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Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis: Dancing with Dragons
mg78
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
http://www.divinity2.com/
Looks like its in stores now in EU - anyone got it yet? Initial impressions? First reviews seem very favourable.
Looks like its in stores now in EU - anyone got it yet? Initial impressions? First reviews seem very favourable.
mg78 on
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Anyway, it looks really good. I didn't care too much for the other Divinity games, but fuuuuck at the footage I've seen. It almost looks too good, so I'm, hopefully without cause, anticipating news of gamebreaking bugs and awful design decisions.
Post some of those reviews you mention, why dontcha?
Is, you may be right - amazon.de says it is in stock, but amazon.co.uk does not list it yet.
Only stuff I found so far is in german language, for example:
http://www.gamestar.de/test/rollenspiel/action/1957650/divinity_2_ego_draconis.html
They award it with 83%:
http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/wertungskasten/rollenspiele/44540/divinity_2_ego_draconis.html
Basically they say that the game is great, but graphics are a bit outdated and there are some story/game design flaws that do have impact.
As for myself, I guess I'd rather wait for an international review, as I have found german magazines to be generally too generous when it comes to reviewing german games.
Edit: Damn, a huge open game world and the ability to shift between human and dragon form? Lots of stuff to find and explore? I want.
I got to try the German version of the game today, so I thought I'd give some initial impressions. I don't know German, of course, so I can't comment much on the story or dialog outside of what was translated for me. I only got to try the beginning area, too, so it wasn't very open-ended at this point.
I started off creating my character. You can choose your gender and a fairly small number of facial features. It seems the female gender got most of the attention here, as there are far more options available for her. The male is really quite ugly, and the face selection doesn't change his facial features, just his beard. And so I started off with a lovely woman and bright red hair. It turned out this was a good choice also due to the running animation. It's a bit... effeminate... and the running animation is the same for both genders.
You start at a short tutorial area where you can choose a class (mage, warrior, ranger) that gives you starting equipment and a single ability and then engage in a battle against three goblins. Once you're satisfied with the class choice you can leave and get transported to a fairly large area with plenty of side-quests.
I should probably bring up the graphics and performance, though. The presentation is by no means bad, but it won't blow you away. It reminded me visually of Two Worlds. In which case, one would assume it wouldn't be quite so demanding a game on your hardware (the system I played it on had a fairly high-end card). That doesn't appear to be the case. It's not a very optimized engine and thus performance issues abound. I can only hope when it comes out on Xbox 360 in North America they'll have fixed some of these issues because it's very distracting. Things in the distance (not very far distance, though) have reduced frames and look completely awkward. There were also sound problems, as well, which locked up the game every now and again.
Gameplay, on the other hand, is fast. The combat is very action oriented, with the ability to do jump attacks and rolls and lots of mouse clicking to swing your sword. It almost seems like it would translate better to a gamepad, and so that also reinforces my want for the Xbox 360 version. There are lots of skills to choose from under various class categories - Priest, Mage, Warrior, Ranger, Dragon Knight. The Dragon Knight offers more general skills than the others, such as lockpicking or increased EXP per kill as well as weapon talents (one handed, two handed, dual wield, shield).
I tried a magic and warrior character, and both have lots of skills and tactics at their disposal. I originally wrote here that the warrior felt impractical, since I kept getting tore up by magic, but I tried it again and just had to adjust my tactics and skill set. You can't just barrel in in this game. You have to actually use some tactics if you want to defeat tougher foes, and so it's not exactly an easy game. To close the gap between magic and ranged users, I invested in a rush skill that shoots me toward my target at a lightning speed and deals damage. I went with a two-handed sword, a nice strip of steel as tall as my body. Fun!
Magic was also fun, although I didn't feel as engaged in the combat as a warrior. I could mix and match, but with the time I had I went pure magic with her. I focused on summoning and long distance magic attacks. Like I said above, there's a ridiculous amount of skills to choose from. I could customize her in all sorts of magic specialties and skills. For my playthrough, I had a ghost which healed me and an undead which cast fireballs at enemies. I'd hide behind him to shield myself from ranged enemies and dispose of enemies with my fireball.
