Divine Divinity
It's not listed here, but on NFOrce...
It's like a Diablo mixed with Baldurs gate with better graphics, better, more RPGish plot (than Diablo at least) and a ton of cool features. It has been in production for quite a while.
Also, I'll add that it is 3 CDs so make sure you have room.
http://www.divinedivinity.com/
Oh shite... my bad
http://www.isonews.com/forums/showth...threadid=90130
Go here for earlier thread - I didn't see it on the first page so I figured it wasn't posted.
I too am interested on what this game is like but it might be awhile with everyone playing the UT 2003 demo and Battlefield 1942 being out. I'd give it a day or two before someone gets around to actualy playing it.
Anybody played it yet? looks good.
Probably just more unoriginal buggy euro-trash. Hopefully not tho, looks really cool.
looked like another shitty diablo clone by a nobody developer. Bound to suck so i didn't bother downloading it. Was pretty curious about it till i saw the screenshots.
It's actually really cool... I like it alot... been playing for quite a while now. Definately worth trying... it's more RPG (alike Morrowind) than Diablo or anything alike... it's more like Ultima 7...
Swampthing you're an idiot sir , anyway this sounds good, sadly I wont be able to grab it till monday , but i'll deffo give this a go.
The name scares me away, the gameplay more so.
Agreed, the game's name is disturbing..after looking at the screens, it's easy to write this game off..next
the name should have been just Divinity, divine divinity was forced on for commercial reasons, the designers were bummed out about it.
The original name was 'Divinity: Sword of Lies', but their developer, CDV, forced them to change it, like djsweepah said, for commmercial reasons :/
ReV
The game is cool... feels abit like Arcanum to me actually.
this game is very nice~
nice mixture of ultima 7(NPC, object interactive) + balders gate(bunch of quest, deep story)+ diablo 2(arcadish battle, interface)+ etc...
definetly one of "RPG of the year"
I agree completely, in fact i'll probably buy it
My first thoughts after seeing some screeshots "YUCK a low budget diablo rip-off" But I was bored last night so I descided to download it and give it a try. I must say this game is actually really good! If you like RPG's this one is deffently for you! Give it a try you'll be surprised
Ohh and the first review is online at PC-Gamer giving the game a solid 5/5 stars
http://www.pc-gaming.com/read.asp?id=70&type=rp
hmm many negative ppl here that havent even played it,game got some good reviews and i like it, ppl should give the game a chance insted of judging em before they even try it.
There was a time, not that long ago, when you could clearly say that the PC role playing game was officially dead. It had come in late at night, battered and bruised from too many first person shooters and now lay on the mortuary slab with one of those little name tags attached to a toe.
Publishers were reluctant to publish them and so games developers were reluctant to create them. It was a vicious circle, or at least quite an untamed one. Then Baldur’s Gate came along, and the corpse was well and truly brought back to life.
Since then he’s been up and about and dancing all over the place. There was a brief fling with Planescape Torment a few years back, a quick waltz with Icewind Dale before dinner and recently a night on the town with Neverwinter Nights – he got dressed up in his best 3D costume for that one. So how does Divine Divinity fare, the latest release from Belgian software house Larian studios?
The first thing that should be said is not to pay too much attention to the name of the game. So what if it doesn’t actually mean anything? RPG players are used to obscure and sometimes even confusing nomenclature, it is, after all, the gameplay that matters. Fortunately here, gameplay is king.
You start out by selecting a character from the six usual suspects. Nothing particularly original amongst them, a male and a female version of three classes, the warrior, the magician and the thief (called for some reason a survivor). Each character has a different voice set and you can even change their portrait if you like, though you cannot import your own from an outside source. Gameplay consists of moving your character in the 2D isometric world, solving quests, talking to NPCs and hacking the back legs off monsters, though not necessarily in that order.
First impressions strike you as a clone of another game, this time by Blizzard and which shall henceforth be known only as “The Other Game”. Moving your character is the same, the bottom interface bar with health and magic bars is the same, heck even the font looks similar. However, Larian studios is quick to point out that Divine Divinity is not simply a remake and if you look a little deeper into the title it’s easy to see why.
Divine Divinity is a true classic RPG like the old school games of yesteryear. The first thing that you notice is how detailed the graphics are. Water pools in muddy gardens which reflect your character in real-time. Baskets of carrots sit in sunny orchards and beehives at the back of houses give way to cornfields where white rabbits scamper and play. Even more interesting is that everything here can be manipulated. Pick up the carrots and eat them to refill you health. Put jars in the beehives to collect honey for a nice snack or brutally cull the rabbits and collect their meat to fill your belly. The whole world created here teems with life. Butterflies flit around the trees and bushes, birds flock overhead and boars roam the forest. It can’t be stressed enough just how much this adds to the game. Most of the time you could just stand there and wonder.
Another nice addition is mushrooms and herbs which can be mixed with empty flasks to create potions and you can even find rotting food to make poison potions which then can either be thrown at enemies or applied to weapons or even your own skin. It really is remarkable how much attention has been made to the small things in this game. Move pillows in bedrooms and you’ll find hidden keys to open chests. Trapdoors under boxes reveal passageways into cellars. Even objects which you cannot use can still be manipulated or moved from place to place.
Talking to NPCs is excellent in Divine Divinity. Most of them have full speech and the voiceovers aren’t bad for a game with a smaller budget than its rivals. An attitude scale reflects their reactions towards you and obviously insulting them about their parent’s marital status means you’re not going to get the best barter prices if you then decide to trade with them.
When it comes to the old rough and tumble, combat is surprisingly similar to “The Other Game” but rather than becoming a click-fest you only need to click an enemy once for your character to fight them to the death. Using skills that you learn at every level-up is also easy. You can assign them to the right mouse button by browsing through the ones available and before long you’re casting meteor spells and summoning followers with the best of them. Each of the three classes also has a special move such as the warriors “round” attack which hits all nearby enemies at once.
Sound effects are good as well. Orchestral music tracks grace the main title page and they really are very good. They also change to reflect the current state of play, wander into a cursed abbey for example and you’ll get the cawing of ravens which increase the atmosphere immensely. Each character has their own voice set and there’s quite a bit of speech. Carry too much and your warrior or wizard will tell you about it, as will trying to use a jar for a weapon for example (although you can use a saucepan for a helmet – which just goes to show how much attention to detail the designers have). The music also has pseudo latin chanting in it, similar to Heroes of Might and Magic which sets the medieval tone nicely throughout.
Summing up this game is easy. Not since Baldur’s Gate has there been a better 2D RPG. Once you start you’ll not want to stop because the game is brilliant. You’ll get over 300 quests to solve according to Larian and not of the “fetch and carry” variety either. The graphics are sublime despite there being no polygons in sight. You won’t get bare caverns and towns of Icewind Dale here, you’ll get a cellar full of dozens of bottles all of which can be moved. You’ll get barns where you can make beds out of hay with pitchforks outside that can be used as weapons. This game has it all. If you like your RPGs done with verve and style in a world clearly created as a labour of love you can do no better. There’s even humour in it with references to Terry Pratchett and a pair of skeletons arguing about why it is they don’t fall apart when they move, and just where do their voices come from? Amazing!
This is Divine Divinity. The title is not wrong.
Score 5/5
This was not my review... it is from PC Gaming. It gives a great idea of how the game is though so I figured it's worth posting.
It's a good game, get it!!! And best of all, it's from Belgium ;-p
Well, it's the first RPG ever that didn't bore after some hours...
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