Every once in a while, a game comes along that revolutionizes a genre and brings a whole new crowd of people rushing to their PCs to see what the fuss is all about. Back in the day, it was Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Then in the mid-90s, there were games like Command & Comquer and Starcraft. People thought games like Diablo II would clear a path for RPG fans to crawl on the PC bandwagon. Well, they didn't. It seems as if the PC RPG'er is much more content with a game like Neverwinter Nights or Morrowind and less content with games with games like Divine Divinity.
Not too long ago, I finished playing Prince of Qin, a Diablo-style RPG that, aside from its setting in ancient China, didn't really bring too much to the table. Now I am confronted with another Diablo-style RPG that doesn't even bring that to the table.
So, what does Divine Divinity have going for it? Well, compared to Prince of Qin, the graphics are a nice upgrade, and you don't have to drown out all the horrible localization. There is also a semi-coherent storyline that involves the seven different races of the game world; the orcs, humans, mages, dwarves, lizard people, elves, and imps. However, the whole, defeating the "Lord of Chaos" plotline does seem a tad bit similar to the whole "kill Diablo" storyline. Your character does also have a bit more coherent manner of speaking than Prince of Qin's protagonist, Fu Su, and you can also choose your starting class: Fighter, Mage, or Survivor (Rogue) or both male and female persuasion, so something a little new there.
There are also "Sight" and "Hearing" stats that presumable will allow you or monsters to hear and see what's going on outside of each other's range, and create ambushes accordingly. The maps for the game are also pretty darn large. For example, I spent level 1-25 on the first map, and if my character wanted to run from left to right for the entire length of the map, I'd probably have to wait for my stamina bar to refill 2 or 3 times. However, if you dig the whole running about outside bit, there's also a quite a bit of dungeon crawling, which throws you into the boring dark dungeons enough of the time to make you think you're coming down with the black lung.
There's also a new system that gives you reputation for each different shopkeeper out there. You've got your global rapport which goes up and down throughout the game, and then there's the personal relationship you've got with each individual shopkeeper. So, you could have a negative reputation to the rest of the world, but Gene over at the sandwich shop thinks you're a swell guy. You develop this reputation by paying more for goods in a trade, or giving the shopkeeper free items that you don't really care about, like Stamina potions.
Aside from that, you really could make the case that this WAS Diablo, with just a modified skin on it. In fact, if you put me on the witness stand, and demanded that I tell you whether or not this was just Diablo with some minor tweaks, I wouldn't be able to answer you.
There are minor differences, like the ability to combine potions, and I'm guessing, at some later level, distill potions for the herbs around you. However, the level you need to have that skill at is higher than 2, (because for the life of me, I can't do anything with those damn herbs.) and since most of this game still boils down to you being able to take and give out damage (you don't have any NPC help that you don't summon yourself.) the unique abilities that this engine provides are quickly threshed out of the game. Besides, Prince of Qin allowed you to create all your own armor and weapons, and that pretty much still felt like Diablo.
Control in the game is a horrid mess. For the most part, it ends up like Diablo...point and click where you want to go. However, there is a teeming mass of humanity thrown about the game for no other reason to add flavor, but 99.9% of the people in the game have the same thing to tell you. What's point of adding flavor if it's all bland? You don't see anyone cook up a bowl of chili and then throw in a carton of unflavored tofu for taste.
As far as gameplay goes, this gets incredibly irksome, because you'll be trying to run along on the screen, constantly clicking to move forward, and then a person will materialize at the edge of your field of vision, and voila! Guess who's switched over to the "Chewin' the Fat" screen? In Prince of Qin, you had to actually run up to the person, allowing the player to just click once more and change their path. Not so in DD.
This got to be so bothersome in large groups of people that I felt absolutely no remorse at completely devastating an entire camp of my soldiers that were mind controlled to attack me. They had committed the crime of wasting valuable system resources, and they were ticking me off. They all had to die. I didn't even try to find a way to save the 100+ men that were slaughtered, I was just THAT tired of getting into the same conversation with all of them.
Also in the "gripes with controls" area, falls the fact that the you character will not fight back it its being attacked unless you instruct it to do so. So if you're trying to pop up the potion screen real quick while an enemy's chasing you down, and you want your character to turn and fight, you're in a real world of pain.
So, back to the main plot. The story goes like this. In the intro movie you die. Seriously. You're fighting a bunch of orcs, and you get popped. However, you get saved by a little white cat and a band of nearby healers who do a lot of healing of cases similar to yours. Apparently, at the time of your dying, you were "marked" along with 2 others. Together, the three of you must stop the coming devastation, which you will learn about later on in the game. I say apparently, because for a good part of the game, you have no clue as to what the heck's going on, except that people are trying to kill you...again.
