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.
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Beyond Divinity - 2/20 hours
The thing about the first 2 hours of this game that is going to stick with me the longest is the Death Knight's voice. I'm a little guilty, because it feels like singling out a single performer's work for ridicule, but I can't just let it pass. There were some seriously questionable artistic choices that went into creating this character. I'm not sure I can adequately describe it. It's equally goofy and gruff, like the villain on a children's cartoon show, but it's also kind of bad. But that description doesn't really do it justice. I'll just let the video speak for itself:
Needless to say, I turned off the sound as soon as possible.
Other than that, I'd say that Beyond Divinity has gotten off to a stronger start than its predecessor. You wake up in hell (or, more precisely a prison dimension operated by a demon) and you and your Death Knight companion have to work together to escape. It's a nifty premise that hooked me right away. It's possible that it might overstay its welcome - two hours is already a long time to spend in an introductory dungeon - but for now, I'm fine with it.
Sadly, I am already predicting that I will end this game as prematurely as I did the original. If the first dungeon is anything to go by, Beyond Divinity is going to continue the series' pattern of taking its time to roll out the central plot. It's really all down to a race right now. Will the story or gameplay get me invested enough before the deadline that my desire to continue outweighs to move on?
Needless to say, I turned off the sound as soon as possible.
Other than that, I'd say that Beyond Divinity has gotten off to a stronger start than its predecessor. You wake up in hell (or, more precisely a prison dimension operated by a demon) and you and your Death Knight companion have to work together to escape. It's a nifty premise that hooked me right away. It's possible that it might overstay its welcome - two hours is already a long time to spend in an introductory dungeon - but for now, I'm fine with it.
Sadly, I am already predicting that I will end this game as prematurely as I did the original. If the first dungeon is anything to go by, Beyond Divinity is going to continue the series' pattern of taking its time to roll out the central plot. It's really all down to a race right now. Will the story or gameplay get me invested enough before the deadline that my desire to continue outweighs to move on?
Saturday, October 28, 2017
Beyond Divinity - Initial Thoughts
About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)
Beyond Divinity is the follow-up to the award-winning Divine Divinity. Soul-forged with a Death Knight, your fate is to spend the rest of eternity bonded to this creature of evil, unless you can undo his curse...prepare for your greatest adventure!
This new re-mastered version offers support for Windows 7 and higher resolutions.
Key Features:
An RPG of Epic Proportions: Experience an adventure that will last you over 60 hours, filled with tons of non-linear quests and offering an enormous world to explore, spread over 4 story acts. And if that’s not enough for you, you can always enter the Battlefields - a randomly generated universe filled with loot, enemies and new quests.
Classless Character Development: You decide what kind of character you want to be! An open, class-free character development system with over 30 character traits and 290 skills to learn, including advanced alchemy, craftsmanship, trap creation and many others.
Work together to emerge victorious: You can seamlessly switch control between your avatar and the Death Knight. In combat, you can pause the game at will and take your time to issue commands to each party member. Summoning dolls allows you to increase your party size even further.
Interaction Galore: Discover the enormous amount of objects that can be investigated, traded, used and combined. Found some empty flasks and picked up some colourful mushrooms? Create potions! Obtained some vile-smelling poison? Daub it on your blade or arrow tips: your foes won't know what hit 'em!
Award-winning Soundtrack Enjoy the dulcet melodies composed by Kirill Pokrovsky, the two-time winner of IGN’s "Outstanding Achievement in Music" award.
Previous Playtime
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
Same story as before - it was part of an impulsive and ill-considered bundle purchase.
Expectations and Prior Experience
Having played the previous game, I've got a pretty good idea about how this is going to go (unless it does a complete swerve and shocks me). The interaction and class development are oversold, but it's still nonetheless a solid action-rpg. Having a Death Knight to help me out should change the feel of the game somewhat, but it could potentially be just another thing to micromanage.
My main hope here is that the sequel is more self-assured than the original. That it will present its strongest ideas earlier and that it will polish of the rough edges of the UI. There was potential in the original that was not quite fulfilled, so they don't have to reinvent the whole game. I just want to spend more time playing the actual game and less time wandering aimlessly looking for the fun parts.
Worst case scenario, it's just another forgettable ARPG. I can live with that.
