Divinity: Dragon Commander Preview

Rock, Paper, Shotgun is offering some hands-on impressions of Larian’s ambitious RTS/RPG hybrid Divinity: Dragon Commander. It’s still early days, but they seem to be pleased with how it’s shaping up:

In the build we were shown, the combat AI isn’t in place so the troops that overran my defences were controlled by another player. There was a lot happening on screen and it was happening quickly, but there is an icon-based clarity stencilled atop the busy graphics and once attuned to the pace, I think even my slow, methodical chess-player’s wits will find the tactical considerations simple enough to manage in real-time. That said, the use of population as a shared resource does favour the commander who acts quickly.

As with the multi-genre games of the early nineties that Dragon Commander reminded me of, there’s a suspicion that each part may be entertaining but slight. Only more time with the combat, and experimentation with various units and upgrades, will reveal the extent of variety in approaches, and intriguing though the characters are, dialogues could well be elaborate performances without any significance beyond the adjustment of popularity sliders.

Dragon Commander is an engaging curiosity that may yet reveal unexpected depths, but even if that’s not the case, it’s an unusual proposition and one that I appreciate. When it first skipped onto the stage, I feared it had used all of its best material in the opening salvo, but there may be more surprises yet.