just finished it and the expansion off. had a lot of fun. lots of little side missions and loved all the little stories that went with them. just the right amount of goofiness in the quests: during one murder mystery, you can mind read a pig to find a clue. liked the combat action system and how the environment if big and open. this game has my favorite character jump: a nice big one that actually clears a lot of distance. also great for jumping onto stuff. one of the few games i didn't feel frustrated whenever i had to do platforms. not sure how other rpgs compare to it. any recommendations? played dragon age but didn't really like it as much. you can really jump around and maneuver a lot in divine divinity 2 but i always really slow and clumsy in dragon age.
You might want to take a look at Two Worlds 2, Arcania, Gothic 3 and Risen if you liked Div 2. I'm going to assume you are familiar with the Elder Scroll games like Oblivion and Skyrim, but of course they are the AA king when it comes to open world games. Most of those games were recently on sale in the Steam sale, Skyrim still is if you're quick.
Please note every game mentioned above is inferior to Divinity 2. Also the Elder Scrolls games are boring.
Amalur is an okay action RPG. The fights are pretty dynamic, but the world building is less interesting than in Divinity 2. And I didn't love Divinity 2 all that much, the beginning was great but it kinda dragged after a while. If you love open world action RPG you could give Guild Wars 2 a try, the world is huge and really beautiful, and there are a few great jumping puzzles. I don't know if the servers have enough people that level up though, but anyway a lot of things can be achieved solo. Risen and Risen 2 are very good, but if you can stomach older games Gothic 1 is one of my favourite open world RPG. It's hard but fair.
The closest to Divinity? Probably Kingdoms of Amalur. I thought DD2 was just "okay", because the promising beginning quickly dragged. But KoA has the action/control sequences that DD2 has (actually, a bit more); a large, diverse and colorful world; numerous side-quests, crafting and other diversions; and finally a somewhat interesting story. It's not a great game, but neither was DD2 - both are entertaining, but largely forgettable once finished. If you look at sales for KoA, you can find it for under a ten-spot.
Unfortunately DivDiv2 is sort of unique. I have to agree that Kingdoms of Amalur is probably the closest thing to it in terms of an overall package, but it lacks the humor/self-awareness that sets Div2's writing apart. The best writing parallel is probably Double Fine's stuff.
thanks for the suggestions everyone. i already have nier and finished it, really liked that one, too. will try some of the demos or look out for sales of the other games.