Ocz agility 2 review: The First SF-1200 with MP Firmware

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Motivation for the AddictionOCZ’s Agility 2 and the SF-1200Controversy, Corsair RespondsSequential Read/Write SpeedRandom Read/Write SpeedRandom Data PerformanceOverall System Performance using PCMark VantageAnandTech Storage BenchPower ConsumptionFinal Words

While it happens a lot less now than a couple of years ago, I still see the question of why SSDs are worth it every now and then. Rather than give my usual answer, I put together a little graph to illustrate why SSDs are both necessary and incredibly important.

Along the x-axis we have different types of storage in a modern computer. They range from the smallest, fastest storage elements (cache) to main memory and ultimately at the other end of the spectrum we have mechanical storage (your hard drive). The blue portion of the graph indicates typical capacity of these storage structures (e.g. 1024KB L2, 1TB HDD, etc…). The further to the right you go, the larger the structure happens to be.

The red portion of the graph lists performance as a function of access latency. The further right you go, the slower the storage medium becomes.

This is a logarithmic scale so we can actually see what’s going on. While capacity transitions relatively smoothly as you move left to right, look at what happens to performance. The move from main memory to mechanical storage occurs comes with a steep performance falloff.

We could address this issue by increasing the amount of DRAM in a system. However, DRAM prices are still too high to justify sticking 32 — 64GB of memory in a desktop or notebook. And when we can finally afford that, the applications we’ll want to run will just be that much bigger.

Another option would be to improve the performance of mechanical drives. But we’re bound by physics there. Spinning platters at more than 10,000 RPM proves to be power, sound and reliability prohibitive. The majority of hard drives still spin at 7200 RPM or less.

Instead, the obvious solution is to stick another level in the memory hierarchy. Just as AMD/Intel have almost fully embraced the idea of a Level 3 cache in their desktop/notebook processors, the storage industry has been working towards using NAND as an intermediary between DRAM and mechanical storage. Let’s look at the same graph if we stick a Solid State Drive (SSD) in there:

Not only have we smoothed out the capacity curve, but we’ve also addressed that sharp falloff in performance. Those of you who read our most recent VelociRaptor VR200M review will remember that we recommend a fast SSD for your OS/applications, and a large HDD for games, media and other large data storage. The role of the SSD in the memory hierarchy today is unfortunately user-managed. You have to manually decide what goes on your NAND vs. mechanical storage, but we’re going to see some solutions later this year that hope to make some of that decision for you.

Why does this matter? If left unchecked, sharp dropoffs in performance in the memory/storage hierarchy can result in poor performance scaling. If your CPU doubles in peak performance, but it has to wait for data the majority of the time, you’ll rarely realize that performance increase. In essence, the transistors that gave your CPU its performance boost will have been wasted die area and power.

Thankfully we tend to see new levels in the memory/storage hierarchy injected preemptively. We’re not yet at the point where all performance is bound by mass storage, but as applications like virtualization become even more prevalent the I/O bottleneck is only going to get worse.

Motivation for the Addiction

It’s this sharp falloff in performance between main memory and mass storage that makes SSDs so enticing. I’ve gone much deeper into how these things work already, so if you’re curious I’d suggest reading our SSD Relapse.

SSD performance is basically determined by three factors: 1) NAND, 2) firmware and 3) controller. The first point is obvious; SLC is faster (and more expensive) than MLC, but is limited to server use mostly. Firmware is very important to SSD performance. Much of how an SSD behaves is determined by the firmware. It handles all data mapping to flash, how to properly manage the data that’s written on the drive and ensures that the SSD is always operating as fast as possible. The controller is actually less important than you’d think. It’s really a combination of the firmware and controller that help determine whether or not an SSD is good.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, we basically have six major controller manufacturers competing today: Indilinx, Intel, Micron, Samsung, SandForce and Toshiba. Micron uses a Marvell controller, and Toshiba has partnered up with JMicron on some of its latest designs.

Of that list, the highest performing SSDs come from Indilinx, Intel, Micron and SandForce. Micron makes the only 6Gbps controller, while the rest are strictly 3Gbps. Intel is the only manufacturer on our shortlist that we’ve been covering for a while. The rest of the companies are relative newcomers to the high end SSD market. Micron just recently shipped its first competitive SSD, the RealSSD C300 as did SandForce.

