Divinity 2 - PC and XBox 360 Demos Available

[Anderson]

It's available (in English) on the 360 as well. I plan to download it later on.

 

[ToddMcF2002]

So did anyone try it? I played for 30 seconds and was pretty turned off by the arcade feel. Am I selling it short? I'm guessing not based on the complete lack of feedback.

 

[txa1265]

So did anyone try it? I played for 30 seconds and was pretty turned off by the arcade feel. Am I selling it short? I'm guessing not based on the complete lack of feedback.

I had pre-ordered and then found I was getting a review copy, so I decided not to touch the demo ... since I still have so many active games to play ...

 

[JDR13]

So did anyone try it? I played for 30 seconds and was pretty turned off by the arcade feel. Am I selling it short? I'm guessing not based on the complete lack of feedback.

Read my impression on the previous page. Yeah it's definitely an action-RPG, but so was Divine Divinity. Overall I think it's worth a purchase.

 

[Anderson]

So did anyone try it? I played for 30 seconds and was pretty turned off by the arcade feel. Am I selling it short? I'm guessing not based on the complete lack of feedback.

Sorry, I forgot to express my thoughts here. I've been carrying on a long discussion about it on TXB (an Xbox 360 forum).

Perhaps rather than just give my thoughts, I'll try to relay what the general reception was. There were maybe 20 people talking about it in the thread, and the feedback was 50/50, with about half the people liking it, and the other half disliking it.

The ones who disliked the demo always did so because of the technical shortcomings -- framerate issues, screen tearing, graphics quality, etc. Some people found those things so bad that they couldn't enjoy the game.

The ones who liked the demo weren't so frustrated with those technical shortcomings and focused instead on the core gameplay. They liked that, mentioning things like the humor, the voice acting, quest quality, open world, and the lack of world levelling.

It all seemed to come down to how much the technical shortcomings bothered a person, vs. whether that person was able to look past those shortcomings and enjoy the core gameplay.

I was in the second camp. I liked the demo quite a bit, played it for about 5 hours total (it's a big demo). I won't be buying the game at release -- $60 seems like too much, and I am not ready for another medieval RPG right now -- but I'll pick it up later, at a discount price.

 

[Corwin]

As a person who has had no tech issues with the game all I can say is there is something in this game to please and frustrate everyone!!

 

[Dhruin]

On the other hand, I hit a show-stopping bug within ~1 hour and Larian haven't been particularly forthcoming on exactly when the fix will be out. Not overly impressed.

 

[ToddMcF2002]

Can you save in the demo? My graphics settings don't seem to persist and I can't seem to save? The button is grayed out

 

[JDR13]

Can you save in the demo? My graphics settings don't seem to persist and I can't seem to save? The button is grayed out

Apparently not. I just booted it up again after reading your post, and I had no saved games, even though I hit quicksave before I quit my last session. I guess they couldn't be bothered to include that feature in the demo.

 

[Corwin]

Dhruin, may I ask what the bug is? I'm intrigued.

 

[Dhruin]

Sure - it's the longest thread in their technical forum:

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=391132#Post391132

A load transition (such as when you're just about to enter the airship and go to Broken Valley) gets stuck forever. I got through one of these but not a second.

It's about six weeks from the first post in that thread (and an 8-page thread is not insignificant) -- the lack of a fix is unacceptable for such a critical error. I realise Lar posted about a patch back on the 5th but no date was provided and no patch notes to be sure the issue is addressed - and it obviously won't happen until at least early January, now.

I have a high tolerance for bugs and a lot of good will for Larian but it's rapidly dwindling with a useless game.

 

[Moriendor]

I bought the German CE on release in July 2009. I remember that same bug from back then even. OK, sure, it only happened (I think) back then if you used the registry "hack" to turn the German game into an English game but looking at how the original English version seems to be affected by that very same bug and facing an 8-page thread, well, who the hell knows what the real issue is?

I also find it kind of strange that I preordered the English (UK) version from Play.com on October 29 (at the most two or three days after Play and other UK retailers started listing the game) but have not received a shipment to this very day. The game was supposed to ship on 11/20/2009. Play.com has labeled the game as "shipping within 4-5 days" (or 1-2 weeks) ever since but nothing ever happened except for a mail update on 12/10/2009 where Play.com apologized for not being able to ship the game due to supply issues. What's up with that one? Are (some) UK retailers refusing to ship the game in its current form because they know that it's bound to have a near 100% returns ratio due to its bugginess?

