Parent's Guide: Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Divinity: Original Sin: Enhanced Edition is a fantasy role-playing game that pairs a huge, hundred-hour long story with some complex gameplay, to produce a game that harks back to the role-playing glory days of old. With so many games now offering either little, or nothing in the way of a single-player mode, Divinity: Original Sin is a game that'll keep players hooked for weeks or months on end - and, if you have a friend who's willing to adventure with you, you can play the whole thing in split-screen co-op too.

The story is set in a fantasy world, where a magical substance known as "the Source" is used by wizards, known as Sourcerors, for nefarious deeds. As a duo of source hunters, you set out on a quest to find, and put an end to those who'd use the source for evil, with your adventure beginning in the sleepy seaside town of Cyseal, where a councillor has been murdered. From here, there are hundreds of side quests to complete, and loads of story missions too, in a game that's as complex as it is huge.

Each quest usually has several ways to complete it. A good example is one of the earliest quests in the game, where a robot created by a friendly wizard has gone totally out of control. While the more hot headed may try and storm in all guns blazing, more careful players may go and talk to the wizard who made the robot first, who'll hand over a handy remote control, letting you disable it. Combat, meanwhile, is actually turn-based, something unusual for a role playing game like this. Each character has a certain number of action points they can choose to spend each turn, with moving, and using weapons or abilities/spells all using up points. It's an interesting system, and one that adds a layer of strategy to proceedings, especially with how complex things get.

That said, Divinity: Original Sin is most certainly a game aimed at an older audience. The battles themselves are unforgiving, even on the easiest difficulty, with a single mistake often leading to your entire party getting wiped out, and, unfortunately, there's no easy way to resurrect your team mates - only single use scrolls. When you first start playing, you'll find yourself dying a lot more than you can afford to, so there's a lot of reloading and trying again involved. Quests can be similarly unforgiving, as an act as simple as accidentally picking up something, or opening a locked door in a house can all too easily lead to combat - and with no way out, other than killing everyone that starts on you, you end up having to reload your last save that bit too much. With little in the way of helpful tutorials, and a quest system that doesn't tell you where to go next, those inexperienced in role playing games may find themselves struggling here, so this is definitely one for an older audience.

In terms of mature content, Divinity: Original Sin: Enhanced Edition sits somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. What violence there is is of the bloody type, with weapons causing spurts of blood to fly out of enemies (especially when they die), and the odd dismembered limb found littering the battlefields. However, there's little in the way of bad language, and beyond a few vague references to sex (characters having "slept with" someone, etc), there's nothing else here that parents may want to be aware of.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: Playstation 4