We first met Indilinx a little over a year ago when OCZ introduced a brand new drive called the Vertex. While it didn’t wow us with its performance, OCZ’s Vertex seemed to have the beginnings of a decent alternative to Intel’s X25-M. Over time the Vertex and other Indilinx drives got better, eventually earning the title of Intel alternative. You wouldn’t get the same random IO performance, but you’d get better sequential performance and better pricing.

Several months later OCZ introduced another Indilinx based drive called Agility. Using the same Indilinx Barefoot controller as the Vertex, the only difference was Agility used 50nm Intel or 40nm Toshiba NAND. In some cases this resulted in lower performance than Vertex, while in others we actually saw it pull ahead.

OCZ released many other derivatives based on Indilinx’s controller. We saw the Vertex EX which used SLC NAND for enterprise customers, as well as the Agility EX. Eventually as more manufacturers started releasing Indilinx based drives, OCZ attempted to differentiate by releasing the Vertex Turbo. The Vertex Turbo used an OCZ exclusive version of the Indilinx firmware that ran the controller and external DRAM at a higher frequency.

Despite a close partnership with Indilinx, earlier this month OCZ announced that its next generation Vertex 2 and Agility 2 drives would not use Indilinx controllers. They’d instead be SandForce based.

OCZ’s Agility 2 and the SF-1200
Motivation for the AddictionOCZ’s Agility 2 and the SF-1200Controversy, Corsair RespondsSequential Read/Write SpeedRandom Read/Write SpeedRandom Data PerformanceOverall System Performance using PCMark VantageAnandTech Storage BenchPower ConsumptionFinal Words

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OCZ Agility 2 120GB SandForce SSD Review

OCZ Agility 2 120GB SSD featuring the SandForce SF-1200 Controller

OCZ’s Agility 2 120GB is a new generation of drive based on the SandForce SF-1200 controller. Unlike the OCZ Vertex LE and OCZ Vertex 2 drives, the Agility 2’s SandForce controller has an IOP limit artificially limited in firmware. With that being said, it is also cheaper than the Vertex 2 120GB and is still a very fast SSD, especially with compressible loads.

The short story of the SandForce controller is that it uses an internal encryption/ compression algorithm to write data to NAND faster than other drives. The SandForce based Agility 2 120GB is therefore fairly fast with compressed workloads (i.e. pictures, music files, zip files, ISOs, and etc) and much faster with compressible workloads such as office documents. Another major storyline is that SandForce is a fairly new player and the controllers are of unknown reliability. Finally, originally SandForce reserved much more space on drives in this capacity range for use in wear leveling, cache and etc. OCZ Agility 2 and Vertex 2 SandForce drives were originally 100GB but after being criticized for mediocre cost per GB and with little performance penalty moving from 28GB reserved (old drives were 100GB usable 28GB reserved) to 8GB reserved (new drives are 120GB usable 8GB reserved), the choice to enable the extra capacity was clear.

One can search for more detail, but that is the one paragraph summary of hundreds of 10-15 page reviews.

Test Configuration

I noticed that I have done a poor job listing the test system in articles from the first quarter of 2010 and earlier. As a result, here is test configuration:

1. CPU: Intel Core i7 920
2. Motherboard: Gigabyte X58-Extreme
3. Memory: 12GB of Corsair Dominator GT 1600 C7 DDR3
4. Case: CoolerMaster Cosmos S
5. Drives (OS): 2x OCZ Vertex 120GB in RAID 0
6. SSD: OCZ Agility 2 120GB
7. Controller: Intel ICh20R with Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) 9.6.0.1014
8. NIC (additional): Intel Pro/1000 PT Quad
9. Host OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

This system is not the fastest around, however it is plenty to ensure that other hardware is not slowing down SSDs. I will note that the numbers I find in my testing may not be indicative of what one may see on an AMD or NVIDIA chipset.

OCZ Agility 2 120GB Benchmarks

On to the benchmarks! I am using my revised standard benchmark suite to make it easy to compare to other SSD reviews I have posted.

CrystalDiskMark

I have used CrystalDiskMark (and an older one at that at version 2.2) for quite a while now, and so I am providing these results as a point of reference.

