Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga Extensive feedback

Hi all! This post is intended to provide a complete feedback to the game (with minor spoilers). I'm new to the forums, registered just to write this post. I've been lurking around while playing, though.

While this post is mainly aimed at providing constructive criticism, I do want to say some good words about the game first. I'm one of those RPG old-timers, who has played dozens of the best games in the genre, starting with 90's and till this day. Therefore I'm pretty picky, and my tastes can be old-fashioned. As of late, I find myself more and more often throwing away a game without finishing it when I don't like it, so the fact that I did finish DKS (despite admittedly being close to throwing it away several times) is a significant praise to the game.

What I mostly liked about the game was the great storyline, voice acting and atmosphere. Also, most of the maps are beautiful, and don't bore you with countless repetitions of the same dungeon, unlike some other games *cough* Oblivion *cough*. When comparing to Oblivion, another positive difference that catches the eye is that NPCs don't respawn or grow in level together with you. The game also favorably distinguishes itself by its outstanding sense of humor, which is so rare and hard to find these days. The countless pop-culture references were also a great joy. The whole dragon mode thing had a lot of promise - most of it was unfortunately wasted, but I still enjoyed flying around at great speed and exploring the world from high altitude.

On the technical side, the game made several good decisions, but also many bad ones (detailed below). I really liked the very usable log book (conversation log!) and weapon/armor comparison hints on rollover.

That said, there was a large number of things that irritated me in DKS and game decisions with which I disagree. The list (in the order of decreasing importance) is going to be long and detailed, so I want to say in advance that it's not intended as bashing, but rather as an honest feedback for the developers, so that their next game can avoid these mistakes.

1. Performance. This is by far the worst one, I considered dropping the game more than once because of it. My machine is an overclocked core2duo 2.6 GHz, 6 GB of DDR2 870 MHz RAM, Win7 x64 (fresh install), overclocked HD3850 with 256 MB, all newest drivers, playing at 1600x1200. This configuration is able to deal with most of the new games I throw at it (albeit with modest video settings - no AA or HDR, etc), and certainly with all the older ones. Still, I have not managed to find the right configuration for DKS. The main issue I'm encountering is periodic (about 1-2 seconds apart) stuttering, which manifests itself in sudden, for a fraction of second, sluggishness of all movement on the screen, which is then followed by fast-forward recovery (as in a stuttering movie). I tried setting everything to low (completely disabling shadows, etc). Also tried everything I could find on this forum and elsewhere. From what I've seen, the severity of the issue is random - sometimes it's awful, other times tolerable, and in some areas non-existant. Also, perhaps it sometimes only starts occurring after a while in the game. One common thing more likely to cause it is a lot of fire on the screen. All scenes that have a lot of vibrating air are certain to cause abysmal performance. FPS is bad, too: with everything disabled, set to low, etc (except detail set to high), I get constant 25 FPS when standing in the battle tower near Kirill.

2. Camera. This game really should have gone with the first-person view, there are no reasons for over-the-shoulder camera. The camera as it is is bad in every way:
- when you change the angle, it gets closer/farther from the ground; this makes aiming and exploration difficult (see below)
- hard to evaluate distance; even close to the endgame, I often couldn't hit containers on the first attempt; matters are even worse with moving objects, such as enemies
- because the camera is far from the character, you can't adequately react to close encounters with the enemies (this would screw up fine melee mechanics, had there been any such mechanics in the first place)
- when the character moves uphill, there is no comfortable way of controlling the camera: if you keep the view angle you are used to, it will reduce the visible surface ahead; if you rotate the camera backward, it will change the distance from it to the surface and make the character model obscure a larger area. Moving downhill is even worse: in attempt to see more detail you rotate the camera forward... which actually increases distance to the surface.
- the character obscures part of the view
- shallow roof and various objects that stand in camera's way cause the camera to zoom in/out unpredictably, which is very distracting and sometimes gets in the way of seeing parts of the surface by obscuring it with the character's back; this is the typical problem of the third-person camera, whose only (still unpleasant) solution is to render the obscuring objects invisible
- the first-person view gives greater immersion in the game reality (e.g., you can use the third-person camera to look around the corner - not very realistic)
- thousand strikes skill causes the camera to be rotated, further disorienting the player; this is a classic example of a special effect destroying gameplay; it looks cool the first time, but is clearly a nuisance from then on; when you pause the game in the middle of thousand strikes, the camera would spin wildly for a couple of seconds after unpause (this is obviously a bug)

