DivDiv; A must-have for any RPG Collection
I picked DivDiv up (actually it was my mother that first picked it up; how embarrassing) on a whim one day, with some scepticism. I installed and played it, expecting something mediocre at best. However, I was pleasantly surprised.
DivDiv gives you a choice of three basic starting classes; Warrior, Rogue or Mage (what else?), however you are not confined to this parameters during the game. They only really affect your starting stats (and your voice, oddly); once you start playing and gaining levels you are able to pick skills from any of the three categories, with none of those annoying multi-class penalties. This lack of restriction makes character building easier and increases skill customisation - which is always nice.
Once your class, face and name have been chosen, the game kicks you out into the world. The storyline DOES take a little while to break into; the starting village could probably be seen as an unofficial (and long) training sequence. It's for the best, really; the enemies you face outside of the village are far tougher than anything you'll have met so far (unless you've been silly and picked a fight with Jake...), so you'll want all the goodies and experience from completing the sidequests in the village.
DivDiv has no real difficulty curve; its a challenging game from the beginning and you'll need to be smart about who you pick fights with. Some places will be impassable to you until you reach higher levels. The game has none of that silly "levelled enemies" rubbish; each enemy stays at a fixed toughness throughout.
Combat is fairly primitive, but not much more so than other similar games around the time. Spellcasting isn't exactly complicated either, but it doesn't need to be. As long as your character is levelled properly, combat shouldn't pose too much of a problem.
Once you finally manage to find the beginning of the story, it turns out to be rather good. You'll probably want to read up on the backstory too, though it IS explained over time during the game. The story has a good few twists and turns, and is good for many, many hours of gameplay.
The sidequests are good too; some simple, some deep, some funny. They'll pop up all over the place, and are all worth the effort of looking into. You never know where you'll find something important. There are easter eggs and secret quests dotted around too, which are also fun. One sidequest turns out to be a romance subplot, and is quite fun if you can get past how thoroughly ugly the pleb you are given is.
So to summarise: a good, solid RPG. Good character building, good story, fun sidequests, and plenty of hours of gameplay and replayability. Combat could probably be more interesting, but its not so bad.
My rating: 7.5 The game loses points for being too challenging during the early stages and at certain points throughout. Also a number of potentially game breaking bugs that were neglected during patches can cause problems.
My verdict: Definitely worth getting if you're into RPG's.