By Kieron Gillen on December 21st, 2009 at 8:01 pm.
The game that’s known in RPS’ palatial suite as Divinity 2: Divinitosity Divine! – otherwise known as Divinity 2: Ego Draconis – now has an English demo available. It’s almost 2 Gigs in size. It allows you to play as a Dragon Slayer – who due to grammatical playfulness, rather than actually killing Dragons, he actually has the ability to transform into a Dragon. Well, I dare say he kills Dragons too. Let’s just hope he doesn’t start with himself. The tragic ending of young Dragon’s lives by their own claws is a growing tragedy. Anyway, get the demo from here or watch some videos below….
Here’s the most recent trailer which looked actually interesting…
Except it’s still not very interesting. This one has Dragons in and shit.
“Dragons and shit”. I am totally a fantasy writer, me.
21/12/2009 at 20:21 Vinraith says:
I keep meaning to pick up and play the first two. Come to think of it, GOG’s entire catalog is on sale at the moment, so I suppose it would be the right time.
21/12/2009 at 22:07 Bhazor says:
Don’t remind me about that damn sale man…
I’ve already spent $55 there today and that Jagged Alliance collection is gosh darn tempting.
22/12/2009 at 00:32 LintMan says:
I enjoyed the first one quite a bit. IIRC, you control a single hero and click enemies to attack a la Diablo, but the game has more detailed quests, conversations, and stats than the Diablo ilk.
Div 2 was a bit disappointing. IIRC, it’s bigger, more detailed, and you have a party instead of a single hero. Should have been everything I wanted, but somehow it just wasn’t as fun or compelling for me, and I never finished it.
21/12/2009 at 20:27 illuvatar says:
Div 1 (let’s call it this, please) was one of those games that I’ve tried at least 5 times because of all the praise. Everytime I loved the Ultima feel. And everytime I got frustrated because of the insanely difficult starting dungeon.
Never quite made it. Supposed to get easier after that, according to the same promoters. Good for them.
21/12/2009 at 20:35 Turin Turambar says:
““Dragons and shit”. I am totally a fantasy writer, me.”
At least, one with the quality of Dragon Age’s writers :P.
22/12/2009 at 01:32 Carra says:
Ooh, a compliment to Kieron.
21/12/2009 at 20:54 Azhrarn says:
Had the game for a couple of weeks now (the european version has been out a while now, thanks to belgian devs and a german publisher), and it’s quite a nice game.
You start off as an actual dragon slayer in training only be given the dubious gift of dragon-knighthood by the very thing you were being trained to kill along with a mandate to go save the world because humanity is to busy killing dragons and their knights to notice a demonic invasion threatening to destroy the world.
21/12/2009 at 20:56 MooseDrool says:
Dragons… knights… demonic invasion… this sounds ground breaking, who are these masterminds?
21/12/2009 at 21:11 dadioflex says:
DD – good.
BD – Bad.
DD2 – not hearing anything good so far, and it’s been out for a while.
21/12/2009 at 21:28 Azhrarn says:
@Dadioflex:
mostly because the US doesn’t have the game yet, which in game-journalism terms means it effectively doesn’t exist yet (No offence RPS).
22/12/2009 at 01:35 Carra says:
Larian Studios.
From the review I read it’s a good game but doesn’t match the likes of Dragon Age.
It’s a mystery to me why they would delay the release of a game in one zone with several months and miss the Christmas period. It makes no sense.
21/12/2009 at 21:10 Heliosicle says:
Greatest battle tower of all time eh?
21/12/2009 at 21:10 Dinger says:
Ego draco, I suppose they woulda called it if they cared about how society declines. Still, the name does the finest job of celebrating institutionalized buggery since Harry Potter.
21/12/2009 at 21:12 dadioflex says:
“Still, the name does the finest job of celebrating institutionalized buggery since Harry Potter.”
Actually, I think you just did that.
22/12/2009 at 00:20 Scoteh says:
Is their website just awful and non-functioning for anyone else?
22/12/2009 at 00:38 Z says:
I love the fact that the videos load while I’m asserting that I am old enough to watch it.
22/12/2009 at 00:49 Bhazor says:
I’m quite looking forward to this. Customisable critters and dungeon? Lylat Wars style open dragon fights? An action RPG with actual combat? Yum.
On the other hand I have zero interest in Diablo 3.
22/12/2009 at 01:08 Meats says:
This game wasn’t very good. I played through the first part (before you become a dragon) and was disappointed with the combat, the story, and the gameplay, but persevered because the idea of being a dragon sounded p. cool.
The dragon bit is even worse. The area you start off in, which would appear to simply be a ‘noob’ area at the start of the game (which dangles a much larger map in front of you as a carrot) is where the ‘meat’ of the game is, and this area is unavailable after you become a dragon.
What ruined it for me, though, is when you’re a dragon, you can’t incinerate enemies on the ground (they dissapear), and airborne, far tougher enemies materialise out of nowhere.
I reckon I got maybe 80% of the way through the game, then gave up. It’s really that bad.
22/12/2009 at 01:59 Red Avatar says:
I loved the game – the locations are gorgeous, the story interesting, the quests entertaining, you can create your own potions & items, embue them, etc. The combat is a bit MMO inspired which is the only downside for me.
And Meats: how you can complain about the starting area being unaccessible after you turn in a dragon is beyond me. In fact it’s not true. The starting area was overrun and has fallen to the “dark side” but as a dragon you can still visit it. I loved seeing the once lush area being dark and foreboding.