Overall, there's no reason for anything but first-person view in a game where you control a single character.

3. Combat/movement mechanics are, mildly put, upsetting in comparison to other action-RPG games:
- no melee mechanics to speak of. Instead, everything happens in a semi-automatic way. Click-click-click - that's all you need to know about melee combat. No blocking! No user-controlled maneuvers! Worse: there are some automatic maneuvers, and different maneuvers result in different lag, which you can not predict.
- bad responsiveness, made worse by sluggishness. The fastest way of killing an enemy is spamming the mouse or shortcut button: if instead of spamming you try to perform the next action upon previous action's completion, you can barely reach a half of that speed. Therefore, you always try to have the next action stacked, which means that you can't react to unexpected events on the battlefield and usually waste time performing another hit after killing an enemy.
- sometimes a "stacked" action (which you triggered while previous action was being performed) would be performed, and sometimes not. So you end up dumbly clicking the mouse or spell shortcut over and over to avoid missing the moment when the lag of the previous maneuver/action ends.
- strafes, strafe rolls and jumps are useless in close encounters, as you can not adequately react to events (strafing is only useful for avoiding projectiles, strafe rolls are only useful for... fast traveling)
- arrows, melee hits and magic projectiles all fly through friendly characters, so you can't tactically cover yourself from enemy fire by standing behind another enemy
- rush attack (or whatever it's called) works through obstacles and irrespective of height differences, e.g. skeleton wizards without any apparent climbing gear are able to rush up or even through a 5-meter wall (I never used this skill myself, so not sure if it also works for the player)
- projectiles' speed seems to increase with level of the skill? e.g., closer to the endgame it's impossible to intentionally dodge enemy arrows and often difficult to dodge fireballs, so you have to constantly move from place to place, thus reducing your own firing speed
- AI is pretty bad. Obvious things: NPCs never use jumping, they often stand without doing anything in the middle of the battle and they tend to return to their original spot after giving up on following you, in which case you can easily run after them and kick them in the back without any retaliation. This is true both for hostile and friendly NPCs.
- enemies heavily prefer to target the player and not your friendly NPCs, especially when you do anything other than running around (e.g. fight); the demon summoning spell says he taunts the enemies, but I didn't see that happening
- no target locking in the pause mode; this limits the usability of target locking, because often enemies are close to one another, and you have to either carefully aim at the one you want to lock on, or cycle through targets, which takes time
- half of the time, movement won't work after unpausing; e.g., you pause the game, press (and keep pressed) the forward button, unpause... and the character doesn't move until you release the button and press it again

4. Many technical nuisances.
- unskippable cut scenes, sometimes followed by a crash. I had a crash after the final fight's cut scene!
- sluggish cursor movement in the menu (duh, 30 FPS)
- the game heavily depends on saving a lot, but saving is slow
- cut scenes in the middle of the battle

