I love gaming, I always have and I always will I think. I can remember way back when I was a kid enjoying playing games, and now that I’m an adult I still enjoy it quite a bit. My favorite types of games have to first person shooters, real time strategy and role playing games, and not necessarily in that order either. I game because it gets me away from everything, away from the rigors of daily life. It allows me to go visit some planet somewhere, or live a fantasy life, it’s an escape that many people have come to love. As far as role playing games are concerned though, I only like a certain type, the type that lets you actually be involved in the game, I don’t care much for the ones that you get to sit back and watch the battles, I want to be involved.

Today for review I’m looking at a game that isn’t going to be released until next year, sounds like a long way off but it isn’t really. January 5th is the release date of Divinity II: Ego Draconis for both PC and Xbox360 and I got the PC version a few weeks before that date so I could bring you a review or preview of it. I’ve got tons of screenshots for you along with a video as well from my time playing the game. Divinity II Ego Draconis will offer you hours and hours of play even if you just play it right through without doing any of the side quests. The graphics are beautiful, and game play is fun and exhilarating, especially as you fly around in your dragon form. So continue on to learn more…

Just so it’s clear, the preview build I received is 90% complete, but I could still complete that game. I found no real issues with this build, it seemed finished to me aside from maybe a couple graphical glitches here and there.

When you start the game you’re actually a dragon slayer, as you progress you will become a full dragon knight and there’s a whole back story behind all of that as well with accompanying cinematics to help the story unfold. It’s not until quite a bit into the game that you get to play as a dragon actually. As with any RPG you start out weak and without much in terms of weapons and armor. You’ll need to fight and earn experience and money to move up in levels and buy what you need. You’ll also find things sometimes on the dead bodies of your slain enemies, and you may find treasure chests, boxes and barrels that may contain money or other items of interest.

The main menu is rather plain with minimal options for load, save, credits, exit, continue, new game and options.

I played Divinity II at 1920×1080 resolution through my Vizio 47” HDTV over HDMI with most all settings on high. I’m using a slightly overclocked Intel C2Q9650 along with an ATI Radeon 4870 1gig video card. The majority of the game played very smoothly, with some issues with slowdowns only when I was in dragon form and lots of other dragons and arrows were flying around the screen, but it was only for a second or so.

The other options are for controls, brightness, sounds and gameplay.

Specifications:

Divinity II Ego Draconis

Divinity II – Ego Draconis brings you back to Rivellon, a timeless world of awe and magic, torn and scarred by successions of apocalyptic wars. Ever since the Great War ended, the Order of the Dragon Slayers has had eyes only for their number one enemy: the Dragon Knights who killed their Divine hero.

But all the while the true enemy  the Black Ring still festers beneath the surface, ready for its next move, poised to strike. For their leader Damian tirelessly plots silent schemes with utterly malign intent.

Then one day, an event takes place that will reshape the history of Rivellon: a dying Dragon Knight gives her powers to a member of the order that seeks to destroy her: you.

Perhaps you, blessed as you are with the powers of the Dragon, will be able to stop the black tides that threaten to engulf Rivellon. Many adventures await you, many mysteries yearn to be unravelled and all the world awaits the outcome of your new destiny.

Divinity 2: Ego Draconis brings you back to Rivellon, a timeless world of awe and magic, torn and scarred by successions of apocalyptic wars. What the peace-loving people of the land did to deserve such terrible calamity, not even the gods can tell, but as any of their warlords will snidely say, the time to wonder and question quickly vanishes when the Lord of Chaos is slaughtering your kin, burning your cities and sowing the onetime fertile soil with salt. Twice this incarnation of evil burst forth from its hellish dimension to wade in valiant blood against the blackened sky, and twice Rivellon?s defenders would not back down despite appalling losses. Still, victory brought no relief, for they knew that some day, the Demon would be back.

And back he’d be, sooner than anyone could have anticipated, because, as is so often the case, evil festered from within: humans, loyal to the Damned Hordes, sought not only to ensure the return of their dark master, but to give his Demonic form human semblance, so that rather than to destroy Rivellon, he would come to rule her. This group, known as the Black Ring, were close to achieving their goal and would doubtless have succeeded had it not been for both the tireless vigilance of the famed wizard Zandalor and the startling fate of an unsung adventurer named Lucian. This adventurer, guided as he was by the forces of good, exposed the Black Ring’s sinister schemes and when the time came willingly underwent a daring ritual that infused him with the powers of the gods. So the Divine was born.

Leaving but grim corpses in his wake, the avatar of light followed the enemy to its stronghold, nestled deep beneath the desert wastes of Yuthul Gor, where he stalked and killed every Black Ring elder until finally he and their diabolic leader, the Demon of Lies, stood snout to face. The fiend smiled and told the Divine he was too late: the transfer was complete and the Lord of Chaos would walk again. Indeed, behind him, on a large altar lay a newborn infant, a shell of innocence wrapped around a soul of utter corruption. The Divine’s sword saw the Demon dead, but despite being able to put an end to the vast plague that had almost brought Rivellon to her knees, he could not bring himself to kill the child.

So I mentioned about the graphical glitches early on, well I’m not sure if this is one or it’s just part of the game, but I noticed that in some parts of the game you can’t be a dragon and fly along burning the trolls, imps etc. The first doesn’t affect them at all it seems, but other times it does. One of the glitches that I ran across was you could fly through some things, and other times things might just appear in front of you, so only time will tell if these things get fixed for the final version. Overall though the game feels and looks basically complete.

