Holy smokes what have I been missing?! A whole lot...

I've played Skyrim, Divine Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2, Eldar Scrolls Oblivion, Morrowind, Witcher 3, Kingdoms of Amaular, Divine Divinity.... but this gem here... it's the perfect mixture of nolstagia and modern open world Rpgs. It's where Vampire Masquarade Redemption and Skryim kiss even though Skyrim was later in time.

I must say the reward system (i.e. after you complete a quest) is genius. You get to choose what you want. I've never expereinced that before and it's what intrigues me and allows so much personal customization for your adventure and character.

Graphics are a lil bit dated, but if you grew up playing rpgs you know how to appreciate graphics and gameplay over just eye candy.

The only gripe about this game is I have a high end computer and had load screen issues where screen would just get stuck. This is a known issue and all I did as others have mentioned was run the 4GB patch and issue was gone!!

This game is awesome!

Pretty good, hope larian gives third person rpgs like this another go once they're done with baldur's gate 3

At the moment this game has mixed reviews and I'll tell you why you should ignore those reviews.

Divinity II is a hardcore, unforgiving RPG with a learning curve. You will encounter areas that are a higher level than you, you will get your arse kicked, level up, do side quests and enjoy the games lore without rushing into any areas that are above your level and you will find the game won;t be as hard as you first thought.

Divinity II also has a few bugs hat can be easily avoided by saving often!!! Crashes during loading screens is a huge issue among the mixed reviews of this game but like I said, this can be avoided by saving often!

Lastly, the ending has also come up as a bad point of this game but REST ASSURED! the Developer's Cut containts the expansion that takes after the main games story and tries to correct the much hated ending of the original, so don't come into this game thiniing you have a bad ending waiting, you don't.

Thank you for reading my review of Divinity II Developer's Cut. I hope this review clears up any misinformation about the game, which I think every hardcore RPG fan should play and enjoy with out issues.

Divinity 2 is a game where you can (at will) turn into a dragon, attack a flying fortress & its army of dragon riders, land on the courtyard, kill the guards with a mix of sword fighting and destructive spells, subdue the fortress’s commander and then read its mind to know his deepest secrets. All this 100% gameplay, no cutscenes involved. It has to be the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ best RPG ever made by man, right?

Sadly, not quite. Larian Studios was held back by time constrains, lack of resources and, worst of all, the focus on consoles and their limited hardware. While the game overflows with original ideas and Larian’s usual clever writing, the execution doesn’t deliver. It’s not a bad game by any measure; the gameplay is good, some quests are creative (and funny) to do, and it succeeds in giving players interesting mechanics to play with (like mind-reading). But sadly it lacks that “special something” in its execution, making the game somewhat repetitive and mediocre by the end. Still, is a great game that’s not afraid to break the mold and bring something new to the table.

Perhaps one of the most criminally overlooked RPG's to be released in the last decade, Divinity II is a unique entry in the Divinity series with much more action-oriented gameplay than any of its siblings. The class-building system is much simpler than Original Sin, but deep enough to be satisfying for the real-time action-based combat, with immediately noticeable impacts on each skill point spent. It has an excellent sense of player progression, starting you off feeling weak and frustrated with entry-level mobs and eventually being one of the most powerful and respected people in Rivellon: A Dragon Knight. That is, someone who can transform into a dragon at will and destroy anything by looking at it. Make no mistake, this game is a proper "power fantasy" RPG, complete with your own fortress and cast of servants eager to do your bidding and please you in any way they can. You start off collecting herbs for alchemy, or gems for enchanting, and suddenly find yourself telling one of your minions to gather them for you instead. Any of the tedium of resource collecting and crafting that Western RPG's are known for can quickly become a task delegated to someone less than yourself, with more efficiency than you ever could on your own, and it's just as awesome as it sounds.

Divinity II is often described as an open-world game which I really don't think is accurate. Open World implies a certain non-linearity and encourages the full exploration and travel of the world without loading screens separating specific "zones" aside from say, cities or dungeons. However Divinity takes the latter approach, with each zone distinct and seperate from one another, a loading screen between each one, and one specific path you take from zone to zone on every playthrough. Enemies aren't scaled to your level, but rather to the area they're in, making it very obvious which area you're expected to progress to at which point in the game. Once you clear the monsters out of the zone, they're gone, making it easier to traverse and explore as you play, which I actually found very rewarding. None of this is a bad thing, it's just more like "Fable" or "Zelda" than "The Elder Scrolls" and there's a lot of misleading information on the store page through tags and user reviews calling it "open world" when that's not at all what you're going to be getting into.

