Divinity: Dragon Commander

By now everyone knows what the game is, a genre mix, and yes this causes it to lose some depth in each category, but does it work? Meh, it's hard to recommend. I enjoyed it and don't even regret the preorder but your mileage may vary. Stripped down to gameplay alone, the game is a loss. Each level of strategy is shallow. The tabletop would be boring on its own and the RTS is a mess of rock, paper, scissors with both games ending with who can mass enough troops together. Dragon combat, one of the game's big draws, is poorly integrated. Switch to a dragon and all you can really do command-wise is send everyone at one target, meanwhile your dragonform is a bit fragile and not as devastating as you would hope without the final abilities. The charm though, is undeniable. The characters aboard your command ship are colorful, well voiced and animated. The political part of the game is entertaining but serves no real purpose inside of the game. Not even halfway through the campaign, I started using auto-resolve every battle to avoid the tedious RTS battles so that I could get to the next dialogue. I do enjoy the combat and am about to start it up right now, but it is repetitive. Bottom line: years from now I am going to rant about how fun this game was because you could fly around battles as a dragon and it was all steampunk and all that because there will probably not be a sequel - so buy this game because it is one of a kind.

The common denominator among critics seems to be that this game dividing attention between RPG and Strategy elements detracts from its depth and this is a bad thing. I'm not sure what people expected. Mass Effect's challenge mechanics aren't as good as Gears of Wars (3 came close, but still not there), Alpha Protocol's aren't as good as Splinter Cell's, Shadowrun Returns wasn't as good as XCOM, etc. Deus Ex comes close, but its individual mechanics don't live up to the standards of Thief or other first-person shooters. Why? Because each game stressed interactivity and reactivity and options over tactical depth. That way the player could build a convincing sense of self from making choices, which is the essence of RPGs as a genre. If the strategy elements are developed enough to give the players a sense that they are a commander aspiring to Imperial Glory against strong rivals, then that's enough. I'm not sure why people require RPGs (which are basically interactive stories with rich settings) to equal games that focus developmental resources almost exclusively on challenge mechanics.

Played it through, tested multiplayer with a friend so here is my review. The game is good in all things it does. Not very good but good. The RP part has good speakers and nice texts. It tells the story in a interesting way. It is sometimes funny or exciting. But in the end the arcs are very short and the things you decide dont really have an impact so after a while you just stop being interested in most. Strategy map is quite good. It is intuitive, allows for good control. The visualization is nice. The RTS part is fun and for fast thinkers. You cant build where/what you want but use predefined sites. Micromanagement is high. Units allow for a lot of different strategies. Dragon mode is fun and important. Multiplayer is nice. You can play in teams. Just a quick skirmish or strategy maps. BUT the multiplayer lobby is steam-exclusive. Vault and GOG versions can only play via LAN or DirectIPConnect. Larian is still writing "GOG, Steam, Vault etc... No differences" on their HP so they mislead at least me quite bad. They provide NO official substitute platform for non-steam users, not even a forum. MP is non-existent outside steam and since SP is shortlifed on its own. This brings the rating down to 2. ATM not worth the money. Once its ~10 bucks its ok for the SP time. If MP would work it would be ok and maybe even a 4.

That was the first thought i had when i saw this game. But the Trailer convinced me. A Political System? Difficult Decisions? Fights with Airships? A must-have! Now after a few hours of playing, I am double minded. I have Fun playing the Game. I still think the Dragon might be a bit overpowered, but I play on "middle", so there is still more learn. But the Game is not as deep as I thought it would be. And I have a bad Problem with Lag. All 5 Seconds there is one. Perhaps this game is not optimized on a Laptop, but it´s annoying as f*ck when ArmA 3 runs perfectly, but this game lags. I hope there will be patches. I would give 3,5 Stars, but i will suggest they will patch, so i round up to 4. Fazit: It is a really nice game, but don´t expect too much. Then you can have a lot of fun.