Divinity: Dragon Commander Review

Meet Puff the progressive dragon. 

So a woman, a one-armed man, and a lizard with a monacle walk into a bar and start discussing same-sex marriage... Ok, let me back up a second.

You know how people say that things like religion and politics are best left out of conversations with friends? Divinity: Dragon Commander puts these concerns front and center, and places you in the hot seat to make all the tough calls, delivering a real-time strategy experience that, though lacking refinement in some areas, makes your decisions in the throne room as important as the ones on the battlefield.

Jumping right into an AI skirmish to get a feel for the mechanics first, I was initially unnerved by what I saw. The lack of any fog of war, combined

with the wide-open tech tree, made combat feel spineless and unstructured compared to the precise builds and attack timings of StarCraft 2 and the like. The art direction is similarly haphazard, with pastel and base colors fighting a little war of their own while I tried to reconcile the steampunk unit designs with their arboreal, fantasy surroundings. After being all but slapped in the face with a generic looking “VICTORY!” screen, and being spat back out to the main menu, I anticipated a long, bumpy road ahead of me.

Thankfully, things began to improve once I fired up the single-player and multiplayer campaign modes, where the real-time battles benefit from the much larger context of a turn-based war. It starts on the strategic map, where you'll see continents and territories spread out before you, ripe for the conquering. With a variety of structures to erect that generate yet more resources, including a slew of battle-turning strategy cards, and a need to generate units to defend your growing territory, there's enough to spend your money on that every penny earned has value. I never felt like I had quite enough resources to become complacent, which lent a refreshing sense of importance to my actions.

If you're playing either the custom or story campaign, that importance bleeds over into your post-turn dealings on your flying fortress, the Raven. When you aren't busy mulling over which units and upgrades to research, you'll be at the bar, where your motley crew of generals can usually be found bickering about something or other until you step in to settle things. Maybe you challenge them to work better together, or perhaps you enable their personal squabbles. Either way, it informs how they develop as leaders, which in turn affects what they'll excel at when you entrust a battle to them. These quibbles can be entertaining for sure, but it's when their beliefs start intersecting with your political dealings that things get truly interesting.

Each of the six fantasy races has a representative in your cabinet and as you can imagine, they can’t agree on anything. The happier they are, the more support you can expect from their respective nations, but no matter how hard you try to satisfy them all, you simply can't – and that's the true joy of the system. Everything from religion in the school curriculum to government regulation of banking, same-sex marriage, and wage equality across genders will come up, and they're all presented in such even-handed, multi-faceted ways that even your strongest convictions may be challenged. How long will your beliefs remain intact when you have a war to win and allies to placate? I found myself wondering that a lot, but Dragon Commander wisely avoids answering on moralistic terms. In the end, the sword is your only judge and the only wrong choices are ones that lead to defeat.

Oh, and the dragons have jetpacks. That's a nice touch.

And with all that framework and structure in place, suddenly the combat comes into its own as the fast paced, simple fun it's intended to provide. The AI isn't exactly genius level, but it doesn't have to be in order to meet you in the middle of the map for an all-out slugfest, which is what you'll inevitably be doing. Huge deathballs of units (reminiscent of Total Annihilation) collide amusingly while you assume direct control of your dragon, whose customizable ability bar allows him to act as something of a hero unit.

Laying waste to armies as a dragon doesn't quite elicit immediate thrills though, owing mostly to how cumbersome it can be to order your legions about whilst in dragon mode. A heavy reliance on awkward hotkey combinations keeps things from ever feeling truly fluid, but once I got used to it, commanding the many unique and powerful units while swooping about and raining death on my foes proved to be a unique sort of fun. As a stand-alone RTS experience, its focus on going wherever your enemy is and getting bloody with them might have rung a bit hollow, but as one cog in a much bigger, more intricate machine, it works quite well.

That's really the rub with Dragon Commander – just past its problems there's always something worthwhile.  The in-battle visuals and UI may be lacking, but the rest of the art direction fares far better. Combat seems ungainly, even sloppy until it clicks, and then you can become a godless killing machine. Even the characters seem like one-dimensional, extremist caricatures until...well they actually are one-dimensional, extremist caricatures, but that's sort of the point. They're intent is merely to push and pull at your belief system until you question your decisions, and the savvy writing and voice work allow them to do exactly that.