5. The game seems to encourage munchkin/cheating behavior instead of restricting it. Many things give you better result when you save/reload, and there is often no way of achieving the same result by honest means. The game is random where it shouldn't be and is non-random where it should be.
- mind reading's cost in XP is a clever idea, but it works against honest players. I ended up choosing this option every time, but I couldn't help thinking that I would be much better off saving and reloading in case the information was useless.
- random loot in chests, generated at the time of opening; would be easy to fix by generating loot in all chests when the game is started
- limited supply of malachite gems and their random distribution in veins, one-time encounter with that trader who offers you to buy the gem (I met him before I knew anything about usefulness of malachite gems, so I didn't buy it)
- endless hidden buttons and secret areas encourage a kind of pixel hunting
- a Lovis quest, where you have to choose the correct answers, which I personally had no idea about (and I'm a heavy RPG player: I pick up and read all books, explore all conversation options, etc.). The only way to get the answers right is to try it repeatedly, which breaks the illusion, because in the game world, you supposedly *say* your answers, not choose one predefined option. The right way to handle this would be to make sure the player has the required information before they start the quest and shuffle the questions and answer options randomly.
- Orobas chest!!!

All said, one thing DKS got right: the ability to easily reset the skillpoint distribution. This encourages experimentation.

6. The role-playing aspect has a lot of blunders.
- the dragon mode - a great idea - is basically wasted, because the dragon can't fight ground enemies. Also, the inability to rise higher than certain altitude or fly over mountains is a severe hindrance.
- there is no character alignment (good/evil, order/chaos), all the usual consequences of alignment are lacking, too
- every area's map is completely revealed as soon as you enter the area, including hidden chambers, which makes the exploration process feel very unnatural
- nearly everyone is thinking of their hidden treasures or some other stuff that is obviously intended for you to rob. That is usually the only thought that passes through their head, because you can't mindread most of the characters more than once. I think a little more creativity and diversity in NPC's thoughts would make mind reading much more interesting.
- lockpick skill should be accompanied by pickpocket
- while I appreciate the possibilities you get by mixing different classes, I still think it's wrong from the RPG perspective; generally, I think the correct way to do mixing is to force the player to choose an initial specialization and then allow other specializations to be unlocked as quest rewards or for a price, and/or make the other classes' skills cost higher than the native skills
- citizens and guards do not react to you robbing their stuff
- skeletons can heal and be healed

7. Story/world blunders:
- enemy NPCs are interspersed with friendly NPCs, all at a distance of 50 meters from each other. In some cases, the friendly NPCs stand in a place to which they obviously couldn't get in any other way than passing through an enemy camp. I had more than one encounter, where enemies walked by friends, without friends even paying attention.
- all NPCs are either friendly or hostile, you can't attack a friendly NPC, except as part of a quest
- stains of blood on the floor next to a long-dead skeleton
- lots of corpses everywhere you go, and nearly no survivors; some of the corpses are in places long inhabited by hostile creatures (why haven't they rotten or been eaten during this time?)
- every peasant and their dog has a secret storage locked by a talking magical device
- *SPOILER* the critical component of the storyline is silly. I'm talking about the part, where you're being told that resurrecting Ygerna would kill Damian; disregarding the fact that it's a lie, the idea itself doesn't hold water: so you resurrect Ygerna, Damian dies... then she commits suicide and resurrects Damian *SPOILER*
- NPCs behave way too silly for the dire situation they are facing. E.g., no one in Orobas Fjords seems to notice *some* (to avoid spoiling) changes that happened in the Broken Valley
- too much strange/magical things are unexplained, such as the debris flying around the battle tower, the Dragon Stone, antidragon zones, flying fortresses, etc. (maybe some of them were explained in Divinity I, which I didn't play)
- some areas are just too dark, you can't even see the opposite wall of a passway. If the game has dark areas, give the player a flare or a lantern.
- too many NPCs share same faces

I'm an old timer myself (been gaming ever since the Odyssey was released in the mid 70s - my first computer game was Ultima II - it came with 7 floppy discs and a cloth map - it was SERIOUS :P ) and loved DKS and I really enjoyed your write up. I agree with most of your points but disagree (or simply experienced things differently) with a few.



I agree the explorable areas of the game are great. My only dislike was how different areas of the game feel disjointed. I don't mind separate 'maps' for dungeons, but I do like the outside world to be contiguous. I also felt that the map feature in DKS was very well done, allowing players to make their own notes on the maps (I think Arx Fatalis was the last game to allow that and before that game, we're back in the 90s with Ultima Underworld) although I didn't like the art direction of the maps very much.