Essentially, there are about 10 or 12 skills for each of the classes, and of course you're not restricted to what you can choose. It is, as you know, a classless system. Each skill also has five ranks, although apparently you can go past that limit later in the game. They have level restrictions, too. That skill down the tree may require me to be level 15 to invest a point into, for instance, as well as increasing the rank of skills. Rank 3 for Two-Handed Sword may require me to be level 11, something like that. With all that in mind, you only get one skill point per level up. All the choices available to you, from the numerous skills to whether to hold onto your skill point(s) for later investment, leaves you with a game that makes you heavily ponder what to invest your points into.
At first I was underwhelmed with the game, but now that I'm getting further I'm really enjoying it. There's lots to explore and find, with some very interesting side-quests. It's worth looking around because you never know what you'll find, be it dungeons where you're ambushed by silly bandits or meet a necromancer, to talking teleport ruins which require a password you don't know, or shrines where a mysterious man shows up and talks poetry before summoning a monster. Everything I've found had some personality to it or mystery behind it, and you may not unlock their mysteries right away - you may have to search for clues! I really want to explore every corner to see what I could find, unlike Oblivion where pretty much every dungeon was the same.
So a big game world, lots of loot and skills and quests and things to find, challenging combat and leveling system which requires you to think, but lots of bugs and heavy performance issues. It certainly feels like a European RPG to me!
I updated my impressions above, and it is lots of fun! I had a hard time stopping, even though it wasn't my copy and it was completely in German. It's definitely a European RPG, to the way it feels and with all the performance issues and bugs. I was underwhelmed at first, but as I wrote the further I got and the more I developed my character and explored, the more I enjoyed it. I started to find so many interesting things - places and things you won't necessarily get to explore or use until you find clues and unravel their mysteries.
International release seems to be in September.
Good god thanks so much for this info. I was looking everywhere for it (including gamestar), nobody mentioned if you can customize your character to any extend. Finally!
Int version is for somewhere around early september. Looking forward to it.
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=368308
Creating a creature is pretty neat. You find parts off fallen foes or dead bodies scattered around the world or even in chests. These parts have their own stats and even skills. You'll find better heads or chests or arms or legs as you play. You then take them to a necromancer or your necromancer and can create your creature by choosing from the various parts you've collected. My creature is a warrior type with the rush and whirlwind skills. He's great in a fight, although he keeps peeing everywhere. Nonstop.
Wait its not, goddamn these similarly named games.
Divine Divinity 1 - Great Game
Beyond Divinity - That steaming pile where you start the game with the good and evil guy chained to each other?
Divinity 2 == Divine Divinity 2?
This right?
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Is there a release date for the US version?
And not one of those, "late 2009, whoops I mean early 2010" release dates.
worst of all though is that melee is absolute suicide against packs of 3 and problematic with packs of 2. the game of course knows this and makes it an art in pitting ridiculous amounts of enemies at you and having their mages absolute monsters in melee.
i've only managed to wade into melee when i have extremely good armor and weapons. you don't get a self heal till lv 20 which is way, way too far along in the game. if you aren't chugging pots, you're relying on your healing summon which sort of heals you when it feels like.
on the plus side, the writing is pretty decent. the game is refreshingly different with the mindread mechanic (it's pretty awesome, i have to say), but i wouldn't make this is a first day buy. i'd wait for a patch to address some of the more ridiculous problems before shelling out 50$.
I haven't found targeting to be a problem. And as far as melee being suicide, that's completely not true. I just waded into a group of 20 soldiers and utterly mopped them up, and they were all one or two levels above me. If you invest your attribute and skill points intelligently, and you use proper tactics in difficult battles, you'll come away from any fight the victor. Some fights you can't just charge in blindly and have to actually think how you're going to dispatch them. I think that's a strength of the game, not a fault.