OCZ Agility 2 120GB CrystalDiskMark Benchmark Results

This is one reason SandForce SF-1200 drives like the OCZ Agility 2 have received both praise and complaints. OCZ’s Agility 2 120GB provides solid CrystalDiskMark numbers, however there is one blaring issue. The sequential read speeds are over 500MB/s for the OCZ Agility 2 120GB SSD in CrystalDiskMark, yet the SATA II max bandwidth is 3.0gbps or 293MB/s. This is a good example of how SandForce numbers provide some interesting benchmark results.

ATTO Benchmark

ATTO has been one of my longstanding favorite benchmarks as it usually gives a different view of drive performance than a lot of the other quick benchmarks available.

OCZ Agility 2 120GB ATTO Benchmark Results

The ATTO benchmark shows one simple trend without anomalies like CrystalDiskMark. The OCZ Agility 2 120GB SSD is fast. The 285MB/s read speed is basically at the limit of SATA II and the 275MB/s write speed is very good also. One will also notice that the small file size speed is also strong.

There have been some reports of ATTO Benchmark results degrading significantly over time on SandForce based drives and users needing to RMA drives in response. I have been using the OCZ Agility 2 120GB SSD for approximately ten days writing 80GB/ day and my ATTO benchmark scores have been holding constant +/- 3MB/s which is a fairly normal variation.

AS ASSD Benchmark

The AS ASSD Benchmark was developed specifically to test SSDs. This is a new benchmark to my suite that I started to use in the Intel X25-V 40GB RAID 0 benchmarks.

OCZ Agility 2 120GB AS SSD Benchmark Results

Sequential reads and writes are good, but much lower than ATTO and CrystalDiskMark. This is a major reason I added another benchmark to the suite.

4K writes are very good, in fact better than the Intel X25-V 40GB drives in Raid 0. The 4K-64Thrd numbers are also very strong. I was fairly surprised at the write access times, but they are still twenty times faster than most spindle disks.

Conclusion

Even with the performance anomalies, the SandForce drive is fast in real world usage. Then again, just like I experienced with my first SandForce drive, the OCZ Vertex LE 100GB, the performance differential is not enough to make a current Indilinx or Intel drive user astonished by real world performance gains. I will note that with the price being competitive with the Indilinx 120GB drives, one may look to the OCZ Agility 2 or Vertex 2 120GB as being an incremental upgrade over older technology. Then again, Indilinx has been field tested by many more users for well over a year so reliability is well known at this point while SandForce is a relative newcomer. I do think OCZ should be a bit more forthcoming in marketing efforts as they clearly advertise the OCZ Agility 2 120GB’s 285MB/s read and 275MB/s write speeds, yet other benchmarks show a different picture. Overall, I have been impressed with the OCZ Agility 2 120GB, and now that much of the reserved space has been freed up for use, the cost per GB is in-line with previous generation SSD technology.

Original Sin 2. It is difficult to be a god — gambling

Close in spirit

Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition

Tyranny

Planescape: Torment

“Lord of the Rings” , we have finally completed the story campaign. As promised in first impressions of , we are rolling out a full review of Divinity: Original Sin 2 . Even now, after the end credits, it’s hard for us to believe that all this was not a dream. nine0003

Larian ‘s plans for a sequel to his surprise hit, Divinity: Original Sin , were almost utopian. New races and features, voice acting, a well-developed world, several game modes — and all this should at least not be inferior in quality to the first part. And as a maximum — to surpass it.

An army of fans trusted Larian to fully fund a Kickstarter game in just twelve hours against an original goal of half a million dollars. In a month, users collected more than two million by unlocking all additional campaign targets. But the project seemed too big. We doubted until the last: well, everything can’t be so good, it doesn’t happen. Something must go wrong.

We admit with great pleasure that we were wrong. Original Sin 2 turned out to be bigger and better than its predecessor, and there is practically nothing to complain about here.

Trailer about gameplay features

Event Horizon

The first Original Sin still captivates with incredible freedom of action. She was something more than just a tactic in the spirit of classic role-playing games. Both in combat and in conversation, there were always several ways to get out of the situation. Both banal persuasion, natural effects, and unobvious tricks were used. For example, it was possible to build a “house” of explosive barrels around the boss and undermine the reptile before he decides what sauce to devour us with. nine0003

And on the next turn, when we tried to take the characters from the front to the rear, they slipped on the ice. Together.

