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Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga |OT| Re-release with new expansion and updates

Fredescu said:
What do you want to know beyond this: "includes the complete and re-mastered adventure Ego Draconis, and the brand new adventure Flames of Vengeance"?

I thought it was obvious. That is the company line. I wanted the impressions of real people who'd played the first game.

It looks alright, but I've got a lot of RPGs on my plate right now. Is there any reason to play this instead of Risen, Gothic 2/3, Nehrim, or what have you? I'll need something to work on after I finish The Witcher.
 

Aaron

Member
Just got the game and 30FPS lock doesn't bother me at all. Game runs very smooth, even in the more expansive areas. I just love the flow of the game. There's no overly long cut-scenes, no hour long training sessions, no ponderous conversations full of 'I don't give a shit'... It presents you with three starting abilities, lets you try them out, and then sends you off to the first town to collect quests and earn sweet rewards. The dialogue so far is all well written and to the point with a nice undercurrent of humor. Running is the default, and the combat is just as snappy. I only played for about a half hour, but I feel like I've accomplished quite a bit already.

It's refreshing to play a fantasy RPG free of ponderous bullshit. Even good ones like the Witcher tended to fall a bit too much in love with hearing itself talk. I'm not saying these should be pure quest fests without any story, but this game manages to do both with just the right balance for me.

Also, you can make a female character with freckles. If that's not a selling point, I don't know what is.
 
360 version here. So will those of us that bought the original get a title update and thats it or will this actually be a free add on i will download? If so im surprised Microsoft let a small company do that.

Or am i in a pipe dream and have to buy it again for the improvements?
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Just noticed that as opposed to Arkham Asylum you get no revokation tool.
Apparently the GOTY Edition of the same game hands out new activations by the end of each month.

Anyone know if this is the same?

I read you can deactivate upon uninstallation as well, but me being forgetful..

Also read on the official forums that they're making a patch that will allow people to unlock the framecap :D

Gonna sink my teeth into this in a moment.
 

Cirruss

Member
I bought this game on a whim after seeing the Steam Advert pop up and having a brief glance at this thread. I had never played Ego Draconis before and the fact that it was included in the package tempted me even more.

So far, I love this game, havent had any problems with it apart from a few frame rate issues but thats most likely down to my rubbish PC trying to run everything on maximum.

Aaron said:
It's refreshing to play a fantasy RPG free of ponderous bullshit. Even good ones like the Witcher tended to fall a bit too much in love with hearing itself talk. I'm not saying these should be pure quest fests without any story, but this game manages to do both with just the right balance for me.

This. Usually I end up getting really annoyed by the dialogue in most RPG's as they seem to drag on too much for my liking, and the voice acting in a lot of them just seem to make them drag out even longer. But in this game it seems to have just the right balance, and having a decent set of voice actors for all the characters i've met so far has kept it moving nicely.

I especially love the music in this game.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Been playing this for little over an hour and I like it a lot already, was so involved I forgot to save though and then I died :lol.
Also love the funny messages on the gravestones :D.

So far it seems to be worth it and I haven't even gotten through the tutorial.

Edit: Quote from the devs.

Lar_Q from Larian forums said:
We obviously underestimated the impact this would have for certain players, so we're working on delivering you hotfix as fast as we can (this week still) which allows you to tweak the settings of the game to your liking. We'll do this by exposing configuration files which allow you to modify certain aspects of the engine such as for instance the lock, but also other things which could be helpful with people who are playing it on very low system specs.

At the same time we're working on a more durable solution which would become part of a patch that doesn't require you to modify a configuration file. That will take some more work however.

Nice :D.
 

koji

Member
Easy_D said:
Been playing this for little over an hour and I like it a lot already, was so involved I forgot to save though and then I died :lol.

Go to Options -> keybinds -> bind a key to quicksave (F5 or something) :D
 

chico

Member
playing the renewed Divinity2 campaign for the first time. im surprised how good it is. only negativ... i feel a little bit overpowered as a lvl 16 fighter. but maybe i was just lucky with my drops.
 

chico

Member
Blast Processing said:
I thought it was obvious. That is the company line. I wanted the impressions of real people who'd played the first game.

It looks alright, but I've got a lot of RPGs on my plate right now. Is there any reason to play this instead of Risen, Gothic 2/3, Nehrim, or what have you? I'll need something to work on after I finish The Witcher.

its way better than risen and gothic 3... Gothic 2 was a masterpiece but kind of old now. graphics of divinity2 on high settings are really beautiful!
 

Aaron

Member
I upped the difficulty to hard since I was mowing down goblins, and it did the trick. The battles are just the right amount of challenge for me, and all the quests have been fun so far. Just a great game all around.
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
koji said:
Go to Options -> keybinds -> bind a key to quicksave (F5 or something) :D
Ah, was wondering why pressing F5 didn't do anything at first and just assumed there was no quick save button. Thanks :D.
 

