After my last review of Dragon Age: Origins, I’ve certainly been in the mood to test out some additional Fantasy Action Role Playing Games! Well, Belgian developer Larian Studios was kind enough to provide me with an advanced copy of Divinity 2: Ego Draconis, and I’d like to give you a preview of some of the things I came across. Now, I received both the Xbox 360 and the PC copies of the game, but unfortunately, to play the 360 version I need an Xbox debug kit, which I can’t afford and my PC is not exactly up to snuff, so I wasn’t able to capture maxed out graphics. So for all of you tech heads out there, leave me some comments below on what specs I should be running these days to utilize all that is PC gaming!
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. How the story unfolds from here is to remain to be seen!
Divinity 2 claims to have up to 60 hours of single player only content and I believe that. I played for around 6 hours and I don’t feel that I even scratched the surface of this massive adventure. Aside from the main story-line quests, there is just a ridiculous amount of side-quests that actually involve going out and doing something, besides simply collecting a few healing potions and giving them to the local priest. The game world appears to be massive and you could spend quite a lot of time just traveling across it.
In the tutorial town, you find that your character is classless, which means you’ll be able to mix and match skills and spells from priests, mages, warriors and rangers. That’s right, you get to create your ultimate hero and play them however the hell you want. I went with a two-handed sword wielding badass that could shoot fireballs and heal himself. Overpowered much?
Ego Draconis is a third person action adventure role playing dungeon crawler… I think. I don’t really know what to call this; there is simply a ton of things to do. Aside from battling monsters, you’ll have to platform and solve puzzles that actually can take a while to figure out. And my comments on being overpowered earlier are certainly not warranted because this game is damn hard… Or I just suck.
The combat system allows you to be agile and actually dodge arrows, spells, and even incoming melee attacks if you are quick enough with your controls. On top of that, you’ll eventually gain the ability to turn into a dragon and fly around destroying anything in your path. I didn’t get much playtime with this, but I can only imagine the crazy stuff I’m going to get to do.
While I didn’t get to experience it myself, you are also able to purchase and build your own Battle Tower where you can create potions, train and modify your equipment, and even collect body parts on the battlefield to create your own necromantic battle pet used to fight, tank, heal or just look pretty.
The environments that I came across in the few hours I got to play were just beautiful. You can actually see the grass move as you walk through it, the trees sway in the background, and the water splash around you. It’s a shame that I wasn’t able to experience it in all of its glory. I’m truly envious of all of you out there with killer gaming rigs!
There is also a wonderful soundtrack to accompany everywhere you go, and it wouldn’t be an RPG without a ton of voice acted dialog, but I will cover this more in depth in my review.
I had a pretty fun time playing through the beginning Divinity 2, that is, once I got a hang of the controls and upgraded my weapons and armor past the basic gear. I have high hopes for this game as it really 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, how I could improve my character and see both what skills he was going to learn, and how cool he was going to look with new armor. What a great way to open the new year! Make sure to check out my channel for all of the latest current-generation high def game reviews, and check back in early January for a full review of Divinity 2: Ego Draconis!