Fans of tabletop role-playing games also found something familiar here: that forgotten feeling when you and the game act according to the same rules. Everything that is not forbidden is allowed, and no one bothers to violate local prohibitions if the opportunity has turned up. It’s not always easy, but that was the beauty of Original Sin — it invited you to study the principles by which it works. nine0003

Apparently, Larian appreciated how much the audience liked the «tabletop» freedom. That’s why Original Sin 2 doesn’t just resemble NRI — it’s completely designed as a board game. No, you don’t have to roll virtual dice and look for something in the list of spells every couple of minutes. It’s about the philosophy of development and the principles on which tabletop RPGs are built.

At the origins of fantasy

A good D&D campaign starts with a good storyline. Ironically, it was the story that became the weakest part of the previous game. It provided an excuse for adventure, but was anything but interesting. Sometimes bright characters appeared in it, like the magician Arhu, but they did not make this apotheosis of fantasy stamps any better. nine0003

Why pray when you can talk face to face with the gods?

The second part also drew inspiration from many sources, from Martin and Tolkien to all the same Jordan and Pratchett. But literary texts no longer look like a commercial product. Now they seem to have been written not by a team of scriptwriters, but by one game master. And not to sell the game, relying on statistics and focus groups, but to make it interesting for both him and the players.

Never pass by the paintings in Rivellon. You will be surprised how many funny portraits you can find. nine0003

The world of Rivellon is almost unlimited. We are waiting for a myriad of situations: difficult, funny, dark and just unusual. The tone of the story is also constantly changing. At one point we (no kidding) are trying to help the turtle win the heart of the nimble rat, and right after that we are thinking about genocide, moral decline, nihilism and fate. Both events are written equally well. Larian plays with the tone of the story so skillfully that the transitions and mood changes do not cause any rejection.

It seems that you just went down to the basement, and already you are fighting with someone’s revived sins, and even multi-colored ones.

And D:OS 2 elegantly bypasses one of the most boring fantasy clichés — dividing the world into black and white. At first, everything is very clear: there are obvious «villains» and «heroes», us and them. But the deeper we dive into the web of intrigue, the more clearly we see that there are no right-wingers in this story at all. Only the guilty.

There are many characters, factions and historical events involved in the story. But their number does not tire, but only kindles curiosity. Names and places are remembered, plot twists can really surprise. And from the grains of information a clear trail is formed, and we follow it voluntarily. Not because there is no choice, and not because of annoying exposure, but because the story is really intriguing. nine0003

You’ll never guess what happened when we opened the sarcophagus in the crypt filled with clay warriors. Nothing. Plot twist!

The scriptwriters seriously worked out the backstory — and not just for show, but to make everything secret clear. So that the player is keenly interested in the plot background. Hats off — in our case they succeeded. But due to the volume of the script, tiny miscalculations sometimes occur. The game occasionally forgets our gender or race, does not know that we already have this or that information… The developers are slowly fixing these little things with patches. nine0003

We didn’t expect the D:OS 2 storyline to be so good. In addition, all the characters have found voices. The voice acting is obviously budget, but in a good way it surprises: the actors sound very lively — probably because they were allowed to interpret their characters in their own way. Special thanks for the appearance of the Narrator — his presence enhances the atmosphere of table gatherings. And in his voice and intonations, he is in no way inferior to the same Logan Cunningham, who plays this role in the projects Supergiant Games .

Thanks for the tip, random frog. Everyone should be such responsible forest citizens.

Our partners have also changed, and for the better. Each of them has something to talk about, and their personal stories are directly connected to the main plot. Now they are not just an appendage to the main character, a knight in shining armor. They became independent individuals. The side quests of the brothers in arms not only reveal their characters, but also echo the fate of Rivellon — and sometimes in a rather unexpected way. nine0003

What you sow is what you reap

The most controversial feature of tabletop games is that they require a huge investment from the player. Time, attention, effort, money. We sacrifice all these things that are dear to any adult in the name of an exciting pastime.

The fact that the ship is talking to us, literally turning its head, instantly causes a smile.

Ridiculous, but with exorbitant size and tons of content, Divinity: Original Sin 2 respects the player’s time. She understands that the efforts invested in the passage should pay off and bring dividends in the form of pleasure. She elevates to the status of a creed a simple truth: «No one wants to waste precious time on boring nonsense.» nine0003

First of all, there is no pass-through content in the game. Quests that added «so that it was.» Any, even the most insignificant situation, one way or another, will reward you for your attention. Valuable loot, money, information, funny dialogue or a memorable scene. Anything, just so as not to make you feel like wasted energy.

