Divine Divinity (PC Action RPG) - My Impressions inside

[Despair]

Ok, Time to share more impressions of the game, after couple of hours of play time last night.

I will have to say that its looks very nice. Character models, environments and everything in between rendered with care and lots of small details. Character animation is also very good. I have seen only one small village, an underground dungeon and outside woods, but the place feels like a living world. Animals and monsters fill the surroundings, and the game hides the unxplored ares with Fog of War(how its called in other reviews), but once you explore the area you can see everything clearly on the map.

The automap is done nicely, and what I love about it that it displays all the objects, NPCs and monsters, which makes it much easier to navigate through the world. Seeing monsters on the map especially helpfull, and something Diablo 2 was lacking.

Character development is done in the way simular to Diablo stats/skill increases. Once you gain enough experience to level up, you get 5 points to distribute to stats, and 1 skill point that you can apply to learn a skill. There are many skills to learn, in many ways. Warrior can not only specialize in brute fighting, but learn some helpfull Magical skills. Or Mage can get Lockpicking skill, or specialize in Pickpocketing. Another cool skill is Indentify, which works somewhat different than in Diablo, and once you learn it, automatically identifies the mystery items, if the level of your skill matches the level of the item. Repair item skill allows you to repair item without need to return to the town, and it doesnt break the item's durability, something that simular skill in Diablo did. Nice touch.

Combat is very easy to get into. Simularly to Diablo you target the enemy you want attack, and proceed till one of you is dead. You do have an option to sheath/take out your weapons at any time, and most characters wont be very friendly to you if you approch them with weapons drawn. Right click is used for magical spells, or special attack/move, unique to each of 3 characters.

I chose to play as Survivalist who's pretty much Rogue/Assassin hybrid. After some leveling, I got Meteor(your typical Fireball magic spell) which does a good damage and only requires 2 mana, Indentify skill, Lockpick skill and my character started with 1 point into Assassin Kiss skill, that makes attacking with Daggers more powerfull. Before Meteor spell, fights were rather dangerous, especially against Arbalet Orcs, but now you can pretty much frie them with constant meteors and then finish up with a dagger slash.

I wish this game had autorun option that Diablo 2 has. While you walk with decent speed, and running is possible, it not very intuitive, and game could have use that option.

There are plenty of text to read, since place is filled with various books, manuscripts, notes etc. THere are plenty of conversations with or between various NPC, and you always have more than a few options to answer.

Game also presents you with a great selection of quests, wich vary in difficulty and style. From convincing a mentally ill mage to unfreeze one of his friends, finding the way on how duplicate healing gem to save lives of 2 soldiers to escorting the healer group through woods full of dangers, game gives you alot of freedom.

Well, You have to click multiple times to get your character to run, or switch direction of walk/run. You can hold the button, and then he will move toward the location of cursor, but its done not as good as in D2. Your character starts running if the distance to destination is far, and he can run until your stamina runs out, and speed of movement depends on the total weight of all items and equipment you carry.

I need to check the manual for key mapping, and see what are the shorcuts and options it has.

More impressions after extra time spent playing

I got to try the teleport stones. You get one as the gift, and the way they work, you got to drop one where you plan to place your base, usually near the bed or item shop, and use another when you need to instantly comeback to town ala townportal spell in Diablo. But first you need to retrieve the 2nd stone, which is located in deep dungeon, so you got to be ready for some heavy fighting, right after you teleport there. Horde of skeletons prowl the dungeon, armed with clubs and bows, they are pretty easily killed, usually few sword attacks or 1-2 meteors take care of them. But there are plenty of them there. Another way to traver around is Set Teleporter Platforms that will instantly transport you somewhere. In my case it was another basement.

I also got to finish up a quest, where you had to find the way to heal 2 people when you only have 1 healing gem. The way you have to use knowledge from the books, and special magic item to succed is pretty interesting. After accomplishing the task, I got a great deal of experience and a very usefull Restoration(Heal) spell that is great, especially when deep inside the dungeon and running low on life.

Spent 2 skill points I recieved on 2 more skills :

Freeze, which unfortunately is not as good as description said. And Repair, to be able to repair my broken items. But again, it was dissapointment, since it either I who didnt understand how it supposed to work, or the skill level is too low to be usefull(which I dont think so). Anyway, I pretty much continued using my Meteor as magic attack and had to stop by Item Shop to repair my broken Daggers and shop for better Armor. I got Scale Mail, Decent Skull Cap and Good Boots. Also sold off some of the junk I was carrying which improved my moveability alot.

I do need to get another point into Identify, since Shop keeper charging 150 for each item to identify and gold is running low.

While exploring underground, I found a shrine, which granted me a zombie follower that was fighting on my side, but unfortunately died when I had to return to the town. He was a pretty good help, especially when fighting Big Skeletons and Magic Skeletons.

I also met with some Orcs, that wanted me do a quest for them, which I accepted.

[NeoZeedeater]

Thanks for the impressions. I have been interested in the game for a while but I haven't played it yet. I should see if there's a demo.

[Despair]

There is a demo available, or so I heard. You should check it out.

This game is also has a great music score. I havent gotten far into the world, but few themes that I heard were very nice.

[skelly]

Yeah, I want to check this out as well.

I tried the Gothic (1) demo this last weekend and unfortunately it didn't do much for me. There's so much NPC interaction -- it's like medieval Shenmue. I'm less excited about Gothic 2, now.

[Despair]

Plus its only $20 at Best Buy.

[Despair]

Well, Played more last night. Still exploring the dungeons under Healer village. Those are pretty big, and exploration take longer than it would have taken for the simular are in Diablo. Lots of combat was done, mostly against skeletons, but there are more encounters with Ghouls, Skeleton Guardins and Skeleton Summoners, that can summon more regular skeletons to help their attacks.

Found alot of great equipment though. The way DD works, that items generate differently every time you load up the game, so you can continuosly re-load before opening a chest containing a magic item, and try until you find something that suits your liking. I was lucky to score Scorpion Boots, that gave me great boost of Magic, Life, and Strenght, Very cool and tough Armor and good pair of gloves and new helmet. My mana is like 150 now, and since I upgraded my Meteor spell to level 2, it does much greater damage now.

The game is also full of humor. From very funny descriptions of your traits in the statistics menu, to the comments in some of the books you find, or conversations you can find yourself overhearing, the game does a great job keeping you in a good mood. In one part you get to listen to conversation between 2 skeletons that disscuss the possibilities of them even being alive, and how can they actually move without having anything but bones. Pretty funny stuff.