Customer Reviews

Beyond Divinity

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I like Larian studios because they are a small-time studio that gets no PR, so it's not real easy to write this mediocre review for this game. I loved Divine Divinity and I gave it five stars. I wanted to love Beyond Divinity too, but I'm disappointed. The game is still solid and it can tide you over for a long time, but the game never really pulls you in and captivates you. I think that the key to making a successful follow-up game is to figure out what was great in the previous game, carry it over, and then add good new features. I give Larian a B- here. This game lacks the epic feel and attention to detail that made Divine Divinity great, and it suffers because of it.

The game starts off with an interesting premise - you are soulforged to an evil Death Knight - somebody who should be your mortal enemy. The Death Knight is your unwilling companion until you can undue this curse. Unfortunately, the story isn't as interesting as it sounds. You spend the game trying to undue the curse, but the game is straightforward and lacks interesting twists or side stories. The Death Knight does have a lot of funny dialog, but his voice sounds horrible. The voice actor who does the voice sounds exactly like Serious Sam. Imagine Serious Sam yelling at you "YOU HAVE NO BRAINS - HUMAN!!!", and that should give you a feel for how comical the Death Knight sounds. Most of the voice work is bad, and the game ends up being unintentionally funny sometimes, because of this.

The game doesn't have many interesting quests or areas to explore either. So many quests in the game are simple "fetch this necklace being guarded by this monster" types. Half of the tasks in the game require you just travel a few inches on the screen and enter some small cave to complete.

This game uses the same top-down 2D engine as Divine Divinity, but with 3D characters and monsters. The 3D parts look really good but the backgrounds are drab and boring. About half of the game takes place underground or indoors, in grey caves, dark dungeons, or other installations. Most of the outdoor areas take place on one big drab world called "Nemesis". This world is decorated with thousands of burnt trees and rocks, and lots of dirt. Spell effects look really good though. Overall, I would have to say that Beyond Divinity is an average looking game.

The game's role-playing system is very innovative and interesting. This system can be overwhelming at first, but once you get used to it, you will probably like it. This system allows for all sorts of interesting choices and customizations. There are literally millions of different ways to build a character in this game. Between the two main characters and the summoning dolls, you can do a lot of things, and then play the game totally different the next time through. This innovative system, however, comes with some drawbacks. Mainly that it has a lot of useless abilities, and since it encourages min/maxing, you won't be able to experience as many skills as you would like.

This game could have used a lot more polish. Divine Divinity got all the little things right, whereas Beyond Divinity gets so many of them wrong. The biggest culprit here is the interface. It is missing so many little features that it's impossible to list them all. Chief among them is the ability to bind hotkeys to your weapons. This ability was mysteriously omitted from this game. That's why switching weapons becomes a tedious chore after you have done it a few times.

But by far the biggest flop in this game is the feature called "The Battlefields". During the game, you can unlock these areas, and then just magically teleport to them at will. These areas are alternate dimensions where a small camp of merchants is just sitting there, waiting to give you randomly-generated fetch quests. What are they doing there? I have no idea. Then, you go off into bland, repetitive, randomly-generated dungeons to find extremely inane items. The Battlefields have absolutely no reason for being in the game and seem like they are just a cheap way of padding the game's length without creating any quality content. None of them are interesting to visit or play through. These boring and inane dungeon crawl areas represent the worst that the Divinity series has to offer and you'll probably feel cheated by them.

Beyond Divinity is a very long game, and since Divine Divinity comes in the box, you are getting a deal of exceptional value. Divine Divinity was an excellent game in its own right - that part of it is worth almost half the purchase price. I'll give Beyond Divinity credit for being a unique game in many ways, but it's often dull and unrewarding too. I recommend playing it, but only because the PC has so few good RPG's out there right now.

Beyond Divinity (BD) is the sequel of recent great RPG "Divine Divinity." As much as the newest game in the series has a much better title (must say that Divine Divinity is a bit to rethoric), the gameplay doesn't really get better.

