Divinity 2: Developer's Cut

[Kipi]

Developer: Larian Studios
Publisher: Focus Home Interactive, Atlus USA (NA version)
Genre: Action RPG
Platforms: Windows, Xbox 360
Released: 2012
Version Used In Review: Windows version 1.4.700.49


Introduction

Writing a review of Divinity 2: Developer's Cut has been completely new experience for me. What made it so different is the fact that I'm not reviewing one game, but a remake of a packet that combines the actual game and the only expansion ever released. To make the previous statement a bit more clear I must tell a few things about the "history" of Divinity 2. First of all, the original game, known as Divinity 2: Ego Draconis, was released back in 2009. Two years later, year 2011, the game was re-released as Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga, which included the expansion back Flames of Vengeance as well as lots of fixes and even updates to original Ego Draconis. Finally, the third release occurred in 2012 with the title of Divinity 2: Developer's Cut. This release included everything released under the title of The Dragon Knight Saga as well as some additional goodies, like concept arts and design documents. The most prominent feature, and the only feature, that affects the actual game was the ability of playing the saga in Developer's Mode, a mode that allows access to console commands.

During the review I'm going to use the term "Divinity 2" as general term of the whole packet. In those cases I'm referring to the vanilla game or the expansion specifically, I'm going to use the correct titles instead, Ego Draconis or Flames of Vengeance.

Finally, this review is based on the Windows version of the game. I have heard that XBox 360 version is somewhat different, especially in terms of gameplay and how well it works. This means that some of my opinions are only valid for Windows version of the game.


Graphics

Graphical presentation is the very first thing that determines the quality of the game. While I am actually quite forgiving when it comes to graphics, especially if the rest of the game is well made, even I have standards that must be met.

If I compare Divinity 2 to other games released back in 2009, the graphics are above average. Of course, the age of the game is quite visible, mostly in texture quality; sometimes grany textures and jagged edges are the most notable things. Also, the animations aren't always smooth and no real "visual candies" are present. Basically the quality of graphics is good enough to not distracting the player from actual game, both in good and bad way.



There are some minor problems with graphics as well. Stretched textures are perhaps the worst thing I experienced, though these occurred rarely enough. But when those did the problem was very annoying; few times the graphics of object was stretched so badly that about half of the map was covered by it, making it difficult to do anything.

Other minor problems were creatures partially melting through the surface, lighting not working properly indoors and completely missing textures. None of these problems were bad, mostly because the possibility of experiencing any of those was close to none.

Where Divinity 2 shines in terms of graphics are the cinematics; those which didn't use the game engine were really well made, even beautiful. Unfortunately there weren't many of those, only a handful, but those few were much better I was generally expecting from a game of that age.

Finally, one small detail about the graphics; the lips of characters were actually synchronized with the dialogue. The synchronization is also very accurate, only few times I was able to spot a very small difference between the lips and the audio.


Audio

The music of Divinity 2 is very good, with enough variety ranging from peaceful and even melancholy background music to epic battle fanfares. The transition between tracks is also made pretty well, the old track fades away before new track begins.

Sound effects are generally good. All the basic effects are present; clash of weapons, moans, grunts, objects shattering and so forth. While the quality of these effects is not exceptional, there is nothing wrong either. On the other hand, sometimes the background effects hit the spot; especially in Flames of Vengeance certain locations have exceptional atmosphere due the background effects.

Voice acting in Divinity 2 is also something worth of mentioning; every line has been voiced and every important NPC has distinct voice. The recycling of voice was only apparent with NPCs who only throw short comments without actual dialog. The quality of voice acting is also very good and enhances the personality of characters. In certain cases the quality is so good that, when combined to writing quality, the NPC becomes memorable character and, in some twisted way, even a target of worship. Without spoiling too much I can say one word which is enough to describe the exceptional quality: Bellegar!

[Kipi]

World and Writing

The story of Divinity 2 takes place in undetermined distant future after the events of Divine Divinity, the first game in Divinity series. The game starts from a point where the player is joining the group of soldiers known as Dragon Slayers; group of dedicated soldiers and mages whose sole purpose is to hunt down all the dragons and Dragon Knights from the world. During the initiation rites the news reaches the player that another dragon has been spotted and so the hunt begins.