I also agree with the dungeons in DKS - very atmospheric and much better than the 'monster closests' of Oblivion. I also agree (and this is an important one) with you that the absence of level scaling in DKS really adds to the sense of character progression.



I had zero performance issues. No crashes ever. DKS ran perfectly for me. I do admittedly have a beefier (and newer) system than the one you describe that you are using.



I disagree with you here. A first person view of this game probably would have been a show-stopper for me - especially during the many parts of the game where you are fighting many enemies at the same time. But the bottom line for me is I just like 3rd person view better despite some of the camera flaws you point out (and to which I agree with some of your criticisms). It's subjective.



I agree with you on this point. I used Thousand Strikes and would tend to get disoriented after using it, especially in dungeons. It was a small annoyance that grew over the course of my play through of the game. I thought the same thing about the blurring effect as you explore the game world in dragon form - a special effect the first time you see it you think 'oh neat' but after that first time it was just a pain to see anything clearly as you explored the game world.




I never had a crash after a cut scene and that would be annoying. But I still agree with your point here in spirit because even if you don't crash, you can lose a fight with the boss enemy, only to re-load and re-watch a cut scene, which can be annoying having to watch it over and over again because the boss keeps killing you. A way to skip cut scenes would be great.




I did not experience this although there are a number of games where I do have this problem, just not in DKS



Again, I really didn't have problems here, my games saved in maybe 1 second or less. I guess just a newer faster system overcomes some of these problems.



I don't really disagree with you here but would like to add that chests that are involved with a quest line, puzzle, or are otherwise inaccessible until specific conditions are met by the player should NOT be populated with random loot, but rather, hand-placed loot.



Yep, I made the same mistake my first play through. Something should be mentioned in-game about malachite GEMS being the rarest of all. Also having malachite GEMS and malachite ORE was a bit confusing my first time through because I failed to notice they were two different things. This situation is analgous to when a movie is cast with two very similar looking leading characters - it drives me nuts!



On this I respectfully disagree with you. I really enjoyed all the little secrets revealed by carefully observing an area to find buttons and levers and so on. There was an entire discussion on this very subject on Rpgwatch you can read it here if you want a different perspective.



I agree with you here. Ironically, the idea of flying free as a dragon becomes a clausterphobic experience of hitting invisible walls and invisible ceilings. World of Warcraft really spoiled me in the area of flying mounts - love or hate WoW, they really nailed it with flying mounts and the freedom of movement and speed you have when you are in the air.



I disagree with you on this. This design choice is rooted in the original Divine Divinity game and really is an underlying concept of the series. With the recent announcement of Skyrim, the next TES game, there has been some discussion about the leveling system returning to an experience point system rather that the system which has been in place since Daggerfall - which is a system of leveling up as you level up your skills. This probably won't happen in Skyrim considering the leveling system has persisted for the last 3 iterations of the TES series. I believe the 'open skills' concept for the Divinity games to be the same - an underlying core and foundational design direction for the series. I happen to like it and find it refreshing actually.



I agree. I like games like DKS to react when I take other peoples' stuff. There should be ways to steal things and consequences for being caught. Even better, there should be moral consequences even if you're not caught.

Anyway, I liked your write-up. I hope Larian is financially successful with Divinity 2 so they can make another game.

I generally really dislike the first person perspective, especially if you need to move and look in different directions at the same time. In rare cases it can work OK, IMNSHO, or at least be tolerable.

In the Xbox version of D2:ED the camera distance is fixed (holding Target Lock down zooms to an almost over the shoulder view), and you can use the right stick to move the camera freely. In DKS the camera was moved closer, which a couple people said they liked better.


