Divine Divinity

This was a fun little game but had a lot of annoying features. Firstly many of the quests were bugged. Some quests you'd complete and they would never register as completed. Other quests wouldn't trigger properly at all. Secondly the game was way too long given the content. At the end of the game when you're finally ready to go tackle the main guy you take a teleporter and...you end up on yet another set of levels that you have to slog through. Seems like it was artificially extended with little actual reason. Thirdly the balancing was all over the place. You could take on a troll and win but shortly thereafter get swarmed by insects and die. Saving often is a must. By the end of the game though you were unstoppable. Overall though it was a fun little Diablo-clone. The story was pretty good as was the world. Never felt like resources were being reused.

The game still has a lot of bugs and can crash on you at anytime, but it is playable. Make sure you save often and with multiple saves. The gameplay feels like a mix of Diablo and Baldur's Gate. The game world is pretty huge with lots of things to kill and a good number of quests without feeling overwhelming. It'll take many hours before you're done with this game. If it wasn't for the bugs I'd give it 4 stars instead. Still its only 6 bucks for a RPG that was once sold for 60 and was worth that amount, so if you can stand the occasional crash you can have a lot of fun with this game.

The Good: The game offered very open ended game play and side quests that felt useful. The Bad: The ending felt unfulfilling, the skill system was disappointing, and the inventory system was irritating. The details: The game begins with an opening dungeon crawl that serves as an extended tutorial, but after that the whole world is essentially opened up to you. Only a handful of locations are sealed up until the completion of plot elements and these don’t detract from an opened ended world. Exploring will set you up with a lot of side quests to help level characters and for the most part feel like actual things a hero would do (rescue a lost boy’s parents, help a little girl track down her cat, and beat up all sorts of ruffians). A few side quests also come with certain mysteries and unintended side-effects to both your character and the world around it; these add a good role-playing feel as to how you decide to carry out your heroic action. The skill system allows any class to put into any skill tree, characters can also buy (or find) spell books to increase their skill levels. Skill books (and the occasional quest reward) mostly improved spells rather than personal skills. And while there were ways to improve combat, there were no active fighting skills making combat rather boring. The skills themselves give players many options both offensive and defensively, but most don’t live up to the hype leaving only a few good skills worthwhile. The inventory was obnoxious with items free floating in the inventory rather than in an organized grid. To add extra trouble the merchant windows rearrange everything to a single column of items disrupting any organization used. In addition the game doesn’t give a clear way to store items, although that can be remedied by simply storing your items in a barrel, crate, or chest just about anywhere. Divine Divinity uses magic pyramids rather than town portal scrolls, the pyramids can be used to teleport to each other allowing for players to pick and change the location of return. This feature is annoying at first, especially since picking up the pyramids requires dragging it into the inventory menu rather than picking them up by clicking on them. After some time the pyramids become a friend and a useful way to get around. However, after you trigger a certain plot event an annoying imp comes and steals them until the end of that plot line. The main plot line was nothing special, but was compelling enough to find out what happens at least until the climax. After being blessed to turn into the Divine One, however, the game leaves its open ended game play and turns to a strict linear game leading toward the end. This final act was easy to beat and made it feel like a waste having become the Divine One. The monotony concludes with a mazelike dungeon where in classic fashion you are forced to reface the various evil lieutenants before finally facing the lead villain. Even the final confrontation was a bore. The final chapter of the game was a poor ending that failed to capitalize on the best features built up during the majority of the plot. Summary: Divine Divinity is a rather unique play through with an open world to explore, but lacks the anything to make it a true success. Some of the features were interesting, while others were frustrating. The ending was a tremendous let down and leaves a bad taste spoiling an otherwise good game.

I have been a big fan of Larian ever since Divine Divinity was released in August of 2002 (I still have my hard disk copy). Don't let the dated graphics fool you. The story is compelling and the side quests are very well thought out. I remember thinking to myself the first time I played it how the quests weren't just filler but could be little stories in and of themselves and how rare this can be in an RPG. Many consider the beginning of the game to be the weakest part - and I can understand that having played it through three times - but there are still great moments and choices that have moral consequences. With this on sale for 59 cents you can't go wrong unless FX Graphics are a must have for you.

Divine Divinity falls across a few different scores, depending on the kind of player interested. Weighted scores seem appropriate as the Divinity series has seen releases that visit several different types of RPG gaming, so I was hoping to write a review that will help players with less prior attachment to the genre decide their interest in jumping in. For fans of the genre in 2002: 5/5 Purchasing a copy of Divine Divinity in 2002 at full price and jumping into its sprawling maps was very exciting. The music is excellent and atmospheric, and nice design work helps add a real visual draw to its earthy palette. Impressively, each of the 6 players characters (Survivor [~rogue], Warrior and Mage; each has a male and female option) is voiced, although not all dialogue is voiced (be realistic!). The humor in its voice acting is a real highlight of the game, and the game is a real hook-up for anyone looking to be called a Shabbily Dressed Dogsbody by bratty royals. For fans of the genre in 2019: 4/5 The aRPG gameplay is unspectacular. A major feature is that all 96 (32 across 3 different trees for each class) skills are available to all characters, but many of those skills are uninteresting. Of the Warrior's 32 skills, 8 are simply means of increasing your attack speed with different kinds of weapons. Most of the Survivor's skills are RPG utility skills, but their usefulness is fairly limited. The Mage has the most interesting skills, but they're still not much fun to use. The gameplay may be your fix as a die-hard aRPG fan, but it's lacking in its own appeal. For casual players in 2019: 3/5 All of the above, except the payoff isn't so hot. If you're looking to jump in for a look at the series's beginnings and to appreciate the here-and-there charm of Divine Divinity, you'll be met with a very tall order of time dedication for the tidbits of charm awaiting beyond. Play at your leisure, but between you and the morsels of payoff is a whole lot of bored combat.