Craptacular
Anyone familiar with the original pen and paper version of Dungeons & Dragons will no doubt recall having to endure a poorly designed adventure. Typically these contain overpowered monsters, convoluted quests and excessive traps. Instead of offering a challenging and rewarding adventure, the 'dungeon' was tedious and frustrating with the Dungeonmaster deriving a power rush from killing the player/characters. Fast forward to today and we have Divine Divinity. The redundancy of the title should have been my first clue as to the game's difficulties.
I admit I am not a great fan of arcade style RPGs but I enjoyed Diablo and Titan Quest. After about 60 hours of gameplay with a couple of restarts I chucked Divine Divinity into the trash.
Initially I liked the game. The graphics were good. The controls were simple. Character customization was limited as is typical of these games. There's a choice of male/female, a couple of different faces for each and a box to type the character's name. The opportunity to customize the character comes from the numerous skill selections made during the game. The equipment panel was set up well with spaces for weapons, armor, accessory rings and an amulet. Weapons and armor can be fitted with charms to further enhance the character's abilities. The inventory panel was categorized into weapons, armor, magic items, potions and misc. Each page allowed random placement of items rather than a fixed number of boxes. One unique feature allowed me to drag and drop items into inventory as long as the weight was not too much. I carried numerous empty chests and other containers to my hidey-hole for storing items I found but was unable to use immediately. There were teleportation devices available not too far into the game which made traveling back to base much easier.
As with most games the character is fairly vulnerable at first. This requires relatively easy monsters to slay at first to get a few levels under your belt. The character initially comes equipped with a knife, a loincloth and a pair of sandals. By scavenging around I found some items I could sell to a local merchant and only slightly better equip my character. Most weapons and armor have strength and agility requirements that are too high for the character at first. I started the first quest with a training sword, shield and a few potions; no armor. Initially I could hold my own against the skeletal warriors I encountered. By the fourth level I found the quest too difficult to accomplish. I restarted the game, setting the difficulty to easy instead of normal. This seemed to make little difference. I played the game through level fifteen relying on skirmish tactics to defeat enemies. I became heavily dependant on a bow as my character did not level up fast enough to fight toe-to-toe with the numerous orcs and trolls I encountered.
Leveling up added five attribute points and one skill point. The five attribute points are spread over strength, agility, intelligence and constitution. The character starts with ten points in each of these. A simple axe required a strength of 35 and agility of 30 thus a character would have to be level ten to use it. This would mean leaving the character's hit points and magic abilities at 10 (level 1).
The single skill point received had to be used in one of 3 classes; warrior, survivor (thief) or sorcerer. Each of these contains numerous specific skills necessary for the character's survival. Each class contained four disciplines. Each specific skill had levels as well. Putting a point in swordsmanship only raised the damage done slightly. The skill is then locked until level thirteen. There are so many specific skills necessary for the character's survival it is difficult to obtain any kind of mastery until the character reaches a much higher level.
Here is the major problem with this game. The quests levels are far more difficult than the character's advancement. While the game obviously has a story line, it is difficult to get involved as one is constantly fighting for survival. There are too many interconnected quests, too many high powered enemies and too many nuisance monsters to take any interest in the story. By level 15 I was still running from fights to stay alive.
As stated at the start of this review, I found this game to be reminiscent of a poorly designed D&D adventure; tedious and frustrating.