Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga a few questions before buying

Saw this game come up on steam (yes I'm one of those people who uses Steam a lot and never any problems with it), the trailer looked good, so I thought I'd come check it out.
It would be much appreciated if you guys could answer the following sets of questions (I know there's a lot, but I'm a student and it's not the cheapest of games so I want to have a good idea of what I'm buying).

1. How much depth/variety is there in character customisation, both early and late game? Are you forced to choose between going one combat style or another (e.g. magic caster or melee type) or can you level everything simultaneously? Is there replay value in this game or will you find that you can get all skills and such on a single run? How quickly do the levels go? I've read that it takes ages to grind to level 3 in the start, is this a game with slow leveling? Are there new skills etc unlocked in between levels in that case, or will you be waiting a long time between character improvements?

2. From what I gather this game is released both PC and console - will I be able to use e.g. a 360 controller with it on PC? ...or any other 3rd party controller? Or is it only locked to mouse/keyboard? Is the gameplay style better suited to controller or m/k (I know this is a preference thing, but still...). Is the combat more twitch-based, or strategic? Does spellcasting require certain gimmicks/minigames (e.g. trace the rune) or is it just click of a button?

3. My specs are: core-i7, gtx260m-1gb, 4gb-ddr3, 1920x1080 - how good will this game run? I've read conflicting posts saying that AA is available and not available, which is it? I don't mind the 30fps lock, I tend to run a lot of newer games on higher graphisc and therefore lower fps for more eyecandy, so I'm used to almost always being in the 20-40fps zone. More interested in the depth and quality of graphics.

4. I've read conflicting posts about this game being linear, and openworld, at the same time. I don't mind one or the other, so long as the quest structures and such are easy to understand and you don't have to spend hours running around the map blind to find something. Does this game limit your exploration? Does this game force you to explore lots? Do you gain a lot of benefit by exploring lots? I don't enjoy spending an hour to find a piece of weed not marked on the map (oblivion, anyone?) just to do a quest or something, but at the same time I would like there to be freedom of movement around the environment (FF13 was a little too railroaded).

Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions guys!
D

it doesnt take too long to reach lvl 3,the starters area only gives 1 exp per mob. (so unless your really stupid or bored,you can lvl to lvl 3 there. Lvling goes pretty quik.
Skills: you can lvl all at the same time. and you get new skills every 5 lvls (start with lvl 1,then lvl 5,10,15,and 20.) so if you play pretty good and lvl up fast,you wont be waiting for a long time.



i dont really know if you can use a 360 controller on pc. and its mostly click click click click click.



yes you will be able to run it at max,but be aware. the fps cap is 30 and there's a stuttering problem in the game. (atleast for a lot of people.) AA is not supported,the ingame AA just blurs the edges a bit,but its not true AA.



you can see where you have to go on your minimap. but the game is far from linear. in fact,you are supposed to do lots of sidequests. this is because the main quests are all pretty hard so you have to lvl up before you start a next main quest. (yes i remember Oblivion,drives me nuts.) You have lots of freedom. (and even more when you become a Dragon ^^)



no problem.

Oh and to add on to 1), what's the total level cap? How long does it take to reach the level cap? Are there hard stops on your leveling progression before you do certain quests etc? And just how wide is the skill tree, is there a lot of customisation, are you forced to compromise in certain areas to unlock advanced skills and such or can you just fill out the whole thing?

Oh and if you use a bow, are there limited ammunition or does equipping a bow give infinite shots? If limited arrows, are they expensive / hard to find?

ll cap i dont know. (still playing and im far from the end.)
Hard Stops,meh,you can grind on mobs if you want. (at lvl20 you get 4k each and you need like 30k to lvl,so yea no real hard stops.)
skill tree consists of:
Priest (he can summon monsters to work for him.)
Warrior (can you feel the breath of your enemy on your face yet.)
Archer (speaks for itself.)
Magican. (also speaks for itself.)
you start with 1 skill. and every 5 lvls you unlock 2 new skills.
so at lvl 1 you have 2 skills. lvl 5 4,at 10 6,at 15=8 and at 20=10
but thats only if you follow 1 path. you can levelup skills of all 3 main classes but this will cost too many skillpoints in the beginning.
you can customize it completely. (you arent forced to get 1 skill before you can get a skill afther it. in fact you can skip whole lvl 5/10/15 skills and only take lvl20 skills. (but lvling with only lvl 1 skills is pretty dumb.

Edit: bow has unlimited Ammo.

It was said elsewhere that there is no controller support, but the game (at least Ego Draconis) is not a console port really, so KBM control is preferred anyway.

There is no native controller support, but you can use a controller (you just have to assign a function to each button manually).

In D2:ED there was a technical level cap of 60, or so, but a practical max about level 36/37 (a couple got to 40 spawning opponents at a particular location near the end of the game). In the early game leveling is faster in DKS (getting to level 9 finishing up to a certain point, rather than level 7 in D2:ED), but nobody has reported end levels yet.

You can leave the tutorial section fairly quickly, if you wish. I bought an Xbox to play D2:ED, so played around in the training area to get a feel for combat and the controller, then went through a few more times to get enough gold to buy a decent starter bow (handy through the mid game in D2:ED even without investing in any ranger skills), and then I was almost up to level 2, so kept going. Leveling goes faster once you move to Broken Valley, and start getting more than 1 exp per kill.

In D2:ED you could unlearn all your skills (for a price) starting about half way through the game, and re-invest them. The skill system has changed in DKS, but I would expect this function should still be available in some form.

Combat in D2:ED was not twitch based, but was fairly action oriented. It wasn't as strategic as a turn based system, but your approach could certainly have a big influence on combat (weapon/skill choice, use of cover, high ground, etc).
Spell casting is a button press, just like melee or ranged attacks.

Anti-aliasing works for some people/systems. Others have got it working if they disabled HDR lighting, or forced AA in the drivers (or renamed the executable to get the drivers to use an existing profile from another game). Some people were not able to get it working.