There are two more tricks the game uses to reduce downtime when it’s not clear where to go next. Firstly, amusing opportunities and tasks are scattered almost everywhere — you won’t have to go far for adventures. Secondly, enemies still don’t respawn in D:OS 2. So, you won’t be able to earn experience either. nine0003

First, pull the sacred pin, then count to three, no more, no less.

Players will have to look for problems if they want to become stronger. It’s a little cruel, but almost all quests are worth it.

The paths of heroism are inscrutable

The main success of the first Original Sin was the interactive world, and it hasn’t gone anywhere. The freedom of action has only grown, and D:OS 2 tries to take into account all possible scenarios. Anything with a health bar can die. nine0027 All . And the game remembers this.

We can get the necessary information in many ways. Talk to people. Question animals if we have the appropriate skill (and talking to them is even more enjoyable than in the first part). Dig into chests. Read notes. Talk to ghosts… including animal ghosts.

Characters of different races may solve the same problems in different ways. Physiology is also implemented here for a reason: unique racial properties play a role both in combat and in social interactions. For example, lizards can dig up hiding places without shovels, and elves devour other people’s remains and thus receive important (and not so) information from the memory of the dead. nine0003

Puzzles are also pleasing in variety: often, in order to solve it, you have to look closely even at the details of the interior.

Talking with ghosts rarely cheers you up. But you can find out in all the details how the unfortunate man died and suffered. In case you want to get pissed off.

Larian have created a world in which even building pyramids from boxes is not boring. True, sometimes developers go too far: some puzzles or key actions for quests can be mind-blowingly non-obvious. Especially in the last third of the game. nine0003

And because of the detailing of the world, the pace of the story suffers a little. There are a lot of little things here that you don’t want to miss, and the plot, on the contrary, often rushes things in the name of a spectacular denouement. And if the transition from Fort Joy to Driftwood is painless, then the departure to the Nameless Island, and then to Arks, does not seem so impeccable. Perhaps Larian tried to apply shock «therapy» to the players. But this particular move did not hook us.

Another caveat: D:OS 2 relies on metagaming in many situations. In tabletop games, this means that the player solves the problem using their own knowledge gained outside of the game, not his character’s thoughts or knowledge. With due diligence, a good third of D:OS 2 quests can be «broken» simply by going around the path conceived by the developers with the help of some kind of trick. Most often — teleportation or disguise. Such permissiveness certainly has its own charm, and Larian themselves are encouraged to exploit such loopholes. But it seems to us that not every roleplayer will like this approach.

The devil himself will break his leg in the inventory, even with sorting configured. On the other hand, what kind of role-playing is this without digging in clothes, flasks and weapons? nine0003

Permanent wagering fails. We are now immersed in the role, then depart from it in a fit of furious munchkinism.

By the way, in battle you will need not a competent roleplaying of the character, but knowledge of the combat system. Without this, no Divinity can be achieved.

Throw the initiative!

Turn-based tactics from the first part in D:OS 2 has not changed much. Fights are still difficult, they require good preparation and competent decisions. The role-playing engine works on the same principles, but has become a little more tidy. nine0003

This spectacle is beautiful beyond words. But by ear … Let’s just say that the pianist troll still has room to grow.

Leveling up stats and skills now brings noticeable and understandable bonuses, rather than abstract points in the random number generator. We pump strength — we hit harder with heavy weapons. Dexterity — better shooting and wielding daggers. Skill schools also received bonuses, so now they need to be developed not only in order to learn certain spells. Hydrosophist increases healing, Warfare increases all physical damage, and Necromancy grants «innate» vampirism. nine0003

We have already talked about new schools in “first impressions” . Necromancy, as the name suggests, draws on deadly charms like immortality and blood rain. The call allows you to create, pump and control creatures useful in battle, and the polymorph allows you to physically rebuild yourself, comrades and enemies for the sake of advantage in battle. Turning an enemy into a chicken can be more enjoyable than you might imagine.

The skills menu is very convenient. You won’t get lost in this. nine0003

In addition, there are several times more elemental and status effects in the sequel. As well as the skills that trigger them, try combining two empty skill books from different schools at your leisure. As if that weren’t enough, almost everything around can be blessed or cursed, which drastically changes the basic properties of the treated surface.