"These mages are giving me trouble. They're tearing me up before I can even get close! I suppose I'll invest a skill point into Rush to instantly close the game between any enemy and me, which is a level one skill! Wow! Using this skill against those ranged enemies, jumping back from tough foes to use it again is doing away with so many problems I had!"
Of course, I'm not saying you can't always charge in blindly. As my Vitality and Strength increased, and I put points into Two-Handed Swords, I've become a walking god. The only enemies that have caused a dent so far have been those Captains/Sergeants, but with my damage output they still go down fast and I can hurt them before they hurt me with Rush/Thousand Strikes. And I didn't get these skills or become this way "too far along the game", as I don't even have my dragon form yet!
I do have a complaint, though, about the loot. Before I said there's a lot of it, and there is. I've found and picked up tons of weapons and armor, but are they any good? Most of them I've discovered are, in fact, not very good. I haven't changed weapons much because I haven't been able to find any really good ones.
Now on the other hand, my sword still does a ridiculous amount of damage, but it's only the third sword I've used! The second one was a story sword you get in the very beginning. Also, most of the weapons I've picked up have been one-handed swords. It seems a bit unbalanced in that respect. Many of the non-crap items I've found have usually all been quest rewards and not in some chest exploring a dark cave or dungeon.
Despite that, I'm still having fun with the classless system and tons of interesting quests and things to find and mysteries to solve. I've only been in the Broken Valley and Sentinel Island locations so far, as well, and haven't gotten my dragon form yet (that's close, though). I can only imagine how many things will open up when I do and what new things I could find as I start flying around. You really do feel compelled to explore in this game.
i dumped most of my points into lockpick at first to get at the delicious goodies inside but apparently the rest of the game didn't take kindly to that and massacred my mage/ranger hybrid over and over again. it seems it doesn't really care for a sort of speaky/searchy type of character. invest intelligently really amounts to invest in combat skills which is something they should make clearer as most of your experience comes from killing enemies and not necessarily solving quests.
but once you get some decent weapons and armor, stats aren't that necessary really i've found.
but yeah, most of the loot is fairly crap. later on the in game you find some oddball vendors with some pretty good gear but until then, it really is crap.
I've only used the mind reading when I wanted discounts in shops. I haven't really found an obvious use for it yet in a quest. It takes up huge chunks of EXP later unless you invest points into the Mind Reading skill (I haven't; you don't have many points so I've been spending them on survivability), and it doesn't seem like enemies respawn, either. Once you kill them, they're gone, unless valtzy can tell me otherwise. Thus there seems to be a finite amount of experience to be gained, so I've been hesitant to go wild mind reading.
The world is neatly crafted, though, as I wrote a few times. It's definitely the highlight of the game for me. I'm still not to the dragon form yet. I'm stuck in the tower you're suppose to get it and can't find a way. Have you been that far, valtzy? Maybe you can tell me what to do.
You are right, I stand corrected! And I'm also quite happy to see that the game seems to be worthy of the friendly reviews.
Enemies really only respawn during the flying parts of the game from certain structures, other than that, no they don't respawn ever.
I find that three points in mind reading will suffice. I started another character because I'm level 30 with one of them and at this point, there's so much tedious combat it's aggravating if your avatar isn't built accordingly. It's not like I have a hard time fighting, I have excellent weapons. It's just tedious clearing them out without helpful skills. It's easy to spare three points because at certain parts of the game, you just get thrown like 5 or 6 skill points to put somewhere which is sort of silly i guess.
the only thing i don't like about mindreading is that you can't exactly reload and find the secret that mindreading lets you know. the mindreading spawns the secret in question, whether it's a key, a bag of gold, or opening a locked door.
i'm pass the dragon part and in the fjords. in regards to the tower:
although at this point in time, i imagine you've gotten past that part due to how late my reply was
there's one thing i will praise the game on is that early on there is a multitude of ways to tackle quests which is wonderful writing on the writer's part. there are various ways to just go about things which is adds a little bit of depth and repeatability.this sort of peters off later in the game though; honestly combat in the fjords is absolutely retarded in the amount they throw at you. if you aren't built accordingly, you will feel it.
Pay the price!