It is difficult to review an RPG game after playing only once. For a game like Divinity Original Sin 2, it's nigh impossible. The sheer volume of options available to you here is outrageous. But what makes this game so great, is that each of them counts. Every choice you make even subconsciously will get you somewhere. Never will you feel that you have reached an end of something because something you did 5 hours ago. The game adapts and throws something new back at you. It starts with the character creation screen. The sheer amount of options you have with class selection is more than what you might have faced before and yet, after playing the game for more than 120 hours, I never felt I missed out on something by selecting the class I did. My playing style adapted with the game and with my party and together we were able to decimate most foes easily. Customization is the name of the game and throughout the campaign, you will continue to change your character, and your companions, to fit the demands of the game.
Speaking of companions they have a different footing in this game altogether. They are not bystanders with their own stories to tell. They have all the functionalities as the main character and often you might find yourself playing as either of them than your own character. Each has a story arc that spans various acts and comes to a satisfactory conclusion if you choose to play through it all. That is bound to form a bond between you and them which wouldn't have been possible if you did not invest in the game so much.
Truth be told the mechanics of the game is difficult and it takes a while to wrap your head around it all. It took me nearly 20 plus hours of playing before I told myself I am ready to take on everything now. Distributing points to your combat, physical and social attributes take a while to decide as there is a chance you might be spread too thin, or specialize too much in one thing either of which will become a detriment in the later parts of the game. Adapting to the difficulty and the newer types of enemies is essential, along with creating a character who is well versed to help the team as well as be strong on his own. You have surely heard by now that the natural elements play a huge role in the combat, and it is true. Crowd controlling in battle has everything to do with combining AoE spells which put elemental statuses on your foes, and sometimes even on yourself. Knowing which combinations are useful in which situation is by trial and error, and by using your brains. The game doesn't hold your hand at all.
Combining spells is not the end of combinations in the game. You can combine spell books to make new spells, ingredients to make potions and various other things which can come in handy without you realizing when. All this forces you to keep an eye on your inventory and planning ahead in battles so that you can finish in the smallest number of turns (this is a turn-based RPG right). This all sounds cumbersome but is quite fun to do once you have it all figured out (35 plus hours in and only a quarter of the game finished).
It is tough to criticize a game when its core mechanic is so strong and is built on experimentation. It makes up most of its replay value. But the most fun you will have over the course of the game is with the characters you play as and the characters you play with, digital and physical alike. The option to have 4 players co-op and play as the 4 characters in the party, each having equal capability to utilize the game's mechanics to his/her own advantage and then contribute to the party as a whole is a gem of a feature. The replay value is going up and up.
I will abstain from giving away plot points and how the story unfolds, even though most of it will unfold as per your play style, but I can assure you it is very difficult to do something wrong in this game unless its something you did not want to do in the first place. Everything can be followed up with improvising and characters can be built in any way you want to. Even still you won't be able to see half of everything in your first playthrough, no matter how thorough you are. You can expect to get sucked into a world beautifully detailed both graphically and lore-wise and will find yourself looting like crazy and reading anything you find to know more about the world you live in. The characters and NPCs are more dimensional than I would have expected frankly and the sheer number of available tasks is enough to get lost into, each detailed in the most beautiful way, fully voice acted a lovely script with the narrator providing the source of sudden and unexpected humor even in the direst situations.
The final para I will devote to letting you know, no matter how to take this game, whether as a great time with friends or as a serious RPG experience, the backbone of the tale is more than what is revealed in its light-hearted tone. It is a journey into society and belief, into religion, faith, devotion, and individuality. Comical in nature, it is really a deep observation of our environment our nature and an insight into what we can become if we have the conviction in all that we feel to be just. After all this, I could not find a fault in the game for the life of me.