Beyond Divinity - 20/20 hours

I'm STILL IN HELL!

It is definitely clear at this point that I underestimated the amount of afterlife in this game. I defeated the boss, cured the Imp plague, and then suddenly got magically whisked away to do chores for a necromancer. When my summoning ended, I came back to find the Imp village slaughtered in its entirety. It was an event that managed to hit a trifecta of horribleness - being a disgusting atrocity, unmaking the work I'd just spent hours to achieve, and then depriving me of the reward I'd been expecting.

It was pretty neat to be on the receiving end of a magical summons for a change. It really makes you appreciate how killing your summoner and breaking free to run amok in the mortal world is, in fact, a sensible and appealing thing to try and do. Sadly, I never got the chance. I guess the necromancer was too good at his job.

In the end, the "all the imps die before they can tell you how to get home" plot twist mostly served to diminish my interest in the rest of the game. It felt like the rug was pulled out from under me, and I kind of resent having to track down and befriend this new group of people before I can move on.

I don't think I will be sticking with this game past 20 hours. I do have a strong desire to escape fantasy-knockoff hell, but I'm afraid of being jerked around again, and of course, being at a the beginning of a new area means my guide is frustratingly vague. The emotional payoff just doesn't seem worth it. Also, the skill system in this game is a step back from the original, and so if I were going to play an old-school rpg from the Divinity series for another 40+ hours, I think I would stick with the first game.

That being said, I was mostly all right with Beyond Divinity. It only really had two real flaws, from where I'm concerned - the first being that the weapon skills are too specific, thus punishing you for failing to specialize early and then stick with your choice for the whole of the game. The second flaw is one endemic to the isometric rpg genre - navigation, particularly to new quest objectives, is more or less left up to chance. No one ever tells you where to go. It's not even like Morrowind, where the NPCs give you directions that are accurate, but too vague when you take player subjectivity into account (i.e. "it's a little ways past the big rock"). Systematically searching ever area and talking to every NPC is pretty much the only way to ever get things done. It's exhausting.

But you know what, it's a more interesting setting than Divine Divinity, and while the "escape from hell" plot was way too stretched out, it did immediately grab my interest, and could well have supported a whole game, were the fantasy-knockoff hell filled with a variety of distinct and memorable characters and imaginative afterlife-inspired vistas.

Overall, I'd gauge my feelings about Beyond Divinity as "vaguely fond, but also slightly disappointed." There was a lot of potential here that went untapped, and a lot of unnecessary padding, but the basic idea was sound, and I always at least slightly enjoy ARPG gameplay. If I play again, though, it will be to salvage my wounded pride. I really wanted to get out of hell.