Divine Divinity
| Platforms: | PC |
| Publisher: | CDV Software |
| Developer: | Larian Studios |
| Genres: | RPG / Action Role-Playing |
| Release Date: | September 19, 2002 |
| Game Modes: | Singleplayer |
Perhaps not quite divine, but still the ultimate modern-day Ultima.
In many ways, Divine Divinity is the Diablo II that a lot of us wanted but didn’t get. In yet other ways, it’s the Diablo II we’d have kicked out the curb. We get a very familiar take on action role-playing here with all of the usual trimmings – random itemization, upgradable character attributes, skills aplenty and monsters galore – but with an added focus on NPC interaction, multiple-choice quests and an expansive free-roaming aspect that reminds one of Baldur’s Gate or even Ultima.
Chill out, foolish Orc! With the freeze spell you can turn opponents into ice sculptures.
The preliminaries you’re required to go through before being thrown into unavoidable dungeon crawls are pretty extensive by action role-playing standards. First you pick one of three ubiquitous character classes to play as, be it the warrior, mage or rogue (which the game calls the ‘survivor’ for whatever reason) and proceed on a quest to banish evil and reunite the seven races of Rivellon. After some investigating you uncover an extensive network of catacombs which you must clear for the first seven or so character levels, but get past that initial hurdle and you’re rewarded with quite a big, open-ended world to explore, replete with tons of villages, towns, hidden treasures and side quests.
Overall there’s a lot more complexity here than in your average ARPG. Alongside such additions as an alchemy skill for brewing potions, a reputation system, an ability to enchant or poison weapons and special combat moves we also get a skill system that isn’t conventionally limited to the three character classes. That last part is especially unusual, as it allows each character free access to the game’s entire pool of 96 skills, potentially yielding such absurd hybrids as an axe-wielding mage. This odd departure disrupts character building by quite a bit, but on the upside you get a lot more stuff to play with.
As in Morrowind and Ultima VII, many of the items laying around in Rivellon can be used or combined, moved, and repositioned (occasionally revealing elements like secret passageways). Like any RPG worth its weight in magic armor — and very much unlike Diablo II — Divinity has a complex (if not very compelling) story, and boatloads of quests. You’ll need to go on your fair share of them too, because many of the game’s straight-path quests can be tough without vital experience points under your belt.
But All Good Things Come To An End
Ultimately there’s not one fatal flaw with Divine Divinity (the missing multiplayer comes close though), but rather we get a long list of grinding annoyances and inconsistencies spread far and wide. Take the controls for starters – while Diablo II perfected the isometric hack ‘n’ slash with its remarkably fluid mouse interface, Divinity is lacking greatly when it comes to navigating your onscreen avatar. A skewed perspective makes navigating around the world without getting stuck a bit of a challenge.
Greetings noble and extremely rare blacksmith!
It took me but several days to find thine ass.
Running up on the annoyance scale is the aforementioned skill system and some weapon balancing issues. You can find frost weapons that all but break combat in your favor, or you can just employ the extremely useful ‘freeze’ spell with the same result. Bows, which in addition to being substantially overpowered come with infinite ammunition, can do upwards of 90 damage early in the game, and often I would use them to kill the more powerful Guardian skeleton mini-bosses. There’s a difficulty slider that doesn’t require a full game restart but Divinity is a tad too easy to begin with, and perhaps a little unbalanced. It’s also too big for its own good. While the game world is impressively large, a lot of that real estate is merely generic wilderness used to farm XP.
Although you can trade with most NPC’s, proper specialized merchants aren’t spread out intuitively, and the ones that are available aren’t always packing enough gold for your wares – plus there’s seriously nothing more annoying than not being able to find a shop to sell your crap when playing cart mule, which drags on for far too long. Simple RPG logic dictates that any three houses nestled in close proximity must have a shop nearby.
So is Divine Divinity worth your time investment? Eh, mostly I guess. It plays half-decently as an action RPG mired by those pesky quirks and odd design. But the quests are fun and the sense of completion experienced after clearing up an entire dungeon is oodles more rewarding than in most ARPGs.
System Requirements: Pentium II 450 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 8 MB Video, 2.5 GB HDD, Win 98
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Buy Game:
www.gog.com
store.steampowered.com
www.amazon.com -
Community Website
www.galaraf.net
kiya.xanlosch.de
www.geocities.ws
chronicle.nafs.ca -
Wiki
divinity.wikia.com -
Vintage Website
www.larian.com
Tags: Divine Divinity Download Full PC Game Review
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How do you even extract this? I extracted all 3 at once, but each iso comes in its own folder, not one iso with the game in it like I’m used to. Is there supposed to be 3 separate iso files? Also, Part 1 seems to be corrupted. Can’t extract. Always get an error.
And once extracted, how do I set up the file path? Am I supposed to leave them in the folders their in, and just extract the iso into those folders? Or do I need to put all the extracted files from the iso(s) in the main game folder?
Here we go again. No corruption whatsoever on part1.
It’s a 3 cd game dude. Just mount the CDs and install the game.
Lol I feel so sorry for the guy, It’s fuc*** 2016, even my little brother knows that. Thanks a lot for the game, pure gold.
I love this game so I downloaded it. When I try to install it, it ejects the disk and says to Insert Install Disk 1. This happens from a burned disk or mounted ISO. Please help… I want to play this game again. BTW, I have windows 10… but that shouln’t be the problem. Thanks for the great games!
Boy do I feel stupid! I noticed that I accidentally wrote the ISOs to DVD-R disks… Rewiting them to CD-R disks worked to correct the problem! Thanks again!
You don’t have to write them to discs though. Just mount them on virtual drives
Hi.I cant get thru ,insert CD1 part of installation 🙁 .Tried to re-mount iso file ,but nothing seems to work for me.
i know im gunna seem like a big noob but i need some help….downloaded it and un packed it no problem. ive mounted all three discs and ran the install. here is were i hit a problem….it tells me to enter disc one…ive already mounted them and its telling me i need disc one…ive tried unmounting all an re mounting and no dice…ive tried one at a time and no luck either…please help….thanks
easy.
copy the contents of every CD into one folder on your hard-drive. install from there.
thanks so much, i got it to install but 87 percent in it tells me that the hints.txt could not be opened. says to check if my disk is full [which its not] and that i have access to the destination directory. well i dont understand what the issue is to be honest. my disk is not full and when i went to find the hint.txt file it had a pad lock on the file. im able to access the file and read it….im noobish at this so i apologize for my ignorance. my dad and i played this all the time when i was little and he recently passed and im wanting to waqlk down memory lane…any help will be greatly appreciated….thanks
im all out of ideas….ive been working on this all day and cant get pass this error. i know its not my disk space cause i have 281 gb free. i found the file hints.txt and ive set the premissions sop it can be accessed but it still doesnt work. if anyone has any suggestions of what i can do to fix it i would be more than greatful. the install starts and gets all the way to 86 percent and shows up with the error ive stated above. help would be greatly appreciated. thanks.
Yeah no idea. Sometimes if you have too big of a hard drive the installer will get confused by it. I installed this game on a 40gb hdd, and didn’t get any error
you should buy the gog version, it’s easy to install and you will be able to play it on a modern pc
well hell, thanks again.
how is this website offer it for free? it costs on steam and this website gives it 3.5? deserves at least 4 I am ere in 2018!!!
Great game. And epic music. RIP Kirill Pokrovsky.