There are four difficulty modes to choose from, which are Explorer, Classic, Tactician, and Honour. Explorer is designed for players who lack experience with RPGs or simply just want to enjoy the story. Taking advantage of the strategic skills that are offered helps, but being a brilliant military strategist is not required as this mode is pretty forgiving overall. Classic is geared towards RPG veterans or people who enjoy challenging combat. Your abilities will be tested but if you take the time to learn how the combat system works you should prevail, this mode is challenging but doesn't feel unfair. Tactician is the mode where the enemies have essentially harvested the source of George Patton, Zhuge Liang, Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. This is where being a brilliant military strategist is almost essential to be victorious, as the enemies show no mercy at all and will throw every dirty trick they have at you. Playing this mode might also not be a bad way to learn some useful combat tactics. Honour mode is for the truly confident and cocky or those who just enjoy suffering, as this brings the grueling challenge of Tactician but adds a hardcore mode, meaning if you fall in battle say bye bye to the save file. This way could be potentially fatal to one's PC, but many bragging rights will come from completing the campaign on this setting.

There are many treasures and interesting hidden encounters on the island and a good portion will be missed if the player is fixated on only solving the quest that is supposed to lead to the escape from Fort Joy. Original Sin II gives the player a lot of freedom in regards to their play style and how they want to interact with NPCs, but remember that every action carries its own consequence. During the review play through, Fane started peaceful and diplomatic with all magisters and other NPCs lurking about Fort Joy and always sought a non violent solution for each encounter, that is until one particular incident happened. A cat had decided to follow us, and even thought with the Pet Pal talent he didn't speak very much he was a friendly companion. During some exploration of Fort Joy Fane and his companions came near a locked gate, they weren't causing any trouble and guards told us to step away. As we started to take our leave a guard shot an arrow at the cat without provocation killing it instantly. These guards then saw a display of poison and fire that left their charred, broken corpses arranged in a display that would make John Wick proud. A well timed autosave from not even five minutes prior allowed for a load where the feline companion was back good as new, but this time Fane was getting on the other side of that gate, and these same guards were preemptively killed again before they could bring any harm to the cat. This had a slight impact in how the magisters viewed us in town, so from this point on the play shifted to a much more aggressive style that was intolerant of magisters.

RPGs are generally single player affairs and Divinity: Original Sin II can be played with zero interaction with other humans and still be a rewarding experience. The good folks at Larian Studios acknowledge, however, that gamers do in fact have friends and have made this title multiplayer friendly by creating a wealth of multiplayer content. The campaign can be played in its entirety with up to four players co-operatively either locally through the magic of the split screen or online. Because of the freedom offered in this title, some attempts at co-op can end up a little less than ideal , but any issue that arises from this has more to do with the player than the SLG game Story guide. For "friends" like this, there is also a PvP arena mode, where those who tire of their friends incessant smack talk can take their parties into the arena and settle once and for all who is the best at the strategic combat of Divinity: Original Sin II.

Dwarves have the Talent Sturdy, which gives a +5% to Dodging and a +10% max Vitality. Dwarven Guile gives players +1 in Sneaking. The Skill innate to this race is Petrifying Touch. Lizards have the Talent called Sophisticated, which gives them +10% Poison Resistance and +10% Fire Resistance. Spellsong gives dwarves +1 to Persuasion. The Skill built into this race of beings is Dragon's Blaze. The Undead are the living-challenged version of the four races. They will have the Talents of whichever Undead race they choose. In addition, they have the Play Dead Skills. The Undead can also heal from poison and will take damage from standard heal

A party built for mixed physical and magic damage could consist of a Cleric, Ranger, Conjurer, and Enchanter, or two other types of magic users. A group built for magic damage might have two characters with points in Pyrokinetic and Geomancer Combat Abilities, one Support character, and one Summo

The first thing a player must do in the campaign for Divinity: Original Sin II is either select an Origin character or create a new character. There are technically eight races to choose, though that number is slightly inflated because of the Undead. The options are Human, Elf, Dwarf, Lizard and the Undead versions of each of these classes. Dwarfs are sturdy and begin with talents that contribute to vitality, dodging and sneaking. Elves gain bonuses to lore and may gain the memories of the dead by eating their corpses (yum!). Humans gain bonuses to critical chances, initiative and bartering. Lizards gain resistance to heat and poison and persuasion and have a useful function of being able to dig up secrets without a shovel. All Undead have the undead talent which causes healing items to harm them and poison to heal them and one of the other traits associated with their race when they were alive, plus they can also attempt to pick locks with their bony fingers and no other tools.