Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis Final battle is--literally--impossible.

I am at level 32. I played successfully as a melee fighter/summoner combo. The hours leading up to the final battle were an absolute cakewalk considering how difficult some of the game was. Yet with so many points spent on health leech and health regen, I had gotten to the point where I was barely taking damage, and often was taking none--even in the arena fight in which you re-fight all the bosses that had come before.

The final battle, then, has come as a surprise. I have at last eliminated every non-boss character in the battle, leaving only the two bosses. However, because they self-heal, it is literally impossible to complete. They regain health faster than I can damage them, so at the end of the game--in an area that I cannot leave to go and finish up the few side quests I had left--I am stuck in a stalemate.

I can forgive bugs, in the sense that they are accidents. They are not purposeful design failures, but flaws that appear in many a game, particularly ambitious ones like RPGs. But I can't forgive purposeful design decisions that force the player to revert to an old save game and lose hours of progress due to conscious design decisions. Divinity 2 has some excellent qualities, and it's easy to like in spite of its many, many flaws. But the last several hours of the game are a failure of game design. You have a responsibility to make your game communicate properly to the player. By making the linear path leading to this encounter so incredibly, mouse-button-mashingly easy, you communicate to the player that he or she is in a position to follow the path to its conclusion. This is game design 101--and it is one of many reasons why superb games like Dragon Age capture our fancy, while games like Divinity II don't catch on. All these great ideas have been piled onto shaky ground; if you can't get the basics right, no number of good ideas will lift your game from the abyss.

This isn't to say I don't like Divinity 2; I actually do, though it goes out of its way to make you dislike it. It's like your bad-girl crush--she'll curse and insult you, but you remain starry eyed because you see the wonderful qualities lingering deep inside.

Divinity II is no Divine Divinity, though. Even compared to its modern-day brethren, like Dragon Age and even Drakensang and Risen, Divinity II comes up short. So much potential has been lost because the basics--the difficulty curve, the map interface, the AI, pathfinding--weren't delivered. A patch can help, but the very core is too flawed to make this a legitimately great game. Fair effort here, and I wish you the best of luck with Divinity III.

Many people have finished Divinity 2. So the final battle is certainly not impossible.

Change your tactics, maybe?

I also was at level 32 or 33 at the time I go in the Hall of Echoes. I spend just 1 hour to finisch the game, but what a disappointment it was!



Yeah! Linear sort end! In an area you cannot leave again! For me the most stupide thing they make in this game!! It makes no sense you cannot go back! Yesterday I write also about it on this forum: asked myself "why Larian don't learn from earlier errors (DD and the Wazstelands you are in and can't go back!), don't listen to their fans about this and I'm afraid loose (many) fans ... so, so sadly
So sadly because I found the game realy great and fantastic UNTIL the moment I discover I can't go back out the Hal of Echoes! Sorry I must say it here and now... it makes me cry... so a fantastic game and than ... crack ... the game goes to pieces at the end, after playing many hours!



I totally agree with ursoward : ... "design decisions that force the player to revert to an old save game" ... if I wish to finish more side quests ... because WHO would expect that you can not return????

Of course it can be finished, assuming your character is at the necessary level and you have spent skill points in a certain way. But I look elsewhere on these forums and see others are in the same boat, simply because they took their character in a direction that makes the final battle impossible to complete.

I find the idea of "tactics" in Divinity II to be amusing, since most boss tactics involve rolling, jumping, and exploiting the bad pathfinding and AI rather than actual tactics as you would find them in other, better RPGs. There is no "tactic" in this battle. With my summoned demon and my creature, I cannot damage either character faster than they self-heal. I can wail on them for hours, even after consuming the best potions in my inventory, but not defeat them--even though the hours of cakewalk that preceded it communicated to me that I should have been more than ready.

This isn't difficulty--this is imbalance, a quality that intrudes on a fair bit of the game. It's why so many complain of the difficulty. If you are going to make a hard game, you need to give the players a tight and precise combat system. This is what separates hard games, like Demon's Souls, from cheap and unbalanced games, like Divinity II. I like a good, tough-as-nails challenge. But Divinity II does not offer precision of attack nor precision of movement. You win by exploit, not by tactic. And that is a serious flaw.

I was able to win, finally, by dragging my difficulty slider to easy, though after viewing the ending, I wondered why I put in all that effort to finish that battle. Goodness gracious, what a poor ending.

I honestly have no idea why you're having problems in the final battle since you say before that it's a cakewalk.

What's your stats & skills distribution + equipment?

I am at work so I can't pull up my game. But I had my summon demon skill maxed, summon mastery maxed, health leech maxed, health regen maxed, and plenty points in mana leech, sword and shield mastery, heal, and bleeding. The game is tough, but the build did me well. Even in the arena battle vs all the previous bosses, I was just able to click away without dodging or casting any spells aside from summons, since I was generating health with every hit. I felt as though I must be well prepared to take on the final battle. I don't remember my exact equipment, though I had on some--but not all--of a set; scorpion set maybe? And a nice, charmed-up, enchanted-up warhammer.