Ceebs

Member
Has anyone figured out the benefit disenchanting gear? Is it just to let you reassign a more appropriate enchant to otherwise good gear?

Currently in the Maxos Temple and it has some very clever puzzles for an RPG
the mirror room was really cool and unexpected
. I also love the rhyming mage in the area with the tower. I find him hilarious.
 

Mudo

Member
I bought this on Steam last night, having played the original for about 15 hours awhile back. I am on the exact same PC setup and the performance for me is much improved. I have the game settings maxed and everything has been running smooth (no hitching/jankiness like there used to be). Overall I'm really impressed so far and can't wait to get back to where I was originally.

P.S. The music in this game is just sick!
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
Hrm. I have to enable TimeSlice Shadow Update or it dips down to 20 FPS territory. A small price to pay (Environment shadows are static rather than dynamic), really, can max everything else and keep a stable 30, apart from the minor drop when loading new areas :D.
 

Dennis

Banned
Hotfix released!

http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=424718#Post424718

+Allows you to change a number of parameters in your global_switches.xml and config.xml (including removing the 30 fps cap)
+Various crash fixes
+Fixed freeze during intro movie
+Story fix: invalid items in Battle Tower platform operator interface screens removed
+Prevented some infinite loading screens
+Enhanced cut-scene flow
+Fixed issues with subtitles during regionswaps
+Foliage Shader Fix added
+Specific cutscene animations fixed (added missing animations)
+Removed issue with physics blockers
+Savegame backwards-compatibility fixes
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
Oh good, I wasn't going to buy the game if you couldn't remove the 30fps cap.
 

Finguo

Member
This thread made me really interested in this game. Downloading the demo for the original right now. Do you think the demo gives a good overwiew of what to expect from this remastered edition gameplay-wise? From what I understand the changes made are mostly cosmetic, right?
 

Scott

Member
diglyd said:
do you think they will release a 360 bundle? like a game of the year edition?
It's coming to 360 with the same "The Dragon Knight Saga" subtitle, including the original game and the add-on. Thus far, it's only slated for a European release, but there is a ESRB-rated boxart floating around, so we'll see.

There's also a new achievement list, including some of the old achievements with adjusted values, as they're still only using the 1000 points: http://www.xbox360achievements.org/game/divinity-2-the-dragon-knight-saga/achievements/

I assume this means that your save doesn't carry over, and you'd have to start from scratch again. Seems like an odd way to handle this (why not just increase to 1250?), if that's the case.
 

Ceebs

Member
Finguo said:
This thread made me really interested in this game. Downloading the demo for the original right now. Do you think the demo gives a good overwiew of what to expect from this remastered edition gameplay-wise? From what I understand the changes made are mostly cosmetic, right?
Not sure how far the demo goes, but I will say that it starts out kinda slow and has been getting progressively better as I get further in.

Also turn off HDR. The game looks much better without it.
 

deim0s

Member
This game came thru via a screenshot from another forum that i'm in and wondering what you guys could say about it/worth the purchase/replayability/etc? I haven't played first one or the other games...
 

subversus

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap
I sort of want it, but I've got too many games to play. Will buy it next year I guess.
 
Any tricks for forcing AA with an ATI card? I have tried the ingame options, forcing AA through the Catalyst Control Centre, but still no luck.
 

Clydefrog

Member
But I bought the original and my performance was terrible :( I don't want to re-buy it... just let me patch my original FFS.
 

Dennis

Banned
lastplayed said:
Any tricks for forcing AA with an ATI card? I have tried the ingame options, forcing AA through the Catalyst Control Centre, but still no luck.
huh? What about the in-game Screen Anti-Aliasing. No difference?
 

chris-013

Member
I already played 2 hours and I think the story and dialog are good but the combat system can be better...
Now I need to choose between two world 2 and DKS ! :lol

Sinatar said:
It doesn't seem to work, it's still a jaggy mess with it on, I'm running a 5870.

Did you try to put off HDR ?
I was on the same boat but nhancer saved me. ^^
 
DennisK4 said:
huh? What about the in-game Screen Anti-Aliasing. No difference?

No, doesn't seem to make any difference. The environments look all right, but the character models look like they're made of lego. It's not stopping me play it, but would be nice to smooth it out a bit.
 

koji

Member
K, hotfix impressions (playing on a i7 920@ 4.2ghz, gtx295 latest whqls, 6gb ram).
Disclaimer: This post is a bit all over the place but just to give you an idea about what kinda performance you "can" get and tweaks you "can" do.

PRE hotfix; Extreme Detailsettings, everything maxed, steady 30FPS. This was actually playable allthough a bit stuttery at times. But I got used to it.

SLI not working, forcing AFR2 through inspector causing major artifacting, no matter what SLI compatibility mode (oblivion, stalker, tried some others as well)

Forcing AA through inspector, runs like a dog. No matter what compatibility mode, I'm used to that though, friggin SLI...

