Beyond Divinity review

Beyond Divinity begins with you, the antagonist, imprisoned in a dark and gruesome dungeon (Baldur’s Gate II, anyone?). In order to escape you have to team up with a death knight, a being devoted to evil. The reason for that is that both of you are under a curse, if one of you dies so does the other one, thereby creating this unusual alliance. Your quest is to get rid off this curse and also to seek revenge against your common enemy and he who got you imprisoned; the sadistic demon Samuel (cue loud scary music with church organ).

Two to tango

Having two main characters instead of the usual one (or six-man group) is an interesting touch (apart from reminding you of one of those buddy movies where two cops “have to work together despite their differences”). For one thing you have to pick a class for both characters from three choices: wizard, warrior and survivor (which is basically a traditional rogue/thief) and that means you have to think about how you would like to play the game strategically. The most obvious path is to pick one that is good at ranged combat (archer/magic user) and one for mêlée, but feel free to experiment.

Overall the game is far from original and nor does it try to be. As is the staple of role-playing games you go from dungeon to dungeon with some villages inbetween, stopping only to kill monsters or solve quests (which is basically just a reason to kill monsters with some words thrown in), while you are furthering the main story and developing your characters. Early on you get the ability to teleport yourself to ‘The Battlegrounds’, which serves as a diversion to the main story and where you simply level up your character and get more items (and it’s also useful to be able to teleport out of tough fights or to sell loot).

To say that The Battlegrounds are similar to Diablo is an understatement; it’s almost exactly like Diablo (or Diablo II). You start in a small clearing with a few houses and merchants who give you quests and buy your crap. Then you head out to the nearest dungeon (which you unlock one by one by finding the appropriate Battlefield key within the main story) and kill and loot, kill and loot ad infinitum. For someone like me who likes to experience everything this can be tiresome because the dungeons are all alike and they are positively huge, as is the area surrounding them, The fights are too monotonous and the dungeon crawling takes too long (and sometimes give no experience points if you visit them late). Needless to say Diablo was much better at being Diablo but the good news is that this is only a part of the game and you can skip it if you have the discipline (which I didn’t, I don’t like loose ends).

Mad Skillz

Speaking of Diablo the items available are all very similar. There are a ton of potions, arrows and types of food that drop, along with the standard weapons and armour. There are also a lot of items you can loot but serve no purpose other than ambience like bottles, food plates and so on. Ambience is a perplexing thing in Beyond Divinity by the way; there are mutilated bodies and blood everywhere, yet the dialogues and the non-player characters act very goofy. The final similarity to Diablo is that there seems to be a rough categorisation to items; white items are your garden variety items; yellow are magical and slightly better, orange are rare and then you have your green (and greyish) unique items. There is also a stat requirement for some of them like in Diablo, i.e. strength for heavy weapons, intelligence for mage weapons and agility for bows and crossbows.

Every level you get five points to use in statistics and also a skill point. You can find trainers throughout the game and train these skills for some gold pieces (or you can find skill books). The skill point tree is derived from the three classes; for a warrior you can train weapon proficiencies like damage, accuracy, critical hit, deathblow (for any type of weapon like slashing, piercing and crushing) or you can train your defence. For wizards you can train all types of elemental magic along with area effects like meteor shower or acid rain, as well as some defensive spells and cures. For rogues it’s the standard sneaking, backstabbing, stealing, making traps and so on. In fact these are just the basic ones, there’s an extensive array of secondary skills like ‘pacify’, where you can make a monster your temporary pet. Pets also come in a more permanent form, as throughout the game you can find so-called summoning dolls of various types. You can use your skill points to make them stronger and more efficient (they can also serve as a nice death trap fodder or a scout because you can always summon them again).

“Why do you think I have this outrageous accent?”

The voice-acting certainly deserves a special mention. When I first heard the voice of the death knight my first thought was: “They can’t be serious”. As it turns out they weren’t. If Monty Python had done a sketch called “The Ministry of Silly Accents” instead of silly walks, chances are that it would include similar voices to Beyond Divinity. Non-player characters with a German, French and even a Texas accent, it’s all here. The dialogue reflects this also since it’s often silly also, but not too silly (I feel like Graham Chapman as the sergeant now). It works, but it’s one of the factors that sometimes make the game feel unpolished, the other factors being the occasional spelling errors and even doors called id_02578 or something to that effect.

The graphics are outdated and will probably put off many that are used to better. If you play this right after Doom 3 you’ll probably think you were playing Space Invaders. The bugs are not always just spelling errors either; there are some that can get you stuck, unable to continue (except of course you’ve made some extra saves which you should). Getting the latest patch is highly recommended.

Whimper, not a bang

For someone who has enjoyed many role-playing games, this is not a bad game per se. You will definitely get your fix and it will last a long time. However this longevity can get a little tiresome, you have to a do a lot of walking around and a lot of hack ‘n’ slash to approach your goal and the story is simply not interesting enough (like in the BioWare games, as an example). Beyond Divinity is like a rigged slot machine; you always win the same amount you put in, but the jackpot never comes. You’ll continue to play because you have nothing to lose, but it’s not as exciting.