Divinity II: Flames of Vengeance (expansion pack)

[aphoristic gamer]

How come no one has talked about this (http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1074363p1.html) yet?


Divinity II: Flames of Vengeance Gets an Add-On for PC and Xbox Live
The heavens provide for hungry Divinity fans.
March 4, 2010 - Hamburg/Germany, March 04th, 2010 – Aleroth, once a war-torn city, now holds the next challenges for computer role playing gamers. Rivellon, the world of Divinity II: Ego Draconis, is still not safe. In Divinity II: Flames of Vengeance, the game's official add on, players must face the evil once more.

Soon they'll recognize that many of the characters they met in the main game aren't who they pretended to be. Divinity II: Flames of Vengeance continues where Divinity II: Ego Draconis left off. "In Flames of Vengeance, the player picks up the story of the Dragon knight and guides him to his ultimate destiny. Along the way several accounts are settled, and the answers to many questions in the Divinity universe revealed. We've also taken the opportunity to give the engine a solid overhaul, improving performance and graphics quality along the way", Swen Vincke, Creative Director and CEO of the development team Larian Studios, explains.

Divinity II: Flames of Vengeance, the official add on to Divinity II: Draconis, offers more than 30 quests and about 15 hours of gameplay.

dtp entertainment and Larian Studios will publish Divinity II: Flames of Vengeance for PC and on Xbox LIVE Marketplace for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft in August 2010.

"Divinity II genuinely surprised me", "1up.com" stated on Divinity II: Ego Draconis. "I had an absolute blast playing through Divinity 2: Ego Draconis", said the reviewer of "Zeitgeist Game Reviews". German magazine "GameStar" stated the game was "the RPG surprise of 2009 so far" and honored it with an award for special "quest quality".

Guaranteed day-1 purchase for me. Divinity II was one of the best RPGs I played in years. I liked it better than Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2 and Risen. It just has the right mix of exploration, original quests, quirky NPCs, humor, and addictive hack & slash gameplay.

[stusser]

They still haven't fixed the bugs in the initial release. Screw those guys. Never again.

[LesJarvis]

They still haven't fixed the bugs in the initial release. Screw those guys. Never again.

This. I still can't play D2 without major eyestrain and headache-inducing stutter. If they ever fix that I will briefly consider buying the expansion before deciding not to.

[MattKeil]

I can't go that far, as Divinity 2 was pretty janky in many places (Hey Euro RPG devs...stop putting platforming sections in your games. You suck at them. Thanks.), especially the incredibly mushy combat, but I definitely enjoyed it. I haven't actually finished it yet, because I got sidetracked by other games, but I'm maybe five quests from the end. I was very pleased that nearly every dialogue decision included a "sarcastic wiseass" option. I'll pick up the add-on, no questions asked.

[stusser]

You must be playing on the 360.

They corrupted my savegames when I bought it months ago and that bug is still in the game right now. That's unforgivable.

[MattKeil]

I thought the patch in late January fixed the save bug.

[stusser]

It did, on the 360. PC version remains unfixed.

[aphoristic gamer]

I never had any problems with the savegames getting corrupted on my PC version and I always wrote over the same few saves. I do tend to make a backup of saves on a USB key whenever I play a long RPG though, just in case.

I had no problem with the platforming, thought it was pretty fun, especially at the big tower in Broken Valley.

[MattKeil]

The platforming was absolutely awful. You cannot make me do jumping puzzles with a flippy jump that erratic and a collision/physics system that unreliable. The camera wasn't exactly up to the task, either. Getting up to the chest on the top of the tower in that castle full of Dragon Knight worshippers was maddening. I liked having the jump as a method of getting over obstacles and jumping off high places, but once they started trying to get me to do precision platforming I lacked any patience. Granted this was only three or four places in the game, but it was never fun and never anything more than a struggle against the game's engine itself.

I was also disappointed that what should have been the most badass sections of the game (the Flying Fortress attacks) were laborious slogs due to the ridiculous auto-aim of the towers and enemy dragons. I should have been ripping up shit like a, you know, awesome dragon, but instead it was fly up, blow up a few things, change back to human, heal, save, repeat. Lame, lame, lame. Especially considering the fact I'd tweaked my skills to essentially make me invulnerable to most damage in human form, so really my dragon form was my weakened state.

[Joe M.]

360 Matt? I didn't have any problems with platforming either but I played it on PC.

[MattKeil]

Yeah, 360. On the PC maybe it's Mario Galaxy, but that certainly didn't carry over to the console.

This is one of the reasons I specifically asked extarbags about the quality of the 360 version of Risen over in that thread.

[Joe M.]

Well there's your discrepancy between opinions. The platforming struck me as really unnecessary but with PC precision it's not too difficult. The one spot I had a bit of trouble with was the rising platforms with the fireball deal at the end and limited time to activate the final trigger before it all reset. That one took 4 or 5 tries... I can't imagine doing it with a gamepad (but I am completely horrible with gamepads).