Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition

The pitch

Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition is Larian Studios' remaster of their 2014 breakthrough CRPG — an isometric, turn-based RPG built around elemental physics (fire spreads, water conducts electricity, poison ignites) and genuine two-player co-op running through the whole story. It's the game that established the systems Larian would go on to refine into Divinity: Original Sin 2.

A remaster that earns its name

This library has reviewed several "Enhanced Editions" whose own fans call them barely enhanced at all. This one is a clear exception. "In a world where 'enhanced edition' has started to be synonymous with 'will run on modern hardware if you shell out $20', it's absolutely refreshing to see Larian deliver," reads the most-upvoted positive review, praising a genuine rebuild rather than a compatibility patch — full voice acting was added, the story was reworked, and console support was built in. Another reviewer, focused purely on technical stability, calls it "technically a masterpiece," reporting zero crashes across both the standard and enhanced editions on two different machines.

The pattern the reviewers keep describing: strong start, tiring finish

Set against that goodwill, the negative-review corpus is remarkably consistent about where the game loses people. "The first act of this game is enchanting. The world is new, the gameplay is fun, the plot is interesting... but by the [end I felt differently]," reads one representative review. Another: "There is truly a great game buried deep, DEEP, down here. It's a real shame that so much design and effort went into ways to slow down and frustrate the player." "Combat" is the single most-discussed word across the 100 most-helpful negative reviews, and "slow" appears 45 times — not describing the pacing of the story, but specifically the growing length and tediousness of individual fights as the game progresses.

Checked directly against its own sequel

This library has already reviewed Divinity: Original Sin 2, which currently sits at 95.4% lifetime positive (90,537 of 94,939 English reviews) — among the highest scores of any CRPG in this library's coverage. Checked against that figure, this game's own 87.4% lifetime score (84% across the 100 most recent reviews) is still strong, but the gap is real and named directly by reviewers here: "DOS2" or "Divinity 2" appears in 16 of the most-helpful negative reviews, almost always as "the sequel fixed this."

This is less a story of one game being bad and more a story of a studio that visibly learned from its own first attempt and built something even better — a genuinely nice thing to be able to trace across two entries in the same series.

Depth and completion

Achievement data reflects a demanding, quest-heavy RPG: the top milestones sit around 45–58%, and the median across 54 achievements is 14.85%, with the deepest quest-completion achievements under 3%. That's consistent with the "great but exhausting" pattern the reviews describe — a real fraction of buyers engage seriously with the early game and don't push through to full completion.

Value

At NZ$47.99 with only a single DLC pack and no in-app purchases, this is honestly priced for the amount of content and the quality of the remaster work, independent of how the pacing lands for any individual player.

Verdict

Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition is a genuinely inventive CRPG and an unusually well-executed remaster in a category this library has often found disappointing — its own fans credit Larian for doing the work properly rather than cutting corners. Its real limitation, named consistently across a decade of reviews, is pacing: a strong opening that a meaningful share of players find drags by the back half, a problem the studio's own sequel visibly solved. Play this to see where Divinity: Original Sin 2 came from, with realistic expectations that it's the rougher, earlier draft of a design the studio would go on to perfect.