Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga Divine Divinity Vs Divinity 2

Which one do you think is better? For me, it has to be Divine Divinity and I shall list the reasons why below:

- Bigger world. I'm only past 10 hours in Divine Divinity but already I can see how bigger the world is, it also feels more alive because you have birds flying about, rabbits running about, orcs hunting boars, cats chasing rats and soldiers fighting orcs in battle.

- More strategic combat. Divine Divinity is very difficulty, even on easy it is difficult, you have to plan your movements, make the right choices with equipment and know how to defeat certain enemies, I have to use the freeze spell with certain enemies to attack them without them getting any damage on me and other times, I summon 8 skeletons to battle certain creatures immune to the freeze spell while I cast fireballs in the distance, other enemies like skeletons just require me to let them gather around me and then use my whirlwind ability to kill them all, basically, you also have to know the weaknesses of certain enemies to prevail.

- More rewarding. After defeating certain challenging enemies who are really tough, you feel truly rewarded when they drop a powerful weapon and give you 11,000 EXP.

- More freedom. You can go to any point of the world you want, I still haven't even visited to The Dwarfen Bread Inn to continue with the main quest, I'm just exploring, killing orcs, looting caves, completing a few sub quests and even killing innocent people (you can even kill children!).

- More atmospheric in story. War is in the story and you actually see burnt down villages and soldiers fighting against orcs, this is what I wanted to see in Divinity 2 - soldiers fighting against the blackring and then destroyed villages, I didn't know Divine Divinity already had this done and it actually gives you a sense of what you're up against.

I will have to say that Divinity 2 has better armor and weapons though.

As much as I liked Divinity 2 DKS, if I had to pick which I liked better, it would have to be Divine Divinity.

For me DD wins over DKS because it was much more a complete world simulation. Go anywhere, anytime (except for the endgame location) as long as you can kill enemies you can go there. There was day/night. Like the OP stated, there were other creatures interacting with each other in various ways.

I was hoping that DKS would retain these features and since it didn't it somewhat detracted from the game.

I hope that the Divinity game that is meant to be the next traditional RPG that Larian is making contains all the features of Divine Divinity. Divine Divinity is one of the best games I've played and a spiritual successor would certainly be (probably) the best RPG (for me) in this generation.

I have my hopes for project D.
Or E.

Or whatever codename was for new isometric RPG.

D for dragon.
E for eating?
Maybe;
D for Divine.
E for Ego.
Or;
D for dragon.
E for extraterrestrial (aka, The Divine).

I've forgotten which one is which and I've also wondered what's the reason behind the words.

What DD also have are different "races" (Orcs, Elves, Imps, Dwarfs, ...)
I also love the way weapons and armour have 'durability' ... so you must repair you favorite weapon ...

Yeah, in some way DD wins over Divinity II, no matter what ...

I like DKS better myself. Not that I disliked Divine Divinity, mind you, but I find DKS
more engrossing. And I also love having to figure most things out for myself rather than
being led by the hand like too many games these days.

DKS...mainly becouse well your a dragon and the story is solid...ironic to may i add.

Ummm, you're not led by the hand in Divine Divinity either, in fact, DKS leads you by the hand when compared to Divine Divinity where Zandolar just comes and tells you to head to an inn, half way across the land where you could encounter lv 15 orc warriors at lv 5. Besides, you don't even need to do the story straight away, you can basically explore the whole of the world straight away.

* Divine Divinity is marred by a tedious starting area (caves underneath Aleroth) and a tedious end area (Yuthul Gor + Black Ring hideout), both feature endless combat.

But between that, there's an excellent game.

* Divinity 2 originally suffered from a weak second half of the game (endless grinding in the fortresses), but Dragon Knight Saga fixed that completely). So as of now I'll give the honours to Divinity 2.

Well, to be honest, I have a difficult time to decide which game I wish to play ... so I play both ... one day that is DD and another day it's the DKS I'm having fun with

The LONGER I play (think about hundred of hours!!) a Larian RPG, the more I gonna love it !! So maybe over some time (ages?) I love DKS in the same way as I love DD ... !
But in between project E (and D) are probably already out and I wish start to play project E on day 1 !!

Interesting topic. I'll go over my thoughts point-by-point.

It's a bit unfair in some ways to criticize Divinity 2 - the resources required to create a world like Divinity 1 are a lot less than what you would need to do something similar in Divinity 2.


