Beyond Divinity

A sophisticated and enjoyable addition to the Divinity RPG series.

Developer: Larian Studios
Publisher: Hip Games
Release Date: April 27, 2004
Platforms: PC
JustRPG Score: 91%
Pros:
+Interesting and Challenging
+Huge playable world
+Deep flowing storyline
Cons:
-Dated visuals
-Poor voice acting
-Confusing at times

Overview

Beyond Divinity Overview

Beyond Divinity is an exciting addition to the Divinity series and really incorporates everything a RPG lover could ask for into one solid title. The RPG has a vast world full of hundreds of items, quests, and monsters. With puzzles, combat, lore, humor, and strategy Beyond Divinity is sure to have something you will love about it.

Beyond Divinity Screenshots

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Beyond Divinity Video

Full Review

Beyond Divinity Review

By, Robert Wartow

Backdrop

.hack Part 1 Infection (Dot Hack) begins with a bang. Something disastrous happens to your character‘s real world friend, while innocently playing a 20 million-subscriber base, wildly popular online RPG game (MMORPG), The World. To unravel the mystery of your friend’s misfortune, you become an online, ingame rogue hacker, exploring every corner of The World, even some virus-infected ones.

The hero is armed with the special skills of Data Drain and Gate Hack, and some colorful, talented fellow adventurers to fill the two other available party slots. Different adventurers must accompany you depending on the plot‘s development. You have some control over the others in your party, including upgrading them through trades or gifts. You can play only a single class, Twin Blade. Other characters are from different classes, with varied strengths and weaknesses, from a mage type (Wavemaster) to a bully (Heavy Axeman).

Gameplay

Gameplay takes place in three principal areas – towns, fields, and dungeons. Towns house The World’s servers. There, the player can save the game, buy magic scrolls and useful and unique items, store items, buy equipment, and talk and trade with lots of other players in character online. One town has an unusual ranch to check out, a patent homage to an enduring feature of just about every Final Fantasy.

The town’s Chaos Gate provides instant teleportation to a particular wide-open Field, containing monster encounter hotspots, a mystical spring, treasure, and lots of mysterious food. You enter three distinct keywords, some known at the game‘s onset, and others learned through play. Whatever keywords are entered, the difficulty level of the destination is helpfully revealed. This prevents a low-level party from being massacred. Once the keywords are entered, you travel through the Chaos Gate. (You can enter specific keywords learned to continue the plot, do side quests, or do unlimited exploring. Or, you can instruct the Gate to enter random keywords, and take your chances. There‘s also an option to enter any keywords you wish from a word list.) Every Field houses a single Dungeon. The dungeons, where you spend much of the game fighting for your life, are not overly large in size, and always range between three and five average levels.

Many have compared Dot Hack to Phantasy Star Online Episode I and II (PSO) on the Gamecube. Let us gently discredit this. We feel Dot Hack has far better graphics than PSO. The Fields and Dungeons contain many colorful, over stylized backdrops and settings, including weather effects. Dot Hack’s monsters resemble the beautifully-drawn monsters of the later Final Fantasy’s. Dot Hack’s world is gigantic with a seeming infinite number of locations to explore. PSO’s world is relatively small, and plot is threadbare, with meaningless, though fun, side quests, which instill no enthusiasm in the player. Dot Hack’s plot is deep and complex, with each subplot advancing the story just a little bit further. (Remember though, the end of this game in no way comes close to wrapping up the story, to be completed in the three games to be released later this year.) One visual treat, however, was lifted directly from PSO – the cascading rings that accompany the teleportation of characters to and from different areas.

Combat

Dot Hack’s combat engine can best be described as modified real-time. Much like the action-RPG, Kingdom Hearts, button mashing can be effective to beat monsters. Monster combat icons appear as large yellow twirling landmarks. As you approach, the landmark dissolves, monsters come at you big-time, and, undoubtedly, players will feel a healthy adrenaline rush. Some of Dot Hack’s many monsters do not stand around waiting to be pummeled, rather some you need to catch. Dot Hack lets you turn combat almost into a turn-based affair. The player needs only to hit Triangle in the middle of battle to pause the game instantly. From there the player can give orders to the others in the party, anything from healing someone, reviving another, casting a spell, designating a target monster. Without jeopardizing your party from the hailstorm of monster blows, combat becomes a calmer, more strategic, experience. This will help the many action-challenged. Camera angles play a big role in successful combat. You must be facing a monster to do any damage. As in many games, manipulating opposing environmental elements, like fire vs. water, is a key to successful monster combat.

