Posted December 11, 2015
superstande: alright I've bought 5 squirrels... who wants to trade all this crap for the Gothics? ;)
Hey just a heads up, if you use Steam, the Arcania + Gothic Pack (Gothic 1 + 2 + 3 + 3: Forsaken Gods + Gothic 4: Arcania and its expansion pack) is always on sale during the major sales. Arcania (aka Gothic 4) is a bit of a departure from the established games, it's more of a kinda generic action RPG but with Gothic's lore, but it's probably okay on its own (I've only played the demo). Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods and Arcania and its expansion pack were made by different devs than the first three games, explaining the gameplay changes and clumsy lore handling. Now the Divine Pack here at GOG is a temporary bundle consists of Beyond Divinity, Divinity II and Divinity: Dragon Commander. If you like Risen then I would say that you would probably like Divinity II too.
Divinity II is a little more linear storywise but it's still open world/sandbox, it's just that the world is broken up into large areas rather than having the entire world available at once. The world is overall probably a little smaller than Risen's BUT Divinity II has the addition of more dungeons to explore including dungeons you have to work through for the story.
Just like Risen, there is no level scaling in Divinity II so you can wander into an area at a low level and not have a chance of surviving. The only issue I have with the enemies in Divinity II is that they're stuck in their zone, which means if you're getting smashed then you can high tail it back the way you came and the enemy will eventually run back to their original spot.
The skill system is pretty robust and you'll have to specialize just a bit, a jack of all trades build doesn't help you in this game.
Loot is pretty varied although there is a lot of "+3 fire resistance" type stuff, but it IS a RPG. There is unique loot to be found too. When getting a reward for a quest you're often forced to choose between extra (yes extra, as in bonus) experience, or gold, or whatever else is being offered.
The writing in Divinity II is stronger than the writing in Risen, it's actually pretty great writing and there is a good bit of humor in places without the game seeming "jokey". A neat trick in the game is that your character can "mind read" another character when talking to them at the cost of X amount of experience.
The main campaign feels about the same lengthwise as Risen (I'm near the endgame of Divinity II) BUT it has a extra campaign to work through, no idea how long that is.
Overall I highly recommend Divinity II! It's a great game, and it's a real shame that it's overlooked.