The game, like every other entry in the Divinity series, excels most in its NPC interaction and conversational dialog. The writing is very sharp and witty, and each NPC has its own distinct personality and motives, which means you'll be playing for the sidequests just as much as you will be for the main story. There's an obscene amount of voice acting in the game for all the characters, and it's amazing that a game like this can maintain the quality that it does across all voice actors and characters in the way that it can. Whereas many fully-voiced RPG's suffer from having every NPC sound dull, bored, and void of personality, Divinity II very obviously puts individual effort and care into crafting every character you meet. You can compare this to Skyrim, where everyone has the same robotic, empty projection using a small handful of recurring voices and feeling less like real people and more like quest vendors.

Unlike some of the other entries in the series, which certainly had their fair dose of humor, Divinity II seems to put its goofy, bonkers demeanor on center stage, rarely pausing for a moment of somber reflection for the world or its characters. While the story tells of an impending doom, entire cities and provinces being destroyed throughout the course of the game, it never uses it as an excuse for melodrama and instead embraces the wacky nature of Fantasy RPG's in a semi-satirical, wholly self-aware, and absolutely hilarious fashion, without ever stooping down to lazy attempts at 4th wall breaking or mocking tropes that it actively takes part in but acts like it's okay because they acknowledged it. Rest assured, it has the same wit and intelligent writing that the series is known for, and doesn't skimp on lore or in-game literature.

The game has tons of content, with lots of sidequests, skills, dialog options, and secrets. I certainly didn't do a completionist run by any means, though I did take my time in each city to do as many sidequests as I could be interested in doing and eventually completed the game at about 33 hours. Compared to other RPG's of this type, such as Fable, I think this is very generous and those with more motivation could easily go beyond this number if they wanted to. For me personally, I don't see much replay value in the game unless I wanted to play through the game again as a different class, since the zone-to-zone progression would make every playthrough feel a little too familiar for my taste. But if you're really keen on discovering how each sidequest and conversation plays out due to different decisions, I'm sure you could get another play or two in. Regardless, even as a single-playthrough experience, I thought it was well worth the time spent and hope more people discover this game after playing more popular recent entries like Original Sin 2.

NOTE: The game is not playable on Windows 10 right out of the box, you'll likely need to download a small patch file from Nvidia to use more than 4GB of RAM, otherwise it will give you an infinite loading screen when entering a building. In addition, the game is locked at 30fps, but emulates 60+fps by displaying the same frame twice. It's a cheap tactic that's very noticeable but I didn't find either of these issues inconvenient enough to prevent from enjoying the game.

Divinity II Ego Draconis and Divinity II Flames of Vengeance comprise Divinity II: Developer's Cut. The former the original and the latter the expansion. Depending on how you play the length of the entire production can easily extend past 100 hours.

To start, customization was a disappointment. Selection is limited to a male and female model with appropriate sound samples from which to pick. Want to sound like a noble or a soldier then Larian has made that happen. What Larian did not make happen was allow me to choose an avatar in my chosen image. The hair and beard and color of both can be chosen but only female or male and human at that. The game has goblins, why can't the player be a goblin?

Once my disappointment over the customization screen had dissipated it was time to immerse my self in the world of Riverlon. Much like Risen, the player starts as a complete non descript. In terms of the game's systems, the player character might as well have been just expelled from the womb. Barely any attributes or acquired skills make up your profile and depending on your skill level as a gamer and how you allocate your initial allocation of attribute and skill points, the game can be rather unforgiving. Some would think challenging forcing a strategic approach, others may be put off. I thought the former and welcomed the challenge eagerly building my character for the tasks ahead. Im that context the game starts the player much like Risen or Gothic.

As you progress in Divinity II you become more powerful and the game eventually will become easier. Late in the base game there was a distinct lack of difficulty balancing by Larian. While the game continued to be entertaining the lack of eventual difficultly was a serious issue. While the game has multiple difficulty settings encompassing casual through nightmare, this wasn't enough. An additional difficulty setting was needed or the skills needed to be toned down though the game does make you feel very powerful from a role playing perspective.

My opinion on difficulty may be more a product of playing as a pure Mage. I cannot speak for Fighter, Ranger or playing a mixed class. Also note that for a good portion of the base game the game was extremely challenging even on normal. Divinity II is not on rails and you are free to explore areas outside of your capabilities.

