Rock, Paper, Shotgun

If dragons with jetpacks and skeleton princesses are your favourite things, Dragon Commander is being created specifically for you. It’s not often such niche tastes are accounted for, so count yourself very lucky indeed. Alec was pleasantly surprised during his encounter with Larian Studios’ RPG, strategy, dragon-action hybrid at Gamescom a couple of weeks ago and now a developer walkthrough has found its way online in video form. It’s the same section of the game that Alec saw so there’s nothing explicitly new here, but it’s good to realise the article wasn’t the product of a fever-dream. The world map truly is reminiscent of Small World and there really is a skeleton princess wearing fruit wedged into a corset in order to crudely simulate the fully-fleshed female form. It’s in two parts and is well worth a watch, if only for the nonchalant way in which the jetpack is introduced.

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Divinity II devs, Larian Studios, have announced their next game. Continuing their fondness for winged lizards, this time it’s all about “massive dragon combat” in Dragon Commander. A turn-based strategy-cum-RPG, it’s of course set in the Divinity universe – although within what they’re calling an “Art Nouveau/Steampunk world” – and they’re promising it will “break new ground”. You can see the first video of it below.

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Belgian fantasy role-playing epic Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga has a demo version! Just in time for you to turn your back on your family over the Winter holidays and club some goblins to death in the privacy of your game room/office/laptop parlour. The 2gb demo is the first valley of the game, which is a fairly hefty chunk of play, I think. And the game has, of course, been heavily overhauled since its original release last year, both adding new content and new visuals. And it was fairly pretty to start with, if a little grindy.

Also, in the full game, you can build an “abomination” to fight for you, which can’t be bad.

Wow, it’s been almost a year since I dragged myself through the first dozen or so hours of Divinity II. Just the first dozen hours of what was a huge game, because I simply couldn’t cope with the grind. In many ways this was a well-produced RPG, with a lavish, sprawling world and a bajillion quests, but not being able to walk down the road because I’d get sniped to death by enemies a couple of levels higher than me really took its toll. That hasn’t stopped plenty of other folks from enjoying the dragon-based adventures, however, and it’s now back (BACK!) with an enhanced edition: overhauled graphically, and furnished with a grand total of 180 quests. It really does look lovely, but – despite it brimming with fun ideas, like dragon battles, and flying death-ships – I don’t think I will be going back. Check out the trailer below and you’ll see what I mean, it really does look the part.

No release date that I can dig up for this, but it’s supposed to appear some time this year.
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I’ve been playing through the early parts of Larian Studios’ recent RPG Divinity II in my spare time, with a view to writing up a detailed piece on it for RPS when I beat the full game. It’s been an uneven experience, because while it’s an inferior experience to both Risen and Dragon Age, it has kept me coming back to it. I’ve been coming back not so much for reasons of enjoyment, but because of stubbornness. I don’t want this fucker to beat me… But maybe it has.
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