Four years after Diablo became one of the most popular games ever made, Diablo II arrived, crushing all competition. It’s now 2002, which marks the era where “copycats” started appearing, like Dungeon Siege, Fate and Sacred. 2002 was also the year Larian Studios released Divine Divinity – the first title in the series, which includes modern classics such as Divinity: Original Sin. In many ways similar to Diablo due to its hack ‘n’ slashy nature, this included a couple of more traditional CRPG elements, such as a heavier emphasis on dialogue, exploration, and plot, among other things, without sacrificing its user-friendly pick-up-and-play nature. It’s true that not many remember Divine Divinity, yet the few that still talk about it mostly do so because they liked it quite a lot, as despite its many flaws, it is quite entertaining and has lots of charm. If thirsty for some ARPG fun, and don’t mind something that’s super-old and rough around the edges, read on.
Enjoying a video game heavily relies on having the right mindset. You can’t have fun with something like Conker’s Bad Fur Day, for instance, if you are simply looking for a nice 3D platformer or aren’t in the mood for some trashy humour. When it comes to Divine Divinity, don’t come in expecting the next RPG epic, as the story is pretty generic, even by the low standards of Tolkien-esque medieval fantasy. You know the deal – a chosen hero, a dark ring of dark mages who want to do dark things and rule the realm of what’s-it-called. Here, one needs to act as if in the middle of a D&D session with some friends. Billy does the voice acting for all characters (male and female), Peter writes the dialogue, and Jenny handles the plot. In other words, get ready for some ridiculous voice acting, tons of somewhat silly prose, and a storyline that can be described as “unoriginal fantasy fanfiction #3248.” From the character names to the concept art and everything in between, this has that unique “amateur” feel of a Pen & Paper game. Just imagine your best mate going “You fool! You think you can defeat me, the dark wizard Zanax?! Bwahaha!!!” and you can grasp the spirit of it all.
Inconsistency thy name is Divine Divinity. This can go from serious to incredibly corny in a matter of minutes. At one time you are dealing with the murder of some poor merchants by an orc raiding party, or a plague that slowly kills the population, only to then come upon a group of enemy skeletons having an existential crisis, as they wonder how the hell they can move although they don’t have tendons and muscles connecting their limbs. Weird? Sure. Boring? Far from it. It’s not perfect, but if anything, it has character. It’s a shame, however, that this is all it has. Few lines of dialogue among the hundreds available are worth reading, and the various notes that can be found scattered all over the place don’t provide any decent lore to speak of – and you need to read, as completing quests revolves around gathering info from dialogues and manuscripts.
The same continues with the look of it all. Larian Studios has crafted a world that’s quite detailed and very atmospheric. Whether one walks through a dense forest while butterflies fly around and small puddles reflect the main character, or brave a deep and complex cavern with dimly lit corridors, this can be quite immersive – but it is also too “safe” in its approach to design. Safe to a fault. Apart from a handful of locations (with “handful” being too generous), most places players will visit are Generic Fantasy 101. Grasslands and dungeons, temples and cities, with the bestiary being comprised of a gazillion skeletons, orcs, and critters like snakes, boars, and…bees. Thankfully, the music is surprisingly good – almost too good for such a title – and the ambient sound effects do give life to each place.
The game begins. What then? Well, one can now choose amongst the six classes. Six? Actually they are three; the typical warrior, mage, rogue archetypes, with each one having a male and a female model. It’s a very poor character creation scene where one simply picks an avatar picture, a name, and that’s about it. Luckily, the class system is actually much better than that. These basically set the starting attributes (and the main character’s look), but other than that you are free to assign stat points in whatever way you see fit. Additionally, each level up offers a skill point that can upgrade one ability from a three-branch tree, with players being able to create class blends. Even if one focuses on the “standard” skills of the chosen class, it’s still advisable to pick a few from the other two branches, as a wider set of “tools” will be quite helpful. This is one of those CRPGs where part of the fun is starting out super weak, and slowly but steadily getting more powerful. Death will be a frequent visitor, forcing one to level up a bit, pick another area to explore, or change tactics altogether. It’s also crucial to remember that enemies don’t “return,” so there’s no way to grind for levels, which means that one must make every bit of experience count.
If a fan of those slower paced RPGs, you’ll love this. Be ready for some heavy dungeon crawling, though. The best example is the very first maze, which is way, way too large for a starting area that’s only supposed to show players the ropes. Finally, Divine Divinity leans more towards Morrowind than Skyrim in the sense that there’s not much handholding involved. Apart from the rare map marker, you are usually given a general direction, or a simple clue…and are then left on your own to discover things. Additionally, your journal can fill with missions pretty soon, but apart from a few quest lines that simply tell you to “Go the southeast cave and kill the Trolls,” most will need quite some time to be completed. In practice this means that while exploring around trying to solve problem #1, you will probably unlock problem #2, #3, and #4.
So far, Divine Divinity is an enjoyable affair that should only be avoided by those who want something more original, or at least less old-school in terms of its approach to gameplay. Sadly, there are a couple of flaws to talk about. First of all, balance is usually all over the place. There are plenty of abilities that are useless, and some builds generally work much better than others, as there are a couple of difficulty spikes along the way that ruin the fun for some classes. There’s a particular boss encounter near the end, for instance, that can lead to lots of hair pulling if you have created the wrong build. Word of caution: avoid glass cannons. Battles can also be annoying as a mis-click can send your character running past the enemy. You are advised to play this like most CRPGs: pausing, and then issuing commands.
An extremely annoying problem is how hard it is to see things, especially on high resolutions. Some items are practically invisible, forcing one to always hold the “show items” hotkey to find the needle in the haystack. Many will also struggle in the aforementioned starter dungeon, as levers tend to blend with the background. There are more of these practical issues, like how the user-unfriendly inventory is basically a bag that items are thrown in, with no way to sort them like in… Well, almost every ARPG after 1996. Finally, the total freedom is a blessing and a curse, as the developer didn’t thoroughly test its product, making it pretty easy to fail or break quests simply because you did Y before X, although you weren’t actually forbidden to do so. Quests can also leave you with a heavy key item in your inventory that you won’t know whether to throw away or not unless you check an online walkthrough. Oh, and do try to be a good boy/girl! There’s no place for evil bastards here, despite this letting you play as one.
The main problem with Divine Divinity, apart from the general lack of polish, is its failed potential. As said before, this isn’t Diablo. It plays a different ballgame, and a way it does so is by letting one manipulate the environment to explore and solve puzzles via a simple point-and-click method. This means that the player can drag-and-drop boulders to unveil a hidden cave, move a box and discover a key underneath, or place X on Y so that Z can happen. Sadly, these moments are rare. Most of your time will be spend running around, killing mobs, gathering mostly useless loot that you can then sell for a – surprisingly high – profit, and that’s about it. It manages to remain entertaining despite its somewhat repetitive gameplay and boring world building due to how it throws you into a gargantuan world and leaves you on your own to discover it, but you are bound to feel annoyed or sleepy during the 70 hours-plus it can last till the end, with little reason to repeat the process.