The player is free to allocate skills to any category. Categories are broken down by Priest, Mage, Fighter, Ranger and general category to remain unnamed. Want to be a Battle Mage, a Ranger Priest, no problem. The elasticity of the skill system allows for such combinations with the only limitation being that the skills are level locked.

Divinity II tells the story of a budding Dragon Slayer who eventually is recruited to become a Dragon Knight and defacto a Dragon. Morphing into a Dragon is cool and a significant divergence in game play. Like the Dragon Knight, Dragon abilities can be allocated and strengthened through skill points. Game-play as a Dragon will have you battling all sorts of flying beasts as well as entrenched land based weaponry. At this point in the review if you are reading through the spoiler tag I want to point out that anyone who likes their flight controls inverted is in for a big surprise and for this Larian gets an F for failure and not caring about a portion of their fan base. Larian left out inverted flight for the dragon. Thankfully we can send human beings into orbit and utilities exist to help correct this issue. Using Xpadder I was able to setup a profile to control the Dragon on an Xbox 360 game controller and invert the flight controls in the process. This meant playing the Knight with the keyboard and playing the Dragon with the game-pad. A minor inconvenience but the PC version should of been patched as the Xbox version had inverted flight.

Potions, Crafting, Botany and Gemstones all play significant roles. Potions can be purchased though there is an alchemy system based on plants. Potions are not limited to health and mana and include attribute based potions as well. Potions interestingly have many level classifications with the strength of the potion increasing with the level. Crafting is gem based and like alchemy, the ability to craft is available to every player character. When you become a Dragon Knight you get your own Battle Tower and the tower has servants. Servants of which you may weaponize and armor. Servants that will collect gems and plants for you. A welcome time saving feature implemented by Larian to keep game minutia to a minimum.

Divinity II is a 2009 production and looks like it was made in 2009 though in some places the game visually shines but over all the game still looks good. Voice acting is top notch and professional. I was disappointed to see the re-use of npc models, a pet peeve of mine, though Larian did an adequate job covering up this sin and the issue didn't appear to be as egregious as Gothic 3.

Combat was simply fun and skills utilized by the player are accessed via the standard 1 through 0 keys or can be reassigned to any key. All game functions can be re-mapped including quick save. Combat is as simple as swinging your weapon and using skills. Blocking is non-existent and points can be put into the passive skills like evade. The player can also roll out of harms way.

The Developer's Cut allows the player to start the base game and expansion as originally released or in what amounts to a debug mode. Both versions are save game compatible. In the debug version, the console is accessed via F11 and you are free to do as you wish. Want to give yourself an apple ? You can do that. Mostly I stayed out of the debug version though I will come clean so to speak and admit to pumping 5 points into encumbrance to satisfy my pack rat tendencies and because I'm no fan of dealing with limited inventories in action rpgs. It bears to mention that the starting inventory limit can be managed without putting any points into encumbrance.

Divinity II and expansion are worthy for multiple reasons. Divinity II comprises originality, professional voice acting, great game-play, questing and a great soundtrack (accessible via install). A top notch action RPG.

+ An abundance of side quests.
+ Lots and lots of dialogue.
+ Multiple options regarding quests
+ Many interesting and insightful books.
+ Good variety of weapons/armour.
+ Developer mode. Fun, fun fun!
+ Superb voice acting with a large variety of accents.
+ One helluva, damned good soundtrack!

(without a bit of tweaking and fixing some stuff)

- Bad lag and stuttering.
- Poor-ish graphics.
- Random crashes and infinite loading screens.

The 4gb patch helped tremendously: https://ntcore.com/?page_id=371
Also I went into NVIDIA control panel. . . Currently, I have modified the following:

Antialiasing - FXAA [on]
Antialiasing - Mode [Override]
Antialiasing - Setting [8x]
Antialiasing - Transparency [2x (supersample)]
Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA) [on]
Threaded optimisation [on]

^ Works for me! Overall, playable and not too bad looking. . . You may want to
play around with the settings yourself or do s'more if you know how. 😊

*EDIT* I recently oc'd my monitor refresh rate from 60hz to 64hz and it has
further helped reduce lag/stutter. How? Go to Nvidia Control Panel > Display
> Customise > Create Custom Resolution and change "Refresh Rate (Hz)" to 64hz.
Remember to select it. You'll know you've done it right if by going to Settings > Display
> Advanced display settings you see your refresh rate is 64hz... Hope that helps!

