Review RPGWatch reviews Divinity 2

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Divinity 2; Larian Studios

Larian Studios Action RPG gets reviewed <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article?articleid=144&ref=0&id=67">over at the Watch.</a>
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<p style="margin-left:50px;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;border-top-color:#ffffff;padding:5px;border-right-color:#bbbbbb;border-left-color:#ffffff;border-bottom-color:#bbbbbb;">One of the most interesting and useful skills you learn is Mindreading. While using this skill will cost you experience points, it is frequently worth the cost. Often it will open up new quests or areas, it might get you better prices from merchants and it will sometimes give you extra skill points. The more experience it costs to use, the greater the eventual reward.
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While some quests had a few alternative options; using mindreading to discover a more diplomatic route as opposed to straight combat for example, the depth of choice comes nowhere near to that offered by Dragon Age, for example. As the final solutions tend to be roughly the same, other than trying different character builds there was little incentive to replay the game.
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Conclusion: Divinity fails to achieve the depth of choice Dragon Age set as a new standard.
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<p style="margin-left:50px;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;border-top-color:#ffffff;padding:5px;border-right-color:#bbbbbb;border-left-color:#ffffff;border-bottom-color:#bbbbbb;">I very much enjoyed Divinity 2, but I also have to say it didn't meet my hopes and expectations. After a few hours I truly loved the game, but after a few more the weaknesses started showing through. It is a solid story-driven action-RPG that is a worthy addition to any genre fan's library, but in a year that saw Drakensang, Dragon Age: Origins, Risen and the Mac release of Avernum 6, not to mention King's Bounty: Armored Princess, it is hard to push Divinity 2 above any of those games as a necessary purchase. For ardent fans of Divine Divinity, the return to the setting and characters along with the brilliant music might be enough to justify paying full price to play immediately, but for most folks I would recommend waiting for a good sale or a lull in the RPG onslaught to give this a shot.
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They rate it 3/5.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.rpgwatch.com/#14429">The home of the well mannered folks on the interwebs</A>

 

[Droog White Smile]

The second half of the game felt, to me, like playing Diablo 2 on Hell. I never finished it.

I'll probably give it another whirl once they release a few more patches, the game's pretty broken as is.

Anyway, it's a typical Euro RPG.

EDIT: You fucking retards, it's RPGs, not RPG's, NPCs, not NPC's. You don't use an apostrophe in plural acronyms. An apostrophe before an "s" indicates possession and nothing else. Get it right FFS.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

How did you build your character Drog that you had such difficulties? I distributed stat points fairly even, with STR (for shields) and INT (was a Mage mostly) slightly higher than the others. Also I had those spells/abilities at the end:
-explosive arrows (5)
-fireball (12)
-magic missile barrage(12)
-firewall (10)
- summon demon(2)
- Blind (3)
-regeneration (3)

Other than that I had lockpick maxed, and maybe a point here and there.
The problem is you're obliged to max your spell/abilities for them to be effective so you'll end up spamming the same stuff throughout the whole game and that's not very interesting.

 

[Elwro]

A sidenote about plural and apostrophes. ("I'm tired of his maybe's".) I'm still wondering why many people (or, in fact, music stores) write "CD's" in non-possessive contexts.

 

[Pseudofool]

Drakensang > Divinity 2 ??? Really?

 

[Merlutz]

Today I saw a "get your's now" sign about something. Masterful trolling their.

 

[DraQ]

Conclusion: Divinity fails to achieve the depth of choice Dragon Age set as a new standard.

Was it ever supposed to? It's pretty clearly a H'n'S, like Diablo 2, except that with more plot, more character interaction, and some C&C thrown in to spice the shit up. Oh, and dragon morphing. It still feels like a H'n'S, smells like H'n'S, looks like H'n'S and tastes like H'n'S, so I don't see any grounds for mistaking it for a full-blown aRPeeGee, even if in this day and age games like oblibian can get similarly mislabelled and Div2 bows OB out of the water in every possible aspect save for archery.

Also, unlike Diablo 2, Divinity 2 also happens to remain consistently atmospheric and entertaining, the last partially thanks to it's tongue-in-cheek attitude, the closest to which I have probably seen in Wizardry 8, though it's, of course, an entirely different kind of game. It's an idiotically high fantasy game, but entirely unashamed about it in a strangely charming way.