Beyond Divinity is the follow-up to the award-winning Divine Divinity. Soul-forged with a Death Knight, your fate is to spend the rest of eternity bonded to this creature of evil, unless you can undo his curse...prepare for your greatest adventure!
This new re-mastered version offers support for Windows 7 and higher resolutions.
Key Features:
An RPG of Epic Proportions: Experience an adventure that will last you over 60 hours, filled with tons of non-linear quests and offering an enormous world to explore, spread over 4 story acts. And if that’s not enough for you, you can always enter the Battlefields - a randomly generated universe filled with loot, enemies and new quests.
Classless Character Development: You decide what kind of character you want to be! An open, class-free character development system with over 30 character traits and 290 skills to learn, including advanced alchemy, craftsmanship, trap creation and many others.
Work together to emerge victorious: You can seamlessly switch control between your avatar and the Death Knight. In combat, you can pause the game at will and take your time to issue commands to each party member. Summoning dolls allows you to increase your party size even further.
Interaction Galore: Discover the enormous amount of objects that can be investigated, traded, used and combined. Found some empty flasks and picked up some colourful mushrooms? Create potions! Obtained some vile-smelling poison? Daub it on your blade or arrow tips: your foes won't know what hit 'em!
Award-winning Soundtrack Enjoy the dulcet melodies composed by Kirill Pokrovsky, the two-time winner of IGN’s "Outstanding Achievement in Music" award.
Previous Playtime
0 hours
What Was I Thinking When I Bought This
Same story as before - it was part of an impulsive and ill-considered bundle purchase.
Expectations and Prior Experience
Having played the previous game, I've got a pretty good idea about how this is going to go (unless it does a complete swerve and shocks me). The interaction and class development are oversold, but it's still nonetheless a solid action-rpg. Having a Death Knight to help me out should change the feel of the game somewhat, but it could potentially be just another thing to micromanage.
My main hope here is that the sequel is more self-assured than the original. That it will present its strongest ideas earlier and that it will polish of the rough edges of the UI. There was potential in the original that was not quite fulfilled, so they don't have to reinvent the whole game. I just want to spend more time playing the actual game and less time wandering aimlessly looking for the fun parts.
Worst case scenario, it's just another forgettable ARPG. I can live with that.
Divine Divinity - 20/20 hours
As much as I determined to avoid the plot and just mess around, I wound up stumbling ass-backwards into the main story anyway. I wandered into a castle and got tormented by an annoying prince. Then, as I sought revenge for him humiliating me (and being an evil little shit who tortured prisoners), I somehow wound up the only surviving Marked One, with a mission to unite the various fantasy races against a resurrected god of chaos. You know, as often happens in these situations.
It's a decent enough way to end the first act of the game. Giving me seven broad quests allows me a certain amount of freedom to explore at my own pace. It's a trick that has been used very effectively in rpgs for a long time now. So I'm going to go ahead and give the plot a tentative thumbs up. Prince Janus was a fun villain, and while I found Zandalor's shtick a bit tiring, I could appreciate what they were trying to do, and there was a point where I was given vital information by a talking cat. I will admit to being jaded enough that a by-the-numbers fantasy plot, competently executed, is not enough to thrill me any more, but I'm not quite so jaded that I'm going to jump on it as a major flaw.
My main disappointment with this game is that I did not get far enough in the plot to really consider the theological ramifications of the "Marked One" situation, or the political nuances of attempting to fight chaos through assembling a multinational coalition (and the way those nuances would have inevitably been undercut by the action-oriented quests necessary to advance the plot). Divine Divinity is a more thoughtful game than I gave it credit for, but I suspect the store page boast about "an adventure that will last you 100 hours" is accurate, and as pleasant a time as I've had, I'm not really ready for that sort of commitment right now.
So here is where I'm going to call it quits. I've got 8 weeks to play 6 games (assuming I don't break down and buy any in the winter sale), and while I would say, on balance, that I enjoyed this game (level-agnostic orc ambushes or dungeon bosses notwithstanding), it didn't spark an obsession. I do, however, have an unusually powerful sense of unfinished business here. This isn't like The Last Remnant, where I reached the deadline amidst a major gameplay roadblock. I could continue from here, quite easily. I perhaps even should continue, considering I still have two sequels to play, and I might get hopelessly confused about the story as time goes on. Yet I won't, because I am a rootless wanderer among games, my quest to experience each one tantamount to an embrace of dilettantism.
