Divinity II: Ego Draconis Review
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Divinity II: Ego Draconis is the third major release from Larian Studios, following in the footsteps of Divine Divinity (2002) and Beyond Divinity (2004). The game picks up a few years after the events in Beyond Divinity. Damian is camped out in Rivellon planning untold nefarious deeds, but the Dragon Knights, once the protectors of the land, have fallen out of favor, to the point where a group called the Dragon Slayers has been formed, to hunt them down and exterminate them.
As the game opens up, you take control of a new recruit into the Dragon Slayers, but then your initiation is interrupted, and your first encounter with a Dragon Knight goes awry, and you end up with the powers of both groups. That means, among other things, that you can read minds, talk to the dead, and turn into a dragon. With that much power bundled up into a single character, you decide that you should take on Damian, and that's what the bulk of the 30-40 hour campaign covers.
Character Development
Larian uses roughly the same character development system in Ego Draconis that they used in Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity. That is, each time you gain a level you also gain some points to spend on attributes, plus a point to spend on a skill. Attributes include strength, dexterity, vitality, intelligence and spirit, which all do about what you'd expect, but nicely all of the attributes are important for all characters, and so you have to think more about where you want to spend your points. For example, intelligence increases your magical damage (including magical damage from weapons), and it also increases your magical resistance, and so everybody needs it.
The skills in Ego Draconis include spells (like fireball and curse), melee abilities (like battle rage and whirlwind), ranged abilities (like explosive arrows and ranger surprise), and some general purpose abilities (like lockpick and wisdom). These skills don't use any sort of branching tree of prerequisites; they only have level requirements, and so you're free to pick and choose the ones that you like best. That being said, unlike other games that allow you to learn everything, in Ego Draconis you're fairly limited in the number of skill points you receive, and so most players probably stick to the core abilities of the type of character they're playing. I played a melee character in the game (with some points in healing and summoning), and that worked out pretty well.
Because you can change into a dragon in the game, there are also some special dragon skills that you can learn (such as fire breath and dragon shield). There aren't nearly as many dragon skills as there are regular skills, but then you're not given any free dragon skill points when you level up, and so dragon skills are more difficult to learn. To improve your dragon skills, you have to find special dragon skill books, which are hidden throughout the world, and which are just one of the numerous good rewards that you can receive if you're thorough about exploring every nook and cranny of the game maps.
Game Mechanics
Unlike Larian's first two games, which used 2D graphics and an isometric view, Ego Draconis uses a 3D engine and an over-the-shoulder camera. As you might expect with such a set-up, you control your character using the WASD keys to move, the spacebar to jump, the mouse to direct the camera, and the mouse buttons to attack and interact with objects (or at least that's how it works on the PC, which is the version of the game I played; the Xbox no doubt uses standard Xbox controls). You can also assign up to eight objects or skills to hotkeys, and you can can configure the keys in any way you like, and so the interface is versatile and functional.
Unfortunately, the combat mechanics aren't nearly as effective, which is a problem because the game is roughly half combat. You can't attack and move at the same time (making it more difficult than it should be to finish off retreating enemies), the visuals don't always agree with what the game thinks is happening (for example, you might see your weapon hit an enemy, but it's considered a "miss" because the game doesn't think you're close enough to connect), you're always forced to sheathe your weapon for conversations and cut scenes, giving enemies in important battles a few easy shots at you, and you're frequently teleported after killing an enemy, sometimes nearby but sometimes far away, which is just bizarre.
Larian also decided to make your level the most important thing about your character, with your level versus the level of your enemy affecting how much damage you do. That doesn't necessarily sound terrible, but it means enemies under your level sometimes can't damage you at all, making battles against them trivial, and enemies above your level are sometimes brutal to kill, especially since you almost never face them one at a time. Frequently, the only way to get through a battle is to attack, and then run away, and then wait for a couple of minutes while your health and mana regenerate, and then repeat, which gets tedious after a while, especially since opening things like your quest log and your character sheet pause the game, and so you can't do anything while you're waiting.
To help you out in your battles, there are a variety of summoning spells, and you can also create a "creature." The creature is formed from various body parts that you find during your travels, which you can assemble once you locate a friendly necromancer to help you out. Creatures are useful because you can control how you want them to behave (for example, you can use a mage head to make it act like a mage), and they're not timed like other summoned creatures, so you can use them even if you don't have a lot of mana.
Campaign
The broad strokes of the campaign aren't exactly inspired. There's you, there's Damian, and that's about it. You don't meet any companions (the dragon knight you encounter at the start of the game stays with you in spirit form, but she just acts as sort of a narrator), and there isn't really a story arc. All of the heavy lifting in the story occurred in the booklet that came with Beyond Divinity, and so all you do in the campaign is build up your character so you're strong enough to defeat Damian at the end.
Fortunately, what Larian is really good at is filling their world with lots of interesting things to see and do, and so their campaign remains enjoyable even if there isn't much in the way of connective tissue. There are plenty of quests to complete, puzzles to solve, fortresses to demolish (while in dragon form), and oddities to find, and the game provides good humor all throughout (such as when you run into the devastating killer bunny). Larian is also good about rewarding players who explore thoroughly. There is always something to find around every corner, whether it be a magic fountain or a valuable skill book or a hidden quest, and I had a lot of fun just searching through dungeons when I knew there had to be a key around somewhere to open a prominently displayed chest.
Sort of sadly though, Larian seems to like their bad guys way more than their good guys. It's as if, after spending a lot of time developing the origin story for Damian, they're reluctant to let him go. That means the conclusion of the campaign isn't what you might expect, but hopefully Larian will use the ending as a stepping stone to a more satisfying conclusion when they release their Flames of Vengeance add-on later this year (it's already out in Germany, but a North American release date hasn't been announced yet).
Conclusion
Divinity II: Ego Draconis has more than a few flaws. It doesn't look great, it doesn't sound great, it lacks a certain amount of polish, and its combat engine is iffy -- but, with all that being said, I generally enjoyed the campaign. I seem to have a similar sense of humor as Larian, and so the campaign kept me amused, and I think the non-combat activities are fun enough to make up for the combat. So if you've enjoyed some of the "also-ran" RPGs like Risen and Two Worlds and Dungeon Lords, then Ego Draconis might be a worthwhile purchase for you, especially if you can find it at a bargainish price.
