Last night I thought I should FINALLY play the Divinity 2: Ego Draconis that has been out on XBOX LIVE for what has probably been close to two weeks now. I decided that no matter how in-depth or not in-depth this demo was going to be; that I should give it a shot before getting the game later next month. And I am certainly glad I did. Because I will no longer be getting the game next month. The demo was, in a word, awful.
The demo begins with a strange little cinematic of what must be a dragon slayer going after a dragon. The guy sneaks up to it and cracks a branch and the dragon gets spooked and flies away. I was wondering if this was some kind of new deer or small bird dragon breed that I had never seen before. Most dragons I've seen in movies, read about in books, or fought in video games would have roared and then set about to eat the guy or set him on fire. But hey, the mythology of the world and all...
Moving on, you begin as random stock guy #1 because for some reason they locked the character creator in the demo. Maybe because they don't think it matters because you won't be spending too much time with the guy anyway. But it would have been nice to see what options of customization you have. Also it probably would have just been easier to skip the whole character customization thing completely, considering you have absolutely no choices any way.
The game drops you into the world and you, all Elder Scrolls style get met by the first NPC who is your commander. Which was fine and certainly the whole general training area of the game was fine. It lasted a tad long, at around 15 minutes considering it was really only teaching you how to get quests and fight. But hey, that's how they wanted you to do it. During the little bit of the game that I played it seemed kind of like the developers had played too much Dragon Age Origins. Because if you substituted "Grey Warden" for "Dragon Slayer" you would have had pretty much the same conversations and the people would have had the same attitude toward you.
In the game, it tells you that you can only leave this little training island with one unique spell. Either a Warrior, Ranger, or Mage spell. A Warrior or Ranger spell? Well apparently the Warrior and Ranger "spells" are abilities and they use mana. Why? No idea, they just do... This is all fine and good until you run into your first town which you are taken to and then told that you weren't ready to be there in the first place and you must be sure to check out this crypt where you will fight some undead therefore not go crazy. Which is fine and all but it seemed a little pointless and the story really could have been crafted to make all the flying and screwing around at this little town unnecessary. You could have just had the time to finish in the little training town at the start. I guess there was some reason for this, but this too wasn't apparent.
In doing some of the things before you reach the crypt; like talking to townspeople and completing minor quests you can level up. Which is great, except, what the game doesn't tell you is that any spell that you level up into before you do your little crypt quest won't work until you do it. At least that was what I gathered because no matter what I tried or how many menus I searched through there seemed to be no explanation for why I leveled up into 3 spells and could STILL only use one. Great demo instructions guys, thanks...
Finally, it appears you need to level up in the spell that you chose before you left the training grounds as that is the ONLY way you are going to beat the undead in the crypt and do your little ritual thing. Which is pretty awful considering from the beginning you are told you can use ANY SPELL from ANY CLASS. Which story wise, they try to make the point of being a super cool dragon slayer.
The game doesn't look especially good, even in cutscenes where the large ship you and your folks fly around in looks complete 2 dimensional in the 3D world. Some of the characters like your Commander and the Archmage look good. But in general it looks like most of the guys use the same 5 character models with slightly different hair. And this was just in the two towns I visited in the demo.
The big draw to this game is supposed to be turning into a dragon. Which I've heard takes a while to achieve. So if the above makes you feel like you want to trudge through until you can; by all means go for it. I would recommend saving often and in different slots. You never know when you will discover that one of your "choices" wasn't what the game REALLY wanted you to do. I've never played a demo that was SO insistent on trying to make you NOT want to play the full version. Which makes me think that there are probably some things SERIOUSLY wrong with this game.
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