Divine Divinity

Divine Divinity has a lot of things going right for it. It takes Diablo's simplicity and pairs it with the depth of Neverwinter Nights for a fun, easy to pick up top down RPG. You start by picking a character, although which you pick is largely a formality as you can customize them anyway you want. Spell slinging warrior, axe wielding barbarian/thief, you can do it all. You're thrown into a story that slowly unfolds around you. It's the usual stuff, land in peril from ancient evil you're the only one that can stop it, and there's a ton of baddies in the way for you to cut down with blade, bow or well rendered spell abilities. It's backed up by well rendered enemies, that seemed to me to be reminiscent of Fallout 2, and a very nice ambient score. What keeps me from giving this game a full five stars however, is the bugs -aggravating, game killing bugs. The game crashes, a lot. Sometimes it will crash while saving, which is a huge kick in the teeth if you haven't saved in a while. Characters will sometimes go into what I call a spin cycle, where the turn rapidly in place, unable to talk or interact with anything around them. If this happens during an in-game cutscene, all you can do is quit and start over. This for me, means that certain areas of the game are no go zones because they're certain to end the play experience. The game is especially bad with certain anti-virus programs, which result in corrupted save-games. For all this however, you still have at the core a really fun little title that does a lot of things right. I recommend it, just be prepared for some frustrating stoppages in an otherwise engrossing experience.

Just beat it. It's okay. Melee is boring, most skills passive, three active melee skills total, IMO all worthless. Archers have spread, poison, 'spiritual' elemental and explosive shots. The explosive shot does fire damage, the elemental shot is randomly fire, lightning or spiritual. Enemies tend to have specific resistances which go up to 100 by endgame, means you need to Curses to lower resistances. Easier to just use the spread shot as you can land multiple hits with this skill on a single enemy. Damage from these skills are purely on skill level, which is good if your bow isn't great. Spear throwers have nothing. A few bosses use Lv5 Blind, makes you unable to target them for 15 secs, rendering melee or archer characters useless. I've found no way to cure this, I've won by using AOE magic to avoid targeting, or by Blinding them first. Unique gear is boring, all properties are random and thus have no personality. Game is biased towards swords, only other weapons with top tier (orange) options are a bow and an axe. Supposedly True Shot doesn't work, the Crossbow Expertise doesn't grant you a damage bonus and the description for Sword Expertise Lv5 loses the damage modifier (though the bonus damage is supposedly still active). One quest supposedly has an exit portal that doesn't work, so you can get stranded easily. Some quests can be very easily broken, leaving no way to finish them. Some localization issues in the English version. Highlighting your Vitality shows Health, when all references to it, even in the manual, are Vitality. Also, the statistic that governs Offense and Defense is Agility, but the Charms for it state that they confer a Dexterity bonus. Elemental Strike spellbooks boost Deadly Discs and Heavenly Blessing boosts Magical Might. Overall, it's okay, don't expect too much. Read a guide if you're worried about game breaking, and play a Wizard if you can't stand to play Diablo 1 style melee.

(Played on MBP late 2013, Big Sur 11.7.4 via Porting Kit) Back in days of yore I was a huge RPG fan (of the action and Japanese variety) and bought Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn with no prior knowledge of the series nor the AD&D system. I expected to love it since fans and critics hailed it as the best thing since tummy rubs. This is called foreshadowing. I loved the setting and design but I never understood the gameplay even after reading the manual. "THAC0? Why am I moving so slow? When do I level up? Le grill, what the hell is that?!" I played it like Diablo and was very frustrated, overwhelmed and disappointed. I wish I had Divine Divinity back then for a smoother transition between those types of games. Divine Divinity takes the fast action-oriented PC and loot focused gameplay of Diablo and adds Baldur's Gate's world design with emphasis on NPCs providing tons of missions and quests which to me rarely seemed as mere busywork. I was invested in the NPCs with if not enthusiasm then at least curiosity. The main story is above average with some twists telegraphed well in advance while others coming out of left field with some deus ex machina explanation. It's the smaller side quests which are the most rewarding full of humour, self-awareness, some "aaaaw" and some "fuuuuck meeee" moments and everything in between. Some flaws: - Trade UI is very bad. - NPCs will reward you with unidentified weapons/equipment you need to pay to identify. - For easier combat press Cmd/Ctrl to auto-target the enemy closest to the cursor, but be wary that you don't click on interactable things going "I can't do that" when dealing with mobs for several often crucial seconds before figuring out you're not attacking anyone and repositioning your cursor. This got me killed often. - The last quest is sooooo tedious if you're mostly melee you'll consider not finishing the game, as was my case. But I was having fun up until that point and I'm fine not seeing the ending cinematic.

The good: When this game shines, it shines bright. It has interesting quests with a good dose of humor. The world is huge, with decent variety and is fun to explore. The graphic style and music are gorgeous. All skills and spells are available to any class, so you can build your hero without restrictions. The bad: Combat is an essential part of games like DD, but some areas are just unnecessary "grindy". Killing hundreds of enemies to clear a dungeon starts to feel like work after a while. Unfortunately, especially the late stages of the game are pretty tedious and boring. The game is from 2002, so I expected some technical issues with modern OS. I got the unofficial Direct3D fix which resolved stuttering and long loading times. However, the game still crashed every couple hours, so saving often is advised. The ugly: Some cut scenes crashed the game reliably and only switching to software rendering allowed me to continue playing. Even worse, I encountered two game breaking bugs that forced me to replay large chunks of the game as it was not possible to advance the main story. Such bugs can happen pretty easily (e.g. killing an important enemy the wrong way), so be sure to create manual save games every few hours, especially before entering new areas. Conclusion: still a very good game. Minus one star for the bugs and technical glitches, minus one star for the grinding and the atrocious end game.

I'm so happy that I decided to play this game. My biggest worries were the graphics which are totally okay considering the age of the game and the UI which of course misses all the improvements the last 20 years gave us but you can highlight items and that is all the improvement we needed since Diablo 1, right? With these worries out of the way, I experienced a living world where the quests don't feel like fetch quests and many of them can be solved in multiple ways. NPCs are believable and at times funny. Character building and hunting for items is fun, although there were spells when I perceived some enemies to be difficult (might depend on the gear you find and if you read character guides before playing). The soundtrack is outstanding, some of the tracks I even hear nowadays in my car. The beginning is a bit slow and the last area feels a bit unpolished and empty unfortunately but still, this game is a true must-play for me.