I much prefer there not being micro-managed combat. In addition to simply not liking twitch and timing based combat, it seems pointless to have character stats if the results of combat predominantly depend on your actions. There were a couple debates about this when the game was in development.

I didn't have a problem changing tactics during battle in D2:ED, but playing the Xbox version I also didn't encounter any performance issues.

I rarely used Target Lock, but in the Xbox version of D2:ED frequently cycled through opponents while paused, when required for large groups or tough fights.

So far nobody has applauded the unskippability of the cutscenes.


Generally, worthless mindreads don't cost that much (at least in D2:ED), so by the end of the game the 'wasted' experience points are insignificant compared to the amount needed to reach the next level. In D2:ED I sometimes reloaded for poor mindreads, but am not going to bother in DKS.

I talked to everyone, etc and did a fair chunk of Broken Valley before heading to Lovis' tower, and knew the answers to the questions. I don't recall for sure if it was all available in the starting section of the valley, though (it should have been).


The game was originally designed to allow the dragon form to attack ground opponents, but it required too much memory and had too much of a frame rate hit; see Lar's post in the topic Design ideas for Divinity 3 (mostly for Larian).

In Divine Divinity NPCs would react to attempts to steal (or a couple even moving their belongings). For Beyond Divinity (which used some of the same game engine) that was dropped in order to add more enemy AI. I'd assume in Divinity 2 this was one of the features on their list that was a victim of limited resources.
There were differences between classes in Divine Divinity, but the skill system was still open so that any class could learn any skill (which I prefer), though each had one special skill. In Beyond Divinity the choice of class at the start only affected which skills were initially available to you.

What is wrong with skeleton's healing? Potions and spells can heal your character, and at some point if you get beaten down to 1% of your health there has to be a few broken bones involved somewhere.


In Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity you could attack friendly NPCs, though with a loss of reputation, which could eventually result in non-essential NPCs refusing to talk or trade with you, etc. There could have been a design choice made to change that in Divinity 2, or this may have been a planned feature that just didn't make the cut.



Welcome to the forum.

Yeah, that's a big one.


I realize that many players just prefer 3rd person camera. Still, my arguments have an objective grounds, namely the problems that I described, whereas your only argument is a personal preference. I think Oblivion got it right, when it gave you a choice between 1st and 3rd person camera. Of course, introducing 1st person camera is more complicated than just adding this option. In particular, in DKS, NPCs seem to know more than what they see, for they have no trouble finding you wherever you hide. This makes sense when you (the player) have 3rd-person camera (if you have it, then why wouldn't NPCs have it too?), but not for 1st-person.


I agree with this, but feel less strongly about it than about the 1k strikes effect. I actually enjoyed the blur most of the time (except when trying to pick some fine details on the terrain). I'd argue the game should allow switching this on and off.


*shrug* higher stats mean higher damage, less uncontrollable errors, more critical chance, more resistance, etc. I can't see how character stats contradict player's melee skills. As to preferences, I personally thoroughly enjoy realistic combat with steel crossing steel, combo attacks, swift flanking moves, realistic arrow flight, etc. Even better when your opponents also employ smart tactics and are able of performing combat maneuvers. Of course, doing it right is the hard part.


Ironically, I had no performance problems in the dragon form.


LOL, it's not about healing broken bones. It's about the traditional way of how healing works on undead in RPGs: either it doesn't work at all, or it harms undead instead of healing them.


Thanks.


******
Some more blunders I forgot about in the original post:
- no damage when falling from any height
- pretty ridiculous attitude from Damian. Why on earth would the incarnation of evil let the hero live even on their first encounter? Same with other bosses, which first "warn" you by throwing some of their servants at you instead of killing you right away.
- I find the mere idea of "bosses" ridiculous and disruptive to the role play. I think the games should be more inventive than making each chapter end with a boss fight. Solving a tough puzzle? Sure. Concluding a long quest? Sure. Advancing to another stage of the story with a grand cut scene? Sure. Pushing through an enemy territory to an exit? Sure. But please, no boss fights. And PLEASE, no mentioning the word "BOSS" in the game. I do enjoy combat, but I don't like it when the game blindly follows the same tired and very obvious story development pattern.

