Divinity II: FoV - Review, Sales Comments

Dhruin

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Larian's site is pointing out a review of the Dragon Knight Saga at Made2Game. The article is based on the X360 version and the score is 8.5/10, even though the author would have appreciated a little more hand-holding:
Not having played the original I can’t compare what this redworking has improved on but the game does look good, offering some huge lands to explore and a large variety of trolls, ogres, goblins and skeletons to fight against. Since the game is presented in a third person view it can at times be hard to control the cursor, especially when looking for loot on the floor, attacking large amounts of enemies and judging distances on some of the platform jumping sections. The main problem however is the quest selection, you are able to see what quests are open but there are no map hints or mini map markers to point you in the right direction, this may be great for some players who relish adventuring but others will find aimlessly wandering around a mite stressful, meaning the mini map in the top of the screen is just an enemy radar that shows the tiniest of red dots, pretty useless. Whilst on bad points, the save system is atrocious, there is an auto save but it is very sporadic and only happens on occasion, and when it does occur game will pause with an ugly grey autosave dialog box. Manual saving is not much better with you having to pause the action and select save from the menu, however it is a necessity as you will die a lot if you wander into the wrong area ill-equipped or too low a level to take on enemies. Why not have an autosave built into the very long load screen when you go through a door is beyond me.
On a side note, Lar made these comments about sales so far:
Considering the limited exposure the game's been getting, and the lukewarm reviews in some press for Ego Draconis, The Dragon Knight Saga is doing pretty well. We can track sales through the online activations (at least PC sales), and they've been quite steady over the last week. It's too soon to tell exactly how well it's doing, and for sure we could use some more reviews (hopefully they'll be good ones) to attract attention, but considering the limited PR we've had, we definitely can't complain. On the contrary, it's beyond expectations, witness that it's sold out already in several stores. We should be able to make a more definitive judgement in a couple of weeks, but at present all I can say is - whenever those of you who enjoyed DKS do mouth to mouth advertising in some forum it seems to have an impact. The more we get, the more we'll be able to invest in our next game, so please keep on doing it
wink.gif
But in any case, you already had an impact, so thank you very much !
More information.
 
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I'm playing DKS on the PC right now. The mini-map is basically useless. I don't want quest markers or arrows telling me where to go, but the info on the mini-map is so minimal that it's pointless.
 
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Seems like developers are damned if they do and damned if they don't when it comes to 'map quest markers.'

Aracania puts them in and despite the fact that you can still turn that off, the game gets ripped about it in reviews.

D2 doesn't use quest markers and they get ripped for not having them.

As a gaming community, we sure have a way of sending mixed signals.
 
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Well, it depends on the targeted customer group.

- Old-school players don't like quest markers
- "Newer-school" and casual players prefer them

So, the developers are get signals from certain groups.

Arcania was meant (or at least marketed) to be an old-school game - or otherwise they would have left the "Gothic" title partt just out.

D2 is seen as an Action-RPG by the players, and this is the group - cynically speaking - which becomes totally helpless without quest markers turned on.

So, the "ripping reviews" come exactly from the targeted group of ustomers.

But so far, I fear, the developers and the publishers haven'd drawn that fine line.

And this is the place where gaming theory and philosoph jumps in : It works out what kind of target groups there are, what playing styles thre are, what kind of player types there are ... This "groundwork" is so far done by the marketing departments.

We really need people who are working out the theories ! The concepts about gaming ! Right now, marketing departments are doing all of these things - everything in that irection - but with the focus on marketing !

But so far we have nothing really going into the direction of Role Playing Theory !

Because I think we need it - if we want games to appeal to clearly defined target groups.

What's happening right now is that we get a mish-mash : Like Arcania, which is markted as an old-school game, but actually made like an action-game / "new-school" game !

So no wonder that they get "mixed signals !
 
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There was limited or no marketing of Divinity 2: Ego Draconis. I bought the main game from shopto.net (an UK site) and Ego Draconis PC version was in their Wii games catalog. So, this shows gamers' unawareness of the game. Last week, I bought FoV from Larian Vault. Pretty good system, one time activation and such. I hope Larian will live and there will be a Divinity 3 in the future.
 
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This is great news. Hope it keeps up. Wouldn't be surprised to see it getting some more belated love like Risen is with a sale or some such thing, either. Lesser known games like this tend to go that route. Good to know they're doing alright so far, especially the PC sales. European gamers know their shit -- I'm sure it's mostly them.
 
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The original Divinity 2 had some issues but was realy fun if you could get over the graphical problems and some anoying "unpolished" things. Was like a rough gem, with a lot of potential but with a lot of rough edges.

However, this new Dragon Knight saga ( Div2 remastered + expansion FOV) is a very polished diamond of a game now and its been a blast for me and definately tops on my top 10 RPGs of all time (and i've been playing RPGs since i knew how to read ;) )

Make no mistake though, this is not exactly a game that will hold your hand and show you exactly where you need to go and what you need to do, its a game that is slightly more catered to people who like exploration and doing quests "on the wild".