Game world
In terms of the game world, Divine Divinity definitely is better. There are clear zones of different areas, deep forest, farmlands, towns an cities, battlefields, and desert. In Divinity 2 there's one farm in Broken Valley, maybe one or two in High Hall, and I really don't know where all the people live. There was also

But more importantly, in this world which is noted for having 6 main races (actually more), you can encounter areas where each of them is dominant. In Divinity 2, there are Humans, Goblins and a handful of Imps. The diversity is gone, and the other 4 races other than imps get maybe one mention each at most. It makes the world feel smaller and more generic.


Combat/Gameplay
Divinity 2 gets the edge in combat. The kinetic fast-paced movement and fluid animations are a pleasure to play and watch. The skills are a bit more balanced, although the offensive magic line could have used more diversity (only 4 spells?).



Rewards
Divinity 2 gets the edge here, but not by a lot. There are more unique items to be found from exploring, and they're more useful. The ability to choose your own quest rewards is also better. Divinity 1 gave free points in specific skills, Divinity 2 gives you skill points you can use on whatever you want.


Freedom
Due to the smaller game world, Divinity 2 has less freedom. On the other hand, a lot of Divinity 1's freedom wasn't helpful - you get no direction at all on many quests and have to guess.

Divinity 2 is about even on freedom to build your character. You don't get as many stat points to play with, but you do get many more skill points.

Divinity 2's dialogue options are much better than Divinity 1 - you can make a paragon of virtue, or a giggling psychopath, and you can express that in almost every conversation. Divinity 1 didn't give you that much freedom, you generally were stuck in white knight mode if you wanted to actually do quests.


Story

The quality of the story is about even, but I would give the edge to Divinity 2, because its more tightly focused. There’s no main plot in Divinity 1 until after you finish the first dungeon, and it takes an extremely long time (Stormfist Treasure Room) to even figure out what’s going on.


Humor

Both games have moments of humor, but the edge goes to Divinity 2 again. The main character gets a lot more opportunities to be snarky, and there’s more humor in general.

Especially because of let the gamer free and not hold his/her hand I love !
Loose my way in a big game world is a most fantastic experience a ever had !

@Stabbey

I'm about 15 hours into Divine Divinity and there are dialogue options that can be considered to be evil but I think Divinity 2 does actually have more dialogue choices to role play a character, though it doesn't have the dialogue choices that Origins offer.

So I take it that you enjoy Divinity 2 better?

@Joram

Same here, Divine Divinity really rewards (and can punish you) for exploring and you just don't know what you will find.


I hope Larian racked up a lot of cash with Div2 because they'd be able to do so much with the right amount of money. We need to help advertise their games when they are announced, Two Worlds 2 sold very well because of word of mouth.

"Divinity 2's dialogue options are much better than Divinity 1 - you can make a paragon of virtue, or a giggling psychopath, and you can express that in almost every conversation. Divinity 1 didn't give you that much freedom, you generally were stuck in white knight mode if you wanted to actually do quests."

You could be a giggling psychopath in DD as well, but there were actually consequences. Shopkeepers would raise prices or stop trading. People would get angry and stop speaking to you, or even become hostile and attack. Guards would come try to subdue you if you stole or hurt someone. Word could spread about your bad reputation, making people more or less predisposed to be open and kind to you.

You lose all of this in Divinity 2. Sure, you could say whatever you wanted, but no one cared, it made no difference. Better dialogues my butt.

Despite being in the same series, I don't think they can be compared. DD was made for PCs. It's not the most complex PC RPG ever made, and rather simplistic leaning more toward action RPGs, but still one of the better PC RPGs made. Divinity 2, however, was made for consoles. It sucks, but it's the truth because that's where the money is. In being developed first for consoles it was further simplified, and the visuals took precedence over all.

The two games are from different eras. PC gamers are second class citizens now and so we must be satisfied with whatever scraps drop from the console table. You know what else? It's PC gamers' faults; why should publishers care about the PC market when 10 times as many people will pirate their game than buy it?

I'm not sure D2 was first intended to make it also on the console !
To know : it's the first time Larian make a RPG for both: PC & console .
And also the PC version has better graphics and plays good on PC, with also more quickslots than on the console (I've heard/read)

The consequences of the dialogue are not the same as the quality or quantity of the dialogue itself.

The realistic consequences of the DD dialogue are more about how immersive and complete the game world seems, and Divine Divinity already has the edge on that.

There weren't as many "evil" options in Divinity 1 - for most of the quests, there was only one solution with a reward - the good path. In Divinity 2 there are multiple mutually exclusive and equally rewarding solutions to a lot of quests.

I agree that Divinity 2 had more outcomes and solutions on quests. That's one of the pros about it.

Well, I can certainly agree about the more varied quest solutions - that was a huge pro in Divinity 2. Lots of choice in problem-solving. So I see what you mean about "better dialogues" - different aspect than what I meant.