Divine Divinity Review

Divine Divinity, “The best thing to come out in Belgium after Beer” - At least that’s what the game box says - a quote by PC Zone. Oh and the cover art is stamped “The new dimension of RPG!”. Woah, is this a diamond in the rough? It sure is, according to many reviews, including this brand new one. Divine Divinity - which bears the stupid name thanks to it’s German publisher CDV - is a classic 2D action roleplaying game which tries to combine both elements from Blizzard’s Diablo series and BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate II saga. DivDiv is Larian Studios’ big debut game. Altough I have no idea why the developers chose CDV as their publisher: the game was developed in Belgium - in English of course - and first released in Germany, fully translated? What the…

Being a Divine One is a tough job

Wakig up in a strange bed… Horrible!

A day passed. A long, long, frustratingly lengthy day passed. But that is all over, you awake and today is not yesterday. Altough… “What the, this bed is not mine?”. Welcome to Rivellon, my young one! ‘The prophecies of the wise men had mentioned a divine saviour of the Seven Races. This person shall be found and blessed in a secret ceremony before he or she falls into the enemy’s hands.’ - and they take shall be found extremely literal. So far the opening story and cutscene has not really impressed me: you are asked to save the world, again. If only this job payed well…

Now, as a future divine savior of all people, the big question arises. Which kind of savior and hero will you be? Will you take up the sword and smite every opponent crossing your path? Will you pick your enemies off one by one, using the higly trained eye and posion arrows? Or will you stand before them, calling powerful lightning waves of death? Besides the class, a player can also choose the protagonist gender and beginning skills/stats spread points. If you do not like to choose between only three main playstyles, why not create your own? Start using one main class, and pick skills from other class domains. Yes, it is perfectly possible. My warrior was highly trained in the secret arts of lock opening ànd healing spells. That’s just crazy, sir!

A Unique Immersive feeling

Check out my stats, baby. Oh yeah.

But wait, Divine Divinity has much more to offer except a mix and match skill point distribution system. (Notice: all skills are internally sorted per class and domain: every class has three. Mostly offensive, defensive and utility skills. For example, as a warrior, you can enchant your attacks with fire blasts, tighten up your defense using a holy guard skill and feign death as a utility).

The first thing all players should notice is the extreme lovely and unique world art/style. DivDiv uses a very nice looking 2D engine to create and shape the Rivellon world, including characters. Everything is movable in Divine Divinity: you can stash all various books and papers you encounter throughout the game if you want to, you can even move all stools, tables, mugs, plates, forks and whatever the scene will be filled with. Yes, you can act like a greedy bastard and collect & sell every single item you won’t be using. Rivellon has a lot of style to it, the different spell effects are very pretty - as a retro lover and former Baldur’s Gate player, this gives me a warm feeling. The world may look dark on the thumbnails, but this is mere an illusion - check out the screenshots to prove it.

More attention

Who’s up for some baked orc beef?

Besides the graphics in the game,the animations are carefully done also.And this with excellence. I never enjoyed killing a bunch of ocrs before: their death animation is disturbinly amazing. After the killing, the only remains of your enemy will be ”orc drab’, teehee! Of course all enemies have their own animations. One of the many funny parts in DivDiv is just before entering a boss section or something similar. You’ll see an in-game cutscene featuring a couple of enemies talking to eachother. I couldn’t stop laughing after the skeleton encounter in the first big dungeon - if you would like to learn more, by all means buy the game or download the demo! (Yes this part of the dungeon is in the demo)

Larian Studios’ people really like a good laugh I think. After strolling trough the very first village, I encountered a house with a couple of cupboards. As a Baldur’s Gate veteran, I love to take a peek into people’s furniture, just in case there might be some gigantic hidden double bladed sword lying around. Instead, I found a measly piece of paper. But wait, these drawings actually repesent something! The paper containted a sketch of a Beglian soccer club logo. As an American you won’t appreciate or at least notice this of course. A quest in the local graveyard involved a nice reference to the then-popular Dutch game site Spelletjesgarnaal - the founder was a beta tester.

Familiar Similarities

The partial skill index list.

Since we’re talking about the quests anyway: quests in Divine Divinity usually involve the classic fetch/retrieve talks, but can also contain some pretty unique twists. I remember being trapped in a castle yard one second, killing a bunch of guards the next. A few minutes later, I tought I finally escaped, but ended up working for the “king” (You’ll know why this is quoted later) which lives in that very castle. The DivDiv world is divided into four main maps, each containig more than thousand screens. You can travel from each map to the other using special transport systems called Teleport Pyramids: place one in a safe in and you can always escape a tough to beat dungeon. Of course you could also simply travel back and forth, but seeing something like a “Town Portal” system, similar to Diablo, being implemented is not a bad idea.

So why is this game called a good mix between Diablo and Baldur’s Gate anyway? There are numberous of similarities between DivDiv and both games. For instance, the way enemy Health Points are drawn on the screen: using a health bar just like in Diablo. Your statistics and equipment screen also works in a similar fashion and there is even a possibility to place sockets in items. The Baldur’s Gate reference is made because of the detailled world, the mostly excellent plot (twists), the map system (altough there’s an overview map just like Diablo’s TAB), …

Conclusion

Is it safe to yell “Divine Divinity is a good Roleplaying game!” ? - yes. Is it safe to write “ambitious RPG which perfectly mixes D2 and BG2” ? - yes. Is it safe to tell everyone else this is the best thing to come out in Belgium besides Beer - hell yes! Class dismissed people, you can start running towards your favourite game stores right now.