While exploring the world of Rivellon the player also gets involved to other events and conflicts, usually resulting the situation where player's help is required. The sheer number of these situations makes the world more believable and alive. What makes things even better is that the world actually reflects the actions and choices done by player; some quests have several different ways of solving, some quests may offer different result based on the dialogue choices or if the player has spoken to certain NPCs beforehand. Sometimes it's possible to turn the whole quest upside; returning the diary that proves the NPC is guilty to the owner has a very different result than if it's delivered to guards.

Different choices have different consequences in Divinity 2. Most of the time the reward is different depending on the choices you have done. Sometimes the NPC may also like you more or less, which basically affects prices of merchants. It's also possible that the NPC becomes unavailable after the quest ends or moves to different location; confronting a criminal yourself may result the death of said NPC while reporting to guards will cause the criminal to end up in prison. The relation between choice and consequence goes even so far that whole quests can become unavailable because of decisions made by player. Even the order of actions can cause this kind of effects; there is no way to know if one of the actions you have done has changed the location so much that certain features there has become unavailable.

All these choices player must do would be meaningless if the writing is not done well. Fortunately this is not the case in Divinity 2. First of all, while the game relies on the events of Divine Divinity, I was fully able to enjoy the story without any knowledge from previous game. This is because more or less everything is explained during dialogues, cinematics or by books that serve no other purpose than explaining bits and pieces of the lore. And the quality of lore is very good; if you pay enough attention and explore every corner of the world you can find explanation or answer to practically everything. The best example of this kind detail is a book that described the history behind three special types of cheese, of which you actually encounter one during the travels and only because it's part of a quest.

The quality of writing can also be seen in dialogues; I already mentioned the name "Bellegar" while discussing the audio though I could mention most of the NPCs here as well. The dialogues are also entertaining due the humor used, which is far better and more intelligent compared to general standards of last four or five years. Of course, the quality of humor doesn't reach the level of Borderlands, which is not that surprising since Borderlands is beyond everything when it comes to humor. Perhaps the best comparison would be Planscape: Torment.

While the world of Divinity 2 is already interesting due all the features mentioned above, there are some nifty additions as well; puzzles! Puzzles are almost extinct from modern RPGs, especially from Action RPGs. Those few mandatory puzzles you see in hyped games by AAA developer can usually be solved just by using your brain few seconds, if the puzzle is considered more difficult than average puzzle. In Divinity 2 even the easiest puzzle require more thinking and especially paying attention to the surroundings; every puzzle can be solved just by using the clues, only thing you have to do is to find the clues and realize that those ARE a clues.

The variety of puzzles is surprisingly big. Sometimes the puzzle only requires the player to interact certain objects. In some cases the order also matters and at times you also have to find and stand on correct spot. Oh, and the objects may be items you have been carrying around, sometimes the objects are things you see around the world; chalices, levers, paintings, instruments and so on. Sometimes the object(s) can be interacted with or even can be found only after talking or mind reading specific NPC or reading specific book. And, since you can find puzzles more or less everywhere, exploring every inch of the every map carefully is recommended and even fun.

Finally, Divinity 2 uses certain style of open world; while you can explore the world freely certain locations and maps can only be reached when the main story has progressed enough. In few cases the exploration is restricted by obstacles which require specific ability or item to get over. There is also one moment, both in Ego Draconis and Flame of Vengeance, where the main story causes more or less every location to either become inaccessible completely or being changed so much that it's basically completely new location. Fortunately the game warns about these moments beforehand, allowing the player to finish all the quests still open.

[Kipi]

Interface

The main interface is clean and simple; at bottom of the screen are the hotkeys for skills, spells and items as well as bars to display health and mana. The minimap is in top left corner and the health bar for targeted enemy is at top and center of the screen. A small frame appears next to hotkeys when targeting to object that can be interacted with. Due the simplicity there is enough room to show the actual world, which is always a positive thing as long as the simplicity doesn't go too far and works properly. In case of Divinity 2 the simplicity works.

The game also has interfaces for inventory management, skills, quest logs and map. In addition the game also has dedicated interfaces for dialogue history as well as how many each type of enemies you have killed, both having only marginal use. The dialogue history is handy when you need to check out what someone actually said, especially in case of quests and puzzles. The dialogues are also listed by the time, which means it's sometimes a bit difficult to track down the correct dialogue if a bit more time has passed since.

