Divinity II: DKS - Review @ Computergames.ro

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Myrthos

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Computergames.ro reviewed Divinity II: Dragon Knight Saga and gave it a score of 80/100, saying amongst others this:
The direct comparison for DKS is without doubt The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, a similar pack released with mainly the same reasons: solving technical issues, adding new stuff and improvements. Still, I don’t think that DKS sports such huge differences to entice a gamer that already has Ego Draconis to buy the package.
It’s true that the graphics are better, but ultimately these aren’t the point, we want quality gameplay with attractive quests and loot for the more packrat oriented adventurers. Thus, if we consider DKS to be 100%, then about 25% of it is new, including Flames of Vengeance. There are still technical problems, even some that I didn’t encounter in Ego Draconis. And the irony is that back then I had a weaker video card and the game was running much better.
The framerate in Flames of Vengeance can vary wildly as well, from 40+ frames to some 2 or 3 in moments when the game acted like I had 128MB RAM and a Pentium I. A game restart solved the problem for another four, five hours, but this was an ongoing issue, one I didn’t have with Ego Draconis.
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and this:
Judged on its own, Flames of Vengeance isn’t that tempting, although the price is decent for an expansion pack. But the Dragon Knight Saga is a very good package, especially for those who didn’t play the original in the first place. You get an improved Ego Draconis with balance tweaks, better graphics and loot, plus the add-on which offers some closure to the story.
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More information.
 
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A game restart solved the problem for another four, five hours, but this was an ongoing issue, one I didn’t have with Ego Draconis.

Is it common for people to play games for four to five hours in a row?

I can only do like 2 hours at a time at most! I can't imagine playing for five hours… and the quote in the article implies he's playing for more than that at a time.

Wow.
 
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Ovenall said:
Is it common for people to play games for four to five hours in a row?

I can only do like 2 hours at a time at most! I can't imagine playing for five hours…
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If a game is really good i can easily spend the whole day just playing it. Hasn't happened in quite a while though.

When i played WoW a few years back i could sit from 6.30 in the morning to late in the night. Sometimes for weeks.

..and they say drugs are addictive? ;)
 
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I've heard of this kind of thing with WoW. And I don't want to pass judgement here. But I simply get sick and tired of looking at a monitor and sitting in front of a computer after a couple hours... especially when playing a game, being very connected to it.

I installed DKS a couple weeks ago, and am engrossed. The first few nights I played for 4 hours. But that's with a few half-hour to one-hour long breaks. I guess I'm just not cut out to be "hardcore."
 
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is there going to be a retail box version of this game? Seems like all I can find are digital downloads.
 
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I haven't played Divinity II except for the original demo. I'm curious, how much of a connection is there to Divine Divinity, story-wise?
 
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You're supposed to take a 15 minute break every hour. When I review, sometimes I play all day (typically only if the game is great), but I take a break every hour about..I usually find myself doing this naturally..my body just wants a break, or a drink, or whatever.

Anyway, regarding the game, perhaps the reviewer didn't tweak it much. As I've mentioned before..you should uncap the framerate, disable Vsync, and enable Timeslice Shadows Update. I didn't experience any major drops with those settings, but did see some troubles with the default and other settings.
 
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Not many games can make me sit for hours anymore, but in the past - it was more the rule than the exception.

I once played something like 50 hours straight, without food or sleep - just coffee.

That was playing Drakkhen on the Amiga with my brother and a friend.

Interesting experience ;)
 
I have played long stretches but with breaks. On the other hand I do computer work for a living so sitting for 9 hours at a computer isn't unusual at all for me. Even at work, though, I try very hard to remember to get up once an hour and move around.

It is one reason I can't play games to much, or worry about being on an MMORPG to much. Evenings I am just to "computer" tired to want to play much - an hour is lucky. Weekends I get a little more in.

Still if it is an awesome game I can get 2-3 hours in at one sitting - even then I will take mini-breaks.

Sounds like this will be a good game! I ordered it on Steam but have not downloaded yet as I just ordered a new gaming computer and waiting till that is setup before I download any big files.
 
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I have played long stretches in the past too. I don't anymore, not because of the games, I just don't have time enough now, with 2 kids taking most of my free time ;)
 
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DKS is great except for the combat. IMO, some of the combat is just way too fast to tell what exactly is going on, and it becomes a bit of a click fest and "hope for the best." I've experienced this mainly when facing larger groups of bandits. You end up with 2-3 archers shooting at you, plus 1-2 mages hitting you with spells while trying to deal with melee guys. It simply becomes too chaotic for my tastes, and of course you can run away, but pulling and kiting starts to feel very MMO, and not to my liking.

The writing, story, characters and design are top notch, and I haven't had a single bug, glitch or crash on my mid-level system (and I'm in the battle tower now- probably 10 hours in?). It actually pulls off humor really, really well, better than any RPG I've ever played. Voices are generally good to great - some of the best I've ever heard.

I still don't have an opinion on playing s a dragon though.
 
