Question: What do you get when you mix RPG, RTS and TBS together? Answer: An undercooked Dragon Commander.

User Rating: 5.5 | Divinity: Dragon Commander PC
Well this was disappointing, since I quite liked Larians' last game, Dragon Knight. Dragon Commander, while being rather ambitious, unfortunately falls short on all accounts. Except the music, it's actually really good.

Anyway, since this game is essentially 3 games in one, I'm gonna review each part separately.

RPG: You play as the emperor, and you are aboard your ship. There is no character customization, although you can research new powers for your dragon form in battle.
You never actually see your character, and the whole RPG aspect consists of you talking to NPC's aboard your ship. Remember the ship parts of SC2? That's what this is like, albeit with two different choices (yes/no) every now and then.
Fortunately, the writing is good, as is the voice acting, and the game brings up a lot of current political problems for you to decide on. Naturally, my Monarchy was made of awesome, and everyone loved me. All in all, this is the best part of the game, although it does get pretty repetitive.

TBS: Have you played RISK? This is like RISK. That's pretty much all there is to say really. Unfortunately, the game is not very good at disclosing what you are actually supposed to do or how the game's mechanics work, and more than once actions that clearly looked possible turned out to not work at all for some weird reason (like being unable to move your troops one square when they are supposed to be able to move up to 3...). It lacks polish, and feels very shallow. On the plus-side, the AI is actually pretty damn good, which makes the game rather challenging.

RTS: The worst part, despite having a jet-pack flying dragon. This is just like a very shallow version of Supreme Commander, in that you will be spamming boring units towards to enemy's base until he is dead or you run out of resources, and it never improves. I resorted to auto-resolving everything very quickly, which resulted in a very short playtime. I beat almost the entire game in a day. The Dragon itself just feels like a gimmick, and really doesn't add much at all to the gameplay. Very disappointing.

Story: Considering this is an RPG, the main story is freakin' terrible. There's barely any story to begin with. Like I said, the interactions with the NPC:s on your ship are pretty good, but your main objective pushing you forward is ridiculously lazily done.
I shall now SPOIL(ERS) the entire storyline for those that might care (in which case you should stop reading about now), but you really aren't missing anything at all in this regard.
INTRO: You are the son to the Emperor, and a half dragon. There's civil war. You must unite the empire and take the throne.
ACT I: You defeat your enemies on the battle map (and it is never explained who they are, neither do you ever meet them). That's it. There's not even a real cut-scene.
ACT II: You defeat your brothers and sisters who also want the throne on the battle map (and you never meet them either). That's it.
ACT III: A daemon who is bound to your ship is suddenly not bound to your ship and he aids the final one of your siblings with stronger units (even if you already defeated them). So you defeat him (again). Daemon says "oh noes, you beat me!", everyone else says "congratulations Emperor, you are a pretty cool guy!", you get a cheap 2D cut-scene explaining that every is happy and back to normal, with complete disregard for any of the decisions you made during the game. That's it. The end. Lame.

I really expected better from Larian. Oh well, here's a 5.5 for decent art design on the ship (the units pretty much suck though) and for daring to deal with some of the controversial issues of today's society. More of those, please!