The interface for map is perhaps one of the simplest I have seen in a long time, simplest working interface that is. Each map has three level of zoom, of which only closest and second closest were useful for me. The map marks the location of main quest objectives, but only if the objective is in that specific map or inside a location (dungeon, cave and so on) that can be reached from the current map only. Some of the important NPCs are also marked to map, though only if the NPC is not in friendly location like town and gives you at least one quest. The map also shows all the entrances to other locations, though only after you have learned the location by discovering it or through quest. Player can also add personal notes to map as well as highlight already existing marks. After highlighting something through the map interface the minimap shows the direction to it as well, making the navigation easier.



While the map interface is good, I still have few complains about it. First of all, only the map of current location can be seen. There is no way to change the map, even if the current location doesn't have one, which is the second complain. Certain locations don't have any kind of map. While this decision can be explained by the type of those locations, it's still somewhat annoying. Also, sometimes the maps are somewhat confusing and misleading, in one case even completely wrong. One part of the problem of inaccuracy is the absence of height; the map doesn't make any difference between the heights of locations. The map can show two passages crossing even though that doesn't happen; instead one passage runs bellow the other one. Finally, the zooming is a bit erratic; sometimes zooming out or in jumps to the other extremity instead of the second zoom level, sometimes the game just ignores the attempts to zooming.

Quest log is also clean and simple; one page for open quests and another one for closed quests. The list of quests is uses nested structure, the main list using the name of "parent" quests. Parent quest can consist of two or more child quests, which are listed under the parent quest. For example, hunting down all the criminal leaders can be considered as parent quest which consist of several child quest, each one being connected one specific criminal. The difference between parent and child quests is that the parent quest requires every child quests to be completed, if such exists, before it can be completed. In the example of criminal leaders, the parent quest can only be completed after all the criminal leaders have been killed. It's also important to remember that every child quest will result separate reward when completed, followed by better reward when the parent quest is completed. Let's say the previous example requires me to kill five different leaders. In terms of rewards that would mean five different rewards from five different leaders and one big reward after the last death has been reported.

Now that I have explained the quest hierarchy I can get back to the quest interface. First of all, the name of quest, parent or child, uses three different colors to indicate the state and type. The optional quests have white name, main quests have gold name and every quest ready to be turned in have green color. Each quest also contains a short description when collapsed and longer one when expanded.



The problem with quest log is that the scrollbar is a bit bugged; when the interface is opened the scrollbar doesn't work immediately and I had to expand one quest to make it work again. It feels like the game failed to recognize the fact that the list was already big enough to require scrolling.

The skill interface is another example of working simplicity; the skills have been grouped in columns based on the class it belongs to. The buttons to assign skill points appear bellow the skill icon, which requires at least one unassigned point and character meeting the level requirement. The description of selected skill appears at the bottom of the screen and it contains all the information needed; numerical stats, description of the effect, effects of current skill level, effects of next level and effects after the improvements granted by items are applied. There is even a short video for each skill showing what it does playing right next to description frame.

Finally, the inventory interface. The interface shows equipped items around the preview model, the content of inventory as well as all the basic information of the character; experience, health, mana, basic attributes, resistances and other modifiers. Each value displayed also has a tooltip describing the actual effect it causes as well as possible relations to other values. If the cursor is moved over an item, the tooltip shows the description of said item. In some cases the description can be one or two words long while the tooltip of equipment shows the numerical stats of said item. Also, if the item in question is in inventory and not equipped, the stats of equivalent equipped item is displayed as well. Finally, the changes to characteristics is also shown in the interface, making it easier to determine the changes if the item is equipped.



Basically, the inventory interface follows the rule of simplicity as well; only the necessary information is displayed. Unfortunately the interface doesn't work properly. First of all, the game fails to recognize certain actions; especially trying to insert a charm to items is difficult to do. The problem is that, when the player selects the option to insert charms from list of actions, the list of charms available doesn't always appear. Sometimes I had to open the list and click the option several times before the game decided to open the list.

