked chest, or a book that will help you solve a puzzle. Run for a few dozen meters in any direction while in open world and you're bound to find a door or a grate that will lead you to a new dungeon. Dungeons are extremely interesting, each with it's own story and puzzles that actually require you to pay attention and figure out whats going on before moving on. Most of the items in chests are randomly generated, but important ones are not and you will never reach an end of a dungeon and find chest with few scraps in it.
What makes dungeons even more interesting is the jumping ability of your character. You'll often find yourself jumping around on moving platforms trying to reach some level or item. It really improves the puzzle element of the game, as opposed to most newer RPGs where you're quite limited in your movement.
Enemies do not scale with your level and this is absolutely great because it feels awesome coming back to an area where you go slaughtered earlier, with new items and higher level and annihilate everything. And enemies do not respawn, after they die, they stay dead (most of them).
Game is fully voiced over and the voices are fantastic, it greatly adds to the atmosphere, although it would be great if the main character lines were also spoken. Quests are a plenty, and majority of them is quite long and interesting, as opposed to typical go-and-fetch quests, although there is room for improvement with some of them.
Music is the best I've heard in a game, but this really depends on your taste. I rarely notice a song that interests me while playing a game, but with Divinity 2 I have found at least three fantastic tunes that I just can't get out of my head.
Story is pretty good, although some quests and dialogue could have used a little more work. What comes to mind is that sometimes you will not get an explanation why are you doing "this", while it would be more logical to do "that". Ending is pretty fenomenal however, and I never saw it coming.
Graphics are excellent, both the technical and art sides. Huge open zones full with trees and ruins, with high view distance, and very interesting background scenery. Locations are very atmospheric, may it be because of the music, the art style, lighting, or for the fact that you always feel like you might stumble upon a hidden switch that will lead you to a huge dungeon while walking around someones cellar. The game does suffer from performance problems and visual glitches (jerky animation on slower machines specifically), which often detract from the experience. Memory leaks seems to be abundant as well, because often after wandering around for a while you'll find the game too jerky and you'll simply have to restart it to play at a normal rate.
I think I have covered all the typical RPG elements here. Now for the good stuff. This game is filled with innovation. Mind reading being one of them. You can read minds of every NPC you meet in the world. Some of them might be thinking something completely useless or just plain funny, but often they reveal information that will help you on your quest, or even start a new one. Mindreading powerful creatures also often yields upgrade points for your skills. However, it costs experience, so you should use it sparingly, at least early on.
Early in a game you get an ability to create your with creature with a help of a necromancer. You build your creature from body parts you find around the world, and you may customize it at your will, whether you prefer a goblin looking magic caster, or a ghoulish fighter. It is an interesting feature, although some more visual variety with the body parts would be welcome.
Somewhere near the first third of the game you get an ability to turn into a dragon, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Turn in one at will or just drop down from the sky while turning into your human form mid air and reach a area previously unreachable. Your dragon form also has it own skills and you may equip armor on it. You gain dragon skills from skill books, and not from levels, so keep your eye out for those. You may not kill ground enemies while in dragon form, nor will flying enemies attack you on the ground, which does feel weird, but I guess if they implemented it differently, other areas of the game would have to suffer. Other flying enemies do behave a little weird, be it the AI or the animations, but it mostly detracts from the visual experience, not the gameplay itself.
At the same time you gain your dragon form you will also come into a possession of a Battle Tower. Your battle towers is a place you can stash your loot, teleport to various locations in the world, buy potions, sell your item, upgrade your creature, brew potions, enhance your skill cap with help of a trainer, or enchant weapons. Various NPCs offer quests you can perform for them, often retrieving an item which will allow them to upgrade a part of the tower, making potions use less herbs to brew, or less ore to enchant a weapon. Tower also contains runners which will fetch herbs, gems or ores at your request, if you ever run out of certain ones. You may upgrade them with better weapons and armor, for a price, and they will be more successful in their search if you do.
You may be able to turn into a dragon, but don't let that fool you. You will die a lot in this game, even at normal difficulty. Most areas are challenging just enough, since you can always come back later if your not strong enough. But main story boss fights are incredibly hard. You will spend some of the early fights downing 10-15 healing potions one after another just to keep your health up. The game does allow you to run around, and jump and duck attacks, adding a more arcade feel, although I almost never used them. Usually I just stood there downing my potions and using skills, so it is possible that using a little more tactics those fights would not have been as hard. If you earn enough experience, and if you kill everything and solve every quest, you will find the end to be pretty easy since you will likely be 3-4 levels above all enemies. The final fight is challenging enough however. Like I said, most of the fights feel like they do not require a lot of tactics, therefore boss fights are quite dissapointing in the "action adventure" category(not that I look for such a thing in an RPG). Hard ones often rely on luck, hoping that next time when you reload the boss won't use that 300hp draining one-hit-kill ranged attack. Those moments are very rare, and overall the skill and combat system is quite satisfying.
Although in my subjective opinion I would give this game a pure 10 because it hit almost every RPG note in my book, I will give it an objective 8.5 because of the performance problems, lack of polish, bit dissapointing boss fights. Overall I guess lack of polish in all areas its biggest problem.
If you consider yourself an RPG fan, you must play this game. If you're not a big RPG fan, but like a good game, and don't require perfection from it, you should definitely give Divinity 2 a try.
Also keep in mind, Larian Studios is a very small team that made a game that may be placed in the same category as Dragon Age: Origins, which is made by a huge studio with many RPG hit titles under their belt.