-------------------------------------------------

POST hotfix (no xml tweaks); Extreme Detailsettings, everything maxed, can't run a steady 30FPS anymore. (more like in the 20s in open areas)

POST hotfix (framerate unlocked, Vsync on); Extreme Detailsettings, everything maxed, maybe even worse performance compared to framerate locked @ 30FPS.

AA forcing? forget about it, same story like pre hotfix. (for me with my 295/sli anyway)

Now here comes the interesting bit, well for me anyway.

SLI working, forced AFR2 through inspector, NO artifacting even without selecting an SLI compatibility mode. With SLI working and maxed detailsettings I still can't get 60FPS Vsync on steady. 40-50 FPS

So what am I doing now is playing with SLI forced on AFR2, Shadows one step down to High, Trees one step down to High and Foliage to Low. This results in Vsync on 60FPS stutter free gameplay. Was a hassle but I guess that's what you get for having a dual GPU card, can't really decide if I liked the pre hotfix engine more or not, hassle free 30fps locked Extreme Settings was OK as well...

I'm not sure what they changed but they changed something, SLI wasn't working pre-hotfix, period. Well it was "working" but you couldn't look at it, all SLI glitching and artifacting is gone now. Guess I should also post this on the official boards.
 

Dennis

Banned
I have not noticed any performance changes after applying the Hotfix.

About CrossFire. It sorta works. Enabling the second GPU adds about 5-10 fps but introduces noticeable stutter. And no, its not 'microstutter', more like 'macrostutter'.
 

koji

Member
DennisK4 said:
I have not noticed any performance changes after applying the Hotfix.

About CrossFire. It sorta works. Enabling the second GPU adds about 5-10 fps but introduces noticeable stutter. And no, its not 'microstutter', more like 'macrostutter'.

Yeah I'm still trying to figure out if the hotfix was a good thing or a bad thing for me, I can play it at 60FPS vsync locked (sli forced) but had to move some detailsliders around and the 30FPS solid framerate (sans sli) I had before the hotfix is gone.
 

Syril

Member
I found some videos of the original version, and nothing seemed to react to being hit. Is that still the case?
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
I just noticed something strange, pre-hotfix it seems that after you quicksave while running fraps, the frame limit goes away for about 3 seconds. Then comes back on.

Shoots all the way up to 85 frames per second, then dips lower and lower until it's locked at 30 again. It's not fraps fucking up either as the camera movement is way smoother.

Makes me even more anxious to see the patch on Steam :(
 

Minsc

Gold Member
Easy_D said:
I just noticed something strange, pre-hotfix it seems that after you quicksave while running fraps, the frame limit goes away for about 3 seconds. Then comes back on.

Shoots all the way up to 85 frames per second, then dips lower and lower until it's locked at 30 again. It's not fraps fucking up either as the camera movement is way smoother.

Makes me even more anxious to see the patch on Steam :(

Wow that sucks. Seeing it running at 60+ then zapped down to 30 again. Hopefully Hotfix #2 is already started, clearly something funny happened in the first one going by the impressions.
 

koji

Member
Lar_q said:
We put a version of the hotfix without installers on our support page just in case you don't want to wait for it to become available through Steam or any other digital distribution service that features it's own installer.

http://www.larian.com/dragonknightsaga_support.php

Use at your own risk though, Steam doesn't really like you tampering with gamefiles.

Minsc said:
Wow that sucks. Seeing it running at 60+ then zapped down to 30 again. Hopefully Hotfix #2 is already started, clearly something funny happened in the first one going by the impressions.

Yeah and the negative effects seem to be for Nvidia users in general. ATI users have less issues running this game.
 

epmode

Member
I don't mean to bump this thread without anything interesting to say but I'd love to read some more impressions. I am still interested in spite of the SecuROM crap!
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
koji said:
Use at your own risk though, Steam doesn't really like you tampering with gamefiles.



Yeah and the negative effects seem to be for Nvidia users in general. ATI users have less issues running this game.
Eh, I'm on ATI and I have some issues, can't have normal+ shadows on without the TimeSlice option on, though that may be more CPU than GPU related?

It's weird though considering I can max out shadows in Oblivion no problem.
 

Minsc

Gold Member
Easy_D said:
Eh, I'm on ATI and I have some issues, can't have normal+ shadows on without the TimeSlice option on, though that may be more CPU than GPU related?

It's weird though considering I can max out shadows in Oblivion no problem.

Looking at EviLore's second screen from the OP, it almost looks like they worked shadows in to the engine this time around, Oblivion didn't have any iirc (other than on the characters), I remember being shocked to have that pointed out to me... so maybe that's it?
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
epmode said:
Yeah, but what if Valve goes bankrupt overnight? HOW WILL YOU PLAY YOUR PRECIOUS GAME?

khaaaaanvucp.jpg
 
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