Divinity: Original Sin II is the closest I have ever seen a video game come to mirroring the experience of a tabletop RPG. Of course, it ultimately fails, and while it does have systems in place to mitigate some of those failures, the gap between it and the real thing, no matter how small, is infinitely wide, at least with current technology.
The main difference between D:OSII and a tabletop RPG is curation and guidance. In a TTRPG, you can create a detailed backstory for your character that the gamemaster will then incorporate into the world and the narrative; to have that same experience in D:OSII you have to pick one of the pregenerated characters, and while this still leads to a more interesting storyline than a lot of RPGs where your character is kind of a blank slate with little to no backstory (Bethesda and BioWare both do this), it's limited to what the writers think the possible arcs for that backstory are. It's more, but necessarily better.
In a TTRPG, a good gamemaster will consider their player's character builds and personalities when crafting the narrative, the NPCs, and combat encounters. Depending on how hardcore the group has decided to be, if the players ever stumble into a situation they're woefully underprepared, the GM can make sure they get out of it one way or another. In terms of personality, D:OSII has the same problem as any other RPG: they can only write so many dialogue choices, and occasionally you're just not going to find the one you want. In terms of combat, while the game does allow for a wide variety of tactical approaches (for example, the fact that a lot of combat and even most dialogue events affect characters individually rather than the party as a whole is a huge innovation (well, I say innovation, I haven't played enough of this type of RPG to know how innovative this actually, but it kind of blew my mind when I first figured out how to be clever with it)), and even takes to design a lot of the encounters to facilitate this variety (e.g. multi-level environmental design to give ranged characters spots to get their high ground bonus), it doesn't do anything to warn you when you're entering an area or pursuing a quest that is far above your level, or not suited to your current build.
This is one of those places where it does have mitigating systems, such as a (slightly difficult but still technically useable) flee combat option and (and this is a pretty big deal) easy-to-access and completely free anytime respec (that also is easy to use, because you can reassign points individually rather than having to drain them all into the pool and then reassign all of them; also it includes character appearance). And given that the game loads the whole map (including interiors and dungeons) beforehand so you don't have to load every time you fast travel, using these options doesn't waste a lot of time. That being said, a level rating for quests would have been much appreciated, as I would sometimes spend an entire play session chasing threads I was to weak to follow and end up accomplishing nothing out of 2-3 hours of play.
Mistakes will happen, though, so the game does store up to 5 autosaves, up to 5 quicksaves, and like 20 full saves. This helps to make up for the lack of a GM who can keep you from regretting your decisions too much, but is also pretty tedious since, as I said before, the game has to load the whole map, every time you reload it takes a while. Although my final save lists a play time of about 85 hours, with all of the reloading I did, the time I lost to glitches—oh yeah, this game's got glitches, and they are not fun—and the the 2.5 hours that I spent playing for the first time before I decided to start all over again and pick a different character, I probably played this game for upwards of 100 hours, and let me tell you, by the end I was just wanting it to be over.
Of course the main reason for that, aside from the previously mentioned problems, is that I was playing on normal difficulty. I always play a game on normal difficulty the first time, because I assume I will get the intended experience. I realized late in the game, however (like, 80 hours in), that at some point normal difficulty, specifically when it comes to combat, stops being difficult in any interesting way, and just starts being tedious and boring. I played the last 5 hours on "Explorer" mode and spent most of that time wishing I'd made the change much, much sooner. Again, this isn't so much a problem with the game as it is just a limitation. A GM can craft combat encounters to be fun and dynamic under any circumstance, but a game is locked into whatever settings you have, and it doesn't know to tell you, "Hey, you might be having more fun if you lowered the difficulty."
In short, the game can't guide you, so it tries to give you as many options as possible, which somehow end up being both too much and not enough. It's so close, and yet so far.
But that's enough of the negative stuff. There's plenty of good stuff here too. But it doesn't all fit my thesis so I'm just going to list it in random order:
— No matter a pre-generated character's "canonical" build and appearance, you can fully customize them however you want while still having the benefit of their backstory (well, almost fully; you can't change race, gender, or voice).
— The previously mentioned respec accessibility really can't be overstated. I'm not great at character builds, so being able to very easily change things up when I realize that I've invested my skill points in all the wrong places makes a big difference. Also, if there's a requirement on a skill or piece of equipment that your just one point away from meeting and you really want it, instead of having to grind for your next level just to get that one point, you can go to the respec mirror (you respec using a magic mirror) and just take that point from somewhere else.
— Relatedly, investing points in most skill and ability categories will also confer additional benefits, so if you need to put a point in there because there’s one skill or piece of equipment you really want, but you don’t intend to focus on that category, it’s not as big a tradeoff.
— There are some fun mods, including one that's lets you talk to animals without having to invest a talent point, and you should use it, because talking to animals is the best. I thought it was just going to be, like, dogs say "I'm hungry" instead of "woof" or whatever, but no, these animals have names, personalities—you can carry on whole conversations with them and even do quests for them. Some of the animals would probably rank in my top 10 NPCs in the game.
— Early on in the game you can find gloves that give you the ability to teleport other people and objects, and holy crap did that completely change how I thought about the game. It really allowed for exploration and discovery and I used them constantly. They're also pretty handy in combat. Later in the game you get arguably better traversal abilities that don't require you to wear an otherwise pretty useless piece of equipment, but getting teleportation early on was one of the most exciting parts of the game.
— Exploration and discovery really are a big part of the game. The main storyline is broad enough that you can just be wandering around and stumble onto some bit of information or item or encounter that adds some flavor or reveals some secret or even adds a whole new quest thread to main storyline. There also various mysteries and puzzles that you'll come across in the game that you'll just have to figure out for yourself, and while occasionally I could've used a hint or two, it's not like I don't have the internet. Moments like these are where the openness of the game really shines.
— Seriously, those split party mechanics, so cool. It actually manages to make turn-based combat dynamic, at least at the start of the encounter. It can also be especially helpful if there's a bunch of deathfog and you only have one undead party member.
— The broad strokes of the story are fairly typical epic fantasy fare (and I've got unreasonably high standards for special-people-are-accused-of-being-the-problem-when-they're-actually-the-solution narratives after reading N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy), but there some interesting details, a solid handful of real surprises, and the subplots and side-narratives are generally pretty engaging. Also, even though you don't really meet any of the main villains until the very end, they're all foreshadowed exceptionally well, so that you feel their impact throughout the game, and really build up to the final encounter.
Anyway, there's probably more things I could say about this vast, expansive monster of a game, but I've probably gone on too long already. I had a lot of fun (especially for the first 50-60% of the game), got very frustrated, and now I'm excited to play literally anything else, as long it doesn't have turn-based combat or a four-person party for whom I have to constantly monitor 10 pieces of equipment each.
It's a great game. Some day, if we're very lucky, it might even be a good one.