Let's examine che characteristics of this game:

Story: 9 out of 10.
Great main story going on. You command both a hero and an anti-hero: a Paladin and an Avenger (unholy Paladin). Their fates are tied together, so if one dies, both die. I don't want to spoil too much, but, in my humble opinion, the main story line is well developed and scripted.

Graphics:
8.5 out of 10. BD has a good blend of 2D and 3D graphics to it. Looks very much like a mix between Diablo II and games from Bioware's Infinity Engine (Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Planescape, IceWind Dale II). Special FX from magic and similar powers are very well done.

Sounds: 7 out of 10.
Hmm, could be done a bit better but overall satisfactory.

Gameplay: 7 out of 10.
Here is where I find the major flaws of the games.
For first, the game has the real cool feature that environments are highly interactive and fun to explore. This, while fun at times, becomes a major pain when a quest assigns you to find a particular object and you end up "mouse hunting" the whole screen. I couldn't find any key that would highlight interactive objects in the environment, and this made me go insane from times to times.
For second: the game feature a Diablo-style random dungeon generator. This generator is not well implemented and since it is used only for "side quests" you really don't have to do I would avoid totally going for them. The reasons I don't like these dungeons are: 1) poor graphics (while the non random parts of the game are really good); 2) awful monster generation (in one dungeon I had a quest to kill a particular monster and he was nowhere to be found, in another dungeon there were ABSOLUTELY NO monsters).
Third: I really didn't enjoy the interface too much (expecially inventory management). It's ok, but should be state of the art by now.

Bottomline: this game is good, not great, not fanta-freakin-tastic, so I would suggest to buy if:
1) You love RPGs.
2) You played the first game (Divine Divinity) and liked it alot.
3) You love well scripted stories and promise you will avoid by all means the random generated dungeons.

If you're like me and are planning to play both Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity in order, you may have heard that Beyond Divinity actually includes the original Divine Divinity as a bonus. While this is true, it's only in specially marked boxes and not all merchants sell them. I ordered Beyond Divinity from Amazon, assuming that it was guaranteed to include Divine Divinity, but my box didn't have it. I don't mind paying for the original game (I just ordered it a few minutes ago), but I wish I had known that Amazon was not selling the bonus edition before I ordered Beyond Divinity.

This game is such a refreshing change from the dry and listless RPGs that have been released of late. Humor abounds, and once again, I am loving the Divinity universe. New with this game is the ability to play after finishing the main game - one can visit the Battlefields for new quests indefinately. It is so wonderful to be able to interact with most everything in the game and to hear the comments of the Death Knight, imps or skeletons - that know you're the not always so bright hero. Professionally done voiceovers make it decidely better than the demo, and kudos to the Larian team for listening to their fans.
The background music is again composed by the most talented Kirill Pokrovsky, and it is a delight. This game can be played by a newcomer on the easy level, or on the most difficult setting by the most adept, with two settings in between. Don't miss this one!

It's rare that you'll find a bad review of a game here at Amazon from me, but I have to speak up about the woeful Beyond Divinity. A sequel to the much-heralded Divine Divinity, BD is an amateurish romp through a bunch of static landscapes that holds no value, unless you like getting annoyed. The main story line is decent and unique, bringing two characters together in a "soul bond," which causes them to act as one, or die together. You control them both and it's nice to craft the characters any way you want, but limiting it to three basic flavors (warrior, rogue, or wizard) is kind of lame and doesn't allow for much customization since you'll spend most of your time fighting yourself to decide which items to carry to alleviate your "encumbrance." Yawn.

The dialogue is awful, esp. the Deathknight under your control, and I really don't need to hear from every Imp I encounter.

