I've seen the headlines about <em>Divinity: Original Sin II</em> being the best roleplaying game seen in many, many years. I bought it some time ago, upon the recommendation of a friend that we could play through the campaign in a co-op manner. 

We tried to do that a few nights ago, playing around two hours, but found it a little clunky in terms of keeping up with the story, and keeping up with the party in a universe where every conversation with every single character has the potential to be incredibly meaningful in the grand (and believe me, its grand!) scheme of things. 

With that, I embarked on a solo journey, talking to every NPCs, bathed in excellent, consistent voice acting - and such an expansive, detailed world that it made me feel overwhelmed with choice. 

Then there's the combat, which is exceptional. Tactics are so important. Elements are so important. Ensuring you're attacking certain foes with magic, and others with non-magic attacks are so important. 

Armour is an excellent, and incredibly meaningful addition to your characters, as it completely negates damage of a certain type until that armour is exhausted. This is how combat should work, not determine a hit or a miss based on whether you're wearing lingerie or a full plate suit of clangy metal. 

Where the combat is unforgiving, is when you're playing on the hardest difficulty setting when you're still learning the initial mechanics, which is exactly what I've done. Here, every move on every turn is of paramount importance, and a single wrong move can cost you the whole battle, and give you a devastating game over screen. 

Dialling back the difficulty (especially as I'm still learning combat mechanics in more depth 10 hours in!) has made the game much more forgiving and enabled a wonderful storytelling experience where a seemingly random statue in a forest has some ancient narrative about battles between gods interwoven. 

I'll be back with more thoughts (and a full review) when I get there. This is a mammoth game. I'm playing as an undead wizard, using poison to try and kill my foes.