PC

Divinity: Dragon Commander Review

Published

August 6, 2013

Divinity: Dragon Commander Review
Developer: Larian Studios
Price: $40
Platform: PC
A code for the game was supplied to us

The Divinity series isn’t exactly known for having a membership to the real-time strategy club, but Dragon Commander takes some solid steps in a new direction that may end up paying off for Larian Studios. As the son of the recently murdered king it’s up to you to use your unique ability to turn into a dragon to stop your warring siblings from destroying the country.

The gameplay itself is split between a turn based board game style world (think Civilization) and the battles themselves which are fought in real time like other RTS games. You’ll move your pieces around the map capturing countries, constructing various buildings that give you benefits such as more gold per turn, and generally trying to think two steps ahead of the sneaky as hell AI. If you happen to enter the same country as the enemy’s unit then you’ll begin a battle where you can decide whether to auto-resolve it, let one of your various generals lead the battle (basically another version of auto-resolve), or jump into the fight yourself. Cards come into play here where you’ll be able to do things like lower the health of a specific enemy unit type, start out with mercenary units you don’t have to build, or give your dragon powerful abilities for one battle. You can also play cards during the turn based mode that will do things such as lowering the amount of gold an enemy will receive from a country for a turn. You can play up to five cards in a battle and you can even see what cards your opponent will be playing. Smart players will make use of the two slots that hide your cards from opponents so that you can throw some nice surprises their way. Going into a big battle with a card that lowers their Trooper’s health by 75% can be easily countered by them playing a card that increases their Trooper’s health by 75%. Now if you were to place that card in one of the two hidden slots your opponent might not see that coming, might not think to use their +75% health card, and make that battle much easier for you. Besides skill in the actual battles themselves, most of the strategy comes from knowing when to play your best cards and keeping a keen eye on the turn order; thinking you’re about to play a great combo only to realize your opponent is going before you could really mess you up.

When you get into an actual battle the game plays like your typical RTS game with bases to capture, structures to build, and enemies to kill. Anyone thinking that they’ll be able to instantly turn into a dragon and fly over to the opposing base to wreck havoc are going to be disappointed by the timer that restricts you from winning so easily. You won’t be able to turn into a dragon for the first minute of a battle, after that you can turn into one whenever you want as long as you have the resources to do so. Veteran RTS players might find the game a bit simplified, such as your only resource being recruits that are constantly streaming in, but I found the more arcade approach to the gameplay a bit refreshing personally. Things play a lot faster than most strategy games and there’s a bigger focus on combat than build orders.

Now playing as a dragon is fast but simple. You’ll move around the battlefield at a decent pace but you can quickly hit the spacebar to activate your jetpack which makes getting to the other side of the map a breeze. You’ve got various skills you can purchase with research points and before each battle you can decide which ones you want to bring into the fight and there’s a healthy choice of passive and non-passive abilities. There are also three dragons to choose from that all start out with different abilities; the Sabre is the jack of all trades dragon, the Mountain can dish out some serious damage but suffers in health, and the Zephyr is pretty much nearly the opposite of the Mountain. All three have their ups and downs but they’re all fun to play; there’s nothing like noticing your army on the other side of the map needs support and blasting over there to buff them and sending fireballs towards the opposing army.

At the end of each turn you’ll return to the Raven which is your hub of sorts and you may be confronted with an issue that needs to be resolved by your council in the form of enacting new laws. You’ll have to listen to the opinion of each council member and then decide if you’re in favor or against it. These are events like forced drafts, and others that are quite topical, that will affect your approval rating with each of the five races. Of course you could decide to not participate and the majority vote in the council will decide which choice is selected. These political choices will play into the board game aspect of the game with bonuses for fighting in a land that favors you and fewer resources when fighting in a land with a low approval rating.

I have yet to see a strategy game that lets you get into the thick of the combat and smoothly control your units at the same time but Larian Studios managed to pull it off. When in dragon form things get a lot faster and I’m not just saying that because there’s a jetpack strapped to your back. Not only is your dragon able to zoom across the battlefield incredibly fast and dish out some serious damage, but you’ve got to watch out because careless players will likely either get their dragon killed (dragon death isn’t permanent) or neglect their army. You might think that being able to turn into a dragon whenever you want (at the cost of 20 resources) would mean you can take a hit but they’re more like glass cannons which helps balance things out a bit. Smart players will make sure to place flyers or ground units that can target your dragon and if you don’t get the timing down with the dodge don’t expect to last very long as a dragon.

Things move fast in this game and accessing your units and buildings while in this mode is incredibly easy. A tap of the F2 key will select all of your units while F3 will only select the ones nearby, and a quick tap of the q key will send them wherever you’re aiming. Pressing z, x, c, and v will also allow you to access your various buildings and you’ll be able to see what units you can build and the hotkey to select them with. Managing your units, making sure your factories are pumping out more soldiers, flying around as a dragon, fighting off enemy dragons, and keeping an eye on your opponent can seem like a lot to take in when you enter dragon mode but you’ll quickly learn how to handle things and it’s that moment when you’ll really start having fun.

Now my main issue with the game is that it doesn’t really feel like it’s pushing itself into new territory with its game mechanics. The RTS and boardgame aspects of the game feel a bit bare and simplified compared to its peers and while the choices you can make are interesting they aren’t exactly ground breaking. Besides the dragon morphing, nothing really feels fresh. Now that’s not to say everything the game does is bad, it’s quite the opposite actually. Despite nothing exactly feeling *new*, it’s all still incredibly well done and quite fun.

The singleplayer campaign is fun and all, but it’s really meant as a sort of extended tutorial to ease you into the game before you jump into the real meat of the game which is the multiplayer. You can play with up to four other players in team battles or free for all matches and if you thought playing against the AI in the campaign was already hectic enough get ready for four players duking it out in a map. Multiplayer matches play pretty much exactly like the singleplayer with the only difference being the lack of the political choices and “hub” area; this help keeps thing at a much faster pace when playing online. There’s also a solid amount of settings you can tweak such as game speed, starting resources, time until you can deploy your dragon, needing to destroy all of an opponent’s structures to win or not, and even whether to allow players to turn into dragons or not.

The Final Word
Divinity: Dragon Commander doesn’t do anything game changing and it feels a bit of a jack of all trades sort of game, but everything it does it does well and it’s a complete blast to play.