Dot Hack’s cyberspace setting provides a wealth of Wow-inducing outbursts. The Data Drain option in combat is a great example. When a monster’s approaches zero, the player can Data Drain to reduce a horrendous, gigantic steel robot, for example, into a sniveling, puny monster, easily defeated with a single blow. Data Drain always results in a nifty, rare item or essential Virus Cores so you can Gate Hack areas of The World now closed, but needing investigation. One bad side effect – if you defeat, a Data Drained monster, but a single experience point is earned. One REALLY bad side effect – if you Data Drain too often without giving the skill a rest, you may overload and explode. Game Over. In the case of Boss monsters, Data Drain works the same, but what remains is no sniveling puny monster, but a full-blooded slightly less tough monster. All of this makes for interesting and captivating combat, a large part of the game.

Fresh Features

Dot Hack is replete with new and interesting features that kept us riveted.

To start, the entire background and story of a real world gamer becoming a rascal hacker, penetrating deep into a virus-infected online game, is quite novel. Combine this with Dot Hack’s emulating the look and feel of an online game universe. (Message traffic on the web shows many gamers mistakenly believe Dot Hack is a real online MMORPG, along with monthly fees! No real Internet connection is required.)

Just like in the real word, Dot Hack replicates your excitement level when “New” appears before a popular forum or on your email screen. Some of the game involves receiving emails as the plot develops, as well as new, crucial information surfacing on The World’s Board. (Look out for emails challenging you to a strange game of Tag.) The online game world looks very familiar with a bunch of characters wandering around the game’s towns, with the ubiquitous balloon icons talking typical “trash” to each other, even criticizing “newbies“.

Combat grippingly called for surprisingly strategic decision-making to succeed, not related to the usual attack or defend choices. Do you go for experience and upgrade your character or try for some special equipment or a Virus Core, vital to Gate Hacking? The innovative control of other party members became second nature to us after some practice. The game rewards a player taking chances, like entering a Field or Dungeon rated 5 levels above the player’s current level. On the other hand, the game scoffed at players entering areas much lower rated the their current level, by awarding negligible experience points for victory.

Dot Hack takes progress reports to a new level, by slowly unlocking books that contain much in the way of statistics and information. There’s even a monster compendium with tips for defeating them.

Some might complain about the minimal “Save Game” ability, but we thrived on it. You explore a very hostile cyberspace environment without the facility to save. Only in a server-hosting town is saving possible at the local Recorder. We may be a solitary voice in the Wilderness, but we like this throwback to the good old RPG days. Those of you old enough to remember the Wizardry series, may recall those fingernail-biting multi-combat treks back to the Castle just to save the game. In case you’re really stuck deep in a dungeon, a common item will teleport you to the outdoor field, from where you can simply gate back to town from the command menu.

Many pieces of equipment come with distinctive powerful attack, healing, and status skills, essential to combat dominance. The player must tradeoff whether to equip something that will raise defense or offense or something less vigorous that lets you use a powerful skill. Trading is the most successful way to upgrade equipment.

In a first, Dot Hack comes with a 45 minute anime video. This gives some great background on what’s going on in The World, as well as provide clues for completing the game. In a nice twist, voiceovers for game speech can be set for Japanese or English presentation. Listening to the authentic Japanese voices really keeps you glued to the game.

Though some may scoff at what follows as meaningless, we liked the game’s unlocking of some nifty new “toys” to like, some only available when the game is cleared. You can unlock many different background music play lists. Tired of creepy tunes, just switch to something more upbeat, or futuristic. Just like real world gamers, who constantly change their desktop wallpaper, new and different wallpapers are unlocked along the way. Some are concept art of characters, while others are full blown anime renditions of the characters. This makes for great fun, and seems to pump additional energy into the game. As you progress over a dozen special cut scenes or movies will become viewable after defeating the game.

Though Dot Hack’s extras and new wrinkles enhance the RPG game experience, much of the gameplay will ring true to those who enjoy RPG‘s. Expect plenty of exploration in a huge 3D world, frequent monster combat, tons of treasure to earn and discover, upgrading your character’s weapons and armor, and needing to level before tackling pivotal story dungeons. The status screens for the characters and all equipment are well laid out and easy to grasp.

