I bought this game a week before it hit store shelves so I've had time to play it enough to know what I'm talking about. The graphics are done really well, the environements are outstanding, character design is good the only downfall I noticed with the graphics is facial expressions are very plain and lifeless.There is alot of adventuring to keep you busy for hours,plenty of side quests along with a good main plot. Eventually in the game you will gain the ability to summon and take control of dragons. There are some things that bug me about the game and one of the is the cross hair mechanics, you guide this little circle around to people you want to talk to, or search boxes and such and press the LB button.That gets annoying sometimes because people move around alot and it is sometimes frustrating to pin point them and most things you search are so close together that you miss alot of stuff.The difficulty could be a problem for some people to, beware of large groups of enemies, save often because nothing is more annoying then dying 2-3 hours into the game and having to start over from your last save.Besides the little problems I've had with the game are nothing compared to the fun I've had adventuring through what I've noticed to be a very large, adventerous game and if you are looking for a good rpg than ignore the bad reviews and get this game.

• from

The controls are awkward and there are a whole bunch of small bugs, and some larger ones around loading saved games. Fortunately, you get used to the controls after 2-3 hours and the intro quests, and I managed to get around the game load issues by deleting my saves and re-saving rather than over-writing. Once you get past these issues, there is a vast amount of content with a rich story line and vibrant world to explore. I was surprised at just how engrossed I became especially because, at the beginning, it really seemed like this game was going to be a dud. There's also a bit of a steep difficulty curve, but if you approach it as a bit of a strategy as well as an action hack 'n slash, using the pause button to target and plan as the manual indicates, and the difficulty is not only manageable but a large part of what made the game so engaging for me-- It wasn't just mindless button mashing to the goal. Because of all of this, I'm rating this game 5 stars, for the experience I had, even if the packaging wasn't flawless.

• from

This could have been a really great game, but it was rushed out to market and has some problems.

The graphics on this game are pretty sub-par and are, frankly, a disappointment on a system that is as capable as the Xbox 360. The textures are blocky and low resolution. You can easily tell that things such as trees are rendered as flat pictures when you are flying as a dragon, as you can look down on them and see that they have no depth. The trees will actually rotate with you and look like a piece of paper instead of a tree.

There are some graphical stuttering issues, as well as screen tearing issues. The cut scenes stutter and, at times, blink as they play.

Graphics: 4/10

There is a pretty serious bug with the game save system. You can save your game, play for an hour or so and then save over the previous game... if you get killed, your game will load at the previous location (not where you saved it) about 60 - 70% of the time. You will still have whatever you had at the second save and your progress will be saved, but you will start wherever you saved the time before. There is also an issue where you will get killed, reload the game, and then load to a red screen that freezes, making you have to quit the game and restart.

Save system: 1/10

The interaction system is flawed as well and it is difficult to talk to people, as you have to get right on them and click on them while they are walking away from you. It is also difficult to search chests, crates, and barrels because the system doesn't work well.

Interaction: 4/10

The game play is fun and there are some really good ideas at play. This game is recommended for fans of Oblivion and Dragon Age, as it shares a lot of the same ground as those much better games.

Now for the good things:

The inventory system is wonderful, as you can send items to your battle tower from the field, so you don't have to continually sell things or destroy them. What's even better about this is the fact that items in your chest are still available for your alchemist and enchanter, so you don't have to carry tons of stuff around in order to be able to enchant or make potions.

Inventory system: 10/10

Being a dragon is a lot of fun, but I have one problem with it. It appears that you cannot attack people on the ground with your dragon. I have tried this many times and I cannot get it to work. People on the ground will either disappear when you turn into a dragon, or they will be able to attack you while you can't attack them. Beyond that, being a dragon is good fun and the controls are pretty straight forward and easy. There are a decent number of good skills your dragon can use and it is pretty satisfying overall. It is, however, sometimes hard to get your character to turn into a dragon, as it does so slowly and it is a bit clumsy.

Being a dragon: 8/10

The standard RPG walking around stuff is, well, pretty standard. You walk around and look for enemies like all other RPGs. The enemies are sometimes difficult and you have to figure out strategies for attack and can't just run in and swing your sword. The mix of hack-and-slash action and magic is really good, but there is a delay between magic and physical attacks that makes battle a little clumsy at times. With this said, there are a great number of magic and battle skills available and it is VERY comprehensive. There is also an amazing array of weapons and armor and plentiful charms and enchantments to apply to them. You can create some very serious stuff pretty easily.