Sure, it could have been better - engine could use SOME optimization - yeah, I know it's bethsduh fault, weapons and misc decorations slightly less glowy bits, their designers less acid, dragon model and design could have used someone with faint modicum of skill doing it, combat spells/skills more variation and dragon combat some actual fun plus ability to fucking obliterate ground troops (hire the guys from Primal to design dragon spells next time - last time they could not come up with a good game to complement those; the guys from Surreal or any highly arcade flight sim team to do actual flight and combat mechanics), but overall a fun romp through imaginative and vibrant scenery.

It's not an instant classic, prefect, legendary, excellent, awesome or even very good game, but it's a thoroughly enjoyable H'n'S nevertheless.

Also, has entertaining dialogues despite being fully voice acted.

 

[Yeesh]

A sidenote about plural and apostrophes. ("I'm tired of his maybe's".) I'm still wondering why many people (or, in fact, music stores) write "CD's" in non-possessive contexts.

I'm actually surprised by the two posts to the effect that apostrophes are only for possessives. I don't know if English is like your 4th language or whatever, but any 9 year old can tell you that there are TWO very common uses for apostrophes, one being possessives and the other being contractions. Think of its v. it's.

So people who write CD's or NPC's are obviously not thinking in terms of possessives, what else could they be thinking of? That's right, contractions. I'm not a language scientist, but to most of us the apostrophe used in a contraction indicates the missing space between two words (which are being mushed together), or missing letters. When people write CD's or NPC's, they are trying to enunciate in text the demarcation (or 'space', if you will) between the letters that are abbreviations (CD and NPC) and the letter that's used in a completely different manner to indicate plurality (s).

To make this clear, watch.

United StateS of America: abbreviation is USA, or even US of A, but not USsA
Non-Player Character: abbreviation is NPC
Non-Player Characters: abbreviation is still fucking NPC

So when people write NPC's, they are trying to make clear that at the apostrophe, the abbreviation ends, and the final "s" indicates plurality. Otherwise, you might think they're using a different abbreviation, like PCS, CDS, SOS, POS, etc.

But of course you knew exactly what they meant, which if you think about it is they whole point. Now you know why they do it that way. Kind of obvious. Is it incorrect? Sure, but the internet is full of people who get every single possible thing wrong.

 

[Phelot]

Hey DraQ, seeing as how you're the resident dragon combat expert, what do you think of Drakan's dragon combat?

 

[DraQ]

Hey DraQ, seeing as how you're the resident dragon combat expert, what do you think of Drakan's dragon combat?

Could have been better, but I don't know of any game that did dragon combat better.

IoTD rocked with catching and devouring enemies as well as with it's vast array of WMD spells, but the movement was even more limited than in Divinity 2.

In Drakan you could make all the essential acrobatics and also land, while the combat with aerial targets wasn't limited to firing-and-forgetting homing fireballs.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I wonder if the M&B engine would be suitable for this. You'd have everything else already in game - you only need the dragon. And if it doesn't breath fire or lightning, it's only a model - except you need to make it fly

Ah, there's a mod, though it's still under work: http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/ ... 358.0.html

 

[podon]

apostrophes

I AM a "language scientist" (I have a Ph.D. in English) and everyone is right: apostrophes can be used for possessives (i.e., "the cat's pajamas), or used for contractions (i.e.," it's all right with me.") What they can't be used for is to indicate plurals: RPGs, or CDs, meant to indicate "Role Playing Games," or "Compact Discs." Both of these expressions are plurals, not contractions or possessives. Language is power; use it correctly. :D

 

[Shannow]

snip

Wow, such a long post and still the conclusion (and examples provided) are full fail.
I hope you're not a native speaker. Since Elwro is Polish (IIRC) that'd make you look even more ridiculous.

Jabbering on about contractions and then not even understanding what that means... *facepalm*

 

[Gragt]

What about this then?

 

[Shannow]

What about this then?

Could you be more specific? What do you want to know?

 

[DraQ]

IT'Z COMMING.

 

[Alex]

What about this then?

Well, I will be... I never knew about that rule! Is the plural in abbreviations mandatory, or is it optional?

Also, I can't believe this:

The usual plural of no is noes.