One thing that bugs me about this game though is that you can’t free fly, you’re a dragon after all so why can’t I fly over that mountain? There’s an invisible ceiling that you’ll hit if you fly to high up. You’ll also run into semi-transparent barriers as well, some are clear that you just can’t go through as a dragon or a man, and some have a reddish tint that indicate dragon-free zones. If you try and fly into one of these zones you’ll die if you’re a dragon, but as a human you can walk through the barrier unscathed.

As a dragon you’ve got the standard ability to breathe fire and a few magic spells also.

You also have essentially the same inventory while you’re in your dragon form, and you can equip yourself with special dragon armor also.

One thing I do appreciate about this game is that when you change any armor your character will change as well, both the dragon and the human will change to wear the new armor.

The user interface during game play is minimal and it sits at the bottom of the screen. There are spots for spells so you can have them ready to cast in both dragon and human form. The interface also shows your hit points and spell points in the form of both a bar and numerical.

The other interface is the main one which also pauses the game. There are tabs in the interface for Hero, Skills, Logbook, Save, Load and World Map.

The Hero has several other tabs for weapons, armor, jewelry, consumables, quest items and treasures.

Under the Logbook tab you’ll find several more tabs for History of Conversations, Quests, Monsters encountered and achievements.

If you look at the last screen of achievements you’ll see I finished the game, it took a long time, and I’m not going to spoil anything for you, but it was a lot of fun to play.

The World Map tab is not only the world map, it will also show if you’re in a dungeon or other areas as well. The map can point out areas of interest like Quest related destinations, and other points of interest.

The graphics are beautiful in Divinity II Ego Draconis. You’ll be able to see far distances and when you get close up to things they still look very good. Here’s a bunch of screenshots at different angles, inside and outside, close up and far away. I mentioned I’ve got an Intel C2Q 9650 and an ATI Radeon 4870 1gig video card, it was able to handle everything fairly well with the settings on high and everything looked very nice. I’ve also got 4 gigs a ram in my system and I am running Windows 7, the motherboard is a P35 based Gigabyte brand one.

You’ll be doing a lot of fighting in Divinity II, what would an RPG be without fighting right? This is one of the parts of this game that I love, you’re actually involved in the fighting. You press the mouse button and your character will do something like swing the sword or shoot his bow. You’ll also be able to do special moves and combos as well to do high amounts of damage to your foes. You could also just hit them with a fireball or two if you don’t want to get your hands dirty. You’ll run across well over 100 different creatures to fight in Divinity II and the majority of them will be using magic so you’ll need to make sure you’re prepared.

While being the dragon, Divinity II does have the motion blur effect while you’re moving, it’s kind of annoying really, at least I think it is. The view is amazing though and well worth it, there’s nothing like flying fast through canyons and shooting fire at your enemies.

Another thing that bugs me about this game are the quests, there are many times that you’ll really have no clue as to what you need to do next, there’s just not enough information provided at times in the game.

Part of that gripe pertains to the walls seen earlier, you’ve got to get to the place on the other side but you’ve got no clue as to how to get there. You’ll find teleporters though that you can use to get certain places. Some of these teleporters can be set and some are stuck going to only one place so you’ll need to kind of work your way around to get to your intended destination and some just specifically go one way. This also goes back to the being a dragon part of it, you can see those barriers but yet you can’t fly over them?! You’re a powerful dragon that can cast spells and spit fire but yet you can’t fly very high.

Once you progress farther in the game you’ll gain control of the Battletower. This is your sanctuary, here you can upgrade your character, create potions, upgrade or spell your weapons and even create your very own creatures to fight along side of your in battle. While you’re playing Divinity II some creatures will drop body parts, be them their own or own of one that they may have just had, either way you’ll get it and you can use it for your own creature creation.

One of the great features of Divinity II is the fact that the game is classless, so you’re not limited to only one class. You can actually combine the powers and abilities of all of the classes to be the strongest hero, mage, priest, warrior ever seen.

In Divinity II you also have the ability to mind read the non-player characters. When you mind read though you pay for the ability to use it through experience points, in other is will cost X amount of experience points to mind read characters. It’s an interesting feature that adds a different dimension to the game.

While playing Divinity II you can play through the main quest, but there are many other side quests as well to accomplish that will even add more game play time to the game. Side quests are different from other games, you can fail them or just refuse them and something might happen.

The non-player characters in the game are nicely done, the cinematics are beautiful actually. While in game and conversing with the NPCs you’ll you a text box at the bottom of the screen, there may be several choices to pick from for your responses and you can easily spend several minutes chatting with some of them.

To finish this all off here’s a video of me playing as the dragon:

A week or so ago I also posted several videos, trailers and concept art that CDV sent along. You can find them HERE if you wish to.

Conclusion:

Divinity II Ego Draconis is a great game really, I thoroughly enjoyed playing it from start to finish. In fact I’m thinking about going back and playing it again just to do complete all of the side quests. If you’re a fan of dragons and RPG games then you’ll want to add this to your list of must-have games in 2010, and you won’t have to wait long either, the release date is early January.

The graphics are beautiful, the acting is decent and the storyline is interesting, you’ll want to keep playing to see what happens next that’s for sure.

The issues I ran across are most like because the version I got wasn’t quite complete, so they shouldn’t be there in the final version. You will however require a fairly decent computer system if you wish to play Divinity II with all the bells and whistles turned on and in high definition.

Pros:
+Beautiful graphics
+Get to play as a dragon
+Long story
+Many quests with varying endings
+Classless system

Cons:
-Dragon flight is oddly limited
-Sometimes you’re left wondering what to do next
-You’ll need a fairly decent system to play the game at full quality and high resolution

Grades:
Overall
Design
Performance

This product was given to technogog for review by the company for review purposes only, and is not considered by us as payment for the review, we do not, and never will, accept payment from companies to review their products. To learn more about our review policy please visit this page HERE.