Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga beat the game - some thoughts (possible spoilers)

I can definitely say that this game kind of came out of nowhere for me. I knew nothing about it before I saw it pop up on the main menu on steam. Since I am a sucker for rpgs, I figured I'd take a stab at the demo. I played it, but it didn't really seem all that special to me and I was really turned off by the graphics (lack of AA), but I saw it had some potential. Steam holiday sale comes up, so I figure I'd pick it up and get to it at some point. 75-80 hours later (for both the main game and FoV) and I can say this is probably my sleeper hit of the year.

I mentioned above that I had an issue with the graphics. Well, not the graphics themselves, because the textures are pretty good, and there is a lot of detail altogether, but the AA option really did NOTHING at all. I cannot stand jaggies in games. With the help of nvidia inspector I was successfully able to enable 4xAA and SLI. I would have loved to have gone higher with the AA but there was a huge performance hit for some reason even with dual GTX 580's. However, I can say that this game looks absolutely beautiful with max settings + working AA. Well done.

I played through the game as a pure archer. I didn't use any skills other than skills that would improve my ranged abilities. That means no mage attacks (firewall, fireball, etc) because I wanted to stay consistent with how I envisioned my character. By the end of FoV I think my ranged damage was somewhere between 350-650 damage (using the unique bow from the merchant in Market Square) and something like 200-300 magical damage. Gotta love the +100 damage/magic damage enchantments. Not to mention my crit rate was hovering around 85%. Add in Way of the Ranger, and my normal attacks were critting for 3000+ damage sometimes. Want to take out a whole group of enemies in one shot? Fire a splitting arrow with Way of the Ranger on, and with crits, you can do that no problem. I don't think I even used explosive arrows after level 35, because the damage was well under that of my normal attacks.

The game pretty much hit all the right notes with me gameplay-wise. The animations were a bit stiff, and there were some bugs, but overall it was really satisfying. I enjoyed having to maneuver around while fighting and dodge attacks from enemies while lining up shots from my bow. The combat was much better than I had expected after playing the demo, especially with ranged attacks. I think Larian did a great job with the loot system as well. Loot is always a big plus for me in rpgs and I found myself getting excited every time there was a chest or a named enemey to fight because of the chance of getting something new. I wish the trick with reloading before opening chests didn't exist because I think sometimes I would reload 20-30 times just to see what else would show up in there.

I thought the battle tower was a pretty cool addition as well. A lot of games don't really always give you a "home base" so I enjoyed that aspect. Also picking between different sets of crafters was a nice touch too, because it had an impact on the rest of the game in regards to training and crafting. Turning into a dragon was cool as well, but it got a bit old, especially during the flying fortress areas, but gameplay-wise it was executed fairly well. I was happy to see they didn't overuse it in the expansion.

There wasn't really much point to this post other than to share my thoughts with the game overall. I could add a few more things but the wall of text would get even more ridiculous. Thanks Larian for a great game and I can't wait for the next addition!