Divinity Dragon Commander is one of those goofy games that has a ton of heart, but is not something is a great amount of depth and staying power. After about 13 hours, I beat the story campaign. Apart from the story campaign, the game has secondary campaigns that play more like a traditional 4x game, which I may go back and play later.
Overall, I was charmed by its steampunk style, its cheeky political simulations, its funny dialogue, and its grand strategy game map. It plays much like your standard total war like game where you have a large turn based 4x map in which you can build, research, create and move units, and collect and play various cards that impact that game. But in between turns on the 4x map, you return to your ship and engage NPCs in dialogue. This could be a meeting between delegates where you choose policy like “should we instate a “don’t ask don’t tell” policy?” or “should we allow civilians the right to bear arms?” or “Should we allow recreational drug use?” etc. You can confer with your various advisors on the matters and the back and forth can be a fun read. Its all relatively simple, and dodges the dreaded “ 4x game faction management via pop up and spreadsheet simulator” vibe that plagues the genre.
I like the 4x gameplay. Its was satisfying and intuitive to create units, create buildings, move units around and attack.
It’s the real time battles that eventually became a drag. The first few battles were amazing, I loved controlling my dragon, capturing building spaces, building production facilities, and commanding my units in the field. But eventually that turned sour. Now I admit I didn’t understand what was happening, but towards the mid-late game, the RTS battles became increasingly sloggy and difficult. Here’s an example. I invade a new territory with a strong army. The pre-battle screen pops up and I have the overwhelming advantage in units. After all cards are played, I have like 80% of the power bar filled, the enemy has 20%. But when we start the RTS battle, the enemy suddenly has a billon units and during the first confrontation, absolutely smashes my army. I lose. I reload my save and I auto-battle the fight. During the auto-battle, I smash the enemy, only losing one unit and eliminating all enemy units. This happened more and more, until eventually I just auto-battle all the battles. I do not find this to be fun. If it is easier and more accurate to auto-battle, why even RTS battle at all? I’ve read online that the RTS battles can be very difficult, but since this is kind of a dead game, there wasn’t much chatter about the specifics.
All in all, I enjoyed this game. I like Larian studios and I think this one is ambitious and fun, even if the RTS battles were a slog.
