Beyond Divinity

Before you buy this game make sure you read the forum http://www.gog.com/en/forum/divine_divinity_series/beyond_divinity_game_is_very_very_slow This game is just completely unusable on modern systems. Their "solution" is to shoot your computer in its kneecaps to have it fake having less RAM requiring a reboot everytime you want to set and unset that. Completely unacceptable. Very displeased.

Seriously, they did. Well, mostly. Almost made it 5/5. I just wanted to whack monsters still after Blizzard pissed me off with its attitude. And while you can say bad things about this game, Larian Studios do care for their customers. So much so, after years they managed to fix even this, to provide a good dungeon crawler experience. And that's what I wanted. No fuss constantly checking walkthroughs because quest conflict each other. No, here are the quests, but you won't fail them. You also won't have to mindlessly grind for items or exp, because the game is actualy balanced there. The dungeons are distinct enough to not fall asleep (thanks all that's precious you are not forced into the battlefields!), and when you figure out how the game works and what skills to take (don't bother with magic, please) it is pretty fun. Even - or should I say especially - on Hardcore difficulty. I was most suprised to not die every corner. Yes, there are some bad design decisions, but at least they are glaring, so take this game as a trash-movie. You'll even like the Death Knight's voice that way. Think of it like a Disaster Art. It helps. If you pick this you'll cast, stealth and fight yourself through many hours of terrains, some dungeons, some wilderness, some cities. And you'll kill stuff. And you are the hero. The only problem that can occure is, if a vital monster spawns in the wall. This happened me only once, got over it, but the game lost a star because of it. A ghost in the temple's church (did I say this is so bad it's good?) spawned in the wall. I just saved near it, reloaded a couple of times and it got unstuck, but you better know about it. If it happens to you and don't solve itself, ask Larian Studio, they still actively offer help to their gamers!

I remember the first game being unbalanced and unpolished, but this one really frustrated me beyond my breakpoint, At one point I got stuck very early on, when I killed a rat to retrieve a bone and the damn thing dropped just by the door, not allowing me to get out of the cell or pick it up, it was tiime to start a new game because who is gonna save in the first 5 minutes of a game? not me I granted it to the game "that flop was due to my stupidity" and retried, this time with a mighty wizard, except that after 3 casts my mana was gone, so much fun, imagine a room full of eniemes Nonetheless I pressed on, and then I met, Fergus, your first "boss" battle, he is just is 2 levels above you and decimates you in 3 hits, maybe 4 if you are lucky, not even my death knight "tank" could take him, not when his meIee attacks are as underwhelming as my magic (did I mention Fergus fully heals himself after almost dying?), the only thing that worked was to get away from him and return to my cell to rest and keep coming back for more pain, when I finally killed him the game froze and forced me to do a hard reboot At this point I was not having any fun so I decided to buck it and register here my tragic tale, goodbye beyond divinity, it was not nice knowing you

This game suffered from one big mistake. Apparently none of the designers had heard the old saying, "if it's not broken, don't fix it." They revamped the skill system that was very very good from DD into a system that required too much specialization. This in turn created a sense of boredom on the character development side. They also made the first dungeon as boring as possible. Seems they didn't take the many hints they received from the first games feedback (starter dungeon there sucked too). If you manage to get through the opening 10 hours the game definitely gets better, never finished it though. There is some enjoyment to be had here, but if you are looking for the same genius as DD, replay that game with a new build instead.

Only one complaint: GOG did not include the editor that comes with the original / Steam versions of the game. There's a folder "Editor", but the executable has been deleted from it. Therefore, you can't mod with the GOG version, and more importantly, you can't edit stats / skills.