If you compare this to Divine Divinity, you will be disappointed by Beyond Divinity immediately. It's less open-world adventure and more of a linear dungeon crawl with few places to explore. You control two people now: a Death Knight and your Hero character, which is okay since you can move together and fight together. Both of you are trying to escape out of a prison and you want to get back to Rivellon. But the game world is weird and confusing, as are the quests. The game world is a dark, burned out place most of the time (or a prison, or cave), yet if you find "battle keys" you get to warp at will to the "battlefields" with merchants and underground dungeons. The "worlds" are disappointing and tedious after awhile. You will just hack and slash your way through dungeons for gold and weapons in the battlefields, but in the end, you accumulate so many goodies that your merchants can't afford to trade you for all of them, nor is their gear that good to trade (and they only carry a few thousand in gold at a time). You play the game in acts, and you can't go back and fix a quest you didn't finish before you finish the act, so that part I really disliked. Many quests are actually very hard to complete because you don't know where to look and sometimes need special items that aren't obvious, and by the time you find what you need, you don't know where to return the item that X character wanted. I messed up a quest and made it unsolvable by using a cream/potion I found that I was supposed to use to tame a spider. I had to refer to walkthroughs MANY times to solve several quests. These are the annoying quirks that you will discover in this game. This game is a pale shadow compared to the fun and expansiveness of Divine Divinity. Beyond Divinity is dull much of the time. Tip: If you do decide to play, DO NOT make your Death Knight a warrior if you are a warrior. You will desperately need a mage early on.
I really enjoyed the Lost Crown (same game designer/creator) so I gave this game a try. It was a mistake. This game is tedious. The setting is good (a haunted hotel) and there are some haunting sounds and visuals here and there, but the storyline is boring (reading countless notes about/between people who died 50+ years ago to figure out what evil presence lurks), and puzzles that just don't make sense most of the time. You never know where you should go or why, or at what point in the storyline. There are MANY hotel rooms to look through, but most won't even factor into the gameplay ultimately and are a complete waste of time to explore, but YOU don't know that, because you can look closely at different items that ultimately you can't use. There are symbols galore everywhere, allusions to mysterious things, etc. but again, you don't know what to do next or why you should do it. You will need the walkthrough a lot, because, no joke, you won't get a clue you need unless you click a screwdriver to the left and right a certain number of times (how the heck are you supposed to "learn" that you should do that??? It's not in any note anywhere). Another time, you won't get a clue if you play the right tune on a record but then don't turn up the volume to the maximum level. It has to be perfectly done or won't happen. These are the kinds of maddening puzzles you'll encounter in this tedious game. After about 4-6 hours of gameplay, I completely gave up and used the walkthough to get it over with because I got stuck so many times. When I saw how ridiculous some of the puzzles were to solve, I got more upset about how this game operates. It just isn't intuitive at all. It's like Myst--you throw a person into a weird world and they just explore all they want but never really get anywhere without cheats and hints because there's no linear way to solve things and no clues about what to do. Not a fan of this game at all. The two stars are for the creepiness of the vibe.
This game has a really interesting plot and premise, and is, frankly, twisted. It is enjoyable, but there are some annoying gameplay issues that make the game slightly less fun and a bit tedious at times. 1. Movement is really clunky and imprecise (the interface is isometric, which is not a problem, but the movement is harder than it should be due to game design). You will have a hard time with one quest area in particular (the maze) because your character won't quite walk in the right direction at the right time when timing is critical. Also, walking up and down stairs is an all-or-nothing movement (it is more of an animation than an actual movement on your part), so your character can't actually stop going up steps midway through if you didn't want to use the steps, which is annoying given how long it takes to go up and down. Your character is pretty slow moving. 2. You'll get stuck in areas and probably need a walkthrough. Some next steps are not intuitive at all, and it could be something as simple as missing clicking on a tiny object you didn't notice (I kid you not, I didn't click on a small rock I overlooked and I was stuck for awhile because of this). This will lead to A LOT of clicking everywhere to try not to miss things, but you still will miss clues. Or sometimes you need to throw something, but you didn't know you should. Just confusing. Some puzzles are also not intuitive. I wish there had been a bit more of a linear kind of progression and clue system embedded or make the character point out when he's near something important (or highlight it on the screen)? There are a lot of objects that you can't click on, so it's hard to know what will be important. These problems aside, the game had a compelling (and sad/twisted) storyline, and was worth playing once through, but I wouldn't play it again.