Most reviews i'm seeing are giving 85-90% (or 8,5 / 9) and its well deserved.

For those people who are perfectionist you can easily get 80 hours of gameplay out of € 40 wich is just great value for money.
 
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I'm glad the game is selling well so far. Despite issues I enjoyed D2 a LOT (it was my second favourite game of 2009 after Risen). I played it for over 70 hours, so I'm sure the DKS package could easily result in almost 100 hours of gameplay. I have yet to pick up my own copy, but I'm quite broke currently.

On the "map marker" issue, I personally prefer a map without markers with the ability to place my own. Quest descriptions should be clear enough for me to find out where to go, and if I come upon a place of interest while exploring that I might come back to later I want to be able to mark this on my map.
 
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So what is "remastered"? Graphics or gameplay? Both?

Maybe its just the original game + latest patch (+ expansion?)
 
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So what is "remastered"? Graphics or gameplay? Both?

Maybe its just the original game + latest patch (+ expansion?)


Both Graphics and gameplay. There is numerous diferences between the original Div2 and the remastered Dragon Knight Saga.

On the Graphics part the engine itself has been revamped in a lot of areas from stability to speed and its less "choppy" than div2. There's a lot of small re-touches like the environment destruction, etc (i.e. barrels, chests, vases) that look much better, etc.

On the gameplay changes, there's a lot of new gear in all of the Div2 content, some re-touches, a lot of dificulty balance adjustements, some Fan-based sugestions were implemented, etc. The battletower is changed, the dragon combat was changed a little, etc,etc,etc.

Realy, the Div2 content in the Dragon Knight Saga is much much much more polished than in the original Div2. A lot of small details and some major details all make the package much better (and more stable).
 
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Sounds great, I know that quite a few people liked the original game, but the reviews were a a bit mixed, most in the 70% range.
 
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Sounds great, I know that quite a few people liked the original game, but the reviews were a a bit mixed, most in the 70% range.


Indeed, mostly because of some "upolished" look Div2 had when it shipped and its engine problems.
Animations that were out of place, stuttering all over the place, environment destruction animations seemed out of the year 2000, etc.

And of course things like not having a swimming animation (prior patches), crashes, instability, etc.


Most of that was fixed in Dragon Knight Saga remastering, and a lot more added. Quite honestly i would be very very suspicious if i saw a sub 80% score out there.
 
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Perhaps it's also interesting to remind everyone of the fact that you can now buy either The Dragon Knight Saga or Flames of Vengeance straight from Larian's own online store. People might have missed out on that news, and personally I always prefer buying straight from the developer instead of from a service such as Steam or Gamersgate.

Shame they aren't offering boxed copies there though :(
 
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I'm a few hours into The Dragon Knight Saga, and i think it's quite good. The fighting is probably its weakest point, worse than TW2 for example, its very easy in TW2 but even more arcadey here. Looting isnt as fun as TW1/2 either. Havent gotten into crafting yet (if it even exists?).

I really like their building designs, Lovis Tower looked really epic for example.

It's more arcadey than most RPG's, loot is hovering above ground, no falling damage etc.. I like the short jumping puzzles, also very arcadey but fun.

TW2 looks better and performs more than twice as good. I'm getting around 25-30 FPS, can't even run it on higest settings (no problems in TW2). A little surprised by that, it doesnt run better than the now very old demo. The only difference i can see graphically was the smoother animations (still not super smooth, but acceptable).

Overall, i like it. I also like the devs sense of humor, it's a lot funnier than most RPG's (including TW2 where the devs just tries too hard).

/end rambling ;)
 
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I'm a few hours into The Dragon Knight Saga, and i think it's quite good. The fighting is probably its weakest point, worse than TW2 for example, its very easy in TW2 but even more arcadey here. Looting isnt as fun as TW1/2 either. Havent gotten into crafting yet (if it even exists?).

I really like their building designs, Lovis Tower looked really epic for example.

It's more arcadey than most RPG's, loot is hovering above ground, no falling damage etc.. I like the short jumping puzzles, also very arcadey but fun.

TW2 looks better and performs more than twice as good. I'm getting around 25-30 FPS, can't even run it on higest settings (no problems in TW2). A little surprised by that, it doesnt run better than the now very old demo. The only difference i can see graphically was the smoother animations (still not super smooth, but acceptable).

Overall, i like it. I also like the devs sense of humor, it's a lot funnier than most RPG's (including TW2 where the devs just tries too hard).

/end rambling ;)

Try disabling HDR and lower a little the shadow detail. Those are probably the 2 things that impact more on performance. Also disable the in-game "anti-ailising" because it impacts performance a little and honestly has no noticeable impact on visuals.

On HDR, a lot of people actualy say that its too "saturated" and rather have it disabled for a more "natural" lighting, and even gain around 5-10 FPS.

Also, if you havent checked it yet, check the hotfix that was released a few days ago and edit the config files and tweak them for extra performance (on some machines).

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=424718#Post424718
 
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