Review Dragon Knight Saga Review Bonanza

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Divinity 2; Larian Studios

<p>Larian Studio's <strong>Divinity 2 Enhanced Edition : The Dragon Knight Saga</strong> continues to gather favorable scores from reviewers. Since Larian isn't subjected to the BioWare/Bethesda +2 review bonus one can only assume that those reviewers genuinly liked the game or that Larian understood that sending booze and hookers to potential reviewers is always a good idea.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Nowgamer call it a <a href="http://xbox-360.nowgamer.com/reviews/xbox-360/9561/divinity-ii-the-dragon-knight-saga?o=0#listing" target="_blank">hardcore experience</a>, with 8.2 out of 10 hardcore points.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is what most would call a hardcore experience, but those with longer memories are going to fall back into its medieval rhythms as if they never left in the first place. It can&rsquo;t quite compete at the highest level, simply because of its slightly budget feel compared to the likes of Dragon Age, but if you&rsquo;re looking for something deeper and more challenging, if a little rough around the edges, there&rsquo;s simply no other hardcore RPG release in this half of 2010 which can touch it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jeuxpo experienced <a href="http://www.jeuxpo.com/xbox-360/game_test-9584.html" target="_blank"><em>une bonne surprise</em></a>, 8/10.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Divinity II : The Dragon Knight Saga est un tr&egrave;s bon jeu de r&ocirc;les. L'aventure est int&eacute;ressante &agrave; suivre, la r&eacute;alisation est globalement efficace, et le jeu offre un gameplay parfaitement r&eacute;gl&eacute;. Une bonne surprise.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Made 2 Game <a href="http://www.made2game.com/xbox-360/m2g-review-divinity-2-the-dragon-knight-saga/" target="_blank">discovered shortcomings</a> but still gained a lot from it, 8.5/10.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fantasy games of this nature are always going to be compared to Oblivion and whilst it has a good go at it, it just falls short of being masterful. The main problem is the pacing; the story is a little slow and takes a long time to start coming together. That said, give it time and you will get a lot from it.</p>
<p>Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga ticks all of the right boxes for a great fantasy action RPG but fails to pull through on a couple of crucial areas, however it is an entertaining game that will fill in the gap between Fallout New Vegas and Dragon Age 2.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.jeuxactu.com/article-48830-divinity-ii-the-dragon-knight-saga.html" target="_blank">Jeuxactu scores it 17/20</a>.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mygamer.com/index.php?page=gameportal&amp;mode=reviews&amp;id=555989&amp;platform=PC%20games" target="_blank">Mygamer announces</a> that <em>Divinity II is simply a great game</em>, 8.8/10.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Divinity II is simply a great game. While there might be some odd little shortfalls that pop up that keep it from the halls of true greatness, there really is just so much going for it in the way of immersive world and enjoyable gameplay that it is worth exploring. With the newest addition of Fable seemingly falling as flat as it did it is always good to know that there are other developers out there more than able to make the same type of game just as well. Simply writing this review has made me want to go back and play even more of the game.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Spotted at: <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com/#16209">RPGWatch</a></p>

 

[MicoSelva]

It can’t quite compete at the highest level, simply because of its slightly budget feel compared to the likes of Dragon Age

What, it doesn't feature full voice acting from tv celebrities? What exactly does 'slightly budget feel' mean?

 

[AlaCarcuss]

It can’t quite compete at the highest level, simply because of its slightly budget feel compared to the likes of Dragon Age

What, it doesn't feature full voice acting from tv celebrities? What exactly does 'slightly budget feel' mean?

Dunno about celebrities, but it is fully voiced - much of it not to bad either.

Don't know what the hell he means by 'budget feel compared to the likes of Dragon Age' either. Feels pretty polished to me and at least on par with DA.

It's a fun game, I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Can't really see the reason behind calling it a "hardcore" experience, but it's a p. nice arpg overall, yes.

 

[Achilles]

I assume by "budget feel" they mean it doesn't have Bioware's logo on the box.

 

[Texas Red]

What are the dungeons like? Is there are a lot of crawling and filler combat?

 

[Quilty]

These fucking reviews are getting worse by the day. It's just nonsensical stuff. What does this mean?

"Whilst on bad points, the save system is atrocious, there is an auto save but it is very sporadic and only happens on occasion, and when it does occur game will pause with an ugly grey autosave dialog box. Manual saving is not much better with you having to pause the action and select save from the menu."

So it's supposed to spam autosave all the time? What? I hate autosave, leave that to me.

EDIT:

"Not As Good As: Getting 360 achievements for playing it
Also Try: Fable 2"

Fuck off

 

[Cenobyte]

"Whilst on bad points, the save system is atrocious, there is an auto save but it is very sporadic and only happens on occasion, and when it does occur game will pause with an ugly grey autosave dialog box. Manual saving is not much better with you having to pause the action and select save from the menu."

I think someone should tell this reviewer that you can always use hotkeys to access the save game menu. You don't have to pause the game and then select the menu manually.

And the quick save is even more direct. Just hit the according hotkey and it saves. Not that difficult, eh?

 

[forgotmypasswordagain]

What exactly does 'slightly budget feel' mean?

It means there was no ludicrously overblown preview party to which the "gaming press" was invited to get drunk and ogle second-rate models in revealing cosplay outfits that would be completely impractical if worn in actual combat.

 

[godsend1989]

What exactly does 'slightly budget feel' mean?

It means there was no ludicrously overblown preview party to which the "gaming press" was invited to get drunk and ogle second-rate models in revealing cosplay outfits that would be completely impractical if worn in actual combat.

wtf ?

