Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis [Spoilers] It all starts off well enough...

But wheres the rest of it?

I was under the false impression that the pre-tower section in broken valley was the tutorial section. I rushed through it and had a blast but i was eager to get my Battle Tower and "start the REAL game".

At the point where I'd just got the battle tower I'd have reviewed the game a score of 95%... I was excited. It was good.

However, it seems that the "REAL game" was ONE area of cliffs with some really random portals that just had no place being there and maybe 10 dungeon caverns? No elf city, no dwarf city, no more "wishing wells"...

Coupled with that, suddenly i found that I was just invulnerable. From the tower on the balance went out the window. I might as well have had cheats on, hitting for 600 and being hit for 0. It was kinda clear all the work had gone into the pre-tower content which everyone will be rushing through to get to the dragon part. I mean, i killed balegars 3 goblins. where were the other shrines? Ran outta time?

The flying fortress/balista fire areas were only fun enough to include ONE of. Not 5 or whatever, they were really quite annoying. Dragon was great transport but thats it. However, finding full sets in single dungeons is a great idea. (BTW the archmage hammer +magic damage stops working around 4 parts off full set?)

Also, the limitations on where you can fly are downright harsh. Can't go over a mountain? cant go down to the earth because its all poisoned. And i really don't follow the story at all. Damian flies down poison floating islands of balistas in an effort to... to what? Sure seems to be a lot of anti-dragon stuff considering im one of two left in the world.

Aleroth was so unoptimised i actually had to restart the game to get back about 20lost FPS.


Well, i'd planned to keep this REALLY short so I gotta stop here... So, solution? Finish making the game!

I want to see two or three DVDs worth. at LEAST one cliffs like area for every damian fortress. I'd say theres about 33% of the content needed for an epic experience and from early sections its obvious Larian does have the means to make AAA+++ content, but didn't have the time.

*glares at xbox360* Seriously, there are some very talented designers at work. So was it just trying to get it all onto 1 DVD for xbox that was the problem here or did you all make 20 good hours of game, as is the required norm, and whip out the peace pipe and veg out? :P

Kinda annoys me since dragon age would have been multiplayer if not for the xbox version. Why? cos xbox= games for windows live/xbox live which means all multiplayer goes thru microsoft servers and GFWL which charges a subscription fee for the service, doesnt support LAN or direct IP, is trying to take over online gaming and charge for it, etc, etc. So you could use GFWL for multiplayer in both games and have a really, really poor multiplayer component as the service sucks. Or you could do a total rewrite of the netcode for PC and xbox... which would cost too much time/money. There you have it. anything with an xbox version is going to have really weak multiplayer. microsoft!! ruining PC gaming since amiga days.

sorry, where was i?

I'll give div2 75% as the ending left a foul taste in my mouth. I'd say that ending was unforgivable.

Larian, finish the game and it will go down as one of the greatest RPGS ever. But in its sloppy, unfinished state no one can give it the 95% they were so ready to hand out in the first few hours playing. You know its not finished. I know you know, you know?


peace,
Gelmir

(System specs played on)
xp sp3
e6700 cpu @ 2.66GHz
9800GTX 512mb
2gig DDR2

Cranked options, 1600x900, NO AA, 16xAF
Runs fine, ~42fps

Im a veteran RPG player, i've played everything from akalabeth to, well... div2 =)

The broken valley you rushed through isnt the tutorial, its 50% of the game. Dont rush it or you miss many things, Bellegar has 4 shrines for example, try to find them, they are all there.

The first half is definitely better... guess they simply ran out of time. I enjoyed playing it, but it could have been so much better if there was at least one decent city with some interesting characters/quests in it.

Woah. I am glad I waited. As I thought the dragon part is just a gimmick and no-more than transport :-/

Major spoilers on this thread for the people who havent played yet

Oh darn, thought there were two more full maps left to go.

Well I did play the game for a week and if that is only half, guess another week is left to play. Most games I go threw in a few nights.

Besides, in Divinity half the game is done when you get to the Council of 7 and have your quest to find everyone then spend the last few hours mostly killing stuff. So it is about the same with gamplay just all condensed in one town. That town did have a lot going on.

dragonform isnt a gimick - its really cool. It could just be used better... in more ways, in more areas. Believe me, its awesome when you can fly around as a dragon... but theres not enough places to fly! At the same time, the game doesnt suffer at all from the horrible feeling of wasting time walking places. Theres always an adventure just a few steps off.

...And it would be very cool to work in a way to be able to fight the ground units and not have them fade away, but I understand the balance issues. (ironic, isnt it :þ )

The combat is great, the graphics are great, theres innovation all over the place. There just isnt enough and half of what is there doesnt feel finished.

you gotta play it though, i was having so much fun most the time it put oblivion to shame, and i couldn't play more than a few hours of fallout3 before falling asleep. A good 30 hours of fun to be had, and I appear to have missed a LOT. Never did work out what was going on in the room of chickens.

2 more DVDs of content and a different ending and it could be the best game ever.


Also, the game deserves an honourable mention for not breaking itself up into DLC (downloadable content) - something which is potentially going to ruin gaming. We may one day see ourselves just buying an engine and paying per monster, sound, texture. :O At least Div2 is a full game. (mostly :P)

In creating a new game, in my opinion the hardest thing is to create something new and inovative that hasnt been made before in another game, or at least not to the point of exhaustion. Larian manages to do this hardest part with a couple inovative things like mind-reading and dragon combat. Where larian is not at 100% now was the easiest part, wich is creating content that most RPGs already have but add a good touch of classic RPG like a reputation system for stealing consequences, a larger open-world exploring, some kind of "guild system", etc.


In my opinion the game felt "small" for an RPG. The content that it has is enjoyable, but i felt that for an RPG i was expecting something with more free exploring, more item-sets, more epic quests, more cities, more race diversity.


In the end, i felt the game is good in size for an action/console game, but realy not big enough for an epic RPG.


This could be fixed by new downloadable content, but i'm not sure a smaller company like larian will be able to provide that soon, like dragonage will provide or oblivion already did (partialy with its fan-base).


All in all, i think i would give a 83% rating, if this game had a couple more cities like the initial one (with quests) and a few more maps for "dragon fun" so that it wouldnt feel so small, i think the score would go over to upwards 85%, reaching probably near 90%.