Time for Completion

Game length in hours always concerns many purchasers. A short RPG normally takes a lot of flack, and many online are asking about Dot Hack‘s time for completion. (Some have questioned whether Bandai should have released a single 80 hour game for $50, rather than four 20-hour games for $200 for a single story. This matter is beyond the scope of this review, but our high opinion of this game as a standalone is obvious.) Our experience, playing the plot without doing side quests or extra exploration, is in the 12 to 15-hour range. Players side-questing and extensively exploring, aside from the main plot, can expect to spend 25 hours to complete the game. You can even continue to advance your character, after game completion, to get a jump start on Part 2 due in May. In the next game, your character can be imported from Part 1.

Furthermore, imagine trying to explore every nook and cranny of the fields and dungeons accessible by a large number of 3-word combinations. Doing that would put the game in the 50-hour range, if not more. However, at a certain point, new items dry up, and a single experience point is earned for any defeated monster, no matter how tough.

Shortcomings

While, as is evident above, there is much to recommend in Dot Hack, certain concerns to varying degrees deserve mention.

From the “Why oh why did they leave this out?“ File. Pregame game board traffic and information about the Japanese version released months ago had many salivating for replaying the game in “parody” mode. This mode apparently converted all Dot Hack’s game world characters into satirical comedians. Sorry to say, this highly-anticipated feature is missing from the version released here.

The game requires massive amounts of button pressing. Every item or treasure uncovered from combat victories or exploration (opening chests, searching expired adventure remains, collecting food for Grunty’s, as examples) must be confirmed with a button press. When there could be 50-100 such occurrences in a single dungeon or field, over the course of the game, finger cramps seem inevitable. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance also required lots of bashing for buried treasure and chests, but the items literally flew into your inventory, a much better way to handle this.

The manual is woefully terse and lacking in some crucial information and guidance. While the ingame tutorials fill in many of the gaps, one extremely important gameplay feature is missing from both the manual and tutorials – instructions on control your characters directly during combat.

Final Word

We got a kick out of Dot Hack. The feeling of “just one more dungeon” dominated our lives for the 3 days to completion. The engaging environment held our attention without much effort. The strategic nature of combat, plus the convoluted plot kept us going for hours on end. The constant unlocking of both frivolous and important gameplay features created a “what’s next” anticipation. Now, if I could only read Japanese better, Dot Hack Part 2 is already out in Japan!

Final Grade: B

Beyond Divinity hits the RPG bull’s-eye, with everything an RPG gamer covets – elaborate plotline, specialized creation of wide-ranging characters, huge world, 60+ hours for a run-through, infinite replayability, hundreds of main and side quests, oodles of NPC’s, a genuine party to manipulate and level with skill and spell possibilities in the hundreds, party member summoning, staggering numbers of unique and improvable equipment and items, gigantic complementary battlefields, action or tactical combat, puzzles galore, and right-on humor. It’s hard to imagine anything I’ve wanted in an RPG missing from Beyond Divinity.

This game has been suffering from an identity crisis. Until December, the game was called Riftrunner. Many thought this was Divinity II, a follow up to Divine Divinity, the sleeper RPG hit of 2002. The developers now make it clear that this is not Divinity II, but simply a completely new game in the Divinity universe. The developer has confirmed there will be a Divinity II in the future, actually the far future, by late 2005 or early 2006.

For those who experienced Divine Divinity, Beyond Divinity makes use of the basic Divine Divinity engine; nevertheless, there have been drastic, positive enhancements to that familiar gameplay. Do not expect a repetition of Divine Divinity play, but much more.

STORY

Beyond Divinity departs from the cookie cutter, hackneyed plots of most RPG’s by surprising the player with a startling development at game’s onset. From the get-go, your hero is soul-forged, that is figuratively tied, to a rather vile creature, a Death Knight, something each of you despises. This was the doing of an ArchDemon with the tepid moniker of Samuel. Left to rot in Samuel’s prison, both you and the Death Knight, now bonded seemingly forever, finally decide to work together, break the soul-forging if a certain potent magician can be discovered, and go back to each one’s particular existence. This decision to cooperate is a good idea given the fact that when one of the party dies, the other does as well.

CHARACTER CREATION

This aspect of Beyond Divinity can be generated quickly or customized to your heart’s content. The goal is to make the hero and Death Knight complement each other. Personally, I made the Death Knight a tank-type character minoring in range weapons and major league fire spells. My hero went down the mage-dominant path, with some tank reserve in him. This combination made combats not only winnable, but very tactical and interesting.

