Customer Reviews

Divinity II: Ego Draconis

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The end of this decade was a small Golden Age for cRPGs. Oblivion, The Witcher, Fallout 3, Dragon Age, Risen, even the humble Torchlight revived the genre with fresh ideas and renewed vigor. And DIVINITY II: ERGO DRACONIS comes as the cherry to this cake.

If one remembers the (excellent) Divine Divinity, well gone are the days of isometric gameplay. Larian Studios started with a clean state and the result is a beautiful third-person action cRPG. The graphics are not cutting edge and yet they are gorgeous. Imagine what a cross between Titan Quest and Fable would look like today [by the way, ..."thank you" Peter Molyneux for snubbing PC gamers with FABLE II!].
The trees and flowers move slightly to the wind; the skies change in beautiful colors; the sunlight and shades play tricks to your eyes; the characters and gear are very artfully designed; and the fighting moves are impressive. If only the animation of the NTCs were better I would be talking about one of the best-looking cRPGs ever.

Nevertheless, what grabs you from the beginning is not the imagery but the story. The first PC game to introduce flying like a dragon was Drakan: Order of the Flame. But a dragon-slayer who can shape-shift into a Dragon and back? That's some table-turning.
What is more, character development runs parallel to your Dragon development, on different skill trees. Diversification may satisfy your curosity but do not specialize at your own risk: as you advance you better have some well honed skills if you wish to survive and fight yet another day.

In the best cRPG tradition, there are quick-slots, inventory and life/mana/stamina levels as well as a small local map. Other than that the screen is free of unnecessary clutter.
What is more, I particularly appreciated the music, subtle or emphatic where appropriate. The same care was exercised to the sounds of battle, from unsheathing your sword to letting go of an arrow. As to the English dubbing (the original game was in German) it was very nicely done.

Now some bad news. The game comes with SecuROM 7.x DRM but it requires no OnLine Activation so it is a mixed bag, barely making my tolerable limit (with a star withheld though). Be wary of the Russian edition however: that one comes with StarForce, an infamous DRM scheme (that simply refuses to die).

Patch 1.02 is already out and I heard it to be especially useful for Win7 users (I cannot speak from experience on this one, I am sticking to my reliable WinXP until Win7 SP2 is released). Nevertheless, after 20-25 hours of gaming I found no major bugs.

The graphics are exceptional, the world is vast and beautifully designed, the battles are absorbing and the gameplay immersing. All in all, an excellent game and a major addition to any cRPG collection.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Divinity II: Ego Draconis is an action-RPG with a ton of customizability of combat skills, great storytelling, a bit of a lonesome, tragic world setting, plenty of exploration and side-quests to do in addition to the linear main quest line, and a very abrupt ending!

In terms of gameplay, the game has a good sense of movement. You can jump forward or backward or roll to either side to evade enemies. This was especially fun when I was outnumbered or facing higher-levelled enemies, as I could dodge away when they come to attack, then harass them with a ranged weapon in between movements. There are some moderately difficult platforming puzzles (jumping from point to point to advance). The land is full of valleys and cliffs, which become interesting to negotiate when the human <-> dragon form-changing becomes available. The game reminds me of Morrowind where there was varied 3d terrain and climbing and jumping were useful to exploration.

Combat, although having a useful pause feature, is not as strategic as in e.g. Dragon Age. One handy feature is a target lock-on, which lets you swivel the view around your character while he stays focused on the target you've selected. A few times, when my character was more powerful then the enemies he faced, combat meant repetitively clicking the left mouse button to bash one enemy after another, which got a little tedious when there were lots of enemies. Also, the enemy A.I. isn't all that great, and often gave up and ignored my character when he jumped on a tall rock or ran just beyond range of the enemy's "territory".

The touted dragon mode is fun and intuitive to control. Being in dragon mode often means having to evade a swarm of flying enemies and the projectiles of enemy anti-dragon towers, which makes flight exciting and challenging. The dragon has several useful skills e.g. enemy-seeking fireballs which are quite satisfying to use. Disappointingly, land enemies disappear and become invulnerable when you go into dragon mode, which takes some of the sheer practicality and fun out of being able to strafe while breathing fire. Also, dragon mode wasn't useful in terms of any major epic battles affecting the plot; I was thinking I'd have to defend a city or take on an ultimate flying villain at some point, but I guess they are saving that for the next game.