You can map attacks, spells, potions, etc. to the D-pad and the A, B, X, and Y buttons on your controller at will by pressing and holding the button or direction you want to assign something to and then choosing what you want. It is a nice system.

Combat: 8/10

Magic options: 9/10

Attack options: 8.5/10

This game would be an 8/10 if there weren't serious bugs, but it is a 6/10 as it stands. I would recommend waiting for a patch for this game before buying it.

• from

I can honestly say that I enjoyed this game more than Dragon Age: Origins. Though, to be fair, BioWare set the bar way too high by claiming that DAO was the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. The game definitely has the unique feeling that Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity had. However, the transition from 2D isometric to 3D is a disappointment, as I absolutely love of isometric RPGs -- particularly the "fog of war" (unexplored areas are completely black), that rewards exploration.

The framerate on the 360 version is not the greatest, but it does not detract from the playability of the game at all. This is in sharp contrast with Neverwinter Nights 2, which is painfully slow regardless how fast your computer is.

Controls cannot be remapped, but the default button configuration becomes intuitive after the first couple of hours. Of particular interest is the ability to pause the game while you select your target, which is very much needed when playing with a game controller instead of keyboard / mouse. What is more, you can setup a "tactical pause," much like the auto-pause feature in Baldur's Gate, that will pause the game when your health reaches a certain threshold and allow you to quaff a potion, regroup, etc...

The difficulty in the beginning of the game is worth mentioning... you absolutely must do side-quests in the beginning to be strong enough to progress the main storyline, even with the difficulty set to "low." If you purchase one of the armor sets on the 360 Marketplace, that will also help tremendously - look up the stats on the net and find the set that best suits your character's desired stats.

Although not as good as Divine Divinity, this definitely has more depth to it than your run-of-the-mill WRPGs these days. Admittedly, I jumped ship and no longer play new RPGs on the PC platform (because I stopped pouring money into upgrading my computer about 4 years ago), and this decision limits my choice of WRPGs and user-created content. But as far as Xbox 360 WRPGs w/ first-party content only, this one is a gem.

In short, this is a severely underrated game. I can only assume that people who do not enjoy this game have not given the game enough time... The beginning of the game, and various other parts are extremely difficult and frustrating, but if you press on, there is a very good game to be had.

• from

I should say I didn't play it before it was patched. I did not encounter any bugs. Gameplay is addictive, though a leveling system requires some thinking. The same game may be hard as hell or easy as in a God Mod (with not too much in between) depending on your build.

Being a dragon is FUN!!! I just love burning all these little obnoxious balistas and towers!

The ending was a bit of a surprise, but fear not, an add-on, Divinity 2 Flames of vengeance is coming soon, where we will continue a story of a dragon knight (about 20 more hours, whicn will make it 60 hours total) and kick asses of all bad guys. The add-on will improve graphics, they totally overhauled an engine. A big patch will be available as well if you do not feel like buying an add-on.

• from

I'm not going to say that this is the best game I have ever played, it's not. What it is, however, is a game that's a lot of fun to play, has a HUGE storyline and can get you hooked if you like RPG games. It has a good storyline, lots of goals to reach and some neat weapons.

Now for the bad parts. First, the "movie sequences" can get a bit long and there is no way to skip them. Secondly, there are quite a few "quirks" in the game that can get annoying after a while, maybe should have beta tested it to find all of them before releasing. Last of all, with todays games being so visually amazing with graphics that astound, this game is a bit of a step backwards in that category. The graphics aren't bad at all, just not up to what Ive come to expect nowadays.

Great game overall. It's worth a try at least!

• from

Divinity 2 is a lower budget RPG on the xbox 360 & PC and it definitely show's visually & performance wise... but tech issues aside this is a great game. You have to put a few hours into it, be patient as there are several character evolutions resulting in fresh new gameplay as the journey progresses. This game just gets better & better as you go.

The quests are fun and have a devious sense of humor, this is an RPG that doesn't take itself all that seriously. Divinity 2 is sort of like watching Commando (arnold 80's movie). The production & acting is bad in "Commando" as well but it's just great fun to watch, that's the best way to describe Divinity 2.

Highlights would be the combat & humor. Combat's always fun and if you pay enough attention to the books and dialogue you'll run into many interesting situations that will have you chuckling.