The game tries to be Diablo (much like the first Divine Divinity), but it just doesn't have the polish that Blizzard puts into all of its titles. The Battlegrounds feature is a complete distraction from the main storyline and because it's "randomly generated," you may find yourself trudging on and on in a dungeon, only to realize the item you seek is in the third level of another dungeon in that same Act's Battlefield. Blah.

Inventory management, graphics, sound, and overall gameplay really hamper this game from being any fun. I suggest Diablo II if you like hack 'n slash RPGs on the PC, or if you have a console, the Champions of Norrath or Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series are very well done.

Despite the $20 price tage, save your money and look elsewhere.

Well, I finally took the plunge and purchased Beyond Divinity at its outrageous $50 DSRP price tag, and fortunately, I was able to return the game to the store and receive a full refund. The store owner commented that all of his customers that purchased Beyond Divinity were returning their purchases as well. Why?

Starforce Purchase Prevention! Larian's ingenious solution to the problem of legitimate customers.

After doing some research, I found that Starforce, especially the latest version, causes many problems on NT/2000/XP systems including but not limited to constantly random reboots. These problems have pushed indie programmers to develop software that removes Starforce from a system completely. What's neat is that the removal software is called Starforce Cleaner, which enforces the view of the people in the disc storage and duplication industry that Starforce is like a computer virus.

While many active Larian forum members have not suffered the same issues, many Larian customers have, and like many of them, I've sworn never to buy any product that assumes I'm a criminal. Unfortunately, I'll never be able to play Beyond Divinity unless Larian wises up and removes (or replaces) the Starforce Purchase Prevention scheme. I thought the game looked like a lot of fun from its screenshots. Oh well...

By the way, you cannot play the game with a backup disc.

The game runs and plays fine, but, as reviewed by so many, I just lost interest in it. Talk to guy, open chest, find key, open door, talk to guy, etc. Boring.

If you have been playing Divine Divnity, I'd suggest that you skip this one unless you have nothing to do.

However, if you had not played Divine Divinity, this game will come across as interesting (but at times, frustrating due some challenges involved :P).

It basically follows the concept that made Divine Divinity popular: good, clever quests, a good and somewhat non-linear plot (although Divine Divinity was better in this aspect), and some challenging mobs (Gamespot rated the game difficulty as hard, as c/f to say, NWN's Hordes of the Underdark which is rated as easy).

Graphics are not as good as Hordes, but it is decent, and management of the two characters (i.e the main character and Death Knight) is pretty okay, once you get use to it. The use of the pause/spacebar turned out to be the best tool for me in this aspect, and while it can be disruptive to some extent, it does help a lot in dire situations. And, frequent saving is important.

The one new aspect of the game (as c/f to Divine Divinity) is the addition of battlegrounds where your character can level up (as per usual slash/hack leveling and via some quests). This is intended to help in situations where your character finds it impossible/difficult to beat the current mob/mobs in the main plot. Whether one uses the battlegrounds extensively is obviously based on the way the character is played and leveled.

The game does have some bugs, but nothing that is really serious, if you go to the game's website and do the patches. And, the game website does have a pretty good help system (via location markings and mapping of the game) which makes things a lot easier when the game seems difficult.

The only beef I had with the game was the predictability of the ending but even with this foresight, it didn't make the game less challenging cos I still faced a considerable amount of difficulty trying to beat the final boss.

Game on its own standing? I'd rate it 8/10
Game as c/f to Divine Divinity? I'd rate it a 7/10 (I give Divine Divinity a rating of 9/10)

Just FYI, folks, the top-listed review for this game mentions that Divine Divinity comes with the game. For the latest edition of the game (I bought my copy in January of 2012), you only get Beyond Divinity.

Just in case you were looking to get a bargain and get two games for cheap. :)

The inventory bug is unresolved, especially for Windows 7. Makes the game unplayable past the 2nd level. Game is enjoyable except can't use inventory system. Weak programming. Tried all the tips and fixes from the internet sites for BD - no help.
Good luck with this one - if you dare.