Hmmm....on offense, just my opinion:
I have the feeling you better change your "point of view" with the DKS :
it's a RPG full of Fantasy, so don't expect (too) many realistic events/things in the DKS !

Oblivion has more realistic events, but despites that I love much much much more the DKS, just because of the Fantasy !

I like it when a game CAN'T be reality! The real world is already, unfortunality(!!),ful of drama, horror, ... please, let a game a GAME (of Fun and pleasure) and not try making a game TOO seriously, too realistic !!

What should I say to all of you who want a game that is very realistic ?
Let your fantasy & imagination flowing in your mind
so your Spirit shall be forever young
And your fantasy contaminate others of all mankind

Joram, it is well established that the correct way to build a sci-fi or fantasy world is to make certain fantastic assumptions, but otherwise make it as realistic as possible. In other words, a fantasy world can establish its own rule set, but these rules must be consistent with themselves and with the rest of the world. You starts off with a fantastic premise and then develop the world around this premise, not keep adding more and more fantastic assumptions on top of one another. This is how good fantasy works. Bad fantasy, on the other hand, is self-contradictory and/or pushes itself arbitrarily far every time it finds it convenient.

It depends.

A "realistic" set is needed if you really *need* the underlying mechanics/lore/whatever.

If you don't, then you don't need it.

Two examples : In the TDE role playing system, everything MUST be consistent to its rules system - BUT there are still a few "holes" which cannot be explained very good and upon which fans debate.

Second example is LOTR : The underlying worl (no mechanics there at all !!!) were developed throughout DECADES ! The underlying worl was originally the FIRST focus, and like a Tell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell , the LOTR novels are just nothing but the top layer upon everything (else) ... There is no "realistic" world needed, becaue everything was built from the ground to the top.

The point where a game world needs to be realistic is when an imagined/invented content of a world is needed to be explained. Either explicitely or implicitely.

I could invent a world from scratch . it wouldn't need to be realistic.

Realiric it must be only when it meets something else - hence the context given is important !

Sorry for my grammar, my mind is kind of exhausted today.

My point was that a fantasy world should restrict itself to a few fantastic assumptions, but otherwise remain faithful to the reality. You say that it isn't necessarily so and give an example of LOTR. However, LOTR was *not* built ground up, and it is *not* completely different from reality we live in. On the opposite, despite there being a large number of imaginary details, most of the LOTR world is based on our reality. Some examples, so that you can grasp the extent of things it borrows from the real world: logic, gravity, fire, water, vegetation, culture, the very idea of a language, alcohol, music - are all borrowed from the real world, mostly unchanged.

So a fantasy world always *is* the real world with some very minor (in the global scheme of things) modifications. Of course, you can push your fantasy as far as you want, but you'll have to explain every thing that you invent. So there is a natural limit to the amount of fantastic stuff you can introduce into your world before it becomes too heavy and starts cluttering your mind (like any large system does). No fun in that. Therefore it's much better if you concentrate your fantasy on a few key modifications, while keeping small things (such as arrow trajectory) realistic.

I've never understood why any developer would want to force a player to watch a cutscene. In my opinion, if a player is too impatient to watch a cutscene, then the player must live with the consequences of possibly missing important information about the story - but still it should be the player's choice.

Secondy, many times players have already seen the cutscene in which case the game should allow you to bypass it.

Japanese RPGs on consoles are notorias in this area. Not only can you NOT bypass cutscenes, but a typical JRPG will have a cutscene 5, 10, even 15 minutes long. Ridiculous.

I really do agree with some of your criticisms regarding the way 3rd person view works in DKS. Theoretically, those technical shortcomings could be 'fixed.' After that, it all boils down into a subjective debate.

