Reviews

• gamedeal user

  May 24, 2014

  It's different, it's interesting, it's disappointing. Fighting as a dragon is about as awesome as you might expect, and takes longer to get tired than you might think, especially if you set yourself a good range of skills. You have limited army control in this mode, so can at least fight with a thrash of units under you, radiant in the healing, damage-boosting auras you emit. But you can basically forget trying to play the RTS as designed, because someone put this on top of a Starcraft-y set of units with lots of manually-triggered abilities. You might occasionally switch your artillery in and out of deployed mode, or tell your tanks to use their short-range sonic burst attack, but not much more unless you forego being a dragon. And then I have to ask why you are playing a game whose main defining feature is that you are a dragon. One reason possibly being for the challenge (and inevitable achievement). The dragon is basically like spawning with a Supreme Commander Experimental right at the start. You can assert almost total control of any one point on the map. It's rare for an RTS battle to last more than a few minutes, and if you lose it's because you just got overwhelmed by the AI's ability to multitask harder, or bit off such a ridiculously one-sided starting position that you got rushed while the dragon was in its first-minute cooldown. On the strategic layer, you can only fight personally once per turn, and the rest is up to autoresolves, possibly modified by generals and cards. There's some depth here, especially in picking which fight you want to be your certain win, but nothing to get ecstatic about. Units are almost too mobile, especially naval ones which loop around the map, for territorial control to mean much more than "keep units on every tile". An offensive force headed by your dragon self can steamroll forward so much more effectively than any other that there's limited utility to fighting on multiple fronts. The diplomatic side is basically brilliant. Characters are well-written and well-voiced, although the fact that every choice is binary is oft irritating; there's quite often no room for moderation or nuance. You probably won't want to put up with the actual *war* part of the game long enough to play it through enough times to see everything, and savescumming a bit just to see branches not taken is confounded by several turns' worth of delays between action and consequences. Turns padded by war. The ending is flat as a pancake, however. You capture the last key territory, everyone says well done in turn, title screen. And the multiplayer side? Ridiculously crippled. Pick from one of three predefined dragon loadouts (despite loadout-building being a key fun part of the singleplayer), four players per map tops, no AI dragons, only armies. (It's not much of a spoiler to get the disappointment out of the way and say that nothing of the sort shows up to peturb the mix in the campaign, either. There is no climactic final battle here, just another identikit skirmish.) Get it in a sale, enjoy the council going at each-other's throats, and divebombing down onto massed enemy forces to unleash a huge firestorm amongst them before swooping around to gather your own army and charging forward into the enemy base with a bellowing roar. The ambience is great. Just expect by the final chapter to be looking at the strategic map with a weary, tired eye that just wants to autoresolve but knows the Imperial Army will blow a 70% chance and get driven back, and occasionally wishing your conversations didn't feel so railroaded.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 17, 2014

  I can be a social justice warrior without tumblr? Yes I can be a dragon? Yes I can get married to a hot skeleton? Yes I can sacrifice my wives to a demon? Yes This game was fun, definitely get it when it's on sale.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 12, 2014

  I recommend this only with a big caveat: you'll like this game if you're willing to appreciate what it could have been, rather than what it really is. I found myself enjoying the game's core concepts enough that I could overlook a lot of the poor execution, but not everyone will have the same experience. First off, the bad. The RTS gameplay, which forms the bulk of the game's combat systems, is a mind-numbing clickfest of swarming units around. Everything you own dies almost instantly, to the point where it feels pointless to try to micromanage your units, or even use them wisely - it becomes about trying to get the largest horde and throw it at your enemy's weakest points. Playing across the Risk-like metamap can be a tedious slog if you're waiting around to build units, and auto-resolve usually loses you far more units than necessary. I gambled with a direct strike across the entire map to my enemy's capital in the final stage because I couldn't stand the thought of grinding away at his territory for another several dozen turns; under-prepared and outnumbered, I had to fight that last battle about 10 times before winning, but it still felt worth it to not have to play the metamap anymore. On the other hand, being able to transform into a dragon in the RTS battles is fun, especially since, after some practice, it becomes possible to win battles that are almost entirely in the enemy's favour by judicious dragon use (I easily won battles that the game's auto-resolve system gave me a 90%+ chance of losing). This ultimately ends up defeating the purpose of the RTS gameplay, though it's still pretty fun to play around with. One thing that annoyed me was the realization that the only reason the dragon is not totally invincible is because enemy projectiles will home in on you, forever, from across the entire map, which feels like a cheesy design solution. The story, politics, and RPG elements that occur between battles on the command ship are where the game really shines. The characters are surprisingly well voiced, the art style is excellent, and the storyline and dilemmas are quite compelling, both on their own as well as in terms of their impact on the game. It's sad to see how an excellent RPG/strategy hybrid is hiding in there, barred from becoming as good as it could be by mediocre RTS design. Another six months of polish and design work could have made a world of difference.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 20, 2022