Will I ever come back to Divine Divinity and finish what I started? I wish I could say yes, because I kind of feel like I owe it to the game to see where it's story goes. Yet, I have so many other games I'd rather play that it seems like a real long-shot. I think its best chance is if I play the later games in the Divinity series and come to love them so much that I come back to this one as a sort of prologue.
It's not likely, but it could happen.
It's a decent enough way to end the first act of the game. Giving me seven broad quests allows me a certain amount of freedom to explore at my own pace. It's a trick that has been used very effectively in rpgs for a long time now. So I'm going to go ahead and give the plot a tentative thumbs up. Prince Janus was a fun villain, and while I found Zandalor's shtick a bit tiring, I could appreciate what they were trying to do, and there was a point where I was given vital information by a talking cat. I will admit to being jaded enough that a by-the-numbers fantasy plot, competently executed, is not enough to thrill me any more, but I'm not quite so jaded that I'm going to jump on it as a major flaw.
My main disappointment with this game is that I did not get far enough in the plot to really consider the theological ramifications of the "Marked One" situation, or the political nuances of attempting to fight chaos through assembling a multinational coalition (and the way those nuances would have inevitably been undercut by the action-oriented quests necessary to advance the plot). Divine Divinity is a more thoughtful game than I gave it credit for, but I suspect the store page boast about "an adventure that will last you 100 hours" is accurate, and as pleasant a time as I've had, I'm not really ready for that sort of commitment right now.
So here is where I'm going to call it quits. I've got 8 weeks to play 6 games (assuming I don't break down and buy any in the winter sale), and while I would say, on balance, that I enjoyed this game (level-agnostic orc ambushes or dungeon bosses notwithstanding), it didn't spark an obsession. I do, however, have an unusually powerful sense of unfinished business here. This isn't like The Last Remnant, where I reached the deadline amidst a major gameplay roadblock. I could continue from here, quite easily. I perhaps even should continue, considering I still have two sequels to play, and I might get hopelessly confused about the story as time goes on. Yet I won't, because I am a rootless wanderer among games, my quest to experience each one tantamount to an embrace of dilettantism.
Will I ever come back to Divine Divinity and finish what I started? I wish I could say yes, because I kind of feel like I owe it to the game to see where it's story goes. Yet, I have so many other games I'd rather play that it seems like a real long-shot. I think its best chance is if I play the later games in the Divinity series and come to love them so much that I come back to this one as a sort of prologue.
It's not likely, but it could happen.
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Divine Divinity - 10/20 hours
My main complaint with Divine Divinity is that saving or loading a game takes a surprisingly long amount of time. I'd have thought that a fifteen year old game like this would have been lightning-quick about it. It makes me wonder what it was like to play the game back when it was new. If it takes 25 seconds to load a game on a 2015 computer, did it take several minutes to load on a 2002 computer? And did you have to go through that every time you died?
Because 25 seconds isn't that bad in isolation, but when you have to do it three times in ten minutes, it starts to add up. Which is to say that, even on easy mode, this game is kind of tough.
I think it comes as a consequence of two different factors - the first is that there does not appear to be significant level-gating. Once I left the safety of the starting town, it became all too easy to wander into an area where the enemies were too powerful for me. The first warning about such areas tends to be me dying and having to reload. The second issue is that your fights do not seem to be designed encounters.
In other words, sometimes you'll be wandering through orc country and you'll come across an orc. As a single foe, they're barely worth worrying about. But in maybe one out of every three encounters or so, it won't just be that single orc. As you're fighting the first one, a bunch of additional ones keep wandering out of the fog of war. Before you know it, you're fighting a half-dozen or more, complete with elites, archers, and the occasional spellcaster. It's rare that such a nasty surprise has failed to kill me.
My guess is that it's reflective of a particular design philosophy, one where the world is not necessarily designed with the player in mind. So the orcs ae wherever the orcs are, and you can either fight them or learn to accept it. Issues like line-of-sight and attracting aggro aren't even considerations, because you're not really having an encounter, you're making a discovery.