Subjectively speaking, I still find it awkward playing games in first person view, I always have. I just like seeing what is all around my character - that peripheral view gives me such a great sense of visibility of the area my character is standing. It's true that you can abuse the camera mechanic to see things your character cannot, but it's something I can live with.

Objectively, I would never say that 1st person view = lesser and 3rd person view = better. But my view is that every player has a natural comfort level with one or the other.

I agree that Oblivion got it right, allowing you to play in 1st or 3rd person – that way each type of player can just play the way he or she wants to play. I just hope that Skyrim will improve its 3rd person view mechanics as Oblivion's implementation of 3rd person view was weak.

Also, if you're interested, I wrote my own impressions of DKS here a few weeks back... it has dropped off the first page of this forum already, but you can read it here.

My main criticisms were:
- the camera is too far, so consequently it's harder to notice fine details that are close to the character. This plays a role in close encounters, where you have to quickly react to enemy movement.
- the character obscures part of the view. This similarly plays a role in close encounters, when your character obscures the enemy.

I can't see how these can be fixed.


I wouldn't call it abuse, because it's the norm. Your character can't see with his back, whereas you can see what's behind him. He also can not see anything sitting on a wall above his own height or behind an obstacle, while you can. So in fact you see things that he cannot all the time. In my mind, this breaks immersion.

I think each camera setup has its own place. In games where you control several characters, 3rd person view is necessary and natural. However, these games are not suited for manual combat control: you just tell each character what to do, and they do it alone. That's what AI tactics are for (e.g. the way it works in Dragon Age). The only things you are expected to do is using special abilities and issuing movement commands (also not with arrows, but just pointing the target location). In a nutshell, it's a completely different game style from what DKS offers.

Another game that got it wrong was Risen, which is quite similar to DKS (single character with fine-grained control), and in it, this deficiency was even more evident, as Risen gives you much more involved combat mechanics than DKS. I feel that this switch to over-the-shoulder view and dumbing down of control mechanics is driven by the consoles audience, that loves eye candy and hates anything harder than repeatedly clicking an action button. I guess that's also why DKS treats aiming so liberally.


Very nice review. Looks like we agree on quite a lot of things.

Neatfires;

In Divinity 2 healing magic isn't holy, and undead are not inherently evil, so they are not incompatible.

In a world with levitation strong enough to keep huge rocks floating in the sky, I don't have a problem with levitation strong enough to control a fall. Also, the slayers were formed to exclusively go after opponents that can fly, so the ability to take a fall would have needed to be one of their first concerns.

Damian needed you alive, since you were the only possibility to get Patriarch to open a gateway to the Hall of Echoes.
Also, having the badguys immediately eliminate potential threats makes for very short games (and movies, etc) and violates union rules (Evil Overlord List).



DebateMe;

I can see wanting to prevent accidentally skipping a cutscene, but that could be prevented by requiring a double click / button press, or something.

Or even just a confirmation dialog box would work. "Would you like to skip this cutscene Y/N?"

One fix for this, like what some other games have done, is include the ability to zoom in and out. On the PC, a mousewheel works well.




Not sure what I'd recomend for this as a fix. At the same time, it's not something that I find personally bothersome, for the most part.




That is very true. But this is the nature, the very essence, of 3rd person view - that you see your character and his immidiate surroundings, front, back, and periphery. Is this really a flaw or a subjective dislike?




This is true. At this point though I think it's just a case of different tastes, not really worth pointing and counterpointing further. I happened to like pivoting the camera in DKS in such a way as to spot the key sitting on the wooden beam supporting the ceiling of the house I was exploring.



Thanks for taking the time to read it!

If you're playing with HD3850 with "only" 256MB of VRam on such a high resolution, don't expect too much. The fact that your cursor feels laggy in the menu is already an indication that your game settings are optimistic.

However, if you are still at only 25fps with everything on low, that is not normal. I would normally suspect the graphics card drivers, or stuff running in the background, or a fragmented HDD, etc. Not the game.