The game’s complex and large skill system lets the player create diversified characters, beginning from one of four primary careers: warrior, wizard, survival (thief-life) and the unique Summoning Dolls discussed below. Given the large amount of skills available, the possibilities seem endless. Many skills must be taught to the characters by NPC’s, especially merchants scattered around the world, or learned from books.

CHARISMATIC GAMEPLAY

In a departure from more recent RPG’s, Beyond Divinity begins with an actual adventuring party of 2, over which the player has complete control. This doubles all of the manipulation and leveling considerations during questing and the considerable amount of combat that will be encountered. (In another review of this game, I was amused at the reviewer pointing out that beginning an RPG with a party was unusual. Did that reviewer forget the Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, and Icewind Dale series, or the multi-member parties of the great early RPG’s, like the Ultima, Wizardry, Might and Magic, and Bard’s Tale chains?)

Your party during the game is not confined to your hero and the Death Knight, but a certain object, a Summoning Doll, found during the journey summons a powerful ally, bringing the party up to a maximum of 3 at any one time. Each game chapter contains a useable Summoning Doll. The summoned object, the first of which is a Skeleton, can be equipped, upgraded, and leveled. Unlike many, who put massive amounts of skill points into the thievery skill of finding and dismantling traps, I used my summoned party member to walk boldly in likely trapped areas, sort of a freebie guinea pig of trapdom. Summoning dolls disappear or “unsummon” when leaving the physical proximity of their summoning. However, with a time penalty, they can be resummoned at will.

QUESTING NIRVANA

Concerning the sheer number of quests in an RPG, my recent review of Sacred for this site acknowledged that Sacred “contained probably the greatest number of total quests ever in a game of this type, between 200 and 300.” My prescient, fortuitous use of the world “probably” left the RPG quest king door ajar, for Beyond Divinity quests number at least 300, and probably more. Talk about an RPG with plenty of intermediate goals? There’s so much to do in Beyond Divinity that some players may be overwhelmed at first. This is not meant as a criticism of the game but simply a statement of fact. These quests make Beyond Divinity a decidedly nonlinear game.

WORLD

Beyond Divinity’s world is quite large, and consists of a series of interlocking indoor, dungeon and wide-open outdoor environments. There are masses of NPC’s, many with quests and others just to add local color. Individual merchants can be found throughout the explorable areas. Each Battlefield, discussed below, begins at an encampment staffed by a small group of merchants. Given the ability to teleport to a Battlefield instantly at any game juncture, these merchants become quite accessible. These merchants as do others throughout the world double as teachers of advanced character skills.

Interaction with the world, both outdoor and indoor, is extensive. Among other things, the player can open treasure chests, pillage corpses, break vases, peeking behind paintings, rummage through closets, combining liquid and bottles to make a convenient carry-with item, fashion and place traps, read books, or pester animals. The player can also move many objects, some of which have surprises hiding underneath. Important items can be highlighted by pressing the ALT key, a practical technique used originally in the Baldur’s Gate series, I believe.

THE BATTLEFIELDS

Beyond Divinity takes an innovative leap in RPG gamedom by affording the player with a separate and important game within a game, the Battlefields. Each chapter or act of Beyond Divinity contains several, increasing levels of Battlefields. This is entirely separate from the main story or even the main game’s side quests. These battlefields all have merchants with plenty of items and equipment in stock, and ample quests of their own. Players can level and just diddle around in the Battlefields. Once you find a Battlefield Key, the party is teleported there at the simple click of the mouse. This is true even in the middle of combat. On several occasions, I was getting trounced, and “fled” to a Battlefield to recuperate and, at times, level.

The Battlefield approach is new in my experience to RPG’s. Others respawn monsters so the player can return time and again to level. Normally, this is just a game area and, frankly, this can be a rather tedious exercise. The Battlefields change all this by providing fresh merchants, quests, dungeons, outdoor areas, and brand new puzzles. This feature, to me, was worth the price of Beyond Divinity admission. Talk about losing yourself in a game’s natural world!

The developers have stated that, without the Battlefields, finishing Beyond Divinity will be quite challenging. I found this to be the case. See my criticism below in which a bug has apparently emptied one of the three Battlefields in Act I, causing significant problems in passing the level.

