The main campaign has a staggering amount of content. The maps you'll explore are massive with various routes, containing numerous quests, battles, secrets, and even ambushes along the way. Even if you rush through the story, a single playthrough will last you about 50 hours.
D:OS2's greatest strength, however, is the ability to choose. This includes choosing your character, your companions, what builds to use for them, what route to take when exploring the map, how to solve various encounters and quests, and many more. Every single choice affects how the story progresses, and a bad decision early on can come back to haunt you later. As a result, there's enough variety to keep multiple playthroughs new and exciting from start to finish.
Winning battles in D:OS2 is equal amounts of preparation and tactics.
When preparing for battle, you need to consider your group setup, your formation as you enter the battle, and even what equipment you bring with you. For example, during one battle you fight against an ice dragon that constantly freezes the ground. Any character that steps on the frozen ground will slip. To avoid this, you can equip spiked shoes on your characters before the battle, allowing them to retain footing.
During combat, you always need to keep in mind things like turn order, positioning, height, and how various magical effects interact with the environment and characters. For example, standing on a cliff increases your range and visibility, using a lightning spell on a puddle electrocutes all characters standing in it. Fast characters will get a turn first, so a group of fast characters could end a battle without letting enemies retaliate.
As a result, the combat has enough depth and variety to satisfy any RPG fan and even entice newcomers of the genre.
Very few game worlds have the same interactivity as D:OS2. Because of this, it can be easy to forget that using fire near an oil barrel will cause it to blow up in your character's face, or if a fire is blocking your way, you can just douse it with water. As a result, it might take a while until you get fully used to the interactivity.
Every single dialogue line in D:OS2 has a voice-over. From the prattling of an overzealous city guard, to the lines a sketchy shopkeeper feeds you, to even the conversations you have with forest animals. You even get a narrator to read out long walls of text for you. On top of that, each and every voice actor's performance is superb, providing depth and nuances even to obscure side-characters, which is hardly ever experienced in games.
Even though you choose a class when creating your character, it only affects your starting equipment. You can create a character build with any skills you like without class or archetype constraints. This includes a fire mage that wears heavy armor while wielding a shield and a hammer, an archer that can use teleportation magic to always keep the distance, and countless more. You even get to build your companion characters from the ground up, allowing for hundreds of party combinations.
As an added bonus, once you complete Act 1 of the game, you can respec your build whenever you want, free of charge. Because of this, you don't have to worry about messing up your build, allowing you to freely try out any skill combination/setup.
D:OS2 has an expertly composed soundtrack, giving the world a great amount of color and atmosphere. From the mellow flute permeated with ambience and a divine chorus when you travel down a road, to the upbeat strumming of string instruments as you ransack a tavern, to even a ominous orchestra during a confrontation with a dragon. Wherever you are in the game, the soundtrack is a joy to listen to.
D:OS2 features a Game Master mode, which lets you create custom multiplayer campaigns for up to 4 players, with the 5th player assuming the role of a Game Master.
When creating a campaign, you can use any asset within the game, such as characters, items, etc, and import new, user-made assets as well. You can even create new quests, levels, and alter any of the existing assets, allowing you to go as far as creating a sci-fi campaign if you have the patience.
Additionally, because there is a game master, you can create various role-playing events not possible in a normal campaign. For example, you can designate one of the playable characters as a kleptomaniac, so whenever they're near an object that can be stolen, you'll have to roll a dice to determine if that character resists the urge to steal or not.
On top of that, the game master can control NPCs, add quests, and make rule adjustments on the fly.
There's enough creative freedom to create any campaign/story you want, keeping you interested in D:OS2 long after you've finished the main campaign. Even if you don't want to create a campaign on your own, you can just download a campaign made by another user.
The first title in the series had a bit of trouble explaining all the aspects of play of the game. Luckily this has changed in the second release as there is now a camp where a trainer will give challenges to the player that explain the game a lot more in-depth. This is great for new players as they can learn the ins and outs a lot easier.
Much like the sophomore album syndrome (where the second album from a break out band falls flat) the story in this release feels a bit weak. While not horrible, it will have trouble connecting to players who are not already familiar with the series. There is also a sense that many of the story elements are setting up events to be found in the third game, meaning that players will be left unknowing what the conclusions are.
Much of the mechanics found in the original title remain the same, which is a good thing as the turn based tactical grid based combat is the strongest thing about this game series. There have been some slight improvements though making for a more balanced rhythm to the game by adding new units to both the players choices and the enemies, which mixes up the gameplay quite often to keep it feeling fresh.
Players of the series can import their game saves from the previous title, giving them the option to start as one of two different characters. This ensures that choices made in the previous game are not lost when starting this game and experiencing the story it has to tell.
Due to the design of the gameplay, the amount of hit points a players unit has is the exact amount of damage they will inflict on an enemy. This makes for the winning strategy to always hit all enemy units on the playing field to ensure they inflict as little damage as possible. While players can go about it many other ways, this strategy tends to do the best, which is a bit limiting.