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84 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Better than Diablo II but not quite perfect, February 20, 2004
Divine Divinity is a great game. The best way to characterize it is 'Diablo II with a plot.' Your character goes up levels and chooses skills in a similar fashion as Diablo II, has the familiar 'life' and 'mana' counters, and even many of the graphics look similar (some are better and some are worse than Diablo II). But the Devil, they say, is in the details, and Divine Divinity gets many of them right and a few of them wrong.Pros:
1) Lots of quests and character interaction. Instead of just having a few NPCs standing around for quests and shopkeeping, you have a wider world.
2) More real-world items. Unlike Diablo II, here you have plenty of items not in the 'Weapon', 'Armor', or 'Gem/Potion/Scroll' category. Lots of different types of foodstuffs scattered around the place, including homes and campsite, as well as bushes and shrubs, lend a bit of a 'Morrowind' or 'Gothic 2' feel to the game, despite the isometric character view.
3) Lots of clever, tricky quests. Many of the quests are quite challenging, and hidden caves, trapdoors, secret passages, and other thing abound to confound the player.
4) Humor. I often find myself grinning at books or parchments I pick up along the way, unlike Diablo II which is savagely unfunny. Cons:
1) Somewhat uncertain gameplay. Gameplay is very similar to Diablo II but also allows you to pause the action and give orders (not a negative). However it also feels a bit less manageable than Diablo II. My character often swings almost at random, or tries to go after something it can't reach while being gnawed on by other things. You have to be quite precise with your control, which gets tricky when enemies pile up.
2) More danger. This could also be seen as a 'pro' but I'll put it here. Diablo II can get challenging at higher levels and difficulty settings (Divine Divinity also has different difficulty settings) but early on your character is unlikely to get eaten right away. That is emphatically not the case in Divine Divinity. What makes this worse is the wide range of armor qualities and weapons you can get. For example, in the very first village there's a sword that does over 100 damage (not that you have the stats to use it). Monsters are powered accordingly. So it's much harder to know whether something will kill you in a few hits, since the damage ranges are much wider. For example, I started a Fighter that had 200 hit points by level 8 or so, and still died in a few hits from a nearby orc chieftain. This degree of sudden murder was reserved on Diablo II mostly for end bosses or very high levels. Here, every critter could be your last..made harder by the fact that they're rarely alone.
3) The difficulty of the monsters would even out if they dropped appropriate loot, but they don't. Perhaps I've turned into a powergamer due to Diablo II or something, but I find the degree of goodies dropped by monsters to be exceedingly sparse. Most of the valuable items my characters get are from chests or just lying on the ground, rather than generated by monsters. There's nothing like killing an 11th level orc, nearly getting yourself done in in the process, only to get 2 gold pieces (if you're lucky). What happened to that enormous axe he was just hacking me with?
4) Teleporting stones. In an effort (successful I think) to ease gameplay, your character is almost instantly granted a pair of teleportation stones. These cleverly allow you to drop one and use the other to recall back to the first. This lets you travel around quickly between points. There are also waypoints. However I find it a bit odd that while I'm scrounging for a ruined dagger and a rope belt for equipment, I already have a pair of super powerful teleport stones. A minor gripe, yes, but frankly why anyone wouldn't sell them for a suit of platemail is beyond me.
5) The interface is a bit overwhelming. You can completely blanket the screen with subwindows if you're not careful. The minimap is very useful but is not translucent and instead takes up a chunk of the screen. You can move it around, which I inevitably do by accident instead of escaping when I'm trying to navigate a fight. All in all, Divine Divinity has a lot going for it. It has a much better storyline and overall RPG feel than Diablo, but (perhaps necessarily in order to avoid lawsuits) gives up a bit on the adventuring aspects. It's definitely worth checking out if you've enjoyed Diablo or more RPG type games such as Baldur's Gate or Fallout/Fallout 2.
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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Divine Divinity may be Divinly inspired, November 15, 2003
I'm almost tempted to believe that Divine Divinity was divinely inspired. This is probably one of the more addictive and fun single person RPG's available. Period.As a D&D player and Game Master for several years, I highly recommend Divine Divinity to anyone that wants the same kind of "feel" as tabletop games. Although there are only three character types (Fighter, Mage, and "Survivor" [or "Thief" if you prefer]) you can choose to be either a female character or a male character, making six choices altogether. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Once you have this simple decision made, you are thrust into a vast world that you have to find out about before you can solve all the possible quests. I have a list of over 27 pages of quests and sub-quests so far, and I may not have discovered them all. This world is absolutely =huge= for a computer RPG. The graphics are great, although a little resource intensive. The game recommends a 450mhz computer with 128MB of RAM, (256 is "recommended"), a DirectX 8 compliant video card with at least 8MB of memory, an 800x600 monitor, and a few other features, as well as the most important item - 2.5 GIGS of free Hard Drive space. I suspect you should at least think about doubling =all= of that. I'm running a 800MB computer with 256 MB of ram and a 64MB DirectX 9 compliant video card, and I find loading times a little slow even on that. But it's worth it. I've played for about 200 hours of game time now, and still haven't found everything I need to complete some of the quests. I find my knowledge of RPG's invaluable. I can't wait until I get to the end - and I have no idea where that is. People, this game hardly got anywhere near the advertising that it deserved. Most people are discovering it by word of mouth. And this review is here to help you decide to try it. If you are into computer RPG's at all, I think it's worth buying.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Keeps your Interest and FUN!, December 13, 2002
Divine Divinity is an RPG with more than just the usual 'find the magic stuff' type quests. In fact, there are a plethora of interesting things to do within the rich world of this game.You have the option of playing a male or female character; and one of three types: Magic-user, Warrior or "survivor" (thief). I've not gotten too far in the game, and yet it is of such a quality that I am drawn to it, even though I have tended to get tired of other RPG's quite easily. This one is holding my attention probably because the options for play are extensive. Skills, that in other games are tied to one character type, are wide-open in this game. Perhaps you'd rather play a mage that can kick-butt? You can do that here. The score is a perfect accompaniment to the atmosphere of where you are in the game, and the NPC's interaction has been intelligent. It's a great game, and I recommend it... and just for reference, I'm a 44 year old female. :)
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