There are advantages to doing things this way. The world itself feels a tinier bit more real. The enemies aren't merely a challenge to be overcome, but participants in the world, with their own needs and agendas. You can't assume that just because something exists, the hero is going to find it, loot it, or make it their own.
The downside is that the player doesn't get to see it if they're dead, and if the player never sees it, then including it is kind of a waste of time. I guess the hope is that the player manages to successfully navigate the level curve with no help, and then admires your craftsmanship at the appropriate time.
I'm not quite there yet. The game is fun enough that I might stick around long enough to get there, but in the meantime, I once accidentally walked into a cave with a hostile Troll King I could barely hit, and repeatedly found myself near an orc encampments that ate me alive. So far, in all but one occasion, I've managed to survive, but always at a terrible cost in potions.
I wish there were a better story to keep me going. So far, I've learned that I'm something called a "marked one," and that there are forces at work that want to either kill me (as represented by John the Dragon Rider) or protect me (Zandalor the wizard, though I could not tell you a second thing about him). And I know that I am usually pretty useless in following these kind of stories, but in this case, there's nothing to worry about because this is literally all I know. In order to unlock more of the plot, I have to help the military defeat a bunch of orcs, even though, as I already said, they manage to eat me alive nearly every single time.
I think I'm going to make a conscious decision not to pursue Divine Divinity's plot any farther than I have to. At the rate things are going, it would take me forever to get to the end, and I'd rather just use my remaining ten hours to hang out and bop level-appropriate monsters on the head.
Because 25 seconds isn't that bad in isolation, but when you have to do it three times in ten minutes, it starts to add up. Which is to say that, even on easy mode, this game is kind of tough.
I think it comes as a consequence of two different factors - the first is that there does not appear to be significant level-gating. Once I left the safety of the starting town, it became all too easy to wander into an area where the enemies were too powerful for me. The first warning about such areas tends to be me dying and having to reload. The second issue is that your fights do not seem to be designed encounters.
In other words, sometimes you'll be wandering through orc country and you'll come across an orc. As a single foe, they're barely worth worrying about. But in maybe one out of every three encounters or so, it won't just be that single orc. As you're fighting the first one, a bunch of additional ones keep wandering out of the fog of war. Before you know it, you're fighting a half-dozen or more, complete with elites, archers, and the occasional spellcaster. It's rare that such a nasty surprise has failed to kill me.
My guess is that it's reflective of a particular design philosophy, one where the world is not necessarily designed with the player in mind. So the orcs ae wherever the orcs are, and you can either fight them or learn to accept it. Issues like line-of-sight and attracting aggro aren't even considerations, because you're not really having an encounter, you're making a discovery.
There are advantages to doing things this way. The world itself feels a tinier bit more real. The enemies aren't merely a challenge to be overcome, but participants in the world, with their own needs and agendas. You can't assume that just because something exists, the hero is going to find it, loot it, or make it their own.
The downside is that the player doesn't get to see it if they're dead, and if the player never sees it, then including it is kind of a waste of time. I guess the hope is that the player manages to successfully navigate the level curve with no help, and then admires your craftsmanship at the appropriate time.
I'm not quite there yet. The game is fun enough that I might stick around long enough to get there, but in the meantime, I once accidentally walked into a cave with a hostile Troll King I could barely hit, and repeatedly found myself near an orc encampments that ate me alive. So far, in all but one occasion, I've managed to survive, but always at a terrible cost in potions.
I wish there were a better story to keep me going. So far, I've learned that I'm something called a "marked one," and that there are forces at work that want to either kill me (as represented by John the Dragon Rider) or protect me (Zandalor the wizard, though I could not tell you a second thing about him). And I know that I am usually pretty useless in following these kind of stories, but in this case, there's nothing to worry about because this is literally all I know. In order to unlock more of the plot, I have to help the military defeat a bunch of orcs, even though, as I already said, they manage to eat me alive nearly every single time.
I think I'm going to make a conscious decision not to pursue Divine Divinity's plot any farther than I have to. At the rate things are going, it would take me forever to get to the end, and I'd rather just use my remaining ten hours to hang out and bop level-appropriate monsters on the head.