Also, complaining you can’t kill everything on the ground is a bit silly – it’s obvious this is to avoid abuse or it would make the ground sections pointless. Steering the dragon is great fun as it is – and you didn’t even mention the tower which was a stroke of brilliance.
23/12/2009 at 13:31 MadMatty says:
They pulled the “killing things on ground” part off, rather more elegantly in the old “Drakhan: Order of the Flame” – which is a great game. Doing things like “stuff dissapearing” ruins immersion.
22/12/2009 at 06:08 Jakkar says:
Is it as ugly as it looks? X.x A weak engine is forgivable – poor design and modelling less-so.
22/12/2009 at 06:19 AlienGrey says:
I tried full german version of the game, but from the very beginning it didn’t look as good as Dragon Age so I dropped. Graphic is ok, but in-game cinematics are aften ruined by robotic NPC’s constantly walking in backround. Main character’s moves also are strange, controls too. Don’t know, maybe english version would be better since it was delayed quite a bit. Going to try this demo and decide later.
22/12/2009 at 06:33 Red Avatar says:
You ditch a game because of that? o_O How can a game be ruined by walking NPCs? This game was made with a rather low budget, don’t forget that. DAO had millions thrown at it and you can’t compare the two. Not to mention that DAO was released at a lower price …
22/12/2009 at 06:55 ordteapot says:
Why aren’t they entitled to make the comparison or ditch it? Even if it was made with a lower budget, it still costs roughly the same as or more than Dragon Age, for now at least. And when you’ve only got time to play one ungodly-length Dragon obsessed RPG this year, tough choices must be made!
22/12/2009 at 08:08 Serph says:
From what I’ve seen, the game is pretty hilarious. I don’t get why they’re trying to beat Dragon Age with the whole seriousness level and dramatic voiceover when they can advertise its wittiness instead.
22/12/2009 at 10:18 Choca says:
I almost got arrested by german airport security because of this game. Good times.
22/12/2009 at 10:52 SanguineAngel says:
Choca: What? Explain, please. This sounds interesting. More interesting than the game perhaps!
22/12/2009 at 11:19 Choca says:
The game was shown at the Köln GamesCom this year and everyone invited to the presentation got a really ugly knight statuette complete with armor and huge sword.
Since the thing was freaking horrible I threw it away but kept the sword to use it as a letter opener (or to fight back the english hordes). Being extremely clever, I carried my excaliburette in my hand baggage on the trip back from germany, which led to a fun encounter with airport security when my claymore popped up on the X-Ray.
The fun part was that I laughed so hard when the guy came to me all serious with the thing in his hand that I had a very hard time explaining why I carried a smurf sword on me.
23/12/2009 at 09:18 SanguineAngel says:
@ Choca
Good lord! I was correct, that is an awsome story! haha!
Thanks for sharing!
22/12/2009 at 13:04 Scoteh says:
This game just falls so far short of its potential. So many annoying little issues which, while they frustrate, dont technically make it a bad game. Its just having playing a game where frustration is just the normal state of mind, detracts from its better qualities. The fact that youll occasionally get stuck on bits of scenery because they havent worked out how to properly work their ‘jump’ feature, which in this day and age there really is no excuse for. The fact that on even medium difficulty the game lurches seemingly at random between excruciatingly, finger-breakingly, smash your head through a wall difficult, and a light breeze.
The near constant and always random crashes, my favourite of which is that if you quicksave while running (and believe me, as there are gaps of at least 2 hours or so between autosaves, youd damned well better) then you crash. Wunderbar.
This game has many enjoyable aspects, the combat system regardless of the pendulum difficulty is still fun, the quests are enjoyable and have a great deal of interactivity, the storyline is intrigueing and just different enough from your average to be enjoyable.
If they patch this alot then buy it, if not stick to the demo frankly.
22/12/2009 at 17:19 MWoody says:
My experience with the demo:
1) Download demo.
2) Install demo.
3) Start game.
4) Talk to woman.
5) Punch once.
6) Push “d” to strafe right.
After that there was only laughing. That animation gets me EVERY TIME. For those who can’t be bothered to download 1.5gb just to see it, imagine your character – hands held out in old-timey “fisticuffs” stance – with his entire body save the head turned 90 degrees to the right, running full-tilt.
I proceeded to spend 10 minutes running sideways up to every NPC and proclaiming, “Are you having a BULLY DAY? I’m having a BULLY DAY!” That’s pretty much as far as I got.
It’s as bad as the time I decided I’d finish a Splinter Cell by killing everyone I saw with a thrown bottle to the head. I thought I was going to crack a damn rib laughing. Ah well, we find fun where we can.
23/12/2009 at 10:59 MinisterofDOOM says:
The demo left me comfortable with “missing out” on this one. It reminds me of Darkest of Days in the way it completely fails to do anything at all with the story it is framed within. I don’t think the developers could have made the (supposedly fantastical) dragon-mind-meld thing any more underwhelming if they tried. The NPCs talk up the setting, the honor, the ritual, the duty…and then I get a split-second cutscene and it’s on with the game? What is this crap? Did the demo leave something important out? Did I accidentally click and skip half the cutscene?
Combat is numb and vague. Visuals are unimpressive. Characters have no depth so far. I don’t have any genuine care what happens to anyone, including my character, because I don’t know why anything is happening. Again…maybe the demo left out some crucial chunks, but perhaps if the demo is intended to get me to buy the game, those chunks should be jammed back on so I can tell what I’m looking at.
I guess I should probably try this punchstrafing glitch before I uninstall the thing.
08/01/2010 at 02:04 a says:
Einstein doesn’t mind the chance