For those of you who haven't played Diablo before, this is how your standard PC "Click-RPG" works. You've got your left-mouse button. It will activate the most logical course of action for your character. Click on empty space, and he'll move there. Click on an enemy, and he will attack. Click on a chest and he'll open it. The right mouse button will execute functions you've mapped to it. Generally, you bind a skill like a healing spell or an attack spell to it, occasionally something like "Identify" or "Detect Traps".
Basically, click to do everything. The keyboard doesn't do too much except allow you to turn automaps on and off, and save your game quickly. There's a helpful little gauge at the bottom to show your health (red), mana (blue), stamina (yellow), and experience until the next level (green).
You interact with people in the world who want to sell you goods, solve quests for them, or in the case of Divine Divinity, whine and moan about how you have your weapons drawn, and then tell you one of 5 things. Your weapons and armor all have 2 common stats, their durability rating, and weight. Hold too much weight, and you get encumbrance penalties. Run out of durability and the item is useless until you get it repaired. Armor is DD is done a little differently. Your armor scores for each piece of equipment are added and averaged some way, so if you've got a current armor rating of 20, and plop on a belt that has an armor rating of 80, you end up with something like 36, and not 100.
That's essentially all that you need to know to get through your standard "Click-RPG". In Divine Divinity, as I mentioned earlier, there are three different classes, with a male and female character for each, depending on what you feel like playing as. I don't believe there are any gameplay differences for the two, but I didn't bother making a female character, so I really couldn't tell you. Like Diablo II, the class you pick for your character doesn't have any effect on what armor and weaponry they can use...it just gives you a different set of starting stats. Unlike Diablo II and Prince of Qin, you can get the skills from each class. If you're a mage, and you want to do more damage with your sword, you can scroll over to the Path of the Warrior and obtain that skillset. This is kinda cool, although it does pretty much take all the individuality out of whichever character class you decide to use.
In order to get about from place to place, you've got 3 choices. You can walk, which totally sucks after a while. Then there's the option of using the little teleporter pyrmaid that you get as a present in the first town. Once you pick up a second, you can set one down as an anchor point and send yourself back to town, near a bed, to your favorite pub, whatever. There are also fixed transporters that you'll gain activation scrolls for which will allow you to jump from major location to location. It's a pretty nice system that'll save you some time, especially considering how big the maps are.
But in order for Divine Divinity to have emerged from the shadow cast by the big, bad Diablo, it would have had to have been a bit different. And although it sorta tried to, it also took the safe route, and made itself very similar to Diablo. As my old boss used to say, "Nobody ever gets fired for making the same game." Even the font for the monster names, items, and skills are reminiscent of D2. Not exactly (you can tell the 5s from the 6s.) but close enough. In addition, they carry over the stupidest gameplay aspect of Diablo II, the spawning monsters that spawn monsters that also spawn.
Do you know what I'm talking about? Here's the deal. You come up against Monster Z. Monster Z is a decent monster. (He's just misunderstood.) You'd beat it hand to hand without too much problem, except for the fact that Monster Z summons an infinite number of Monster Ys to protect him. Monster Y can't really take you in a fight...but it makes up for that fact by summoning an infinite number of Monster Xs. Now, Monster X is no problem at all to beat...1-hit kill. But 8 of them on you take a little bit of time to kill, and Monster Y is summoning them all the time, and Monster Z is summoning new Monster Ys all the time.
This is the stupidest thing I have ever seen, especially in light of the fact that you get NO EXPERIENCE for killing off all of the summoned monsters, and only get a medium amount of exp for killing Monster Z. By the time I hit level 25, I'd already run into *2* different types of this monster. What the heck, people! Don't you realize that this really, really ticks off the player?! This is especially annoying with the quirks in the DD controls.
As far as sound goes, it's kind of a mixed bag. All the smacking and pounding sound effects are kind of nice, and the hearing stats allow you to hear enemies from far off, and that's cool, but the background music is not so hot, and varies wildly in quality. Fortunately, you're hearing the regular effect enough that it accounts for a larger part of the soudn score I gave it, but the music creeps up enough on you to make it annoying.
So, in the final tally, this game gets put above Prince of Qin in the battle for most like, but not quite Diablo II. I'd recommend this over Prince of Qin, but this doesn't bring too much new to the table either. It carries a price tag that's too steep to recommend outright. At $29.99 I'd advise someone to pick it up. Oh yeah, and if you know anyone who bought the game, go into the "\Run\localizations\english" path of the install on their HD. Edit the hints.txt file, and have some fun at your friend's expense. Putting something like, "Hey Bob! Why do you keep yelling at the computer? I can't really hear you." should be good for a laugh. Hehehehehe. =)
