Divine Divinity is a game that made itself a little notoriety a while ago, but I doubt that most people outside of the RPG hard core have ever heard of it. I certainly hadn't, and I consider myself quite an RPG gamer. In addition to the obligatory Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, Breath of Fire and XXX of Mana games, I played a lot of computer RPGs: SSI gold box series, Wasteland, Rogue and its many children, Fallout and Diablo.
It's those last two I'd like to address, because Divine Divinity is better than both of them. I know, I know, you guys are just rolling around on the floor, wallowing in bile right now if you love either of those games.
"How dare you! Liar, Blasphemer!"
You're right. Divine Divinity is better than both of them… combined.
Divine Divinity plays out in an isometric view world just like Diablo or Fallout, but from the start, it just felt better. Like those other two, you can click on a point on the map to walk there, but unlike those two, you don't have to click every time. If you click on the ground, your avatar will walk to the spot, but if you hold down the button, they'll keep walking towards the cursor. You can change their direction quickly by relocating the cursor, and they'll turn on a dime. Even better, while you can manually change whether they are running or walking, their movement speed can also be set by the distance between the avatar and the cursor. If you want to walk out of the forbidden tomb of the undead, just place your mouse cursor a little bit in front of your avatar. However, most likely you'll want to be running out of the forbidden tomb like a bat out of hell, in which case you swing your mouse cursor far away from your avatar towards the exit. Contextual speed just makes navigation easier.
I played a rogue-type character, so I had the added advantage of being able to sneak, hide in shadows, and backstab the bad guys, which gave my character's maneuverability a real purpose. However, the backstab skill worked even if I was facing the guy and we were already in the middle of a heated combat, so that really just turned it into a generic combat bonus. Even better was the ability to poison my weapons.
In addition to the rogue class were the traditional warrior and mage character classes. The warrior was great at melee and could wield bows and whatnot, and the mage could sling hot magical death. However, the warrior also had magical weapon abilities, and mages could learn combat techniques. Even my backstabbing rogue managed to learn a few magic-user spells by taking advantage of a few of the sub-quests. After I grew tired of lurking about, I decided to turn him into more of a ranger/scout/sniper character. So, with protective and long-range spells and some bow and arrow proficiency borrowed from the other two classes, I was able to turn my plain-vanilla rogue into something closer to the guy living in my head. A guy who kicks ass… in my head. It was this kind of flexibility that I really appreciated.
The game is massive, huge, gigantorginormous, etc. The sheer amount of content is staggering, which reminded me of Wasteland and Fallout. However, Fallout limited my scope with a deadline in the game which I had to meet or lose completely. With that hanging over my head, I always felt rushed on to the next location without time to really poke around and find all of the hidden goodies. In Divine Divinity, there is no such time limit, and if there is, no one told me. I felt like I had plenty of time to dig around and fiddle with locked chests, curious parchments, suspicious-looking figures lurking in the thicket… And I dug and dug into the detail, and I always found more.
This game has successfully combined the easy interface and fast hack-and-slash action of Diablo with the complexity and depth of Fallout, incorporating the character flexibility found in both.
Excellent sprite graphics, absolutely awesome background music and sound effects and the best-recorded character dialogue I've ever heard in a game are just icing on the monster four-story wedding cake of the core game. Usually in RPGs, there's a few characters who are supposed to be my allies that I just can't stand. In fact, I've heard voice acting so bad in some of these games that I wanted to kill that character. Not so in this game. None of the non-player characters were quite obnoxious enough to warrant death at my hand…
But I could have killed them if I wanted.
Downsides? Yeah, the game has a few. All of that depth and complexity resulted in a few errors. I remember getting permission to sleep in a farmer's barn, but clicking on the straw that was supposed to be my bed only toggled it from a bundle of straw to a loose pile of straw and back. Another pile of straw in a different barn let me sleep without any problem. Whoops.
However, despite mishaps like this, the game is so stunning, aesthetically pleasing and ambitious that I would have to rate it as my current all-time favorite computer RPG.
Now, if only I had time to actually play it…
I'm currently a low-level geek working my way up rung by rung in the industry. My long-term goal is to revolutionize the industry and lead the world in the production of high-quality games. My short-term goal is to get something... anything... published.
