Gameplay

I’ll Swallow Your Soul!

For the most part, combat in Divine Divinity is left-clicking on a monster, and either it, or you, dies. Things become a bit more strategic with bows and throwing spears, where you’ll circle around large groups of enemies, sniping the weaker monsters off first. Spells and skills behave in a similar manner. You simply select what you want to do, left-click, and you’re off. It’s unfortunately that this paradigm in a 2D Action-RPG hasn’t been broken yet, as Divine Divinity relies strongly upon time-honored RPG techniques such as ‘leveling addiction’ and ‘treasure galore’ to induce players to make their way through the game. Except for bosses, which can kill you in a couple of hits early in the game, there isn’t much strategy to be had with normal monsters.

Frosty

Get Your Priorities Straight

Mmm, Cabbage

Thankfully, there are a number of tools at your disposal to make leveling relatively painless. The most notable aspect of this are your teleporter stones. After you finish the first major area in the game, you’ll be in possession of two teleporter stones. To make things simple, we’ll call one A, and the other B. If you drop A, then you drop B and use B, then it’ll teleport you back to A. Similarly, if you use A without picking A up, it’ll teleport you back to B. From there, you pick up B and continue with your adventuring. It’s advisable to leave A by a bedside, as you can rest in almost any bed in Divine Divinity for free to recover your health, mana, and stamina. There are no limitations on teleporting. Our wounded hero could be surrounded by a horde of skeletons led by an angry ghost, teleport back to bed, rest, and teleport back into the fray fully rejuvenated. While this may seem a bit abusive, there are certain battles in the game that are so stacked against your favor that this is a rather necessary technique to become familiar with.

Striking Similarities

There are suspicious resemblances between Divine Divinity and a certain best-selling Action-RPG. There are four attributes (Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Constitution) and three variable statistics (Vitality, Mana, Stamina). When you gain a level, you gain 5 statistic points to allocate, and one point to level up a skill. There are three classes (Survivor, Warrior, Wizard), each with 32 unique skills evenly divided into four subclasses. Each skill can be leveled up to a maximum of 5, and there are level requirements for unlocking more powerful skills and for leveling up skills. This prevents level 5 characters from maximizing Sword Expertise or Elemental Strike. As can be expected, characters may save skill points upon leveling up, choosing to expand heavily when more powerful skills and spells are available to them.

Raving Goblin

Springer, Anyone?

An Uncomfortable Analogy

There is a fair amount of overlap between all the classes. It is impossible to get through the game specializing in just one class of skills. Equipment restrictions are based on attributes, not class. Starting attributes vary slightly, but each class has full access to the other classes’ skills and spells. The only real difference between each class is a unique skill, but these are negligible. Fighters may do a spin-attack at a considerable loss of stamina. Survivors may crouch while they’re walking (at a ridiculous stamina drain) to be less noticeable by monsters (which never really seemed to work), and Wizards may switch positions with another monster via teleport. In the end, the player ends up creating a character that fits their playing style the best. The character immediately chosen does not dictate the playing style.

There are various types of damage such as physical, fire, spiritual, and poison. Monsters exhibit varying degrees of vulnerability and invulnerability to different elements. It’s worth noting that poison damage is quite significant in this game. Unlike the laughable amount of damage poison deals in typical RPGs, poisoned weapons (poisoned by using a Survivor skill) are quite capable of clearing out bosses near the end of the game with impunity. Mana does not regenerate, making mana leech weapons or mana potions rather essential for spellcasters. Hotkeying skills and items is vital, and they are easily assigned to the function keys in a system almost identical to Diablo II’s. Weapons and armor can break, but it’s more of an annoyance than anything else. Gold is not scarce in Divine Divinity, and it’s an easy teleport back to your village/town to repair any broken or worn equipment. The game adopts a bartering system identical to Fallout, where all items have a monetary value, and shopkeepers tend not to have much gold on them. Bartering doesn’t add much to the whole experience, and early parts of the game can be irritating for players who aren’t used to carrying a mix of gold and valuables for easy trade.