However this game isn't for everyone, but if you love western RPG's and can tolerate 20 FPS gameplay you can't go wrong with Divinity 2. The PC version may perform better but i've been playing the 360 version and enjoying every minute of it.

• from

I loved Divine Divinity. I liked its quasi-sequel Beyond Divinity. I am indifferent about Divinity II.

If you can get past the horrendous framerate, the muddy textures and blocky geometry, there is a deep game beneath that obviously received a large amount of love from its developers.

The Good:

Many interesting game mechanics which relieve some of the aggravations of most RPGs. Nice inventory.

The Bad:

Probably the worst translation of an Xbox 360 release this side of Sacred 2. It's clear it was a cursory translation on which no time was spent to transfer the emotions and intent of the original text. I can't stress enough just how bad it is, especially playing it after well-written games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. If you only play JRPGs you probably won't notice, but people who play RPGs for adults definitely will.

The Ugly:

Like I said above, the graphics are below average. The voice acting is dull, with the actors putting inflections and emphasis on all the wrong words. The VA director must not have been well acquainted with English.

But even with all its flaws, it can be a fun stepping stone game until much better RPGs are released later in the year. It'll never be a classic and it will certainly never rate above its predecessors.

• from

Divinity 2 is a free roaming "do anything you want" kind of rpg, the likes of Oblivion, for example. It's a fairly decently sized world to explore, tough enemies to fight, and tons of loot to gain. Let's not forget about the leveling up and unlocking cool new skills and spells.

With that said, let's take a look at some of the pro's and cons.

The Pro's

Adventuring in Divinity 2 is fun. There's danger or surprise around every corner. There's tons, and I mean tons of secrets to be found. In the starting village alone, there's secret tunnels, keys, chests, etc that if you aren't really looking for, you wont find. This really benefits the curious and adventurous player who wont want to miss anything.

Combat is great. The battles go smoothly, the spell animations work well, while not being overly dramatic. The melee combat aspect is done just as well also.

Character development is done a LOT better here than in games such as Oblivion. The skills/spells list is set up very nicely and there's no class system, so you can build a warrior type character, with let's say, a few priest spells such as healing for example, and you have yourself a paladin. This mix and match system let's you customize a unique character with skills and abilities you want.

CONS

The framerate is bad. I wont lie to you. I'd say it's about 20 FPS pretty much everywhere. The only upside is it doesn't get any worse during combat or anything.

There are some bugs. Sometimes loading a saved game will actually load a game you had saved the day before. While this doesn't happen every time, it does happen I'd say about 30% of the time.

The story while being unique, and deep, is short. The main plot and game only takes about 40 hours or so. With that said, there's still another 40-50 hours in adventuring and finding loot, so it does make up for it.

The difficulty level is messed up bad. The enemies are always going to be higher than you, and even the weakest looking skeleton can and WILL kill you in a matter of seconds if you aren't really prepared. Even on easy, you never know when some super beast freak will one hit you out of nowhere. So *always* watch yourself, no matter where you are. It's VERY unbalanced.

The graphic quality as a whole is sub-par and reminds me of PS2. With that said, I still personally like the graphics style and for me, graphics don't mean crap anyways. I only mention it because there's a lot of shallow gamers out there who are all about the best graphics.

CONCLUSION

In the end, Divinity 2 seems a little like an unfinished product. Like the devs ran out of time and had to ship it early. It has it's flaws, and it's bugs, more so than it should have, but if you can look past that, and handle a rough framerate, this free roaming rpg is a blast to play and the world is amazing to explore.

I'd recommend it to anybody who's played and enjoyed games like Oblivion, Sacred 2, the Fable series, or Dragon Age. Just keep in mind, you have to be a forgiving gamer because for some, the flaws WILL outweigh the good. Luckily for me, they didn't and my 60+ hours spent was full of enjoyment, adventuring, looting, and slaying. 30 dollars WELL spent.

• from

This game has a lot of potential. However, it lacks a decent combat system. I found myself having to complete 7 to 10 side quests to level up appropriately in order to begin the sequence when the player acquires the Battle Tower. I found the enemies in the game to be frequently at higher levels than my main character and very numerous. In most role playing games there are groups of enemies in pockets of the game; however, in most role playing games you will have one or more party members to aid in your battles. In this game, you are alone and rely on your own attributes and skills which do not come in large quantities when leveling up. Honestly, this game would be great but it requires a lot of patience.