A wee bit of advice...

> Mindread. Everybody. I mean, some of those who you mindread are just a waste of XP but you earn that back pretty easily. The majority of mindreads though are worth it.

> Always choose XP as a quest reward. I've found gold to be pretty useless so far but XP = level up + skills/attributes = become powerful and eventually 1-shot stuff.

> Try to clear the entire area of wherever you're questing at the time (kill everything for the XP) before you move onto the next place. Clear everything up to Orobas Fjords before facing Laikan, or else you miss out!

> You'll find plenty of armour/weapons while exploring so don't even bother buying from vendors, unless you really want to. I haven't spent a single piece of gold though and I'm up to the second major boss fight and doing fine.

Here's a screenshot of my char so far. It may help you a bit with the attributes. I'm a Ranger so stat priority for me is Dexterity, Vitality and Spirit.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1896458717

That's all for now.

In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a Steam review for every game in my library (#425 out of 612)... it's time for Divinity II: Developer's Cut.

I love Larian Studios to death, but I've gotta say, it's really annoying that they have two different "Divinity 2" games (this one, and Original Sin 2) neither of which is the second game in the series. Divinity II: Developer's Cut, for instance, is actually the third Divinity game. What are you doing, Swen? This is too needlessly confusing!

If you've played any of Larian's other games, you might be surprised at how different Divinity II is. Thanks to meddlesome publisher interference, Larian went chasing trends with Divinity II. The result is a third-person combat-focused action-roleplaying game with a few really neat gimmicks to elevate it from the crowd, all wrapped up in a generally very engaging setting that frequently producing amusing diversions in the form of side content that make the fairly melodramatic main quest much more palatable. The humor alone makes Divinity II a joy to play, but honestly speaking this game is brilliant in almost every respect. I mean, I've been known to just leave the launcher running on my PC simply because the menu music was so fantastic.

Anyway, the two big gimmicks of Divinity II are dragonflight and telepathy. Dragonflight allows you transform into a fire-breathing lizard with wings, and freely fly around the relatively large areas that support the transformation. Aerial dragon combat remains one of the coolest things to do in a video game, and while Divinity II's dragon combat may not be quite so free-form as Drakan's, or as tightly polished as in Larian's subsequent game, the grossly underrated Dragon Commander, it is still immensely satisfying.

Which brings me to my favorite aspect of Divinity II: telepathy! In short, should you choose to, you can develop a skill to read minds. This telepathy can be applied not just to other humanoid NPCs, but also animals. This additional "dialog" in the form of NPC thoughts greatly expands the world of Divinity, and also opens up the multiple sidequests and alternative methods of completion for existing sidequests. It's brilliant to peak beneath the surface of what would otherwise be inconsequential NPC and discover bizarre, sometimes dark, sometime absurd, sometimes obscene secrets they keep battened down below the furface. If you've played Divinity Original Sin or Original Sin 2, it's kind of like the Pet Pal perk: a transformative ability that takes an already excellent game and makes it every better.

I've been a bit of a Divinity fanboy for a very long time now, and my journey started with Divinity II (then called "Divinity II: Ego Draconis, a badass subtitle if ever there was one). As soon as I finished the game, I immediately hopped online to see what other games Larian might have in the oven. I was extremely disheartened to discover Divinity II was a bit of a flop and the studio had no future plans at the time (Divinity II was released in a buggy, incomplete state due to publisher interference). Nonetheless I remained committed, and routinely searched online, waiting for any kind of news about Larian making a new game. When they finally unveiled Original Sin and Dragon Commander, I was ecstatic. Today, Larian is quite possibly the biggest name in the CRPG business. The team Swen Vincke has collected is extremely skilled an imaginative, and has yet to produce a single game that wasn't at least a little brilliant. And if you ask me, Divinity II is where it all started: where Larian proved, handily, that they were capable of producing top-tier RPGs that put the competition to shame.

Note: Also played on PC, sans-Steam.

Great game so far, I too experienced the loading screen bug. I fixed it with a 4GB patcher to allow more vram to be used by the game.

http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php

Download this then find your EXE file for the game and with one click your game is patched. I had no infinite load screens afterwards.

Having finally taken the time to get back to this since I really wanted to play an RPG I can see now why this game is held in such high regard.

The combat isn't 100% action based but it does a good job at being a hybrid.
The game really shines at being an actual RPG game however with choice and consequence and multiple layers of depth in quests.

I think I will enjoy this game now.