As you can guess by the title, Divinity II is a sequel. The original was an isometric view RPG using a dated 2D engine to tell its story of magic and dungeons. And while the original wasn’t the kind of looker you’d take home to mom, Divinity II is running on the same engine used for Fallout 3 and Oblivion and brings the gameplay into a very suitable third-person 3D point of view. However, unlike Fallout 3 and Oblivion, the focus of the gameplay is more action RPG with an emphasis on the action.
Ego Draconis’ story, without giving too much away, is pretty good. The game’s characters have solid background motivations for their actions and the story heads in unexpected directions, with the early setup suggesting something other than what happens. The details are good and fun to uncover, so we won't go into them here.
Interacting with objects in the environment is a frustrating affair, with precise placement of the camera required to gain the ability to interact with something. Collision-detection appears to be a little off combined with numerous interactive objects being a chore to use. Attempting to use a door can often result in opening dozens of empty crates and barrels before you finally pull it off. Not too fun.
Visually Divinity II is a mixed bag. The environments are beautifully detailed, leveraging terrain variety and gorgeous lighting to highlight the well laid-out towns and valleys. However, the animation is borderline horrible. Your character's movements are just an ugly mix of choppy animations and bad physics. Massive floating fortresses wiggle through the sky like they weigh nothing at all and in general; movement is a massive visual disappointment. The combination of the (mostly) beautiful environments and the clumsy movement displayed thereon can only be described as awkward.
For an RPG, the character customization is very weak, with only few options available (you can have long hair or brown hair but not long brown hair, for example) and the resultant combinations look rather crude. Instead of trying to find the combination of features that you would like to convey your character to the world, you'll probably mix and match in an attempt to find something that looks least bad together.
All in all you basically can see that this game is not worth looking at for the most part. The game is pretty rough around the edges and on the whole can be frustrating to interact with. The saddest part about this game is that it has a very good story and uses such a great combat engine. Combine that with lots of content and it really is a shame that the whole deal didn’t come together a little better. If you love action RPGs and can get past the poor interface and on again – off again collision detection, this may be worth a rent. It's just too bad the graphics and combat engine aren't done any justice.
Graphics | Audio | Gameplay | Replay | Genre | Final |
