A couple of weeks back I was playing Divinity II: Ego Draconis. I stopped playing for reasons that I will make clear in this post. I considered writing a review, but realized that since I had only had a few hours of gametime, my review would be incomplete and therefore erroneous.

I want to recite part of the introduction to the game from the game manual for you:

"With Divinity II - Ego Draconis, we've tried to make an RPG that continuously offers you different types of gameplay and that doesn't rely on repetitive mechanisms to accumulate playing hours. Personally, I have a big dislike for games that force me to do the same thing over and over, and I hope that you'll find that Divinity II - Ego Draconis is different." -- Swen Vincke, Larian Studios.

This is the wrong kind of person to be making an RPG.

There are some basic rules that should be observed by all game developers: You do not take guns out of an FPS; you do not take resource management out of an RTS; and you DO NOT TAKE GRIND OUT OF AN RPG!

I appreciate RPG's that let you barrel right through without grinding. This is a really difficult balance to achieve. Divinity II: Ego Draconis does not even come close to achieving it. If you set one foot in an area that is above your level, you will get murdered. A lot. The game's philosophy is that you should do EVERY SINGLE MISSION that you are given to acquire experience points, and only once you have reached the appropriate level can you proceed without suffering innumerable bullsh*t deaths.

Enemies don't respawn in Divinity II: Ego Draconis (unless it's part of your current mission that you should be ambushed on the return journey). Once you kill one, they're gone for good. This makes experience points a precious commodity. And then they ask you to spend those points on reading people's minds!

You know, Mr Vincke, most gamers are much less averse to killing the same goblin a hundred times than they are to dying to the same enemy ten times. Grind is an option. If I want to put a couple of hours into levelling my character so that I can breeze past the next mission, that's my decision. Your job, as the developer, is to make missions interesting enough that I want to do them regardless of how easy they may be. Your job is NOT to take away the option to make them easier.

That was my only problem with the game. I found the writing to be solid. All of the characters are based on the same models with slightly different hair and beards, but that doesn't bother me because I'm a big fan of keeping things simple. The combat system is really engaging as well - much better than that farce in Dragon Age: Origins (and don't bother posting a response to that unless you've played BOTH games, as I have). This game clearly demonstrates how to port a combat system from PC to console in an intuitive way.

I like so much about Divinity II: Ego Draconis, but the non-respawning enemies render it completely unplayable. If Larian Studios had simply stuck to gameplay traditions that have been proven to work, they would have had a masterpiece on their hands. Instead, well...such a waste.

[tags: divinity ii, ego draconis, rpg, game traditions, swen vincke, larian studios]