  IDC HOW CHEAP THE GAME IS DON'T BUY IT Look I LOVE this game. You can see how many hours I have on it. But the game has this bug that makes it crash randomly whenever you enter into a skirmish. The game was released like 10 years ago and this bug is STILL there. All the different links provided to add a patch or fix to this bug are no longer active. meaning that this game is broken and they have no intention on fixing it. SO DO NOT BUY. Hope I could help some of you out there to spend your money more wisely. Thanks for reading.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 16, 2014

  Here is my review of the game: Pros: -Politics: This game has an extremely good politics system in place where you can make decisions that effect not only individuals but entire races as a whole. This phase is easily the best part of the game, it is well voice acted, well animated, and provides great enjoyment for most. Cons: -Map phase: The map phase is shallow to say the least, here you can play cards that improve empire related things, or build buildings that will allow you to improve income and recruit units or mercenaries. But that is all, there is nothing more here, no diplomacy, no trading, nothing that would make you want to spend time strategizing here. -Combat: This should be the most interesting part of the game, since this is the part where you get to be the dragon...for about 2-5 mins. Here are the problems with this phase: First the design choices, as in the way the units look, they are not only quite small(can't zoom in enough), but also look the same for all factions. Second, the speed of the combat is waaaaay too fast, if you want to play defensively, you are screwed, you want to build up bases, you are screwed. The only way to win is if you blob all over the enemy at the start of the battle in which case the battle ends rather quickly because if your draw it out, the enemy becomes too strong and usually you can no longer overwhelm them before you run out of resources, enjoy your 5 mins long battle without strategies and being the dragon for about 5 mins. This problem however also relates to being the dragon. Third, the dragon is strong at the beginning, but if you try and draw out the match to enjoy some base building, you will quickly find, that your dragon is becoming more and more useless as time passes on, since the enemy is improving their units all the time, they will take more hits and you will take less, in the end you will die extremely quickly, making becoming the dragon rather useless. Fourth, the units have way too many skills you can't micromanage on the same level as the ai, which can make some fights rather one sided. Fifth, and this is the largest problem with the combat by far. Mercenary cards. Why in the world would you even want to enter combat with such bad mechanics behind it when you can simply bypass it by spamming inns and mercenary cards and than using auto-combat? -The length of the skirmish matches: These only take anywhere from 25(min difficulty)-45(max difficulty) mins. I tested this by using only mercenary cards and lol i won all of my matches against highest difficulty ai in 45 mins max. This is a joke. Mercenary cards shouldn't be in the game or should be better balanced. -Story: What story? You mean the few cutscenes we get? The campaign can be completed in about 2-3 hours, which is extremely short for a game like this. The enemies are quite generic, have no personality, don't taunt you and pretty much act the same on the battlefield, or at least i haven't noticed that they did anything differently from eachother. To sum it up, the devs created a great politics mechanic in the game, unfortunately the game fails at the other parts, and for the title dragon commander, i was expecting to see more dragons or at least more often than about 2-5 mins in combat. I have the feeling that if they went with the original concept, instead of remaking the whole game halfway through in a single year, they could've achieved more, alas, it is not so. Do i recommend this game for the current price(40eur)? NO This game is not worth 40 eur. But i do recommend you pick it up when it is on offer. The game is worth about 15-20 eur, carried by the politics and the multiplayer may give you a few hours of amusement.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 16, 2023

  you can marry a skeleton and turn her into a vampire babe.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 29, 2013

  This title makes for an interesting mish-mash of genres. It doesn't succeed everywhere, but it makes a good attempt. While there isn't much depth in the strategy portion of the game, the RPG/Political part is well-written and is pretty interesting. You'll regularly be called to make political decisions that are often based on today's social and economic issues. You'll need to balance your own beliefs with keeping the majority of your subjects happy. Your generals, counsals, and potential queens also have their own distinctive personalities and are fun to interact with. The main redeeming feature of the strategy portion is the ability to take to the battlefield as a jetpack-wearing dragon. Yeah, it's about as awesome as it sounds. Being able to turn the tide of a battle by shifting into action game territory has proven to be a great boon for people like myself who normally struggle with RTS but love turned-based strategy.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 1, 2015