Your setup with everything on low should run the game fluidly. If you want us to have a look at your setup, send us a dxdiag or preferably a report created with the tool below because indeed, you should get more out of this.

http://www.larian.com/hotfixes/supporttool/LPC_Divinity2.exe

(Lovis Quest: talking to the priest and especially the necromancer in the cave gives you all the knowledge you need.)

Thanks ForkTong for the input. It's nice to see developers who engage their fans.

I really find the DKS fantastic great game with all the fantasy and "things" of the main story quest you don't know ALL ... Great because I love it I can give my own imagination & fantasy more place to live in my mind! It's like reading lots of books (novels, a roman) that give the reader the chance to make his/her own world in his/her imagination! While watching TV most of the time b-r-e-a-k (make stuck) your imagination. The way a PRG is maked can make or break my mind (of imagination & fantasy)! I know I'm a person who has other thoughts about "fantasy in a game" like others have (for example you, neatfires) ... so totally NO offense to anyone

I play games for Fun, for being in another world, especially a wonderful world of things that are impossible in reality !

I can agree with : give players indeed the possibility to skip ingame movies.
The 1st or 3rd person view : it's subjective. I like both views, but more 1st view if I play an adventure/puzzle game.
I find the view of the camera in the Dragon Knight Saga (last version) really good and even better than in Ego Draconis (first version) !

I can understand many gamers love more Oblivion or whatever RPG that have more realistic things,
but I'm afraid each developer team has it's own STYLE of making RPG's.
It's impossible for ONE dev team to make a RPG that ALL (or mostly all) RPG gamers love !

And I, simply, love the style of RPG the dev team of Larian Studios create !!

I'd love this. It's really hard/impossible to obtain any of the top enchantment / potion recipes, and I am too impatient to keep reloading on a chest. Would also make the lockpick skill more useful (I found that most of the stuff you got was tat anyway and sold it.)

Another annoyance I found was your weapon being sheathed after a conversation where battle commenced immediatley afterwards. So i tend to jump out of the way, but you can't unsheath whilst in mid air...

Also, I loved that fact the world was static in regards to enemy levels, but I really would like some form of respawn or something. Just that the whole area felt overwhelmingly empty afterwards. Even if it were just NPCs roaming the area as it was safer, or more random encounters with bandits or something.

That brings me onto the other thing I didn't like much (FoV aside): Only 1 town/village in the whole area!! I'm not counting Aleroth as you only spend a blink of an eye there until the finale. Yes there are a couple of encampements but I like to to visit other towns. They did make up for it, in a sense, with FoV but that was just on big city. I hope Divinity 3 has more cities like Aleroth from FoV (just a little less of the fetch quests though) interspersed throughout the land.

Lol, my first post and starts off with negatives! I did really enjoy the game, love the humour, and on second play through now.

It was discussed before. Limited resources on a console is likely to blame.



You can by using the hotkeys to switch your weapons. Assign weapons to one of three weapon slots. When you switch weapons it instantly unsheathes.



Not uncommon to first person single player RPGs. Your not supposed to grind, its not a MMO. It maybe boring but it also adds a bit of realism.

I know your not supposed to grind, but other non MMO games (I hate MMOs because of the grind) do it. Either by respawning some enemies leaving an element of danger still in areas, or NPCs starting to roam outside the city/village walls giving a sense of achievement as the area is now safer due to your actions, but all in all keeping the world a more living world. I have played many where nothing respawns but generally on those you rarely revisit areas.

So surely it would be more realistic if stuff did happen after you clear areas? For istance, why would it be unrealistic if say you clear a dungeon of demons and afterwards a small group of bandits seize the opportunity to set up camp there? Or would it be unrealistic if travelling traders start to populate the roads as they are now safer? Or even random encounters of champions having a skirnish with some form of pest/beast (there are few in this, but only 3 I've found).

Anyway just my thoughts.