Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga - A Larian Studios Game

Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga Review

Developed by Larian Studios

Published by DTP Entertainment

Review by Ba5sett

The original iteration of Larian Studio’s RPG Divinity II was released last November as Divinity II: Ego Draconis. It was a solid enough game but was held back from being a truly great RPG by a number of bugs and flaws. It probably didn’t help that it was released within a few weeks of Bioware’s own dragon themed epic Dragon Age: Origins (Which I reviewed back in November 2009).
Divinity II: Dragon Knight Saga consists of the original Ego Draconis game and an all new adventure entitled ‘Flames of Vengeance’ both wrapped up in a new game engine and together promising over 100 hours of play. I will review both games as a whole package as Flames of Vengeance does not add any new gameplay elements it simply furthers the story of the original game.



Players take the role of a Slayer, an ancient order of warriors who exist to rid the world of the half human dragon knights. The game begins as you are just about to complete your training and become a fully fledged dragon slayer. In a well thought out first act things quickly get complicated and you end up becoming a dragon knight rather than a dragon slayer and tasked with ridding the land of its true enemies.
And a good twist this turns out to be as not only are the dragon knights rather cool, they also have the ability to turn into dragons, it takes quite a while to get to the stage where this is possible but its certainly worth it.



Divinity II plays as an action RPG; you start off by creating your character from scratch. The selection is rather limited compared to other modern RPG’s allowing you to select a gender, hairstyle, beardstyle and voice. Once in the world you complete a few quests to find your feet and have to choose a class from the standard priest, mage, warrior, ranger and slayer. One of the nice things about the class system is that you aren’t limited by your initial choice meaning that you can assign stat points freely as you level up leading to some interesting hybrid classes.
Combat is a straightforward affair and occurs in real time, as you level up you acquire skills which can be assigned to the d-pad and shoulder buttons. Each skill has a cooldown once used leading combat to play out in a similar way to MMO’s albeit a little more direct.



Conversations in the game take place in the standard RPG style of listening to what somebody has to say and then choosing a response from a predetermined list, the responses come in the usual good & bad flavours but there is rarely a consequence to your actions aside from perhaps some extra gold or the chance to avoid a skirmish. There are none of the good / evil mechanics contained in games like Fable or the Bioware RPG’s which is a shame, as it would have added a nice layer of depth to the character interactions. One of the nicer features of the conversation system is the ability sacrifice XP to mind read, this can net you useful rewards or sometimes a useless (but often amusing) musing on when the character last fed their chickens or what they had for dinner.
Around half way through the game you gain access to a ‘Battle Tower’ which functions as a base of operations complete with traders, enchanters, trainers, alchemists etc.. these functions are available all over the game world from the start but it is nice to have them in a centralised place, in addition to this you are able to upgrade their services making the battle tower an addictive meta game in its own right.



The quests in the game are well designed and interesting although they are let down by a very poor and basic map and log book, they do the job but only just and in a massive open world game like this being able to easily keep a track of your quests would have been a big plus. There are many dungeons, crypts and caves littered throughout the game and I found them all to be well designed and enjoyable with taxing puzzles often leading to worthwhile loot.
The graphics in the game are solid and benefit from great art direction, the world as a whole is a great looking and diverse place and there are some definite wow moments when wandering around however the game is letdown somewhat by the animation which wouldn’t feel out of place in a PS1 title. Audio is also impressive with the voice acting coming in a variety of well voiced regional British accents and the music providing a nice atmospheric backdrop to your adventuring. Many of the bugs from the previous game seem to have been fixed with the combat feeling a lot more solid and many of the graphical glitches have been sorted out.



The game isn’t without its problems though, many of the bugs from Ego Draconis have been ironed out, yet the game still feels rather rough and lacks polish. The load screens are frequent and quite long, even with the game installed to the hard drive. The game also suffers from extreme difficulty spikes; this combined with the terrible autosave system can make it very frustrating especially for the first 15 levels or so. I’m so used to the forgiving save systems of modern games that the first time I died in Divinity II and realised that I had lost 40 minutes of gameplay my pad nearly went straight out of the window. I quickly learnt my lesson and reverted to regular manual saves; unfortunately the manual save is only accessible from the menu and also suffers from a rather long loading screen.
In conclusion, its difficult not to recommend this game if you are a fan of RPG’s; the open world design and the story are great and the game really opens up once you get the ability to turn into a dragon. It does lack polish but if you are looking for an alternative RPG to Fable 3 or Fallout: New Vegas this winter you could do worse than to check out Divinity II: Dragon Knight Saga.

Overall 7 / 10

Nice review mate. I will definitely be picking this one up soon

Good review mate

Would you say its a rental rather than a keeper..?

stucowie wrote:Good review mate

Would you say its a rental rather than a keeper..?

It depends how far in you want to go really mate, if you just want to play through the main quest then a rental would be the way forward. There is a huge amount of content though if you include all the side quests, dungeons, exploration etc.. so depends on the type of player you are really. It would be a purchase for a completionist or a rental if you just want to enjoy the main story line. Would have to be a long rental though The game has just been releases and is around £26 - £27 at the minute which is a bargain for the amount of gameplay you can get from it.

Lol well I'm the type of person that will do everything but the main quest first (where possible) so it sounds like may be the type of game for me

Well done mate, Like your work!

well written review, sounds ok but seems it cant compete with the heavyweights of fallout and fable

Nice review mate, reminds me though i really should find to time to play the copy of DA Origins i picked up months ago...

DA: Origins is a great game, I keep meaning to do another play through as another class

good review mate

Played the demo for this and it was awful, still unsure on this.

Good review though mate

Finally really getting my teeth into this game. The new remastered version is a massive improvement on its predecessor. It does take a few hours to get into but once you really get into the story it gets really good. It is just very unforgiving sometimes , and it has massive spikes in difficulty which are difficult to see coming.
I keep forgetting it doesnt have an autosave system as well, I advise people save often