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Divine Divinity - 5/20 hours
I did the thing where I play an rpg for two hours and then start over from scratch to test out a new character build. So I am only a little bit past where I was before. Down at the bottom of a dungeon, facing the undead hordes of a repentant necoromancer.
I'll admit, I was taken by surprise when the death-obsessed mage who engineered his own resurrection told me that he regretted his decisions and wanted to die. That, at least, was a novel twist on what had hitherto been a by-the-numbers fantasy plot.
The biggest change in my second go-round, though, is that I'm now playing on Easy difficulty. It's not that different, though I do notice that my healing potions tend to go a longer way, and that, in turn, lets me spend more time down in the dungeon. That's something that eases the stress involved in directionless exploration.
So far I'm having a good time. I wish there were more of a "hook," like Fallout's irradiated wasteland or Planescape: Torment's fantastic city at the center of the multiverse, but I can work with what I've got. I'm not sure I'll ever make a genuine connection with the world or its characters, but I can at least enjoy the mechanics of the game, hacking and slashing my way through dungeons and slowly developing my character into the ultimate killing machine.
I'll admit, I was taken by surprise when the death-obsessed mage who engineered his own resurrection told me that he regretted his decisions and wanted to die. That, at least, was a novel twist on what had hitherto been a by-the-numbers fantasy plot.
The biggest change in my second go-round, though, is that I'm now playing on Easy difficulty. It's not that different, though I do notice that my healing potions tend to go a longer way, and that, in turn, lets me spend more time down in the dungeon. That's something that eases the stress involved in directionless exploration.
So far I'm having a good time. I wish there were more of a "hook," like Fallout's irradiated wasteland or Planescape: Torment's fantastic city at the center of the multiverse, but I can work with what I've got. I'm not sure I'll ever make a genuine connection with the world or its characters, but I can at least enjoy the mechanics of the game, hacking and slashing my way through dungeons and slowly developing my character into the ultimate killing machine.
Friday, October 20, 2017
Divine Divinity - 2/20 hours
Sometimes, when I'm playing a new game, I'm tempted to wonder if the tutorial level is really worth all the trouble. They tend to be uninteresting and overly simple. And then I play a game that doesn't have one, and I remember - not having one really sucks.
I think I've figured out the basics of Divine Divinity, but I also have the feeling that there's a lot I'm missing out on. I had to look up online how to harvest the various herbs you find around the map. I also had a tough (or at least tougher than it ought to be) time figuring out how to use items and fight in combat.
To top it off, this is one of those old style games that seems to think that not telling me where to go somehow builds character. Call me a wimp if you must, but I love quest markers. I can see how some might think they might diminish the thrill of unguided exploration, but I hate knowing there's somewhere I'm supposed to be and being unable to find it.
But that's just a risk I have to take with older games. If the game itself proves to be fun, it's something that can be overlooked. However, it is still too early for me to make that call. I'm still in the first village and so it's still ambiguous whether any frustration I might have comes from the game itself or the fact that I'm low level and unknowledgeable.
The story itself is nothing special. I woke up with amnesia in a mysterious village of healers, and it's likely that their leader has been driven mad by demonic possession. It's a good setup for a game, but I'm not anticipating any special payoff here. I will heal the leader and then move on and probably never think of this place again.
I think I've figured out the basics of Divine Divinity, but I also have the feeling that there's a lot I'm missing out on. I had to look up online how to harvest the various herbs you find around the map. I also had a tough (or at least tougher than it ought to be) time figuring out how to use items and fight in combat.
To top it off, this is one of those old style games that seems to think that not telling me where to go somehow builds character. Call me a wimp if you must, but I love quest markers. I can see how some might think they might diminish the thrill of unguided exploration, but I hate knowing there's somewhere I'm supposed to be and being unable to find it.
But that's just a risk I have to take with older games. If the game itself proves to be fun, it's something that can be overlooked. However, it is still too early for me to make that call. I'm still in the first village and so it's still ambiguous whether any frustration I might have comes from the game itself or the fact that I'm low level and unknowledgeable.
The story itself is nothing special. I woke up with amnesia in a mysterious village of healers, and it's likely that their leader has been driven mad by demonic possession. It's a good setup for a game, but I'm not anticipating any special payoff here. I will heal the leader and then move on and probably never think of this place again.
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