Beyond Divinity

We all love role playing games. The thought of settling down to a cosy, lengthy, traditional epic, authentic to the very spelling of "Elkar" is enough to make any of us at VGL want to toggle a quest screen. This month allowed such an opportunity, with Larian Studio's latest production, Beyond Divinity.

The usual RPG dynamic of the character-less lone stranger/random adventurer has evolved ever so slightly for the Divine Divinity's sequel. Now your miscellaneous do-gooder is coupled with an angry Death Knight, quick to remind you he "lives for pure chaos". In a turning-of-the-pages style plot update, you learn that the anti hero was bound to your respective soul as a punishment for trying to kill Samuel, the evil Arch Daemon he served under. With that slightly forced fantasy commentary, you're thrusted into the masochist's dungeon. Somewhat sparse tool-tips guide you awkwardly through your first steps, but anyone who's played an RPG before should settle in pretty quickly without them.

Your initial task is to escape. Handily, you cell door is wide open, so you're free to experiment with the rats gnawing at the corpses that litter the already filthy hallways of your captor's rustic property. Across maps literally dripping with period detail, you're given the chance to test your newly built duo, both of whom's stats are entirely at your disposal during character creation. Warrior, survivor, or wizard are the general categories. Although you can freely assign skill points to the usual attributes - strength, agility and so on, you do have to conform to one of the three classes for your preliminary skill tree. Its best to build your players as different as possible. A mage could heal a fighter, whilst disabling enemies with slowing spells, for example. None of this is obvious though. In fact, a lot of essential information is provided in the loading/saving screen tips you'll end up spending quite significant amounts of time glaring at.

Yes, glaring. One such tip advises "Save often, you never know who (or what) awaits you 'round the next corner". What is failed to mention here is what's usually "awaiting" you are rather anti-climactic instant-death traps. Avoidable, but most often completely unexpected during the corridors of Samuel's establishment, they force you either to save often or risk repeating long stretches of play. This is particularly irritating, because Beyond Divinity isn't the kind of game you'd want to repeat sections of, due to its progression orientated game play.

Combat is mostly reminiscent of Diablo, if not quite as smooth. It's fast, sometimes bewilderingly fast, so its a good thing space pauses the action. There's a default key for auto-attacking the closest enemy, so easier grunts aren't a problem but if you're unfortunate enough to stumble across higher level monsters before you're ready for them, one of your characters could be dead in a couple of hits. In the usual fashion, potions instantly replenish health so often fighting major enemies revolve around the correct timing of consumption of your health vials. Its addictive, nonetheless; level ups are often hugely rewarding, allowing you to add to an unusually detailed skill tree, and the acquisition of a phenomenal range of new equipment incite a sense of achievement through long, sometimes tedious battling.

While locked doors hinder exploration where necessary, environments are moderately open, allowing you to clear out sections of the underground locales as you please. Most often progress is straight forward - with the aid of "battlefield merchants" who allow you to recuperate your gear and replenish item stocks - but there were occasions we found ourselves trawling through miles of already plundered terrain having missed important items. "You'll never find the key!" chided a note, written in blood on a nearby wall. We weren't amused.

In an effort to keep a flow to the action during pauses like this, instant portals to The Battlefields are available, seeing you suddenly transported to a whole other world. The usual staple of druids, and weapon smiths constitute a camp you spawn in, and a single path leads to sets of dungeon entrances that get progressively harder as you keep going. Immersion, it seems, is not a concept Larian are familiar with. Such shameless level-upping areas, exchanged only in texture sets across each act provide a retreat for when the going gets tough in the "real" game. Effectively, its lazy level design implemented badly, with about as much imagination as road kill.

Areas are generally dark, with so many repeated debris sprites that its often easier on the eyes to focus on the minimap despite the authentic high res textures. The 3D models on isometric backdrops don't quite fit either; characters look stretched, and tighter corridor battles will find you struggling to focus on enemies outlines behind solid walls.

Where games like Sacred or Balders Gate promote exploration with countless sub quests and varied maps complimented by some competent dialogue, Beyond Divinity provides a very rigid path with an alternative, even more rigid path. This would be fine if the combat was enough to keep this style of play interesting, but the truth is, it doesn't quite cut it in an already refined genre without something significant to set it apart. With a needlessly complicated trade screen, no multiplayer, and voice acting that's quite frankly insulting, Beyond Divinity surfaces as an incredibly generic RPG. Often playable, but sometimes frustrating and never original through its 100 hours plus playing time, in a PC games market that thrives on innovation, Larian Games seem to have missed something fundamental. For fans of the original, and hack 'n' slash players at best.

Sam Goldwater