Divinity II: Ego Draconis Review

Well I hadn't really heard of Divinity II (or Divinity I for that matter), it seems it's another of these under the radar titles, and given this current climate for huge releases I'm sure there are quite a few.

This one particularly piqued my interest as it is a 3rd person fantasy based RPG, It seemed very much in the same category as Dragon Age: Origins even down to the 360 HUD. However after playing this, comparing it to Dragon Age is just downright sacrilege. It is a pale imitation if anything, and offers no merits or originality for this genre.

The game starts you off as a pupil desiring to be a dragonslayer, you visit a town but in order to become a slayer you conveniently loose all your memory of fighting, It's been done in games before, it's nothing but a contrived mechanic for explaining the level-up process and class decisions, however it felt like nothing more in this game.

Now the reason this game piqued my interest was the plot and visual style, a fine mix of Dungeons and Dragons character stylings mixed with some final fantasy-esque architecture all set in a world of killing dragons. Despite this, visually (at least on the 360) is looks unfinished. It uses the Gamebryo engine as seen in Oblivion and Fallout 3, but you wouldn't believe it, the models are jagged, and the character animations flawed, the mobs seen in this game seem to be missing frames of animations even down to the simple rabbit critters seen throughout. Though this was almost a dealbreaker for me, I decided to persevere, to see what the combat system had to offer. Not much. At the start of the game you are armed only with a few skills with heart-wrenchingly long cooldowns, the battles themselves are clunky and poorly implemented with terrible targeting and a sense of non-involvement. All of which has made me decide to dump this one, part of me wished to dismiss these aesthetic and technical flaws and delve further into the plot, but it would have to be some EPIC plot to keep me trudging through defective graphics and gameplay. the other (more rational) part of me is aware that that plot will probably be as lazy as the rest of the game's implementation.

I see no reason to ever play this game when Dragon Age does pretty much everything better, It may appeal to those who have played Divinity I, but I am yet to meet someone who has.

This is probably one to miss, and yet again proves that there is a reason games go "under the radar"!

Love and HUDs

Richie X