  Divinity: Dragon Commander is a pretty great mix of real-time strategy, turn-based strategy, political simulation and action-packed third-person dragon fighting ^^ You are playing as dragon commander and your task is to defeat your evil brothers and sisters and conquer Rivellon. "Raven", your flagship, is your base of command from where you can access different rooms to plan your next steps. On said ship there are also ambassadors from different species (like elves, dwarfs, reptilians and the undead) and they will ask you every now and then to do a political decision, which also has a little impact on reputation, earned gold etc. Then, after you are done with talking to everyone and you want to start conquering, there is the world map, divided into several "countries" (ever played the board game "Risk"? Then you know how it plays). Each of these "countries" can be conquered with your units and you can buy and build one of several buildings on it. Some give you more gold, some will grant you cards, which you can use to get extra units or other advantages in the combat. Once you bought your units, placed them, used your cards and you want to attack another country, then you will jump into real-time strategy part. The strategy part is rather simple. You have several fixed spots on the map, where you can build buildings on. First, you have to get your units there and wait a bit for them to capture them, only then you can build there. Over time, you gain points (i think they are called citizens) which you need in order to build your attack units and buildings. The one big difference and fun thing here is, once you collected enough citizens, you can transform into a dragon, fly around in third person and attack the enemy, buff your units or debuff the enemy units. You are pretty powerful and can turn a seemingly lost battle into a victory, but you are not invincible. On your flagship you can buy new buffs, debuffs for your dragon, new units and upgrades for your units. It's a very well done mix, although it plays very simplistic and doesn't have the depth of other RTS games. The maps itself are also rather small and will repeat quite often. The characters are pretty well done, and also the political debates and decisions are quite fun. Most of the time the ambassadors have different opinions, so you can't please everyone always with your decisions. But the impact of the decision isn't always that big. Speaking of the political debates, the humor is quite good as well, the dialogues are fun and i found myself to always looking forward to this in the game. Pretty early on, you are also given the choice to marry a woman from one of the species. The dialogues with them afterwards and the choices you make there are also pretty great and hilarious. The game itself is a great mix of different genres, which plays pretty good, although being rather simplistic, but still fun enough to entertain a lot, especially when you are soaring through the air as powerful dragon, crushing all those puny enemies ^^ Can definitely recommend this to everyone even slightly interested in real-time strategy games. A very refreshing and unique game in my opinion, don't miss out.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 19, 2015

  [b]+ Bold and somewhat successful mixture of action and strategies[/b] [b]+ Well written dialogue and characters[/b] [b]+ Voice acting[/b] [b]+ Soundtrack[/b] [b]- The main plot is dull and forgettable [/b] [b]- The politcal affairs aren't as challenging as they might firstly seem[/b] [b]- Strategy elements are too simple and crude[/b] [b]- Some unbalance between units[/b] Owning every Larian develeoped game in steam I guess I can present myself a some sort of fan. I praise Divinity II: Dragon Knight Saga and Original Sin is IMO one of the best co-op titles in steam. Even so, Dragon Commander is difficult to like as it is also difficult to hate. It mixes so many different elements and genres together (more or less successfully) and was produced so harriedly that devs must have had some compromises. Majorly gameplay is quite much adapted from 'Total war' series combaining real-time - and turn-based strategy.The game puts player into the boots of Dragon Commander, a powerful dragonbreed, and on each turn on a world map player builds units and constructions and moves his armies to invade new areas. When player and enemy have units at the same area in the end of the turn the blood will spill. In these conflicts player deals with the enemy in real-time combat and gameplay reminds the popular rts -series. Optionally, commander can let the AI sort out the battle by paying a reward one of the generals who increase the precent of success or let the army in the location fight without support. Most of my playtime I spent on battlefields personally commanding troops and the rts gameplay has its pros and cons. Starting with the pros. There is various available land -, sea - and air units and each of them have certain special abilities. The resources are collected automatically by constructing settlements on predefined places, that add some hecticism forcing player to act quickly. The genuine feature is ability to assist your troops not just by commanding but to turning a dragon when gameplay transforms into third-person-shooter game. There is also various talents to choose from: some of them are attribute increasing buffs for your units but there is also some heavy weaponry which can blast dozens of enemies at once. And then to the cons. The biggest thing is the lack of maps, which begin inescapably to repeat themself before finishing the game. Secondly, battles are easy to win with most simple strategies and here is a typical scenario: Build units-take a defensive position if outnumbered-destroy enemy assault-build more units-take control of the nearest resource buildings-hire more units-take a defensive position-destroy the enemy assault-take all your units and march into their capital. I never felt couraged to use more sophisticated tactic because I never needed one. I didn't have any use for transport ships for an example. Among these conquests and war planning there is quite much to do and to decide in a political court also. The population of Rivellon's world is inhabited with 5 different species: Dwarves, Elfs, Imps, Lizards and Undead. As you might guess the values and preferences of these folk differ a lot from each other and it is impossible to please them all. The race which you are bowing may grant populations support on battles fought on their lands whereas the breed you are abandoning may degrace their support. Depending on case, the secondary effect of choice is how much money you make or how much units you can hire on each turn. Amusing thing is that you'll also earn a liberty to choose a wife between 4 exotic races - I chose undead Ophelia. Ehmm, I don't consider myself a necrophilic person - I did it for the empire. (lol) All these events and scandals happening outside of the battles are fun to follow. Some politcal crisis are brilliant improvising our own modern cases and the some decisions have impact how your generals relate to you as war goes by. However, dealing with all this politc jumbo is not as hard as I first imagined. I always had at least the 50% support of each race and all I needed to do was to be victoriuos in battlefields and to take a side of a majority in cases. The nightmares of crisises and political challenges faded away just too easily that partly ruined the good idea. All in all Dragon Commander deserves good rating. Dragon Commander is a sum of many compromises and might lose a part of its potential after promising start but on the other hand it has some wonderful moments. Engaging as a dragon for your troops' support in battles was something that you don't see everyday and it was always fun to watch and hear how others were reacting when undead wanted to legalize Necromatism for an example. On its full price I can't recommend it, but on sale a fan of light strategy should give it a try.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 16, 2017

