Divinity 2 Ego Draconis (Xbox 360) – Review
Divinity 2 Ego Draconis is a sequel to the Divinity role playing games that appeared on the pc. You take control of your customizable player character at the cusp of a ritual that makes you a dragon slayer. After a few tutorial missions that introduce the combat system, you are let loose on a world filled with dragons, goblins, skeletons and many other standard role playing game enemies.
The game is broken down into the main quest and familiar side quests. In most role playing games, the side quests are there to add flavor or to lengthen a games playtime, in Divinity 2 these optional quests are essential to help level your character enough to be able to complete main missions. Divinity 2 is not an easy game, and does not hold your hand. If you mistakenly try to tackle a main story mission under leveled, you will pay dearly for that mistake. The enemy AI is ruthless and brutal when it is working properly.
Throughout the course of Divinity 2, you will customize your character to your liking. You start with the standard Warrior, Archer, and Mage builds, but as you level up your free to spend points in any of the disciplines to create a truly unique and personalized experience. You will learn many standard skills such as lock picking and basic spells, but some of the more intriguing nuances set this game apart from many others. You can spend hard earned experience points to read NPC’s minds. Sometimes it’s a waste and will net useless random thoughts of the characters inhabiting the world, but other times it may grant you information helpful to completing missions and quests or lead you down paths that you would have otherwise missed. You also get the ability to transform yourself into a dragon and unleash a rain of fire down on your foes as you fly above the battlefield, and you will obtain your own personal tower, that acts as you hub, where you can send minions out to scour the countryside for supplies and riches.
The presentation of the game is mixed bag, it runs on the same engine that powered Oblivion and Fallout 3, and when your standing still the game does look quite nice, however some things don’t look right in motion and the game at the time of release does have some technical flaws with slowdown, pop ins and jarring transition animations. Installing the game to the xbox 360 hard drive alleviates some of these issues, and reduces some load times, which in some spots are quite lengthy. The game is almost all fully voiced, and the voice acting is done surprisingly well. The worst flaws however need to be fixed with a patch. During my experience, i encountered enemy AI that would stand in place and not move as i attacked them, enemies that would chase me and rubber band back to where they started, missing items upon reloading save files, and the occasional instant death upon reloading. None of these were game breaking as most of the biggest flaws didn’t impede progress, they were just frustrating. Hopefully a patch will be forthcoming to fix these bugs.
If your looking for an interesting western style open world rpg, you will find alot to like in Divinity 2 Ego Draconis. It does not revolutionize the genre, but it does breathe some fresh air into the fantasy rpg scene. I give Divinity 2 a solid 7.0
Developer: Larian Studios
Publisher: CDV Software
MSRP: $59.99
ESRB Rating: M
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