Second problem is also related to inventory management. Several times I noticed that when I, for example, was selling items the game didn't sell the item I was clicking but another one instead. Usually this item was either right next or below the item I wanted to sell. While no real damage is caused when selling items since I can always buy them back at same price I sold, destroying items is completely another matter. Especially during the early parts of the game I came to situations where I had to destroy one or two items to make more room for the loot I wanted to pick up. It's no fun to realize that I just destroyed the ultimate weapon waiting for me to reach the level requirement instead of the generic weapon which had practically no sell value nor use.

[Kipi]

Third complain I have is the item comparison system. First of all, sometimes one of the two tooltips is shown partially outside the screen, making it impossible to read the information. This problem can be easily solved by moving the cursor somewhere else and back again and to hope that this time both tooltips are shown completely. Second problems occurs only with set items; if the item in inventory belongs to specific set the tooltip shows the bonuses granted the by the set as well. The problem is that the bonus only counts the items already equipped, and the item, of which tooltip it is, is not taken into account. This makes the comparison difficult and displays the wrong values in character information. The only situation where this would be even remotely useful way of calculating things is when the a shield is compared to weapon of same item set and the weapon must be equipped as offhand weapon, which is only possible while dual wielding.

Next problem in item comparison is which items are used. Character can equip two rings at the same time but the comparison will never use the second slot. This means that it's impossible to compare a ring in inventory to a ring in second slot without doing some item swapping, which is a bit complicated to do; you can't change the slots of two equipped items directly, you have to equip the second ring to first slot first and then reequip the first ring to second slot manually. It's somewhat easy to do if you have only three rings but as the number increases the more annoying this kind of swapping becomes. Same applies to weapons as well; weapon in inventory is always compared to item in main hand and shield to offhand. This is even more annoying than with the rings since I was changing my weapons more often.

Finally, the damage displayed in character sheet. As long as only one weapon is equipped it works as it should. Dual wielding, on the other hand, is completely different matter; when I did that the very first time and tried to figure out the damage, I was almost able to hear my brain working and trying to understand the logic behind displayed value. Fortunately I decided to make the calculations manually before my brain managed to overheat. The problem with the logic used by the game is that it uses only one value for both weapons, which is some kind of average based on both weapons. Also, the value doesn't care which weapon is in which slot; the value stays the same even if you swap the main weapon to off hand and offhand weapon to main hand. In reality it does matter which weapon is in which hand since the damage gains bonus or penalty based on the hand and skill level. It was just so much easier to compare weapons manually.


Gameplay

Divinity 2 is Action RPG and contains lots of fighting. Unfortunately fighting suffers from control system and game mechanisms; while melee weapon attacks are fairly forgiving in case of targeting, everything related to ranged combat is too complicated. Casting spell, using a skill or attacking with ranged weapon requires a target, which means the player must be very careful with facing direction. Especially smaller creatures are very difficult to target, even when not moving. Moving small creatures are almost impossible to target.

To compensate the problems with targeting Divinity 2 has two additional features; pausing and target lock. Both features are useful in ranged combat, though not being able to turn camera while paused does make it less useful, in melee fights not so much. The only use for pausing in melee fights is to drink potions without panic. On the other hand, same thing can be done by entering the inventory which pauses the game as well. The only difference is that the game continues immediately when the interface has been closed, when paused manually it doesn't.

Sometimes the game also suffers from lag and performance issues. Especially the fights in open location against dozen or so enemies usually slowed the game down, sometimes causing even terrible lag. Lowering the graphical settings didn't help much, though I never tried the lowest setting. But since I know my laptop is well above the requirements and is able to run even more demanding games better, I'm suspecting that the problems were caused by optimization issues. Fortunately the worst problems were quite rare and the game was most of the times completely playable. Still, such issues aren't acceptable in Action RPG.

Speaking of performance issues, besides fighting there is another feature that suffered from it, as well as from somewhat clunky controls; platform jumping. In few occasions the player must get from point A to point B by jumping through a route formed by platforms, in style of Super Mario. The problem is that neither control system nor camera angle is sufficient to accurate timing of jumps. Nice feature which unfortunately is broken by unsuitable mechanisms.

The game is also quite picky when it comes to object interaction; sometimes the object can be interacted only if the player manages to aim the center of crosshair correctly. In worst cases it felt like the area which I had to aim was only few pixels big and finding it was more about luck than skill. This issue is especially apparent with objects that are partially behind or inside other objects.