Developing your character's skills is very satisfying. You get a skill point and a handful of stat points on each level. The stats are straightforward, but there are around 50 skills - some passive "buffs", most active combat abilities - that make different styles of combat practical. E.g. to heal yourself, you could choose a heal spell, or a spell that summons a heal-casting ghost for a minute or two, or a skill that drains HP from enemies on each hit, or a skill that increases your yield from each potion used. Or you could choose multiple of those. You don't have to pick skills from a certain "character class", and skills do not depend on each other in terms of one having to be learned before another. There are several skills associated with summoning and magic, with archery, with melee attacks (including a few cool melee moves), and with the various weapon type proficiencies. And each skill is upgradable: you can put up to 5 points into each skill at first; later in the game, you can unlock higher levels of skills. When choosing which skill to put points into, there is a grid displaying the skills with clear numerical and textual descriptions of how much benefit the next level of the skill will provide. This skill system allows the player a lot of freedom to customize the flow of combat, and is probably the greatest source of replay value for the game.

The game has a quest system that never seemed annoying or tedious to me. Each quest grants experience points and usually gold, but also allows you to choose an additional one or more quest rewards: a nice feature, again giving the feeling of having a choice how to approach the game. Completing main quests and many of the side quests and fighting lots of enemies is critical, as in each new area you find more difficult enemies who you won't be strong enough to defeat without upgrading your stats, skills, and weapons.

The game is set in seemingly frontier areas of a country called Rivellon. Again the feeling was a bit like Morrowind in that you spend a lot of time on your own wandering outdoors, battling monsters, exploring caves and ruins, completing missions and side quests while learning more about how to save the land. The game doesn't have the crowded, urban feel that Morrowind and Oblivion had in cities like Vivek and the Imperial City. This world feels less crowded; I wouldn't call the effect desolate, but the world feels a bit lonely, especially after the player becomes the last of the feared and hunted Dragon Knights.

That said, I felt quite drawn into the story. The main story takes some time to get going, as the player has many side quests available to gain experience and build skills working out of the starter village. Eventually the player is introduced to the Dragon Knight identity, and there and at couple of later events, dialogue and a couple of very effective cut-scenes do a lot to move the story along.

The music for the game is great, and most of the tracks communicated a compelling sense of where I was and how I was supposed to be feeling, from the tribal music when fighting goblins to the epic music when climbing the ruined citadel tower to the desolate music when flying over areas destroyed by the invading evil armies. Battle music was good but not as as totally engaging as in games like Ys. The music changes in some areas to a more uplifting track when you morph into a dragon and start flying around, which is energizing.

The voice acting was quite good, which really helped flesh out characters like the other noble Dragon Knights, evil necromancers, villagers who have so many quests and problems for you to solve, and certainly the villain Damian, who came off as a strong, intelligent bad guy with a strong sense of determination and a dark sense of humor. There weren't a ton of major characters, but the characters in the game worked well.

For all that it did well, the game felt a bit unfinished. The Battle Tower, where NPCs upgrade and enchant the player's equipment after he makes it his home, came a bit late to be of a lot of use for much of the game. There should have been more time left in the plot to make use of the Battle Tower. Also, there weren't substantial dragon-specific missions that I was hoping for e.g. defending the good guys against an enemy army. They should have made the dragon more directly a central part of the quest line. Also, there were areas toward the end of the game, mostly enemy fortresses, which the player could attack and decimate but which had absolutely no bearing on the plot line. It would have been neat to see those integrated more into the otherwise well developed main quest line.

There were also a couple annoyances, even with patch 1.03. Quickload often loaded the player in the wrong location, which meant having to go through the regular load menu, an annoying waste of time. Interface elements like inventory windows weren't consistent in that some windows you can right click to close, while some you cannot. Also, sometimes the player would attack more times than I wanted him to and/or didn't fire the skill I pressed the key for when I want him to; feedback of each click or keypress would probably help. While it was pretty stable and only crashed like once or twice for me, I feel that the game would have benefited from more beta testing.

Lastly, this isn't necessarily good or bad, but the game had a very abrupt ending. The plot held together to the end, and the ending twist and cinematic were quite impressive, but still I can't help but feel that the story really should have kept going past the point where it abruptly ended. It would be nice, although I have no realistic basis for expecting it, if Ego Draconis were the first part of a continuing story that I could continue with the same character when Larian released the next part of the story a year or so from now. I have no knowledge whether that will happen, though.

If Larian develops a sequel, I will definitely play it.