BRAINTEASERS GALORE

Beyond Divinity has a mix of the unusual and the normal puzzles. There are plenty of levers to trigger, many in a particular sequence that requires trial and error or deciphering an NPC’s hint. The game contains some neat requirements for moving around your party members in a coordinated manner. Early in the game, you must separate the hero and Death Knight to activate levers in adjoining rooms so that both can enter an area. Of course, expect to locate and use many different keys along the way. Some of the puzzles are downright wicked, and will tax the player, but that adds to the game’s charm and flavor.

STAGGERING RPG GOODNESS

What would a great RPG be like without huge numbers of quests, monsters, NPC’s, items, uniques, skills, and spells? Beyond Divinity makes these articles available big-time throughout the game. Here’s some statistics to prove the point:

Quests 300+

NPC’s 600+

Monster Types 140+

Skills and Spells 290+

Items 500+

Equipment Classes 300+

NIFTY STUFF

Most RPG’s contain homages or references to noteworthy prior endeavors, be they games, books, or movies. (For example, Sacred has tons of references to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.) Beyond Divinity has one whopper of an homage. Two NPC’s encountered in the game are known as Edmund and Abbe. So as not to spoil the surprise, I will just say that these are the main characters of one of the greatest adventure books ever written. Think French author, a despicable imprisonment, and revenge of the highest order!

Beyond Divinity has two handy automaps. One fairly small that can be nestled anywhere onscreen to give the player a close-in view of the current environs, including approaching foes. Clicking anywhere on this map will move the party rapidly to the new location. The larger automap, available with a single key press, expectantly, gives you the big picture, but travel is regrettably not possible on this map. The larger map permits helpful annotations by the player.

The Diary has several useful functions. Wonderfully, it records every conversation in the game verbatim, so there’s no need to remember what’s been said or take notes. I used this extensively, particularly when the Death Knight would give you a brief overview of a dangerous dungeon level, indicating what was where. A quest log keeps track of the status of the massive numbers of quests, and includes a “Filter” option to let you specify exactly what quest information you wish to see. Better yet, you can make as many personal notes as you wish on the Automap for easy reference during gameplay. A Trophies section collects complete information defeated enemies. I used this a great deal because it detailed the strengths of weaknesses of enemies repeatedly encountered.

Without giving away too much, the “minigames” in Beyond Divinity are especially interesting and innovative. There’s a pivotal game of chess. In one act, the only way to progress is to become number 1 in the world at something special, where the party is competing against other NPC’s. Many other exciting interludes await the Beyond Divinity gamer. Finally, in something gourmets and gourmand will like, you must concoct a special and in demand recipe.

The handy dual teleport stones return from Divine Divinity. This makes finding a safe harbor quite simple at any time. Potion brewing provided you enhance that skill can come in very handy when far from a merchant, especially just before a big battle.

Beyond Divinity uses a reputation system that affects how characters react to you. Treat one of a group harshly and the rest will attack on sight. You get the idea!

The game has a tremendous system for increasing the power and flexibility of items, including equipment and armor. Some items have a charm quality. That means that magic charms bought or found throughout the game can be attached to the item to turn, for example a mundane sword into a powerful magic weapon. Charms do such things as increase agility scores, like strength, and add magic points. If the player is lucky enough to find a crystal bag, it can be filled with crystals bought or found to enhance character defense only. Crystals come in all shapes and sizes.

Last, but certainly not least, is Beyond Divinity’s smart humor. Some dialogues, most of which are spoken, had me laughing hysterically. Gone are the sophomoric days of RPG humor when you would look at a mirror, which would say “You are looking at the ugliest, dumbest person ever.”

VARIOUS GAME MODES

Beyond Divinity has plenty of combat, but pushes the RPG envelope here also. This is accomplished by the gamer choosing one of the four game difficulty levels when the game begins. Level 1 is skimpy on combat, which is of the real-time, action variety. Level 2 stresses real-time action combat, and presents a higher level of difficulty. Level 3 is tougher still and provides a tactical combat experience where strategy plays a large role. Level 4 is hardcore where the player will find intricate, intense combat at a tactical level.

At all difficulty levels, players can pause the action to make decisions about what each member of the party is to accomplish next. I found even Level 2 action combat to involve strategic considerations.

Hovering the mouse over an enemy shows an ever-changing life bar. Running from combat causes no shame in Beyond Divinity. Sometimes this is necessary if you wander into an area way too tough for your adventurers.