• from

Divinity 2 follows the newest generic adventurer taking up the mantle of Dragon Slayer. After the last Dragon Knight is slain by your coterie, you're tasked by a rogue wizard to stop Damian of the Black Ring. The storyline itself is a rather nice plot line involving a healthy dose of misdirection and how easily past history is rewritten.

The graphics are bizarre. While they aren't bad per se, some portions were so poorly thought out and implemented that you can't help but laugh when you see them. Doors are all ten feet tall, and some of the dressers and chests are the size of small houses, making you feel like you've wandered onto a partial set of Alice in Wonderland.

Audio is pretty good. Many of the characters are voiced, and voiced well, but between the scottish and irish accents, there's precious little in the way of original sounding characters. In addition, many appear to have some form of tourette's syndrome, and gesticulate wildly during normal conversation

Gameplay is fairly standard and straightforward. Four normal classes, melee, ranged and magic (offensive and defensive/summoing) all have effective compliments, but a majority of the time you'll find yourself playing melee, since you start with precious little mana. Difficulty does vary wildly, and youhave to be very preceptive to avoid wandering into a region with mobs twice your level and slain in 2-3 hits. Side quests are the standard compliment of find this, kill that, or talk to him. Between a few morality issue quests and some that deal with the perception of the universally hated Dragon Knights, there are some that have a nice philosophical ring to them. Additionally, if you find yourself bored with a quest and wanting to complete it as expidiently as possible, you can simply mind read your target and been done with in minutes, though this costs a sizable chunk of XP. This ability does have some long term benefit, but unfortuanetly, the appropriate targets may as well have glowing signs above their heads, so you'll just find yourself saving prior to use to see if theres any benefit.

Nits abound. Levers, buttons, and other interactable items are well disguised as part of the environment. Barrels, baskets, and virtually every other container has to be looked at directly to see if any contain items, meaning you have a rather frustrating scan to do if you're treasure hunting. Doors require keys, but carrying multiple keys, you don't have any indication whether you might have the key for the door, and said keys are almost 2D, laying so flat on tables taht you can't spot them without looking from directly overhead. Some quest battles are well above your level, forcing you to mob and side quest to be able to advance, and some random mobs will butcher you like a piece of meat. Icons above targets you should talk to are almost invisible, making quest NPC's blend in with the crowd, and many wander, leaving you to search throguh town. Autosaves are seemingly random, and you'll assuming there was one and find yourself sadly mistaken.

While some of the features, namely the mindreading are neat, most of the side quests and sub plots feel generic and overly done, and many add-ons feel almost vestigial. The Dragon form you eventually receive is a nice deviation from the norm, and a pleasant break in the grinding that somewhat plagues the beginning of the game. Rent first, as the gameplay is fun and difficult without being murderous, but it can't help but feel like a copy of a copy of Dragon Age.

• from

Why should you BUY Ego Draconis? If you're a fan of old-style RPGs with lots of quests (many with multiple solutions) and the absolute minimum amount of assistance when it comes to solving quests/puzzles, you'll have a ton of fun. Very early in the game, your character gains the ability to read minds, which provides insight into people's motivations and can alter the outcomes of various quests. And if you like games with a high level of difficulty, run out and buy Ego Draconis immediately! Even on the "Easy" difficulty level, you'll be dying quite a bit. Enemies do NOT level with you, and walking into a fight with enemies even a few levels above yours is guaranteed to end badly for you. The game also has a lot to offer people who enjoy thoroughly exploring every map/dungeon in their games. Ego Draconis offers many rewards to those who take the time to explore every nook and cranny.

Why should you RENT Ego Draconis? Well, how high is your tolerance for bugs and glitches? Because Ego Draconis has quite a few--Larian really should've spent a few more months polishing the game before they released it. I haven't encountered any that were game-breakingly bad, but even minor glitches can get annoying when there's enough of them. There are also a very limited number of areas in the game to travel between, and while the game offers different ways of resolving the quests you take on, there don't seem to be any significant consequences for the decisions you make. Which means that, at least for me, the game doesn't have a lot of replay value.