Finally, one more thing regarding the gameplay; the dragon form! Yes, after reaching certain section in main story the player can turn to dragon at will, with certain restrictions where it can be done. When in dragon form the game changes from RPG to Flight Simulator. Think games like Wing Commander but replace space ship with dragon, laser guns with fire breathing and missiles with fire balls. While in dragon form you fight against wyverns, ballista towers and other structures created to attack flying objects. Normal creatures will also disappear when turning to dragon, which means one can't attack the same creatures one can while in human form. And this is one thing I wasn't able to understand; there are so many references to dragons attacking normal creatures everywhere and still no explanation why you can't do the same. Of course, when the balance is taken into account, the decision is understandable; killing land creatures would have been way too easy in dragon form, so the best way to keep the balance is prevent it.

What I don't understand either is the way dragon form was implemented in Flames of Vengeance; the only section in the expansion where the dragon form is used takes place when the game is almost finished. It feels like the developers realized at some point that the dragon form wasn't used at all and decided to include one epic fight instead. Unfortunately this "epic fight" is actually "epic failure"; your task is to escort zeppelin through a route filled with constructs designed to destroy you and the zeppelin. Even with every skill maxed this section is very hard and requires luck and practice to complete. All you can do is to hope that you remembered to make a manual save just before this section, the game saves the progress automatically few times during the section and it's possible to make one mistake at the beginning and realize it at the very end. At that point it may be too late to cover the mistake already unless you can start from the beginning of the escort.


Character and Items

Unlike other Action RPGs, Divinity 2 takes interesting approach to character development. In theory there are four different classes; priest, mage, warrior and ranger. Each class has own set of skills, priest concentrating on summons and healing, mage to spells dealing damage, warrior to melee combat and ranger to ranged combat. At the beginning the player must choose one class to start with, though priest is not available. This decision determines the starting weapon, starting skill and gives bonus to certain attributes based on the class. After this, the class has no effect to the game; every skill is available to every character as long as the level requirement is met. This allows players to create characters fitting to their playing style by combining skills from different classes. Basically one could say that Divinity 2 is game without classes, though in theory it's not true.

Besides the four classes there is also fifth group of skills. These skills are more generic and useful to every character regardless the playing style. Skills like lock picking, wisdom (which increases the experience gain from all sources) and inventory size. There is also one skill that demands special mentioning; Mindread. This skill, which is gained automatically, allows the player to read minds of almost every NPC. Each NPC can be targeted by this skill only once, though there are few exceptions. Each time the skill is used player gains certain amount of penalty to experience, labeled as experience debt, and the size of this penalty depends on the NPC and skill level. While the penalty doesn't affect current amount of experience, the debt must be paid completely before any gained experience can go towards leveling.

Reading the minds of different NPCs have wide variety of effects; the location of hidden objects may be revealed as well as passwords to locked doors or containers. Sometimes reading minds can open minor tasks or additional ways to complete quests. Merchants will also improve prices to player's advantage or the discovered thoughts may just be entertaining and have no real purpose. Finally, sometimes player may be rewarded with experience, skill points or attribute points. What matters is that the result is always the same for each NPC, which makes it easier to decide when to use the skill during second or third play through.

[Kipi]

Skills in general are very balanced and there is no useless skill. Well, actually there are two skills that can be considered useless; carrying capacity and unarmed fighting. Carrying capacity becomes useless when certain point of the game has been reached, after which player can store everything not needed to personal stash. Unarmed fighting is always useless, the damage multiplier it gives when maxed out never gets even close to the damage of average weapon without any skills. Otherwise, it's all about playing style, though certain skills are always useful and even recommended to have.

The item system follows the generic system used in every modern Hack 'n Slash or MMORPG; item levels, rarity levels, set items, all the basic things are also implemented in Divinity 2. The system works well enough, though the number of different item sets is a bit low and some sets have no use since better ones are available more or less simultaneously.