Monsters do not respawn and provide continual fodder for the leveling grist mill. However, see the discussion of the Battlefields above.

REPLAYABILITY

Beyond Divinity’s replay value is very high. Try a run-through without taking advantage of the Battlefields. Then, there’s the different difficulty modes toggling between action and strategic to while away the hours. Or, for the strong of heart, try hardcore. Gamers can play Beyond Divinity with a party of mages or tanks on in-betweens. Or, play a game performing no quests, or one doing all quests. The possibilities seem patently endless.

What’s more, after you complete a run through of Beyond Divinity, the Battlefields are open indefinitely. This affords practically infinite gameplay from this single game. Believe it or not, different quests await one on finishing the main game. A first for RPG’s? I expect so.

SUPPORT

Simultaneously with Beyond Divinity reaching domestic stores, Larian issued a substantial 25MB patch fixing many material problems. Prior versions of the game had been released in other countries, so there was a benchmark. This exhibits extraordinary and welcome support from the developer. As further evidence of this stance, the game was delayed several weeks because of criticism of the voice acting by those playing the Beyond Divinity demo.

GRAPHICS/ MUSIC/ SOUND/ VOICE

For those who read my reviews, I must again affirm that these topics have no impact on my enjoyment of an RPG. To me, an RPG’s story, character development, and gameplay system are the most important aspects of a game. However, I am surely in the minority here, so here goes.

The graphics look similar to Divine Divinity and are adequate and lucid. The view is overhead at an angle, or third person. Some of the larger monsters effectively seem to overwhelm the party in size and demeanor, and the spell effects are something special. You have the helpful capability to zoom in and out of the action with the use of your mouse wheel. I enjoyed closing in on combat sequences for a real taste of the action. Further, the game allows play in a nice variety of screen resolutions from 640×480 all the way to 1600×1200.

The music is anthem-like and contributes to the game’s tone. Voice acting occurs throughout, and adds to the ambiance. Sounds, especially those of combat, are excellent.

I feel constrained to mention something that really seems to irk some of those playing Beyond Divinity. As mentioned above, the game was delayed to improve the voice acting from the game’s demo, in particular, the voice of the Death Knight. A number of people, not me, seem quite put out by the Death Knight’s voice in the retail version as well. I must admit it reminds me of an angry cab driver. In any event, the Death Knight does not speak constantly, so I expect most will not let this detract from the pleasure of playing this terrific game.

CRITICISMS

Though I prefer single player games, I should point out that Beyond Divinity has no multiplayer mode, only single player. In this gaming day and age, I expect that many will be disappointed by this.

As usual with such a massive effort as releasing an RPG, Beyond Divinity has its share of bugs. Most are small potatoes and simply annoying, like the in-game diary not updating when quests are completed, or occasionally romps by a character in the dark void adjoining a game environment.

On the other hand, there is a serious imbalance in Act I. That act is extremely linear and serves as a symbolic tutorial so the gamer can become familiar with the controls, combat, and questing. But, Act I is no slouch and requires some intense puzzle-solving and combat. And, as mentioned above, monsters do not respawn to permit revisiting areas to up the party’s experience and levels. Unfortunately, one of the Battlefields (Level 2) is completely devoid of anything other than chest and objects to loot for treasure and items. Whatever quests, resultant rewards, and fiends were there have apparently disappeared into the great ethereal void. This caused a real problem when trying to complete the first act which, not unexpectedly, requires combat against some high-level foes.

The inventory of the party members has no option to automatically arrange the contents, though you can toggle principal object categories on and off to ease the finding of items. The player must laboriously move items around to make everything neat for quick handling. If the player does not do this, a character’s inventory is a jumbled mass of disparate and overlapping items.

Finally, Beyond Divinity seemed a bit overwhelming in the combat area, particularly near the beginning. I found myself frequently losing choke point combats, and having to reload saved games constantly to try another strategy. (Opportunely, the game’s save anywhere system made this state of affairs bearable.)

BOTTOM LINE

Beyond Divinity provided just about a perfect and entertaining RPG event. Many playing sessions stretched into the wee hours of the morning, usually finding me on the edge of my seat doing just one more quest or one more dungeon level. It was great fun to control a party again. No question that, those, like me, who enjoyed Divine Divinity will appreciate the many impressive qualities in Beyond Divinity; as well as those new to the Divinity universe who can expect a wonderful RPG experience!

Final Verdict: 91%

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