The sequel to the 2002 sleeper title Divine Divinity, Divinity II has players again traversing the world of Rivellon. Those who haven't played the first title will not be at a disadvantage as the game uses the same game world, but drops players into the shoes of an entirely different character. In this title, gamers will find themselves thrust into the role of a newly minted Dragon Slayer, an elite warrior of Rivellon who is tasked with the duty of hunting down Dragon Knights - humans adversaries who have gained the handy power of being able to transform into dragons. And like the ending of a romantic comedy that you can see from a mile away, you, the player character becomes that which you have sworn to kill - a dragon.
Everybody wants to unleash the dragon.
Lame plot twist it may be, but the dragon controlling aspect of the title is by far the most capturing feature that the game has to offer, definitely adding to the fun of the title. But therein is where the problem lies. When you've spread your scaly wings and are zipping around in dragon form, the game is action-packed with the combat sequences proving to be fast, furious and downright fun. But when you switch back to human form the game turn decidedly dull with the game watered down into a formula for curing insomnia. Walk around, come across yet another goblin-esque creature, hit the attack button, hit the attack button, unleash a special move, finish them off with one last hit of the attack button, gather loot from dead carcass... rinse and repeat!
Combat in Divinity II is performed by mashing the face buttons of your controller, which get skills aligned to them as you progress through the title and discover them. The game automatically selects a target for you, but players are given the option of taking direct control by moving the right analog stick to switch between targets. For the most part, the control system works quite well and the combat itself is both fluid and action-packed. Though like most parts of the game, some aspects of the control scheme could use some further refining. Particularly the fact that there is no part on the interface where you can see how long a skill has to cool down before you can use it again, forcing you to constantly mash its button and listen to the game continually tell you "that skill is not ready."
"That skill is not ready." FFS!
Swords and sorcery is the order of the day in Divinity II, the game seems structured to follow most of the traditional role-playing game standards. Players will spend a lot of time talking to NPCs and embarking on various missions from these fine citizens. Again, these mission types tend to borrow from the usual stable of role-playing quests, revolving around delivering items to NPCs or taking out a pesky band of critters that are threatening the wellbeing of the village idiot. These missions are taken up for the sole reasoning that they provide you with both experience points and loot - which you will definitely need in abundance as you progress through the tail end of the title. As well as leveling up your character, experience points have another use thanks to the interesting 'mindreading' function. As it suggests, mindread allows your character to gamble away experience points for the chance of opening up another wheel of dialogue options which can yield additional information like secret passwords or quest information. Though the value of experience points will have you seriously tossing up whether its worth gambling the points on the chance that you'll get the information you require or whether the information through slaughter approach best suits your style. While this system is a nice diversion from the norm, we found that the frequency of the rewards didn't feel like it matched up well with the value of what we were required to give up - kinda like those days at school when some punk tried to trade you his skanky banana for your awesome cupcake. And just like skanky banana boy, we too are tired of what mind read had to offer us in the long-run.
Refreshingly though, Divinity II does have moments when it goes again the role-playing grain quite successfully. One aspect that we particularly enjoyed in our playthough was the fact that the game doesn’t try to shoehorn you into one specific character class. While you are forced to choose between being a warrior, mage or ranger at the start of the game, Divinity II allows you to craft your own path by giving you the option to place skill points in whatever way you see fit. So if you get the urge to play as a ranged-attack character with the ability to heal, all you need to do is chuck a couple of points into the Ranger and Priest skill trees to see if that will suit your style of play.
Another interesting, yet slight morbid, feature of Divinity II is the ability to collect body parts throughout the game in order to build your own little slice of minion heaven. Add a bag of bloody body parts with a sprinkle of necromantic magic and the player character is able to build zombie-like creatures which can be used to fight for you during the course of the game.
By the power of Greyskull.
Overall, Divinity II's visuals are a mixed bag. For the most part, the game's environments are beautifully detailed, albeit unoriginal art style which showcases a variety of terrain and gorgeous lighting, highlighting the well laid-out landscape of the game world. While the environments are delectable in parts, the title's animation is downright horrible. Your character looks more akin to that of a prancing ballerina with enough vertical leap that would make a basketballer jealous. This combination of the pristine environments and clumsy animation is nothing short of awkward, but can provide gamers with moments of amusement when they see an enemy get hit with an arrow and fly across the screen like he'd just been pulverised with a wrecking ball.
Divinity 2 is not an inherently bad title, but many of its features feel undercooked, thus giving it the aura of a lacklustre by-the-numbers fantasy title marred by a host of technical hiccups on the Xbox 360. So much so that we feel that we honestly couldn't recommend this game to anyone. Those looking for a solid fantasy RPG should head towards BioWare's recent title Dragon Age: Origins and bask in all of the things that it does right for the role-playing genre.
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