I guess since lots of people want to express their opinion on the overall ending to D2 and FoV, We could all just add a single post to one thread on the subject.
I am under no delusion that every single person will only post once nore that every single review will be written here rather than spread across the entire board, but it might make the forum a little neater.
I'll head it off with my experience.
I loved Ego Draconis. It suffered the usual thing that any open world RPG had, the fact that if you did every single quest, side quest, secret thing you could find and slaughtered every single member of the *insert* race you found, you would inevitably be overpowered. That said it's unavoidable because of the people who would take the alternate path of rushing through the game, you want them to be "capable" of completing the story.
But overall it really lit up my old school vibe from playing Baldur's Gate back when I was about 13 or 14. It had lots of variety in gameplay choices as well as being able to hybridize and generally just play the way you want.
The voice acting throughout was fantastic for the english version (all that I can comment on), I felt I was interacting with characters that felt beleivable, unlike most RPGs I come across these days.
I really liked Flames of Vengeance a lot, but I do have to agree it felt a little lackluster and scattered at times. The fact you're basically stuck in one city the entire game felt a bit aggrivating and took away fromthe much loved open world elements.
Dragon Form: It it saddening that there wasn't more dragon form in the expansion.
I felt a couple of the quests were a bit poorly placed, game design-wise; eg. I ran around for hours scouting the entire city over and over again looking for the 3rd vegetable (the carrot), and the only reason I did not run into him was because i didn't run into the seemingly useless corner of the Barracks/Inn. I'm not sure if i'm unique in this, but I literally combed the entire city except for that one corner of the Inn, for like 6 hours, I was convinced it was bugged before deciding to jump around randomly in that room.
As opposed to this I only had to enter the room with the other 2 veggie-men to trigger their conversations.
Story and the overall worth of the expansion added;
As much as I was excited to find out what happened and what was going to happen with the Divine when playing FoV. The expansion felt like and it did seem to live off that one story element, besides the ancient evil under the city.
Throughout the game, like many, I was itching for the resolution between the Dragon Knight and Rhode, their conflict had turned more personal toward the end of EG and I was expecting her to almost turn evil herself, like she was going to throw away her own duties to simply take revenge on the Dragon Knight for being a "betrayer" despite the truth of th dragons or the Divine's fate.
I was also expecting more of a story after what was the end of FoV. That's another thing I found really enjoyable about Ego Draconis; you went from learning the ropes, to becoming a little more powerful, to transitioning into a dragon knight, earning your dragon form and the battle tower. Then you went onto taking on the plights of those around the Fjord and learning about the lore of the land, slowly working towards taking down the fortresses and then entering the Hall of Echoes. That whole ordeal felt truly epic, you transitioned so beautifully from one story arc to the next.
However in FoV it simply felt like you did the chores of city-folk, did A LOT of puzzles, chose between the good or the evil's helping power, of which are no different, for the final 5 minutes of very easily done dragon action.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't expect your story to follow my ideals, it just felt really restrained in the end.
I shall stop there.