  This game showed me how insufficient Steam's "recommended/not recommended" system really is. Even after spending 26 hours playing this game, I still wasn't sure what to make of it. Like in Divinity II, the protagonist is a "Dragon Knight", a powerful warrior that can turn into a dragon at will. Divinity: Dragon Commander acts as a sort of prequel to the Divinity series, the paper thin story is set before the other Divinity games. And unlike other games in the series, Dragon Commander is a strategy game, a TBS actually, although it contains RTS elements. Being a TBS, the game is turn based. Each turn consists of three different phases: The "RPG phase", the "TBS phase" and the "RTS phase". The first phase is the "RPG phase". During this phase you find yourself on the "Raven", an airship that acts as your base of operations. This is where you research units and upgrades and make political decisions. Politics are an important part of the game and have an effect on your popularity. There are five different races: Dwarves, Elves, Imps, Lizards and Undead. Each race is represented by an ambassador aboard the Raven. Every once in a while, an ambassador makes a proposal to create new laws or change existing ones. Although you can't please everyone, it's important to appease as many races as possible (which can be rather frustrating), as the decisions you make here often have a direct influence on the next phase. The second and most important phase is the "TBS phase". Apart from some minor problems, Larian absolutely nailed this part. This is similar to the board game "Risk". It consists of a world map with many small countries that can be conquered. This is where war is waged. During this phase, you can erect buildings. Each country on the map can have one building. Some buildings allow you to build units, others increase your income or generate "cards". Cards can be used to gain bonuses that last at least 1 turn or 1 battle. With cards, you can strengthen your troops, boost your economy or sabotage the enemy, depending on the type of card used. An important thing to keep in mind during this phase is that the AI has access to more resources than you and is able to build gigantic armies in no time, which often leads to intense battles and makes countries hotly contested. However this is less of a problem than it seems, because the AI sometimes behaves rather stupid, often moving units back and forth for no reason. Moving units into a country that is held by enemy troops will result in a battle at the end of your turn. You can choose if you want to let the computer decide the battle for you or if you want to play the battle. The latter option will lead to the "RTS phase". The "RTS phase" is entirely optional. Probably designed to be the most fun element of the game, it is actually quite the opposite. There are almost no positive aspects about this phase. The maps are so small that there are barely any tactical options other than mindlessly sending units towards your enemy, and the AI is ruthless, faster and much more efficient than any human player could ever be. Crap really hits the fan when you reach a certain point in the campaign and the enemy units become more powerful than yours. So now you have an AI that works faster and more efficient than you, and now it even has more powerful units! I stopped bothering with the RTS phase at that point, because every battle was destined to be a loss from the start. The one fun thing about this phase is the dragon. Being a Dragon Knight, you can enter the battlefield in dragon form during the combat phase. While fun, I found the Dragon to be disappointing in terms of power and it isn't as much of a diciding factor in battles I thought it would be. Hell, its main attack is so weak that it takes several shots to kill the weakest unit in the game, even when upgraded to do 33% more damage. The dragon can be a useful tool to support your troops in battle by casting spells, but that's about it. In the end, Divinity: Dragon Commander is a game that could have been much better than it turned out to be. There's so much wasted potential, it's outright frustrating. Considering its heavy flaws, I was wondering if I should recommend this game or not. But it is an interesting game that can provide lots of fun. If you ignore the RTS part, that is.