Why should you AVOID Ego Draconis? The main concept that the game is centered around is that your character can turn into a dragon, and I was pretty excited about that concept--it made the game a must-buy for me. But there are several things about it that I found very disappointing. For one thing, you won't get to turn into a dragon until you've put in a lot of time with the game--it took me just over ten hours to reach that point. Once you can transform, you'll find that your dragon is hemmed in by invisible walls and barriers that limit your freedom of movement. And the game also dictates which enemies you're allowed to attack while you're a dragon. I never experienced the sense of freedom and power that I expected to enjoy while playing as a dragon. To sum up: Ego Draconis is a decent game based on some interesting concepts which could've made it an amazing game...if they had been fully developed.

• from

I waited on this game because of the lackluster reviews, but then it went on sale and picked it up. Wow -- it is actually a great game, BUT with several cautions about what I am mean by "great game:"

1. The game is better looking than some suggest -- there's real time lighting on everything and relatively large levels to explore. Unlike Fallout there's good use of different color in the various areas. Spell effects are totally generic though. Framerate is solid but looks to be around 20 frames per second on the 360 version. The textures are not as blurry as some suggested -- when you consider the size of the levels, I think the levels look pretty great.

2. The game relies on real time combat with cooldown timers on your special abilities. Enemies almost always attack in groups and will try to surround you. You are either gonna love that or hate it. It takes some getting used and the game throws you into hard quick-death action after the initial village. You _must_ jump to avoid long range enemy attacks or you will die many deaths. You can move behind objects to avoid attacks too. Potions are easy to come by and can be keyed to a quick button for easy use. I suspect this is where the poor reviews came in: some folks including professional game reviewers died a hundred deaths in front of the mage tower very early in the game and decided the game was "too hard."

3. Level design is much better than I expected to be. There are large outdoor areas that were obviously carefully crafted by the designers. Interior dungeons offer a nice change of pace from the above ground areas. There are no cookie cutter dungeons like we had over and over in Oblivion.

4. But it is not a perfect RPG. The designers offer 3 different classes and over 3 dozen special abilities. That sounds great but a good half of those special abilities are of questionable usefulness. There are obviously "better" skills to pick. In the first Divinity PC game you could imbue your weapons with all kinds of different effects and different enemies had different weaknesses to things. Here for example there is poison but no freezing. Mage powers are all basically variations on fireballs. The designers simplified the skill tree and it hurts both the game's replay value and its RPG-goodness. There are 3 classes but the game heavily favors melee combat since you are so frequently surrounded by enemies using melee attacks. You can choose to be invisible or deflect attacks later in the game, but melee attacks are so frequent your poor ranger is a MUCH harder character to play than a sword user, especially in the early and mid-game when you have access to few skills.

5. There are some interesting choices for quests along the way and the game often shows a wacky sense of humor if you bother to read the various books you find in your travels. You can to a limited degree play "evil" or "good," but the choices arent all that dramatic either.

6. Like Diablo 2, there's lots of weapons and equipment and its all randomly generated with different skill boost qualities. Some items are rare and so on. But there again, it is all too simplified. Most of these item qualities simply enhance the skills sets mentioned in #4. There are stones you can set on your equipment to add abilities but like everything else it, the abilities are not all that interesting or diverse.

As much as I wanted to love the recent game Dragon Wars, I actually liked Divinity 2 better over all. I enjoyed the large world that one can explore. For all of Divinity 2's flaws, it offered a real challenge that made me think before I walked into a battle (Dragon Age was a total 100% cake-walk). With Dragon Age, you are basically hand-held thru fairly linear levels and I was bored at the 20 hour mark. Divinity is easily a 3 star game, and possibly 4 stars if you like harder RPG games that you typically find on a PC. Some folks talk about bugs but I never encountered one.

When will someone make a real sequel to Baldur's Gate 2? All of these recent RPG's pale in comparison to that older PC game.

• from

OK FIRST THING FIRST. this game is hard. really hard. like 'get hit 3 times and you're dead' hard.

not only that but the enemies seem to always be 6 or 8 levels above you.

combat is ok. you can have 2 weapons and can use magic. but most of the fighting is melee and most of the times you'll die after a few hits. plus you get swarmed easily.

the magic is substandard. most of the spells work but that artwork and effects for them are uninspired and look bland.

enemies will bubble out of the ground like water so you're always having to be on the look out for what's around the corner or behind you.

the whole 'turning into a dragon at the push of a button' bit is kind of neat. and it adds a different level of game play.

but over all this game is not worth the money.

• from

Unless the company created a patch you are unable to overwrite saves. Horrible glitch. My system locked-up during intense battles. Very big disappoint. The game had potential, but the glitches destroy any fun or potential this game ever had.

• from