This games fails to live up to its predecessor.
Beyond Divinity is a flawed sequel to the original game which I found to be very enjoyable. If you are a hard-core fan of the RPG genre or greatly enjoyed the first game, you may find some enjoyment from BD. If not, I would pass it by for something else.
I believe many of the problems in this sequel stem from the significant shift in gameplay by changing from a single player to a party based system. There are a lot of games out there (Baldur's Gate being the perfect example) that accomplish a party based system very well. So, it's all the more unfortunate that Larian couldn't get it completely right were a number of other companies have. This party based system makes for a rather awkward interface. The combat is still relatively fast paced, but now you have multiple characters to control. Getting a particular character to do what you want isn't as easy as you'd hope. Each character gets a primary and a secondary attack. Normally, you attack with all your characters selected which means that either they all use their primary attacks or they all use their secondary attacks. There's also the little problem in that if your main character gets attacked, he just sits there without fighting back. You can set your characters to be "Aggressive" but it's diabled for the main character you have selected. I believe that's a big mistake.
The inventory system is also rather complicated. Each character has a separate inventory, but it is divided into six different categories so if you're looking for something, you have to click through the different catgories on each character. Also, you have to right click, select "Give To..." and select another character to transfer things from one character to another. No click and drag.
The game also has plenty of bugs and that's saying a lot from me since I'm playing several months and numerous patches after the release. Oh, and I don't think lockpicking works. I never came across a single lock that I could pick. There's a number of things that aren't bugs but things that could have been mentioned for those who've played Divine Divinity. One is that all the mushrooms lying around the world don't do anything anymore. I had to go looking on the forums to figure out why I couldn't make potions from them. Second is that there is no charms skill. If an item supports a number of charms, then you don't have to do anything to put the charms in. Unfortunately, the default appearence of a hole has an "X" over it instead of being open. This is what was used in the original to indicate your skill wasn't high enough. I again had to go the forums to figure out why I couldn't use charms.
The skill system is also not terribly exciting. Instead of having a bunch of cool and specific skills to learn, Larian has taken some of the mystery out of the skills by making them uber-configurable. Instead of a "fire dart" spell or a "stoneskin" spell, you can now create custom spells for things like "missile spell/4 points fire/2 points water". Also, there's really no reason to fret over using your skill points as any careful RPGer would do, because any skill can be unlearned and your points returned to the pool.
Perhaps the worst part of the game are the battlefields. Larian says they were adding to make it easier for people who couldn't otherwise finish the game. The are actually dungeons full of mindless combat. And they are not randomly generated in the game as the game information would suggest. There is one battlefield per Act and 3 to 6 dungeons per battlefield. Once you've cleaned them all out, you're done. If you're like me, you'll want to go through each and everyone one of them. Doing so will likely mean you spend as much or more time in the battlefields than on the rest of them game. If the battlefields had instead been infinitely regenerating and random, then I would probably have just fought through a couple and moved on.
One bright point that must be mentioned though is the music. Just as in the first game, the music in BD is outstanding. It's interesting and unique and adds to the ambiance of the game. It's too bad that the music would just stop playing after a while in the game until you returned to the main menu.
The game is also more linear and less interesting than the first game. You're basically led around from one quest to get "X" item to another.