But The Divine and Zandalor heal faster than I can damage. If I separate them so that me and my summons can wail on just one, I can hammer for a long time and get nowhere, because as soon as he gets to just under 50% health, he heals. I could finish on easy, since my melee creature had equipped the insta-death skill that lets him kill an enemy under a certain percentage of health, but on medium it was literally impossible for me. I guess in the end it doesn't matter; after hammering on the same two dudes for an hour, I switched the difficulty and was able to get through. But I was--and am--frustrated with the issue, which imo stems from some clear flaws in the very fabric of this game.

Maybe your DPS isn't high enough for a warrior? When I killed Zandalor/Divine as a warrior, I dual-wielded & finished both off with Fatality... I also killed Divine first since he always comes after your character.

Zandalor always heals the Divine a couple of times but after a while he should stop doing this.

I have finished the game with a warrior that did crap dmg, i had focus on defence and they still bet the crap out of me, anyway i charmed and start runing til it was few left so could take up the fight, its just take a bit more time, i think i used +10 min from i started til they was dead so my strat was wrong but i did it anyway

I had to call it quits in that particular fight as well. I was so frustrated that I wasn't able to finish the game (nor able to leave Hall of Echoes and finish some other quests) that I ended up uninstalling the game (which I normally don't do with RPGs as I play them at least a second time around). Up to that point I was actually enjoying the game very much.

Mind you - I was playing on "easy" and still wasn't able to beat those final guys.

Cheers,
Rainer

I will try again when I get home tonight. If I recall, I was doing around 120 damage with each hit, plus whatever additional bleeding, poisoning, and shocking etc that my enchantments and charms provided. Perhaps it isn't enough? It just seems so odd that I could click my way through the hour before with nary a worry, only to run into this. I will focus on just The Divine and see what happens.

u need get at last lvl 34 to win that game or u need shietload of hp and resists on 60 and fatalilty on at last 10

Well i respeced my skills. Beat the game and feel sick. The end was unexpected... Hope Divinity 3 fixes the games flaws but retains the great things. This game was under rated imo. Please bring out Divinity 3!!!!

Yes, bring out Divinity 3, but this time a totally seemless world, totally, hopefully they understand this ???

Seemless will say: I CAN go back to ALL area's after I go in one area! Can't go back after go in Hall of Echoes is so a stupide thing!! Why they do this over again wrong ???
(see BD and also DD: The Wastelands, the same frustrating thing! - however I find DD the best game of LArian, despite that frustrating thing about limeted freedom after going into the Wastelands)

Why, I asked myself so many many times over again ... !

I don't buy next Larian game before I know for sure it is totally seemless and have also a great(er) ending and a better/stronger storyline by the end! Maybe more than 1 ending will by a very great thing!

For sure I find whole the game very funny and a for me a great game! Beautiful music, NPC's, good quests and so on ...

BUT when I discover some things like I wrote above It's for going to !

lol who ever didnt beat those 2 machomen yet.... FAIL! I beated em to a bloody pulp first and then attackd their goons.

I kickd some butt in there!

I really laugh when people go i couldn't go back and do side quests. The game tells you that you won't be able to go back that this is it, and its not so hard to belive that you get to do whatever you want till you have to face a game changing aspect, and even then the GAME WARNS YOU do not proceed if you have unfinished business in so and so place. so do not blame the designers on it, you knew it was gonna happen before you entered. and if you didn't pay attention to your game that is not a design flaw that's a player flaw.

Yes the final battle is hard. but its not impossible to beat and honestly its fun that they gave you a challenge instead of here you go beat the boss and win the game in 2 seconds.

Last thought, if you can't beat them its not your build its your gear. you can go unstated and win everything *it won't be easy but you can do it* Also on a note above there is no such thing as a seamless game no matter how open world you think it is, you follow the main story and you beat the game you can take 40-200 hours to beat it but eventually you come to the ending by following the main story

Even if you miss the warnings about not being able to return from the Hall of Echoes (Patriarch strongly implying things didn't go very well for Maxos, etc), entering is obviously a significant plot point, so a good place to make a save before proceeding.

Anyway, in DKS/D2:DC you can reach a slightly higher level by the time you get to the Hall of Echoes compared to the original release (I finished D2:ED at level 36.75, in DKS I was level 37.47 at that point). The level influence of combat was also reduced, so entering the Hall of Echoes at lower levels wouldn't be as much of a problem. In D2:ED a couple people were able to complete the final battle on level 30 or 31, and one reported finishing at level 26 (near the end of Ygerna's memory battle - I hate you!), though with a very indirect technique.


Welcome to the forum.

When I reread my own 2 posts in this thread I must honestly say I WAS in a very BAD mood when writing all that about Hall of Echoes, Wastelands ... "the point of NO return" ...
Now I understand it all better (I believe) : it is PART OF the Main Storyline .

And after the relaese of Flames of Vengeance all sad feelings about "point of no return" with Hall of Echoes melt like snow in the sun, immediately !