Divinity 2: Ego Draconis is a throwback dungeon-crawling PC port from Larian Studios. I mean throwback as not cosmopolitan in this case; so while it uses the same Gamebryo engine as Oblivion and Civilization 4, Divinity's mechanics are closer to Arx Fatalis and Risen. Besides banking on nostalgia and dense mechanics confused with "old-school," another selling point of Divinity 2 is the promise of turning into a dragon. While the prize waits at the 5-hour horizon, getting there is a test of will. Divinity 2 is obtuse, confusing, unforgiving technical seppuku and the clunky interface and brutal difficulty ensures only the determined grow wings. You play as a Dragon Slayer. It is your job to slay dragons, and you promptly begin training as a magician, warrior or ranger. Combat comprises mashing move-mapped face buttons in what aren't really combos but a flurry of damage. You can lock on to your enemies--floating eyeballs, goblins, skeletons, the camera as main villain --and rotate around them, changing targets by flicking the right stick. Your moves are a mainstay of fisticuffs, projectiles, and buffs. While this is fairly basic, Divinity 2 has a wildcard of hilarious character animation. Something like claymation, it seems like frames are missing as enemies scurry up and flail their arms haphazardly at you.
Divinity 2 adheres to the maxim of dense and sluggish beginnings characteristic of older WRPG's. After choosing a class, you will have to grind out levels before you can take on the first quest. This is not like Oblivion or Fallout, where skills increase through use or unearthed relics. You allocate points yourself upon leveling, so ultimately it's your statistics that make you effective in combat, and not your class designation, which you can change as well as your starting weapon and appearance at any time. The pace is practically frozen from the combination of slow levels and scarce health items. Divinity 2 is not difficult because of complexity or cleverness. You are making a number go up through repeated combat. Luckily enemies have terrible pathfinding; they will not attack outside of a specified zone, and frequently clip into the environment, so projectiles are encouraged. You don't have to be skillfull to progress in Divinity 2, simply patient. This flexibility in character development represents your unimportance in the detached world of Rivellon. Dialogue has ranging temperments of response, but they are mainly cosmetic, with most conversations ending in a set fashion.
You can get away with saying everything or anything and it won't affect your character or the NPC's feelings of you. You can also read minds, a spin on the morality system of Bioware. It's a broken system, separate from dialogue tree's and costing experience to use, that should only be an option when the exchange calls for it, and the fact that the brain you're reading may be worthless. But most of the time the game makes it clear who is hiding something and I wouldn't be surprised if characters actually said, "Glad he can't read minds!" But at least all of this is spoken well enough and matches the hamminess of the writing. Divinity 2 is snarky and funny in that awkward self-aware schlock kind of way. Ignoring inventiveness or authenticity, it fills Rivellon with the personality of a bratty nerd brother, with NPC's overacting in wacky ways, and a status screen describing a low dexterity as a glandular deficiency. It's not smart enough to create an engrossing world with a convincing script, so it settles for knockoff Fable cheesiness as a crutch. If the animation wasn't so ridiculous, the writing would be the best part of Divinity 2.
This feature review continues on the next page, please click below to find out our final say on Divinity 2: Ego Draconis.