 

[forgotmypasswordagain]

englishe motherfornicater doth thou spake it

 

[Ruprekt]

My character in this game ended up looking like racofers avatar

 

[godsend1989]

My character in this game ended up looking like racofers avatard

Fixed

 

[DraQ]

It can’t quite compete at the highest level, simply because of its slightly budget feel compared to the likes of Dragon Age

What, it doesn't feature full voice acting from tv celebrities? What exactly does 'slightly budget feel' mean?

It probably means that it feels like it was made by people enjoying their work, rather than by a bunch of unwilling slaves to a clueless committee.

 

[treave]

Ironically, for something with a low-budget feel, the graphics certainly are far better than Dragon Age or Oblivion. One'd think that that's the first thing the reviewers would notice.

 

[Lesifoere]

...really? While there are many things to like in Div 2, graphics just aren't one of them IMO. Ever watched your character run? Yeah, that animation. Textures look pretty bad even on high setting, and in the distance I always see foliage/trees flicker on and off (yay speedtrees). DA looks shitty yes, but Div 2 doesn't look much better. It's just got a more vibrant color palette.

 

[made]

I made a female char the 2nd time around and found the ass-wiggle running animation much more appealing.

 

[Murk]

I really wish they hadn't used Gamebryo for this game. I'm about 4 hours in and I already am wishing this was like Divinity 1 instead. The switch from isometric 2d to full 3d really did ruin this game for me in many ways...

... areas are detailed and nice but interaction was better when I had a free roaming mouse cursor and a proper view of the area instead of the current method. What's more disappointing, is that the Gothic games have presented the same camera style and method of interaction but done so much more proficiently and enjoyably.

Combat is rather boring after a while as well, and far too chaotic given how much of a propensity your character has to suddenly NOT walk forward because of whatever clipping or collision issue.

Quests are nice tho, and have many different ways to solve them. I'm hoping the game will get a bit better after I leave the Broken Valley but I get the feeling it won't. Makes me miss the first time I discovered how fucking huge Rivertown and Verdistis were in the original ;(((

 

[treave]

Didn't notice the flickering foliage, but textures seemed fine to me, at least, it didn't seem lacking to me - I'll only say a texture is bad when it doesn't fit - i.e Mass Effect low-res textures for Turians and generic outfits.

I was talking more about the scenery and lighting, to be honest. I suppose the more vibrant colour palette helps, but graphically I've always found DA to be dull and awkward. And man-handed. Fuck are those hands big.

 

[Murk]

Music is worse too >;(

Up until this point I was willing to just accept it as a "decent" game, and worth the investment at the least as an entertaining time-killer... but for some ungodly reason the game went from running rather smoothly to stuttering to the point that I can't even talk to people without them disappearing and appearing far away. Hopefully that'll be cured by a reboot but if I have to reboot every 2 hours to get fluid gameplay then good god Larian fucked up bad.

 

[AlaCarcuss]

Music is worse too >;(

Up until this point I was willing to just accept it as a "decent" game, and worth the investment at the least as an entertaining time-killer... but for some ungodly reason the game went from running rather smoothly to stuttering to the point that I can't even talk to people without them disappearing and appearing far away. Hopefully that'll be cured by a reboot but if I have to reboot every 2 hours to get fluid gameplay then good god Larian fucked up bad.

Nah, I just got through a six hour session and the game runs silky smooth for me. That's maxed out @ 6020x1080 (bezel corrected).

Have you installed the recently released hotfix? It lets you edit the config.xml file and up the frame cap - made a huge difference.

Graphics look just fine to me too. Nowhere near as bad as some are making out and at least on par (or better) than DA.

I'm having a lot more fun than I thought I would with this game and probably more than I should. Quests are really well done, there's tons of loot (for loot whores like myself), great attention to detail, interesting world to explore, good dungeons and well.... acceptable combat and character progression.

Havn't quite got to Dragon form yet - so perhaps my attitude will change, but so far so good.

A tip also for those who want a (less than legal) discount for this game: You can torrent the first part (ED), patch it to 1.03 and then buy just FoV - install and play without a crack. I know you could just torrent the whole thing (or DKS), but this way you're at least giving the devs some money for their efforts plus remaining compatible with all future patches.

They are soon to realeas a patch that turns ED+FoV into DKS too, so you also have the flexibility of being able to play the ED part in it's original (more challenging) state (with the graphical updates) and/or patching the whole thing into DKS. Everybody wins.

 

[Murk]

Restarting the game itself seemed to fix the problem, not sure why it happened but it was growing to stutter more and more the longer I played, as if it had a memory leak. Also, what the fuck is up with that resolution man is that seriously necessary?

I'm impressed with the quests so far, there's a lot of multi-directionality and additional parts to many that otherwise seem very shallow. Combat is... a mixed bag to me. At times its fun at other times its annoying. The way enemies wander around in the large open areas reminds me of MMOs tho and that's kind of... lame. They seem to just stand around waiting to be killed, which I realize the 2d version was the same but its a bit more lifeless in a 3d environment.

I just got to Sentinel Island after cleaning up nearly every quest I could in Broken Valley (the voice in my head was starting to nag me pretty profusely) and I guess this is when the whole Fortress building part comes in, which tbh I'm kinda looking forward to.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Restarting the game itself seemed to fix the problem, not sure why it happened but it was growing to stutter more and more the longer I played, as if it had a memory leak.

I had that too, restart the game regularily to flush the memory. It was still better than DA for example where I had to do that every 30min.