Divine Divinity

"A Great but Slightly Flawed Game"

The game Divine Divinity is an oddly named but well-made game. In most aspects it is similar to Diablo, Baldur's Gate, and Arcanum.

Graphics: For some reason, people like to complain about the graphics in this game. I have no idea why. The graphics are smooth and the animations are fluid. Everything in this game looks great, except for the cut scenes which look a bit cheesy. A usual complaint I see is that you cannot find items or target enemies because the graphics are bad...this isn't true. The graphics are great, they just don't seem to realize that the Ctrl and Alt keys are there for a good reason. 9/10

Sound: The music in this game was well done and helps the experience of playing it well. The main problem here is that the voice acting is usually on average and often below par. Nothing got annoying, however. 7/10

Controls: The controls in this game were well done. You use your mouse to attack, speak, and otherwise interact with your world. Your keyboard is used for many other functions including hot keying items, entering amounts (usually for gold), and other miscellaneous functions such as enemy targeting and item finding. 9/10

Story: The main story itself is your usual ''Evil threatens the world and you are the savior/chosen one and you must save the world''. The only thing saving the story from a low score is that there are so many side quests with their own stories that you sometimes get almost as involved with them as you do the main story. This is good because the main story is so cliche. 5/10

Originality: This game's story and design are nothing new, but the skill system is something that hasn't exactly been done before. You start the game picking one of three classes from one of two genders. You can then progress through the game gaining levels. As you gain levels, you gain one skill point per level and two points for every five levels. You may distribute these points in any way, barring level restrictions, but any class can really become whatever you want, only making your initial class a Warrior, Survivor, or Mage what they are by name. Some games have done similar things, but this does it better than the vast majority.

Stability: Here is one of the larger problems with Divine Divinity. Until you patch it, this game has a bad tendency to crash. Sometimes you will have just killed an enemy and it will sit there a second, then exit to your desktop. Even after the patch it still does this sometimes, but the patch helps. Another problem is that you cannot minimize the game without it crashing. A few times I found myself accidentally hitting the Windows key and going back to my desktop. I've only had it ''not'' crash a total of one time. Even then it took a few minutes to get the game maximized again. This part of it can take some patience. 3/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/24/03