Divinity: Dragon Commander

Zach Goodier

Alright, so try this one on for size: you are a dragon knight, born of the union of human and dragon (no idea where you’d even start with that conception, but OK).  You are the unlikely, illegitimate heir to an empire that has been torn asunder by your brothers and sisters.  The only way to restore peace to the kingdom is to defeat them in battle.  However, you must also contend with the task of ruling the regions you already control, and the need to make decisions can sway the allegiances of the races that follow you, and can have a major impact on how well your campaign goes.

Your generals always keep things lively on the ship, and provide characters that you will both love and hate.

Story:

There really isn’t a whole heap to say beyond what I’ve mentioned already, but the details are important.  As the commander, you must embark on a conquest of the world, to end the constant wars between your siblings.  You will have a cabinet comprised of all the races, including Elves, Undead, Imps, Dwarves, and Lizards.  They all have particular goals/biases that impact their policies, and which way they’ll expect you to lean on decisions.  Decisions can range from allowing industrial development to gay marriage, and while all of us have our own opinions, adhering to them doesn’t always pay off when your own followers stop supporting you.

You'd think a dragon with a jet-pack would be redundant, but it works out very well in gameplay.

Characters:

The commander’s advisors are all interesting characters that embody different philosophies and beliefs, ranging from religious conservative to industrial entrepreneur.  However, the standouts of often your generals, who add to the political discussions with their own views, and simultaneously add a great deal of personality to the game as a whole.  Interacting with them can draw out a full range of emotions, with their various (and sometimes difficult) personalities.  They also have personal stories, which make your more invested in them. 

You'll spend a lot of time using the map to build forces, and plan your moves each turn.

You can also marry in the game.  Although the motivation is political, you can choose between any of the races (Except human, that’s too boring) and take a wife.  Like the political and military staff, each potential wife has a unique personality, which helps hook the player and really add some life to these characters.  The very question of the morality of arranging a marriage does come up in the game, but you still have to make a choice.  Each wife has her own storylines that keep the player engaged and interested in what their wives are doing.

Each advisor will bring a lady from their race to present for marriage, you will pick one and she will join the story, each providing their own unique storyline that you will be tied up with, giving this game some replay value.

Gameplay:

One thing I haven’t really discussed is the actual battles.  One of the reasons is that you spend a lot of time on the Raven, your personal airship that runs on magic of some sort, and allows you to research upgrades for your units, and your own dragon powers.  From the bridge, when you aren’t interacting with your staff/wife, you run the campaign and move your armies.  When opposing forces meet, you get to choose whether you command the battle yourself, pay one of your generals to fight it on auto, or let the army fight it on auto.  Be careful, now, you can only personally fight one battle per turn, so if you plan on attacking on multiple fronts, be ready to either pay a general’s wage or have enough units to fight it on their own, you can’t be everywhere, which does limit your ability to push forward.

There is a generally typical dynamic where one unit beats another, but obviously there is value in just massive a lot of pawns and just overrunning a position.

Battles become real-time, with the player overlooking the map and controlling units, trying to build recruitment centers to gain support from the local populace.  For spending reinforcement points, you can morph into your dragon form, and while the controls are difficult, and army management takes some getting used to in this form, you can truly devastate your enemies by raining fire down on them from above.  However, the dragon form does limit your ability to manage your forces, and prevents you from summoning new troops, so you generally want to wait until you have your forces built up before transforming to lead the charge.

Each wife will undergo changes based on how you influence them during the story.  The Elf princess here is just one example.

Conclusions:

This game is really fun.  It blends a lot of concepts from other games into a new, fresh package.  However, the lack of polish, and the relatively short feeling to the story do hold it back.  And the gameplay can feel rather clunky and difficult until you figure out most of it, but even then, it never feels very fluid.  I would love to see more games like this, that let the general actually take direct action on the battlefield, making it not just an indirect fight through units alone.  The upgrades and interesting characters definitely give this game a lot of value, but I wasn’t in a rush to go back.  Overall, a solid attempt, and plenty of RPG elements and interesting characters, but the gameplay is rather lackluster and unrefined.  The biggest disappoint for me, however, is that more wasn't done with the characters, in particular your generals and advisers.  Their stories are interesting, but if you separate each one individually, they don't amount to very much on their own.

Good:

-Interesting blend of Action RPG with Strategy and empire building.

-Interesting, original characters.

-Choices that capture the difficulty of leading, and impart the wisdom that you can never make everyone happy.

Bad:

-Clunky, ineffective controls that are often limited while in dragon form.

-Rather short, and underplays some of its' greatest assets, such as the character development and side-stories. 

Scully Rating: 8 out of 10