Divinity: Dragon Commander

Divinity: Dragon Commander is an unusual hybrid combining turn-based strategy on an empire map, real-time action combat between air and ground units, and RPG-style political decision-making. The player takes on the role of the Dragon Commander, half dragon and half human, who tries to unite the warring races under a single banner after his father's death, before his own siblings can beat him to the throne.

The game switches fluidly between phases: on the empire map, the player manages the economy, research, and diplomacy; in the council chamber, they must resolve political disputes between humans, dwarves, elves, and the undead, whose decisions affect the empire's morale and stability; and in battles, they command fleets of airships and ground units in real time, while the commander himself can at any moment jump into his own dragon body and personally join the fight as a flying unit with its own abilities. This genre combination was unusual in 2013, and thanks to it the game earned a reputation as an ambitious but disjointed experiment.

The political thread also contains choices with real impact on the world and on the treatment of individual races, which brings the game closer to an RPG with moral decisions than to pure strategy, and together with the real-time battles and map diplomacy, this makes Dragon Commander one of the most genre-straddling titles Larian has ever released. The player can also choose the commander's personal relationship with one of the advisors, which affects the further direction of the political thread and how other factions view his rule.

The multiplayer component allows players to face off against each other directly in real-time air and ground battles, which was an unusual step for the Divinity series in 2013 toward competitive online play, something the studio's previous isometric RPGs had never wagered on.

Why play: Dragon Commander will appeal to players who want to try an unconventional mix of turn-based strategy, RTS battles, and political decision-making in one package, as well as Larian fans curious about their experimental detour before the Original Sin series. Anyone looking for pure strategy or RPG without genre mixing might do better looking elsewhere.