Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Divinity II - Flames of Vengeance This topic title was edited

I played straight through from ED to FOV and was not disappointed one bit by the expansion. As a standalone piece it certainly doesn't sate the desired for a full release; and compared to many recent AAA releases, this DLC probably offers less playtime.

I can understand the desire to have less dialog, but its an unfortunate consequence of allowing players to jump into the DLC without playing through FOV first. To allow players to jump in, you must provide an introduction or refresher lead-in. I compliment Larian on allowing this feature, however omitting the option of standalone DLC playthrough would have allow a tighter integration with the original release.

Other posters were complaining about being locked into a smaller sandbox. From the perspective of game advancement it makes perfect sense and is directly inline with any other title. As you advance in the game, previous levels are locked out and replaced by updated world content reflecting changes that are the result of consequence in plot completion. Think of FOV as the final stage in ED and you will see that similar occurrences happened in FOV. When you complete the Battle Tower, the old Broken Valley is locked out and replaced by new content.

My complaint is often times the game feels incomplete. It really feels like Larian was overambitious in their goals for D2. The game should have been release as a complete product including FOV. However, I understand that there is often a trade off when building a competitive product with a smaller team. Its good to see that FOV actually compliments ED instead of adding side quests and other hidden secrets that are sometimes seen in add-on releases. No names, but you occasionally see milking of existing properties to fuel development on future releases.

There are certainly issues of refinement that I hope future releases address in order to remain competitive with titles released by monolithic publishers. You can begin to see Larian has begun to address issues of RP such gender, status, and path (decision) recognition in world NPCs. Also dialog decision result in more diverse responses. Its good to see but perhaps not in lieu of game content. For a smaller outfit from EU, I must say that most gamers do not give enough credit, Larian has put a tremendous effort into releasing their products. I look forward to bigger and better releases in the future.