Re: Games Discussion Thread
Having played a little more of Divinity II I can officially say its not really that great a game. The main hook of it (that for the first time ever in an RPG you can turn into a dragon and take to the skies) doesn't come through fully until much later in the game. You get a bit of a taste when they flip everything they spent the first hour or so of gameplay completely 180 on you, but not much more. Never mind that Draken II (which though an action game, was somewhat an action RPG) let you jump on a dragon after the prologue was finished.
The difficulty is pretty annoying. To make any headway with the main quest you have to complete almost every side quest thrown at you just to get the experience to be powerful enough to tackle it. While side quests are nice, and add some good fun, sometimes I want to ignore the less enjoyable ones to play through the main storyline. So, the game feels very much like a grind just to progress normally. To players who enjoy games like World of Warcraft and the such, it shouldn't be as big a deal.
While I'm not too huge on graphics, afterall I thought Dragon Age was a good looking game, the graphics in this just pulled me out of the experience. Never mind the animations. Characters have a jilted walk that doesn't seem at all realistic. The combat doesn't seem very involving either, and considering how much time you spend doing it, is very much a shame. Swords just don't seem to connect with the enemy very well, and you feel very distant from everything. The combat itself plays out almost identical to Sacred 2 for 360. You map your various attacks and potions to the d-pad or the XYBA face buttons and proceed.
Character customization. For modern RPGs this should be huge. Alas it's not. After games like Oblivion and Mass Effect the simplicity of choosing between a handful of faces that look very similar to each other save some hair growth (for males) or makeup (or females) with some scars and tattoos thrown in, but not much of either, just seems so very lacking. And considering your eyes get turned silver within five minutes of gameplay, you don't choose eye colour either.
On a good note, the music is pretty good. I rather enjoyed it and might even download it, though its not exceptional. The voice acting wasn't too bad. The choice of using British accents for the characters was pretty neat, but for those living in the UK it's nothing new at all.
I think its a fairly horrible game, others may disagree, but I'll be trading it in for Mass Effect 2 at the end of the month. In the end it could not stand up to such fare as the Elder Scrolls series, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Diablo, hell I felt more drawn in with Sacred 1 on PC and 2 on 360 then this game.