I'm glad for Larian that the German release seems to have been very successful (I seem to remember news of the game selling out in Germany even) but the international release appears to be a complete catastrophe in just about every way (from availability to patch support).

And the lack of communication definitely does not help at all. Communication used to be one of their strong areas and they were able to maintain a decent level of sympathy in spite of buggy games or delays but now we're stuck with a buggy game and delays and just about zero communication. No, pointing fingers at the UK distributor only does not count... we want to know why there are supply issues in the UK/Europe. We want to know why the patch is taking so long. We want to know when we can expect to play a nearly bug-free game.

 

[Corwin]

I got that bug with the neverending load screen when you board the airship, but closing and re-loading seemed to fix the problem with the cut scene firing and it's never happened again. Maybe I'm just lucky. What's sad, is this really could be an excellent game; it has a ton of great things going for it, but there's a few design decisions that are very frustrating!!

 

[skavenhorde]

A load transition (such as when you're just about to enter the airship and go to Broken Valley) gets stuck forever. I got through one of these but not a second.

I got stuck at two or three points in the game. One when first entering Farglow and the airship bug.

The Farglow one was avoided by taking the direct route into the city. I was exploring the first time when the cutscene was supposed to play. By staying on the road instead of going to the gate from the side solved that problem.

The other one was avoided by not having any dialogue options left when the cutscene was supposed to play.

I think there was a third somewhere, but again the dialogue box was still up when the cutscene should of played. I just restarted and chose all the dialogue options saving the cutscene one for last.

Anyways, that's how I got around those silly bugs. It might work for you as well.

 

[KasperFauerby]

First, there seems to be a lot of doors that are simply part of the background, it would be nice if you could enter more buildings.

Questions: Can someone tell me what the "Timeslice" animation and shadow update options are? Also, is this game more dependent on the GPU or CPU?

Regarding doors - I don't know how far you played, but in the actual game you can enter most doors, if not all. I was actually positively surprised with this...

About time-slicing: Normally it means that instead of insisting on updating *every* animation and shadow that needs updating every frame, no matter how many and no matter the required cpu cost, you instead assign a certain amount of time you are willing to spend on that particular task each frame. When that "time slice" of the full game frame is spent you simply postpone the update of any remaining animation/shadows until the next game frame.

The benefit is that you know exactly how much time you are going to spend on the task each frame, so you won't see cpu "spikes" (frames that "stutters" or "lags" due to excessive work on animation/shadows). Thus the game should run more smoothly overall. The downside is that some animation/shadows might not be completely up to date in a given frame. This can give visual artifacts.

 

[KasperFauerby]

I also want to make a short comment on the game itself.

I posted some initial impressions a few weeks back and I was not terribly impressed with the game at the time. I encountered the hanging load screen and overall I didn't feel the technical presentation of the game was very good. I actually decided to postpone playing it until there was a patch out.

But then I "by accident" ended up playing the game for a few hours - and got completely sucked into it! If you can manage to look past the stuttering there is actually a very very good game underneath. I like the quests, I like the world, I like exploring all the little caves and tunnels. And combat is good action-rpg fun. I'm still in the initial part of the game (I think) and I've just started the part where I have to conquer my battle tower - and I can't wait until I have it! So the game is really addictive and has that "just until around that next corner..." feel to it

Just IMHO of course, but I wanted to post some updated impressions about the game play after having bashed the game technically in that other thread For me it seems that Larian has managed to deliver once again after all!

 

[JDR13]

Regarding doors - I don't know how far you played, but in the actual game you can enter most doors, if not all. I was actually positively surprised with this….

I couldn't enter a single door in the starting village. Anyways, I don't know how long the demo is because of Larian's brilliant idea not to include a save/load function in their demo. I'm going to try the demo again when I have enough free time for a long sitdown.

 

[ToddMcF2002]

I liked the original Divine Divinity but this game really has nothing to do with it. After Dragon Age I'm going to temper my enthusiasm and let you folks evaluate it for me. Right not I've only got Arcania on my Radar and even that looks pretty dubious!