Finished Divinity II last night – both Ego Draconis and Flames of Vengeance.

Can’t say too much without spoiling stuff for Terri, so a more in-depth commentary will have to wait for now.

Suffice to say – kickass game.

Completed the whole Battle Tower thing in Divinity II last night…  I’ve now got a tower, and I can turn into a dragon at will, and I’ve got some complaints…

First of all, I’m miffed that I can’t go back to the Broken Valley.  Yes, they warned me.  They said we were going to get attacked and I better wrap up my business first.  I guess I didn’t realize that meant I could never go back to the Broken Valley.  I figured I’d be dumped into some kind of siege mode that I’d have to deal with first…  Or maybe I wouldn’t be able to turn in those old quests, since they were designed for non-dragons…  I did not expect the Broken Valley to simply vanish in a cloud of toxic fumes.

I really wanted to go back and wander around the countryside.  There were some neat places I’d seen, but not actually explored.  I was looking forward to soaring over the countryside as a dragon.  All of that is gone now.

I’m actually debating whether I want to load up a previous save and go finish up in the Broken Valley…  I know for a fact that there’s stuff my wife found that I haven’t seen yet.  But, at the same time, I’m not sure I want to go back to my overstuffed inventory.  Having a coffer to shove it all in at my Battle Tower is very, very nice.  I went from using 155/160 inventory slots, to using about 30.  I immediately retrained and got rid of a bunch of points in that inventory management skill.

Also, I was lead to believe that the Battle Tower flies.  It does not.  It’s still awesome…  But it doesn’t fly.

The dragon mode is neat…  You fly around and breathe fire and all that.  You’ve got some new skills and separate skillpoints to improve them.  There’s dragon armor.  It’s all pretty awesome.  And you can turn into a dragon pretty much anywhere there’s room…  And you can turn back into a human pretty much anywhere…  Which is all very awesome…

Except that the dragon mode seems to be completely separate from the human mode.  You can’t turn into a dragon and then walk around on the ground – you’re stuck in the sky.  And when you turn into a dragon, enemies on the ground just kind of vanish.  So you can’t turn into a dragon and torch a goblin camp.  And you can’t turn into a dragon inside a cave, or dungeon, or anything like that.

I understand why that was all done…  I can easily see how that might unbalance things horribly…  But it’s still kind of annoying.  Feels like I’m not getting the full dragon experience.  And it seems a little arbitrary, too.  There isn’t really any explanation or anything as to why you can’t walk around on the ground and torch goblins.

Now that I’ve got a Battle Tower, I’ve got my own necromancer.  And he built me a monster to accompany me into combat, which is very cool.  You can actually customize the monster with different limbs and stuff, which gives it different abilities.  Very cool.  And the thing is actually kind of cute in an absolutely hideous way…  It scratches itself and sniffs at the ground and occasionally pees on things.  Sort of like an ugly, undead, poorly-behaved puppy.

So…  Yeah.  The mixed-bag continues.  There are things I absolutely love about this game, and then there are things that just annoy me.  Very inconsistent.  Very unpredictable.

I keep getting some weird vibes from Divinity II.  It’s a fantasy RPG…  Swords, sorcery, dragons, goblins…  But I keep getting a science fiction vibe from somewhere.

You’ve got this fantasy setting that is built upon the ashes of an ancient civilization.  You used to have insanely powerful mages, and The Divine, and dragons, and dragon knights all over the place.  There are all these tunnels and secret passages and towers and crypts and stuff, and the modern townsfolk seem virtually oblivious to them.  You’ve got all this talk about what things were like in the good ol’ days.  You’ve got powerful wizards that are claiming to be gods and dragon knights, and scaring the populace, but they’re actually nothing compared to the dragons and mages that used to live in the area.

It all kind of reminds me of the Mad Max movies, or Waterworld, or the Fallout games…  A relatively primitive world built upon the ashes of a far more civilized one.  And something as mundane as a cigarette lighter becomes a prized piece of high technology.

Only we’re talking about magic, instead of technology.

I’ve got a kind of love/hate thing going with Divinity II right now.

Generally speaking, I’m enjoying myself.  The game is fun, looks good, plays well, has an interesting plot…  It’s a good way to waste some time.  And there are some things I really enjoy, like the whole dragon thing…

But, at the same time, there are some very frustrating elements.

My biggest complaint right now is that my computer just can’t run it smoothly.  The graphics are simply a little more than my machine can handle.  I’ve had to turn an assortment of settings down, and it generally plays OK…  But there’s still some input lag.  And then I’ll wanted in to some area that’s especially shiny, and the input lag will get worse.  This makes everything annoying…  But combat becomes more difficult, and some of the platformer sections become almost impossible.  Very frustrating.

Of course that isn’t really a problem with the game – that’s more a problem with my computer.

More specifically a problem with the game is the fact that pretty much all the enemies wind up having some kind of ranged attack.  Even the ones that probably shouldn’t.

I’m playing a warrior, and it’s a huge pain to close to melee range when you’re getting blasted with spells and shot with arrows.  Of course, there’s nothing stopping me from investing in a few ranged abilities myself…  But that’ll water down my melee proficiency.

I don’t really mind getting jumped by archers and mages.  I expect that.  It happens in any RPG.  But even warriors and rogues and random thugs have ranged attacks.  It gets kind of old…

Then there’s my inventory management problems…  Tons of random stuff all over the place.  Bits of stone and gems and crystals that, presumably, can be used for something eventually.  Assorted body parts that, presumably, can be used for something eventually.  All sorts of plants and herbs and flowers that, presumably, can be used for something eventually.  Tons and tons of books that, presumably, will be used for something eventually.  Except the game never really explained what any of this would be used for…  And there’s no stash or warehouse or storage beyond your own backpack…  And that filled up very quickly.  So I’ve got absolutely no idea what to throw out, and what to keep.

Terri played a game called Divine Divinity a few years ago…  I tried it out, but never really got in to it.  Not entirely sure why…  It was a decent enough game.  It just never really hooked me.

Turns out, there was an expansion and now a sequel.  And unlike the first game, I’m pretty much hooked on Divinity II.

There’s been a huge overhaul of the graphics engine…  It’s now a 3rd-person action/RPG.  All sorts of shiny 3D stuff going on.  Jumping, swinging your sword, dodging fireballs, wading through water.  Looks very nice.  Reminds me of some kind of cross between Diablo and Dragon Age.

Your character creation process is very simple – you just pick how you look.  As the game progresses you’re able to allocate stat points and upgrade skills.  And you can use skills from any of the classes – no getting locked-in to playing a mage or a warrior.  You can mix and match to come up with whatever style of gameplay you like.  Plus, your choices aren’t set in stone.  You can change your appearance and skills just about any time you want.

The game seems to have very little to do with Divine Divinity…  The setting, storyline, characters…  All of it seems completely removed from the first game.  About the only similarity is that they mention a generic deity called “The Divine”.  Of course, I’ve only just started playing Divinity II, and I never did get very far in Divine Divinity…  So it is entirely possible that they really are very tightly related, and I’m just not seeing it.

My only complaint is that there’s some serious input lag going on.  There’s a noticeable delay between when I move my mouse, and when my cursor moves on-screen.  I was able to tweak the visual settings and my driver configuration enough to make it playable, but that delay still isn’t entirely gone.  And it doesn’t appear to be a result of my computer being underpowered…  I still see that delay if I lower the resolution and turn off some of the fancier eyecandy.

Still, I’m having fun…  So it isn’t enough to ruin the game for me.