Let’s say cursed oil gets the remarkable property of exploding for no reason. «Cursed Blood» sounds brutal, looks disgusting, and the effect is generally vile. Just do not get carried away: the engine with an anguish can withstand a large number of impacts. Control yourself if you don’t want to «drop» FPS to 20-22 frames. nine0003

For some reason, we thought throwing fireballs in the oil fields was a great idea. Don’t repeat our mistakes. Because of the lags, the battle dragged on for an hour and a half.

But don’t expect fireworks from special effects and dozens of statuses on one enemy. In the combat system, an innovation has appeared, about which you can say a lot of good and even more bad.

Trial and error

From now on, all characters have physical and magical armor. The mechanic has been in the series before, but in Original Sin 2, armor is actually an additional health bar. Every piece of clothing affects her in one way or another. It decreases when the character takes damage of the appropriate type, regardless of the specifics. And until the armor is depleted, this type of damage will not harm the health of the enemy. nine0003

Welcome to Arx. We hope you feel comfortable.

It doesn’t sound too bad, but there is one «but»: armor completely protects against status effects. Forget permanent stuns and control chains. As long as the enemy has magical armor, all your tricks will go to waste.

On the one hand, this adds a new variable to combat tactics. It’s not just important to have all the right abilities — it’s even more important to use them at the right moment. Keep your trump cards until the last, or start the battle with the most powerful moves and wait until they recover? You will have to evaluate the chances from a completely different angle. On the other hand, armor harms the very variability of fights that we appreciated so much before. All your crowd control, elemental play, and resourcefulness will go down the drain if the enemy has armor on. Statuses should sort of diversify the process… But you forget about them when most of the battle is spent on knocking down the defense from the enemy. nine0003

This is what happens when magical armor is depleted.

Build diversity suffers because of the same mechanics. You can still build beautiful hybrids of magical and physical skills, but from now on it is simply not profitable. After all, if a mage and a fighter fight with one enemy, then he will defend himself with two different health bars. Mages used to be death machines, but now spells take a long time to cool down, and it only comes to effects at the end of the battle. Warriors and robbers come to the fore — their blades strike more painfully than lightning. nine0003

The balance of difficulty levels is also a little feverish. As before, if you arrive somewhere at a level earlier than necessary, the boss will roll us with a skating rink. One level later, the combat becomes boringly easy. There are several potential forks in the story campaign, but each has its own level. Of course, you can visit where and when you want. But enemies can also show you how wrong you were in this decision.

Other creatures of the Void will devour us and will not choke. When intuition tells you that things are bad, it is better to listen to it. nine0003

In a word, there are problems with a worthy test in Original Sin 2. Of course, the values ​​of armor and damage are a fickle thing, they can be easily fixed with mods or patches. But in the release version, the difficulty levels never reach the golden mean. Above the «Classic» it’s simply scary to meddle, and the game is designed for at least three or four passages.

On the other hand, no one said that it was easy to become Divine.

And a little more

D:OS 2 has a game master mode that allows you to design your own adventures in the same tabletop role-playing game format. We talked about him in detail0015 back in May , and since then it has not undergone significant changes.

As we expected, this is a great opportunity for board game lovers to spend a few hours on an adventure, even if they don’t have the opportunity to get together. Our editors played this mode after the release of the game, live on our channel on Twitch , and were very satisfied. Another question is that many NRI fans will prefer old-fashioned «physical» gatherings to similar modern solutions. nine0003

Gamemaster mode conveniently places all the necessary tools. But the functionality still needs to be sorted out a little.

There is also an «Arena» mode, which allows you to quickly resolve disagreements between players in battle (at the end of the same stream, we managed to play it as well). Here the conditions are initially equal, so it all depends on your cunning and approach to combat. It is unlikely that a new esports discipline will grow out of this, but we cannot make any claims to this part of the game either. nine0003

Oh yes, even in the story campaign, as in the first part, there are additional mechanics like potions and crafting. But they do not play an important role, at least not on the Classic difficulty level. For almost a hundred hours of passage, we almost did not get into situations where they would be needed.

More Divinity: Original Sin 2 screenshots

More Divinity: Original Sin 2 videos, streams and trailers

Divinity: Original Sin 2 isn’t perfect. The ideal, alas, does not exist. Larian on their wax wings tried to fly to the sun, and, let’s be honest, this is one of the most impressive attempts in the last ten years. nine0003

This is a funny, thoughtful, prosaic, infinitely deep and interesting game. You can play Original Sin 2 for weeks and still not want it to end. You can give the game honors and award epithets for hours, but we will describe it with only one phrase.