Divinity 2 mixes elements of fantasy RPG with twitchy-action fighting. I'll start with some negatives: I found the back-story intriguing, but the in-game story development is rushed. Parts of the story seem a bit stretched. The graphics engine looks dated. The combat is VERY difficult on normal difficulty. I keep running back to old areas to find any last little quest or goblin so I can get those precious EXP points to level up. Once you level, you can blow right through the enemies. Also, no multiplayer.

So why 4 stars? Because it's challenging. It doesn't hold your hand through the game. You can actually fail missions, but keep playing on. You get to fly around as a dragon.
This is like the Eve Online of MMO's... sharp learning curve and high difficulty, but it really does make me want to come back for more.

I recommend this game, but don't buy it for $50 (price at the time of this writing).

After reading the 4 positive reviews I decided to take a chance buying this game and I'm glad I did. I've been playing it for more than a week now and it reminds me of all the great games of the past. This game has to be the "sleeper of the year". The graphics are excellent and the story line will keep you busy for hours. The scenery is in my opinion better than Risen. Combat varies from place to place because in some areas you may be fighting a level 25 character and in other places a level 10 character so you have to know when to run. There are plenty of monsters to kill and the story line will keep you coming back for more. As in the other role playing games there are puzzles to solve and you may need to access a helping website to figure them out. After you level up you have a choice of going in any direction whether it be magic or swordfighting skills so your character can be modified to whatever direction you wish to go. I've only been playing this game for a short time but I can't pull myself away from it because it will keep you coming back for more. I'm really surprised that more people haven't purchased this game because they are really missing a great experience. So if you are a role playing addict like me and loved The Witcher, Risen, DragonAge, Chernobyl and Gothic do yourself a favor and buy this game. You will not be disappointed. And as far as DRM or any other crapola there is no problem as far as I can see. It's been said that there is DRM but it hasn't affected me in any way and there doesn't seem to be any install limits like other games we know and hate. I have had absolutely no problems with a quad core Vista machine and 3 gigs of Ram and the game runs flawlessly. So enjoy.
Just an update for you gamers. I'm still playing this game and I still love it. I usually play games for hours at a time and still haven't finished all the quests. Definitely on par with Oblivion and The Witcher and will probably be a candidate for game of the year. A word of advice, get yourself an undead helper to keep the bad guys busy because the bad guys focus on your helper first which gives you an opportunity to kill them. On the helping websites many complain that some of the bad guys are too strong. If you go it alone relying on your character only, the game may be too hard for yours if it doesn't have enough points.

I'll tell you right up front: I wasn't expecting much from this game. But it has really blown my socks off.I'm just about at the endgame sequence and thus far the game has provided me with hours and hours of fun. The graphics are reasonable, the game play is fun and the story is excellent. I'm already trying to plan out how I'm going to build my character in the second play thru :)

A few other reviewers said that they felt the game was too hard at high levels but so far I haven't found that to be the case. I'm a casual gamer, and usually when I buy a new game I go right for the 'easy' setting. I'm more interested in the story than I am in twitchy gaming. I didn't think this game was too hard at all. You just have to know how to manage the enemies. It's definitely not one of those games where you run and stand in front of the monster and start mashing buttons. I spent a LOT of time in motion.

I loved the combination of flying as a dragon and then morphing and fighting on the ground and back and forth. The puzzles in the game were pretty cool. I used quick save a LOT on the few that were 'jump from ramp to ramp to get to the top'. You know the one: some ramps fall when you step on them, some are constantly in motion. But there were also lots more cerebral puzzles.

The story itself seemed to be fairly original as well.

I did come up with a few nits:
1) can't be played in a window--always takes over the entire screen.
2) I wish it had a key press that would highlight or somehow point to items you can interact with. I got tired of trying to open/use every graphic object in the game.
3) I've gotten spoiled on the BioWare games with 'relationships' and there's none of that in this game.
4) some of the mechanics of the interface were annoying. lots of modal dialogs, so if you're doing one thing and want to check something else, you have to close the thing you were doing, go look and then come back.
5) too few mob models.
6) a freaking TON of crafting ingredients, components etc. You don't want to throw any of it away because it will most likely be useful when you get your battle tower, but it takes up a lot of bag space.
7) only 8 hotkeys for spells/skills

But overall this is one of my three favorite RPGs of the last few years. Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age:Origins are the others :)

I have enjoyed playing this game on the PC. I have discovered some minor bugs, which were annoying, but overall, getting to the point of actually playing as a dragon is a lot of fun. There aer easy quests that can help with experience and money. There are also a couple of encounters that "seem" out of place, but that adds to the enjoyment (it isn't a strictly linear progression). It is fun to play and there are decent abilities to pursue.

