RPG’s tend to come in a variety of region specific flavours. For example, the Japanese RPG usually places you in the role of a teenage boy with a silly haircut, attempting to save the world from some dark force, more often than not through the medium of turn-based combat. American RPG’s often give you a high degree of customisation in your characters, and focus mostly on action-based combat, giving you direct control over the character as they attempt to save the world. The British RPG is, well… Fable. But people often forget the European RPG, such as today’s subject, Divinity 2: Ego Draconis. And with good reason, too.

Rather than stick to my formulaic preview of a game, today I’d like to talk you through my own experience. It seems easier that way. To begin with, the opening cut-scene made absolutely no sense, and seemed to have nothing to do with the game at all. Then I got thrown into a character customisation screen, where customisation was not allowed unless I owned the full version of the game. So, after finally accepting to be a rather generic male character, a strange woman told me it was my time to become a Dragon Slayer, and I must go through the ritual of Dragon Slayers so that I can successfully, uh, slay dragons.

The controls seemed simple enough. You run around with the left stick, look around with the right stick, and the face buttons have a different action attached to them. Available to me from the beginning was the ability to kick, by hammering X. Sadly, a cute bunny rabbit found itself with my boot in it’s face, and died shortly after. As did another. And a few more. In fact, there was a small bunny massacre going on, and no one seemed that bothered. Even the man at the gate of the town I was headed for seemed more interested in laughing at me for not being a Dragon Slayer yet. You can choose what to say during dialogue, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference at all, so it’s best just to stick with the first answer and hammer A until they tell you to sod off.

Let’s stop and talking about the graphics for a moment. Do you remember Two Worlds? Do you remember how the graphics were a little fuzzy around the edges, and that the animations were shoddy, and there was a general lack of quality in them? Well, you’ll be quite familiar with the graphics of Divinity 2 then. Everything looks dull and drab, despite the large amounts of green grass, due to the heavy usage of brown and grey in the environments. It’s all a bit boring, though I guess they’re just trying to fit in with the medieval theme of it all.

Anyway, after a few minutes of aimless wandering, I stumbled across a crazy lady talking to herself, who proceeded to implant the memories of the Dragons into my head, so that they couldn’t use their mind control powers on me. Wait, what? Dragons can control minds now? That doesn’t make any sense. Soon after, I was given the ability to read minds by a slightly more attractive crazy lady. This mechanism is essentially useless, since it costs you experience points to use, and often provides you with no information of any use. I proved this to myself on multiple occasions, as I tried to read the minds of other mind readers, and was swiftly told to get out of their heads.

Speaking of speech, the voice acting in this game is actually fair decent. It’s a British cast, so at least it made me feel more comfortable, and they deliver their lines with feeling and presence, whether they’re just a random NPC or a key character. That said, the main characters voice left a lot to be desired, especially since all he kept saying was “Pitiful lout!” whenever I kicked a chicken’s face off. The soundtrack too is exceptionally bad, as it is totally non-existent within the game.

My own experience with the game sadly doesn’t get any more interesting, but let me tell you this; you are only allowed to be one class at a time, so as a warrior you don’t have access to bows, as an archer you cannot use swords, and so on. This seems awfully annoying, given that many people would prefer to mix things up rather than stick to one plan of attack for every single encounter. It would have really helped with my battle against a ghost, which ended both times with the ghost killing me in one hit. Maybe I should’ve gone and grinded.

If any of this sounds appealing to you, then please, go ahead and buy it. Or, hell, buy Two Worlds. It’s practically the same game from my experience. Personally, I won’t be picking this one up when it comes out on January 5th next year.

Feel I’m too violent towards animals? Really like Two Worlds? Let us know in the comments!