Subm.: Divine Divinity

[Harikari]

Divine Divinity
Released on September 22, 2002
Developed by Larian Studios
For PC
Available@ Larian Vault, GOG and Steam

Setting and Story:
The setting is in a traditional fantasy world of Goblins, Orks, Dwarfs, Undead, Humans in danger etc.
Furthermore you are the chosen one to save the world

''According to prophecy, you are the chosen one, and only you will be able to save the legendary land of Rivellon from submission under the Lord of Chaos.
But before you take on the fight against Evil, you must be discovered and blessed as the Divine Savior. Caution is vital!
The dark magicians are lurking everywhere waiting for their chance to destroy you...''

Why is it a classic? Combat system, ruleset, choices and consequences?
-The similarities between Diablo and DD are undeniable, and for some people this game is how they wanted Diablo II to turn out. What this game essentially does is build on the fundaments of Diablo's Hack'n'Slash (or shoot arrows n stuff if you prefer) and exploration without this 'Arcade' feeling of just farming XP and random Loot in randomly generated dungeon patterns.
-There's an interactive game world to explore, and can you earn yourself a reputation solving the worlds problems. If you anger people they will give you negative or even hostile reactions.
-The character development is open and totally up to the player, who is free to become a jack of all trades or just specialise into one specific skill tree.
-Combat is real-time, but you can pause the game at any moment you wish.
-Easy to get into and fun if you enjoy Isometric RPG's.


What can annoy RPG fans?
-There was budget problems and pressure from profit oriented publishers, resulting in issues such as the game combat being unbalanced (i.e. weak skills and OP skills) and lacking of a good polish to get out the bugs.
-For me this is game goes on the same shelf as Fallout and Arcanum, in the sense that they were great and ambitous ideas, but didn't really got developed to their full potential (but they still are great fun to play of course).


For a much deeper read about the good and bad aspects of this game I recommend Swen Vincke's (founder of Larian Studios) blog article ''How I tried to save Divine Divinity''

 

[RocketteMorton]

Is this a good place to argue/complain? Because I'd like to point out that the game is extremely boring for at least a few reasons:

1. Dungeons go on forever
2. Endless repetitive combat
3. Kiting is a must when it comes to many types of enemies

I suppose the game was basically trying to be a better Diablo, but they should have taken the money they spent on all that dialogue and made the combat better.

 

[valcik]

Technical one for those folks (and googlebot) running into graphics glitches:

After running the game for the first time in D3D9 mode, all graphics became funky with rainbow colors everywhere, huge black patches covering 1/3 of the rendered underground areas, or the main character's sprite blinking and changing colors from default to black at frightening rate. Tried everything through the config utility and by editing config file directly with no luck, Direct3D 9 renderer kept glitching and software renderer didn't make it better at all on my olde GTS 250 (G92) GPU with the latest drivers.

The solution: revert your graphics drivers back to OS default. With the 6 years old graphics driver bundled in Win 7 x64 everything worked fine, yay!

 

[TorontoReign]

Alternatively play Divinity Original Sin instead. I kid.

I need to play this one.

 

[valcik]

Yep, I'll definitely try D:OS later.

Divine Divinity is a nice surprise for me, running on Larian's proprietary engine, with beautiful isometric graphics including pre-rendered backgrounds and fixed camera. What I especially appreciate is that the maps are not procedurally generated and monsters don't respawn, unlike in Diablo 1 and 2. Decent enough character development system allowing for cross-class builds on top of it, top-notch music by the late Kirill Pokrovsky, and huge world to explore sprinkled by witty humour.

(Prepare yourself for long sessions though. I don't mind these huge oldskool dungeons criticised by @RocketteMorton, quite the opposite. Small maps in many modern games are nothing but disappointment for me.)