Ok so I purchased this game on a whim. I tend to do this from time to time as it is how I have found some of my favorite games of all time. This game rated right up there with my top 10 favorites. I say there is nothing like an open world where you can just jump off a cliff and morph into a dragon during free fall.

(+)Ok so combat is pretty simple to manipulate. Considering that if you get in to trouble and you are outside, you can just disengage and morph into a dragon and all your ground targets will disengage you (be careful where you do this as air targets may be worse than the ground targets). Indoor combat is challenging in the beginning however, as you progress in the game well placed points will make you overpowered and you can basically kill everything in your path. Combat in dragon form took a little longer for me to master as targets can be hard to find and/or see sometimes. Air targets have high hit points and do large amounts of damage. However another key factor about the air combat was the ability to bob and weave to avoid being hit at all. I recommend dumping points into heal as you level up. Overall I liked the combat aspect.

(+) Story line is pretty good and kept me going all the way until the end of the game. The layout for your base was fresh and original. No having to travel from this town to that town. In this game you actually have your own base that you use to store gear, upgrade weapons, skills and powers, send out searching parties that collect resources for you. It's nice having your own tower with servants that do everything from running errands for you to dancing for you.

(-) Quests were sometimes difficult to understand and some quest items were extremely hard to find because the quest objectives and descriptions were very vague. You would have to do quite a bit to complete what would seem to be a simple quest. Another quick thing i noted that I liked was the fact that really good items come from questing and crafting. You can find some decent set items off the final bosses but by that time you should be pretty OP already and it really won't matter much what your wearing.

(-) Game was short. I beat it in about one day play time. Also the maps are extremely small for a dragon that can fly from one end to the other in about a minute or so. If they could build an online version similar to WoW I think they could really have something. Note - since I wrote this review, I noticed that an extended version of the game has come out. I recommend buying that version as it sounds like it is the same game just with upgraded maps and more content.

Overall the game was simple and to some gamers that may seem unattractive. For me this game was well worth its price in gold. I rarely find a game I can say I truly enjoyed. I truly enjoyed this one. Like I said earlier my biggest dislikes was the small maps and relatively short story line. Other than that it was definitely a winner.

The game plays well and is fun to play. The manual is very poor at explaning how to do many things in the game. It is hard to play even on easy.

I bought this game when it first came out, been listening to the soundtrack off and on ever since. Best soundtrack I've ever heard, and I even played Lineage II which had a killer soundtrack.

The lore and stories are fun, humorous, and can be dark. The game has great easter eggs: Kill every bunny you see, and you'll see what I mean.
Items are randomly generated with different stats/abilities. If you like an item, save before you reload a different game or when u turn in the quest or kill the fiend again, you'll get a different item.

The music sets the tone for the whole game, as you progress, the music progresses with you, making this game much more enjoyable then what you can get from a game without a soundtrack or a soundtrack not as well composed. This soundtrack is by far thee best I've heard. I find myself listening to it over other games while I play them.

Ability system is nice, you can mix and match as you see fit, of course unlocking other lines by putting enough points into the first line. Later in the game you can re-train, so don't worry if you messed up early on, no need to restart.

Quests: you can really miss out if you chose the wrong options, so I think playing through twice is worth it so you can see what happens upon each decision.

I rather enjoyed the game and can't wait for another! 5/5 Stars, even if it were only a soundtrack.

I don't usually write reviews for games, but this one is particularly good. The game's large world and innumerable side quests make exploring fun and rewarding, especially once you can take your dragon form. The quests are diverse, not your typical "kill the monster" boring side quest with lame rewards (a great feature in this game is you can pick one of several rewards for any quest, allowing you to cater to you character's style). Both the human and dragon combat are fun - the use of rolling and dodging make this more than the usual button-mashing combat style. The large, non-linear skill tree is very fun to develop, and leveling happens at the perfect pace. Item and treasure collection also happens at a great pace, and you are constantly finding new stuff that will make your character even stronger. I've enjoyed the storyline, and the game itself is filled with little easter-eggs and subtle humor that make playing fun.
As others have said, this is a challenging game. You die a lot, and often have to go back to previous zones to level up before adventuring further. I find this very nice, however - the game is challenging but not impossible. You do have to play for a long time before you can take your dragon form, but it is worth it. The game is a bit buggy, but nothing fatal, and the graphics are average. If you're looking for a game to play for a long time, with great character development and world exploration, then this is for you. I reccomend this for gamers who have enjoyed Morrowind/Oblivion, Diablo 2, Sacred, and others in the Divinity series.