Back in December I did a preview of Divinity 2: Ego Dragonis for the YouTube channel, LikeTotallyAwesome. As Belgian developer Larian Studios gave me an advanced copy of both the Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game, I’ve had nearly a month to play through them before the game was released. I really had a wonderful time playing through this third person action role playing game; so I’d like to give you my thoughts and a comparison between the PC and 360 versions of the game, so let’s check it out!
The basic plot of Ego Draconis is that Damien, the villain that was banished at the end of the first game, has returned to the realm of Rivellon, to seek vengeance on those who imprisoned him. Damien enslaves the most powerful beings in the world, the Dragon Knights, who are humans with the ability to actually transform into dragons. The Dragon Knights begin wreaking havoc so a group of heroes known as Dragon Slayers form to rid the world of evil, and of course, you are the newest recruit.
The game opens in the town of Farglow, which will serve as a tutorial, where in addition to learning the mechanics of the game, you gain the abilities to both communicate with spirits, and to read the minds of those around you. Once you feel you’ve got the ropes down, your mentor informs you that a dragon has been spotted in Broken Valley, and your squad is being sent to take care of it. Shortly thereafter a series of unfortunate events leads you to the fallen Dragon Knight, who for one reason or another grants you with her powers, ironically, making you both the hunter and the hunted. The game really picks up from here as you become more powerful and hunt down Damien.
There were a couple things that bugged me though. The introduction video really doesn’t tell you anything, like who the characters are and what is happening; and the tutorial just kind of starts without any back-story at all. Finally the ending of the game is a huge disappointment but it without a doubt paves the way for a Divinity 3.
Ego Draconis took me roughly 30 hours to complete, but I didn’t even scratch the surface of all of the content in the game. There are simply a TON of quests to do and places to explore! The thing is, you actually HAVE to do a lot of the side quests to ensure that you are leveling up properly, or the main storyline missions will just kick your ass. Now, having played both versions of the game, I can say without a doubt that the PC version is greatly superior to the 360 version in every aspect. I’m not saying the 360 version is a bad game by any means, the PC version is just way better.
The inventory management in the PC version is very well designed. You can see all of your equipment and even preview it on your avatar. The 360 version provides no preview and makes it very difficult to compare the stats on various items. There are probably 50 different spells and skills that you can learn throughout your adventure, but the 360 version only lets you map up to 8 of them to hot keys, and that shares the same hot keys as your potions and items that you’d want to use as well, while the PC version gives you many more. It’s also much easier in the PC version to dodge incoming attacks, and roll around and basically enjoy the mechanics of the melee combat. The 360 controls are just awkward when it comes to that stuff.
From the start you’ll learn that your character is class-less, which is a great feature to an action role playing game like this. You’ll be able to mix and match skills and spells from the priest, mage, warrior, ranger and dragon knight trees, which means that as you level up, you’ll have to ensure you have a proper balance of stats to support all of this as well. Along the same lines, initially the game is pretty boring and dull, but once you gain some new skills and gear, it gets very addictive. The game is epic, I just couldn’t put the controller down!
Aside from the ability to learn all of the skills and spells, about 12 hours into the game you will gain the ability to turn into a dragon. The dragon has it’s own set of spells it can learn, and it also has it’s own set of equipment that you’ll have to manage. Unfortunately you can’t use the dragon to fly anywhere you want to kill all of the regular enemies. There are specific dragon objectives and places to fly, which is kind of a let down. Nonetheless, it’s always awesome jumping off of a cliff and changing into a dragon! Around the same time, you’ll also gain access to your battle tower, where you can store all of your extra items, brew potions, enchant your gear, train and even construct and customize your own necromantic battle pet who is an essential companion in most of the tougher fights.
Now, Divinity 2 is not without it’s faults as the 360 version is very buggy. Nearly 50% of the time after you die and re-load the game locks up, forcing you to reload from the dashboard. Other times my equipment would just un-equip itself, characters and monsters would just disappear, scripted events wouldn’t fire, and sometimes when you load your game, it will load you in a location not even close to where you saved it… Sometimes in a completely different zone! Frankly, I don’t know how the 360 version of the game passed it’s quality assurance check with these massive bugs. The PC version did not suffer from any of these. Also note that this game is very difficult. It is very important that you do as many side quests as possible to keep your level up, or you’re going to get whooped up on!
The environments in the game are absolutely beautiful, especially in the PC version. You can actually see the grass move as you walk through it, the trees sway in the background, and the water splash around you. There is a pretty significant difference in the quality of the PC version when compared to the 360 version, but I’ve got to hand it to Larian, as the 360 version still looks stunning, especially the lighting effects. But, with great graphics comes a taxation on your hardware and there are many times where the 360 is going to suffer frame rate issues and lag up a bit here and there, particularly in a few boss battles near the end.
To accompany the great graphics, there is also a wonderful soundtrack, and it wouldn’t be an RPG without a ton of voice acted dialog. Recall that Larian is a Belgian developer and as such you’ll be graced with a ton of European accents with your characters. Thankfully the game is not bogged down in dialog like many other role playing games, so most of your time will be spent out slaying monsters!
I had an absolute blast playing through Divinity 2: Ego Draconis, that is, once I got a hang of the controls and upgraded my weapons and armor past the basic gear. This game held my attention the entire time I played and I just couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen next, and better yet, I couldn’t wait to see my character was going to improve and see both what skills he was going to learn, and how cool he was going to look with new armor. While there are significant differences between the Xbox 360 and PC versions of the game, both are very fun to play. The graphics are beautiful and the game-play is addictive, but there are still plenty of bugs that need to be worked out. Nonetheless, this was a great way to open the New Year! Make sure to leave your questions and comments below and rate this video! Check back often as I’ve got a full lineup of big name games coming up over the next few months!