Exceeded expectations .

Pleased

• epic, multifaceted story;
• an unprecedented variety of situations;
• flexibility and interactivity of the world; nine0216
• thoughtful and variable combat;
• desktop spirit of adventure.

Disappointed

• a scattering of small bugs;
• armor system;
• balance problems.

How we played

What: game provided by the publisher.

On what: PC

How much: 93 hours.

Achievement Edition

“This is for the cat!”

Slaughter the entire fort garrison Joy for killing an innocent black cat.

About localization

All text translated into Russian. Not without misunderstandings, but quite worthy.

Excellent

9. 5

Rating
Gambling

Verdict

One of the best RPGs of the decade, if not all time. An adventure that doesn’t get bored, blown away, or loses momentum right up to the credits. The abundance of features and hardcore will drive beginners into a stupor, but once you get involved, Rivellon will become your second home for tens or even hundreds of hours. nine0003

A new milestone in the history of Wargaming and World of Tanks or the sleight of hand of Viktor Kisly? / Computer and mobile games / iXBT Live

A few days ago, Wargaming, one of the main pillars of the CIS IT sector, announced its intention to give up ownership of any of its assets in Russia and Belarus. Such a sudden «knight’s move» in turn excited the minds of everyone who has active accounts in WG’s digital services. In particular, the “tankers” from the most popular Wargaming project, the free-to-play game World of Tanks, were puzzled. “What will happen to my tanks?!” Well, let’s try to figure it out. ..

Victor Kisly, head of Wargaming and part-time strategist

The representatives of the company themselves in their official press release reported that nothing would change for the players themselves. It’s just that all the technical and service support of the project will be transferred to the Lesta studio, which is located in St. Petersburg and is mainly engaged in servicing and supporting another WG project, namely the World of Warships «ships». Until very recently, Lesta Studio was one of the internal structural divisions of Wargaming, whose head office, in turn, has been de jure and de facto relocated to the Greek part of the island of Cyprus for several years. nine0003

Dexterous hands of sanctions are not afraid!

Do you follow the dexterous hands of WG head Viktor Kisly? That is, until recently, there was the following conditional picture: the head in which all key decisions are made for a long time is no longer in the CIS space, one St. still sawing «tanchiki».

Now faced with some of the toxicity and technical difficulties associated with direct financial operations and transactions, Wargaming has decided to eliminate itself from the toxic environment. And what did she do? Correctly! On paper, she made a VIEW that she abruptly leaves by loudly slamming the door, however, in this situation, the principle of the eternal quote of one outrageous recently deceased politician works: “Eat the fish and on …” well, you understand where, why and what chair to sit on. And when you have a chicken that has been laying stable golden eggs for more than 10 years, then you will not give it up voluntarily and you will certainly want to sit on all the chairs, especially when there is such a completely working option. nine0003

Ostap won’t give bad advice

And now about the picture of the near future. Here, a natural analogy with some reptiles fits perfectly: From one of the magic hands of Viktor Kisly, the same Lesta glove is dropped, which from now forever and ever “on its own” from a light stroke of a master’s pen, and the former hands and head no longer affairs. On paper, of course. In the meantime, both hands simply hide behind the back (closing the office in Minsk, self-exclusion of WG from the Lesta office in Russia), and the head continues to watch intently and nod or shake. nine0003

The glove itself, in the near future, may well “well, quite by accident” put on the entire ready-made Wargaming office in Minsk and announce a solemn expansion. Although, «accidents are not accidental» as the great master Oogway would put it. And here the hands smoothly reach from behind the back, rise upwards, from where strings / ropes are already hanging down to Lesta, they begin to twitch and control all this movement in a “serocardinal way”, so to speak. As a result, the terms changed places, but the sum did not change at all. Brilliant maneuver from Viktor Kisly! He must have read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. nine0003 The Comprehensive Essence of World of Tanks

So, based on the above, it is quite reasonable to assume that the World of Tanks project will not change in any radical way in the near future. The Lesta studio, which was given «patronage» over WoT, will continue to develop the game in strict accordance with the plans of Wargaming, so the «tankers» can relax and not worry about their tanks, because this time the greatest tank wizard outplayed everyone. After all, whatever one may say, but the casino always wins. nine0003

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