Divinity 2 also introduces crafting in three ways; alchemy allows brewing potions from plants, enchanting allows improving items with special properties and necromancy allows creating and modifying a creature which can be summoned to help you. Alchemy and enchanting have very similar mechanisms; player must know the recipe, have proper ingredients in inventory or personal stash and talk to certain NPC. New recipes can be obtained by looting, as quest rewards or buying from merchants. When player begins crafting the game checks all the recipes from inventory and stash and compares them to recipes already known; if the recipe is not in the list the game adds it and removes it from the inventory or stash. If the recipe is already known the game does nothing. In case of enchanting, new recipes can also be obtained by disenchanting items. If the enchantment is new and not learned, the game adds it to known recipes. Otherwise, the enchantment is just removed from the item.

Necromancy works a bit differently; instead of recipes the system uses limbs and body parts, which can be combined to create the creature. Only one piece of each body part can be used, though, which makes the options somewhat limited. Also, once the body part has been added to list, it's always available and no additional things are required.

There is one huge flaw in the crafting system; there is no way to check out which recipes or limbs are already known by the player. The only way to do that is to talk to crafter NPC, start the crafting process and then check out which recipes are available. For example, I ended up using notebook to keep myself updated of all the enchantments and potions I was able to make. Was it too difficult to include a simple interface to show all the known recipes? Apparently it was.


Anything Else?

There are bugs in Divinity 2, there is no way to deny that. Most of the time those were some minor glitches in graphics or mechanisms and nothing serious. Unfortunately, there is one bug which is really serious and, to be honest, I'm very surprised it hasn't been fixed yet since it appears to be rather common one; when player finishes the main game, the game freezes in black screen and must be ended through task manager. While the game is considered to be finished, at least based on the achievements, the dialog which allows exporting the character to expansion never opens. This means I was never able to use the same character in Ego Draconis and in Flames of Vengeance. The expansion can be started with completely new character, though that means no items from Ego Draconis nor any extra attribute or skill points are available either. The game tries to compensate the lack of items with extra gold, which is not even close to enough to equip the character even remotely as well as it was at the end of the main game. And this made the early stages of expansion much harder than it should have been.

Finally, Divinity 2 is a long game; even by rushing through the main story it takes something between twenty and thirty hours to finish the main game and ten hours to finish the expansion. How much more time is needed depends completely on how carefully the world is explored. For me it took something like fifty hours to complete the main game and a bit over twenty hours to finish the expansion. And since the game has so many choices to make, at least one replay is justifiable.


Scoring

Divinity 2 is a difficult Action RPG to score because fighting and action section are not the strongest aspects of the game. This doesn't mean the game is bad, not at all. If I'm completely honest, in my opinion Divinity 2 would be far better spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate franchise than Dragon Age is. While the "Action" part is better in Dragon Age: Origins, the quality of writing, world and NPCs in Divinity 2 is far better and closer to Baldur's Gate than the ones of Dragon Age.

Divinity 2 has lots of positive things and lots of negative things. What really matters is which features are considered more important? For me those were writing, level of details in lore and how entertaining the game generally was. Of course, certain complains I have mentioned in this review, like the problems with inventory interface and especially the bug at the end of main game, will heavily affect the score. Still, I must admit that I liked this game a lot, there were so many refreshing ideas implemented. This is one of those games I would recommend to players who like deep stories spiced with humor and personality. And thus we get to the most important section of this review; the score!

My Score System: 8/10
GameBanshee Score System: 4/5

It was actually quite difficult to decide between 7 and 8. While there were perhaps too many problems to give 8/10, in the end there were enough so good things that I was able to forgive enough complains give the score 8/10.

[GawainBS]

One note: Flames of Vengeance rolls out from Ego Draconis. There is no need to export or import a character, it's just a continuation of the game. There's no seperate start screen or anything, just the cutscene which marks the end of Ego Draconis and then the game continues into the expansion, with your character with all its gear and skills.

[Kipi]

One note: Flames of Vengeance rolls out from Ego Draconis. There is no need to export or import a character, it's just a continuation of the game. There's no seperate start screen or anything, just the cutscene which marks the end of Ego Draconis and then the game continues into the expansion, with your character with all its gear and skills.

Okay, I had the impression that you had to import the character from Ego Draconis to Flame of Vengeance due what I read from official forums. Still, that never happened due the bug and I had to create completely new character for the expansion.

[GawainBS]

I played through the entire game only this week, and FoV started right after ED, without problems. First time I heard of this bug.