Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Beyond Divinity - 5/20 hours

Well, it's hour five and I'm still in hell. By which I mean fantasy knockoff Hell. I'm not sure if it's actually an afterlife-type situation, but I'm also not sure it matters. After I escaped from the demon, Samuel, he ordered his troops to kill me and then bring me back for torture . . . in that order. So the boundary between life and death is still a bit ambiguous. I may technically still be alive, but I'm soul-bonded to something called a "Death Knight," so if I discovered I'd been dead this whole time, I would not be surprised.

But speaking of the Death Knight, this partnership is not working out. He's moderately helpful in combat, but once you account for the tweaked encounter balance (which is generally much better than the original, admittedly) he's more of a liability than an asset. The way the soul-bond works is that if one member of the pair dies, they both die. And since your enemies tend to focus fire, it's less like you have the combined power of two characters and more like you're limited by the health of the weaker character. Keeping both your guys topped up on health is really hard on healing potions. One time, I ran out, and I had to leave my Death Knight behind while my main character fought the enemies solo. They only joined back up once I got the free health recharge from leveling up.

It wouldn't be so bad, if the Death Knight were a better character, but really he's like the token evil party member, except you have to drag him everywhere as part of an escort mission. It's still too early for me to have any serious grudges, but I expect I will grow to hate him.

That being said, I'm still pretty invested in the game. I'm interested in escaping the afterlife, and I want to learn more about this setting's metaphysics. I've got a suspicion that I'll be emerging into a standard Northern-European-esque fantasy world, but I would be delighted if the game was stranger than all that.

I guess the only way to be sure is to keep playing. Hopefully it will be at most another couple of hours before I find out.

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