Divinity 2 - Scandinavian Release Info

We have a large contingent of Scandinavian readers, so this tidbit from Alrik might be useful. After enquiries on the official forums, Lynn Vanbesian from Larian confirmed the Scandinavian distie is Mastertronic - same as with the UK release. This means the game has been released but Mastertronic may not have wide reach elsewhere, so if you can't find the game in-store, you might consider ordering it from UK resellers.
More information.

Have not seen it yet in the 3-4 stores I have been in, but think I going to ordre it over the internet.

I have had play.com preorder for months but it says that "out of stock". Lucky I got plenty of other games to play. I havent even managed to finish 60% of risen even.

This happens a lot, sadly. Small, UK-based publishers get the distribution deal for Scandinavia as well, without being able to actually distribute the games there in any real way.

Both www.webhallen.com/start.php and http://www.spelbutiken.se/catalog/. Have Divine Divinity 2 so that you can get it by mail order.

Old Macdonald said:

This happens a lot, sadly. Small, UK-based publishers get the distribution deal for Scandinavia as well, without being able to actually distribute the games there in any real way.

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I think it would be wise to point Lynn of Larian towards that.

Without knowledge, there is no learning.

I live in Denmark, and I just got Divinity 2 as a birthday present (english version of course). I believe it's been available here since 20/11. I know of at least one online shop that currently have it in stock - www.coolshop.dk. Not sure how far they'll ship their games though.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I think it would be wise to point Lynn of Larian towards that.

Without knowledge, there is no learning.

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I guess they'll find out, since the deal is already signed. Either Mastertronic will get the game out to customers in Scandinavia, or Larian will continue getting loads of questions from Scandinavian fans wanting to find a place to buy it.

Also, it is worth mentioning that getting a PC-centric game distributed properly in Scandinavia is getting very hard in itself these days.

So, this game has appeared in Australian stores (about a week ago, actually).

Do we have some sort of consensus on whether it is worth it? The reviews I've read have ranged from pretty positive to very 'meh'. How is the combat and character system? Is it a proper RPG in terms of choices and consequences? I've not played any games in this series. For someone who loves Dragon Age to pieces; really liked the first half of Risen but never finished it because of how bad the second half of the game got; adores Arcanum and Bloodlines; and thought Fallout 3 was a good game but lacking as an RPG, and a bit too much of a 'post-apoc theme park'; would this game be worth the purchase and time investment?

I probably won't buy anymore games until I finish DA at least 2 or 3 times, and I have my eye on a few different titles. Some older games that I missed at the time like Company of Heroes and the Hitman games are availabl as budget titles for very cheap at JB here, and I've been thinking I should get them, partly because they will run really well on my laptop, and I can feel like I have an awesome computer again until I actually buy myself an awesome computer with all the $$$$ I will earn working Xmas and NYE.

I was getting bored with the tedium of the Deep Roads in DA:O so when Div 2 arrived I gave it a quick spin and haven't stopped playing it since. I will get back to DA:O, but at the moment Div 2 is keeping my full attention.

I really, really like Larians previous work - Divine Divinity in particular, but I actually also thought Beyond Divinity was a pretty good game. So when I got Divinity 2 I was of course very tempted to start playing it immediately - but in the end I decided to wait until I finish DA:O.

I did play through the tutorial area of DD2 though, and while I cannot really say anything about the story or gameplay yet, I'll unfortunately have to admit that this might be a bit of a "rough gem" - tech-wise at least. I see quite a bit of stuttering, I had a problem with a never-ending loadscreen (from their forums it seems many people are - for some wierd reason pressing numeric '8' makes the game continue when/if it happens...) and the game just hung completely when I tried changing a graphics setting in the options menu.

So, the game is definitely *not* as polished an experience as neither DA:O or Risen... but it might still be a better game I guess. Time will tell Anyway, if you're the kind of gamer that values polish a lot then I guess it might be an idea to wait for a patch?

Yep. I have to agree with Kasper. I got mine (from Coolshop) before the weekend and installed it yesterday. The performance was NOT impressive after having just finished DA:O and being in the middle of Assassin's Creed 2 on my Xbox and after a few minutes of trying to find a setting that didn't make movement (especially turning) seem like a stuttering slideshow it crashed to the desktop.

After almost 100 hours of DA:O with only 2 crashes it doesn't bode well when Divinity 2 crashes after merely 5 minutes. I might put this one on ice until after the holiday season and the US release when the focus and patching and performance tweaking hopefully will increase.