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Ovenall said:
DKS is great except for the combat. IMO, some of the combat is just way too fast to tell what exactly is going on, and it becomes a bit of a click fest and "hope for the best." I've experienced this mainly when facing larger groups of bandits. You end up with 2-3 archers shooting at you, plus 1-2 mages hitting you with spells while trying to deal with melee guys. It simply becomes too chaotic for my tastes, and of course you can run away, but pulling and kiting starts to feel very MMO, and not to my liking.

The writing, story, characters and design are top notch, and I haven't had a single bug, glitch or crash on my mid-level system (and I'm in the battle tower now- probably 10 hours in?). It actually pulls off humor really, really well, better than any RPG I've ever played. Voices are generally good to great - some of the best I've ever heard.

I still don't have an opinion on playing s a dragon though.
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Does it have a difficulty slider? I won't be installing mine till after my new PC arrives and curious about that - since at my age, and all the typing I do at work, I have less than stellar twitch reactions. I much prefer the low-stress and easy pace of "easy" when I play games.
 
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You can change difficulty as you play, easy/medium/hard.

The combat is weak yes. The AI is quite good though, their pathfinding at least, in Oblivion and Morrowind it's terrible sometimes which makes enemies really easy to kill because they're running against a wall and things like that.
 
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No mentioning of the bugs?
I've been enjoying the game for quite a few hours now (20 plus) but I'm beginning to have problems with the bugs piling up. Too many NPCs are in places that make it impossible to continue with their side-quests. And more and more side quests are becoming affected. It is to the point that when I'm stumped by a puzzle, I have to quit out to make sure I'm not running into a bug. Playing today, I spent more time out of the game than in it. I finally emailed off a Save game in an attempt to salvage my progress so far, having encountered a cluster of bugs. Reading the forums, it looks like I'll have to repeat this process again in the future. I don't know how long it will take them to return the fixed Save game, and I'll be able to continue playing. This is the point where I have to question the purchase.

It's still a fun game, but if I had known then what I know now? I would have waited a good while longer (several more patches) before purchasing.
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I wonder if pytricc on the forums is talking about div2 not dks? Surely dks cant be that bad.
 
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wolfgrimdark-

I'm like you. Not a great twitch gamer, nor do I want to be. DKS combat is mostly VERY easy. At the very beginning I played on Easy to learn the ropes, but it soon became stupidly easy. I've been playing mostly on Normal, though there are a couple stupid difficulty spikes I've encountered recently, so I went back to Easy. These spikes in difficulty feel more chaotic as in "what the hell is going on?" instead of an increased challenge. Combat is just the weakest part of the game.

I'll also say that it's pretty slow and even worse - bland - in the beginning. But it gets really good and just plain fun to play.
 
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Ovenall said:
DKS combat is mostly VERY easy.
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It is ?

I ask because I found the archer combat in Div2 mostly VERY hard … My hero "died a thousand deaths", so o say. I had the feeling, then, that the archer was … well, "underpowered" or so. The close combat types of heroes definitively had it much, much better, imho.

That's why I never played it through and waited for DKS, eventually.


In FOV I found the archer relatively good balanced, for my taste.
But I can't really say, because I played FOV only for testing (for Larian).

Easier aka more balanced archer combat would be a definitive "plus" for buying DKS for me, personally.
 
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Alrik Fassbauer said:
It is ?

I ask because I found the archer combat in Div2 mostly VERY hard … My hero "died a thousand deaths", so o say. I had the feeling, then, that the archer was … well, "underpowered" or so. The close combat types of heroes definitively had it much, much better, imho.

That's why I never played it through and waited for DKS, eventually.


In FOV I found the archer relatively good balanced, for my taste.
But I can't really say, because I played FOV only for testing (for Larian).

Easier aka more balanced archer combat would be a definitive "plus" for buying DKS for me, personally.
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DKS is easier to me than D2, which I played for a bit around a year ago.

For one thing, you can find or buy weapons that do +20, +50 or MORE to your normal or magic damage. And you can get these early on from vendors in Broken Valley for not very much gold. Carrying a sword that does +40 to magic damage also increases your magic spell damage by +40, by the way. AND they have slots for charming and/or enchantments. That's my understanding of what's happening, at least. There was a thread about this here somewhere and some people were very put off by this as it made the game so much easier.

I haven't tried using archery yet in DKS, though I'm pretty sure there are bows that have these same plus-damage modifiers.

Divinity 2 was far more difficult than DKS in my opinion. DKS also looks much better.
 
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Okay, then it's planned into my "buying list". ;)
Thanks ! :)
 
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Yes it's quite easy, playing a ranger and it's very easy on medium. Shot, strafe and just repeat to kill casters/rangers (you never even get hit with that technique, even if there's more of them), melee attackers are a little harder but not much. I can count the times i've died on my two hands probably. I wish archery was more like in TW2, it was much better.
 
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Cool thanks for the feedback Ovenall! I am playing FO3 on easy because I am usually half dead before I put together the facts - A) Someone is shooting at me, B) Where are they, C) okay remember which hotkey has what weapon, D) get the weapon out and try and aim ... while I slowly die and get flustered. At least on easy I have more time to do all that :)

Course the down side is I play melee (again not good with FPS) so on easy ... well then when I melee it tends to be to easy. But I prefer that over frustration. FNV I was finally able to manage on "Normal" and be happy with it.

So good news, for me at least, on DKS.
 
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