This may sound cynical but issues like these are a very important part of why I'm NOT the indie/non-AAA productions fanboy that many people here at the Watch are. Divinity 2 has been out in german speaking countries for several months now yet it is seemingly still on par with Gothic 3 when it comes to bugs and performance issues.

*Sigh* I'm getting too old for this S**t

It's interesting to contrast against Dragon Age. I've not played far at all and my first impressions are mixed. Performance and animations are pretty rough and I hit a play-stopping bug within the first 30 mins (Kasper's loading issue but pressing "8" didn't work for me). There is a thread on the official forums and Larian acknowledge the issue but seem to be having trouble getting a patch out, which I find rather poor.

The combat hasn't grabbed me so far - it lacks "impact" and ranged feels disconnected (I think an overhead / isometric view works much better for hack'slash) and the character development doesn't seem as interesting as DivDiv. That said, there's a certain flair that I do like and that the much-more-serious Dragon Age doesn't have. The locations are pretty interesting in small ways, for example. There's definitely something there but it didn't impress me at first blush.

Very, very, very early impressions, so we'll see what happens.

I'm playing atm and if you can get pass the distracting stuttering, its a very solid and fun game. The dialogs are briliant, the graphics diversity is realy artwork and the music is awe-inspiring.


ABout the stuttering, it seems you can get it somewhat better if you run the game, go to the desktop and run the task manager, and then apply "priority - high" in the system process.

Some people say it works, i havent tried it yet

I haven't had any stuttering at all. I got the endless load screen at the end of the tutorial, but closing and reloading fixed that. I rarely play ranged and I agree that it needs a proper targetting reticule. The humour is fun too and I enjoy the little touches; 2 of the chars in the Bandit Camp are called Thelma and Louise. There are other similar touches to watch out for.

Tried again last night, but had to quit after less than 10 minutes of playtime due to watering eyes and a beginning headache. I then went to the official forums to see if I could find some way to get rid of this show stopping bug and it seems that this issue has been there from the very beginning but supposedly it has been fixed in the German version. However, it hasn't been fixed in the other versions as of yet.

There were a few pointers of things to try if you're using an ATI X-fire setup, running Vista, running Windows 7, have 6 fingers on one hand, it is Thursday and whatnot, but the results are mixed. For some it seems to help and for others it has not effect ... and for some, like Corwin, there are no stuttering issues whatsoever.

I'm going to try one more time tonight and then I'm done (3 chances rule that I have). Unfortunately there is no return policy for games in my country so returning it is not an option. I'm just going to have to write it off as a bad investment and put Larian Studios on my "do not touch until stability has been proven by several independent sources" list alongside Piranha Bytes and Akella and several other "indie" developers.

Can't seem to find it in Norway. Would be very interested in trying this out during the holiday, so if anyone knows of a Norwegian shop..

Platekompaniet has the XBox version on their website. Maybe they also have the PC version - AFAIR their site isn't always updated. If we're lucky they have it in the shops.

I hadn't noticed that you lived in Bergen. Gåman!

I messed around with the settings to try and minimize the stuttering as much as I could. I did not manage to get rid of them entirely, but I did see big improvements. I did:

- (Win7/Vista only): Right-click shortcut and configure it to run in "XP SP3" compatibility mode. Also put a checkmark at "Disable Desktop Composition".

- Make sure the in-game graphics setting for "Dynamic Geometry Distance" is set at "High" or lower - and not "Very High". According to a developer at Larian, if the setting is "Very High" then the engine effectively disables the lowest LOD for trees.

- Disable the "Render GUI at desktop resolution" graphics option. I have not actually measured if this option has any performance implication - but it sounds like special code would be needed to render GUI at (potentially) another resolution than the game itself. And in my case I was actually running the game at desktop resolution anyway...

- Enable the "Timeslice shadow update" graphics option.

- Limit the number of frames the game is allowed to render ahead in DirectX. If you have an nVidia card you can control this setting on a per-application base through their control panel. Default is 3, I lowered this setting to 1.


Finally, I did try a suggestion from the Larian forums about tabbing out of the game to set the thread priority to "High" for the game. It seemed to improve stuttering a little, but it's annoying to have to do this each time the game is started so I don't know if I can be bothered once I start playing it for real...

pibbur said:

Platekompaniet has the XBox version on their website. Maybe they also have the PC version - AFAIR their site isn't always updated. If we're lucky they have it in the shops.

I hadn't noticed that you lived in Bergen. Gåman!

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Hehe, heia Brann!

Anyway, I checked the local Platekompaniet yesterday, but I couldn't find it. I'll keep looking though.