Review Beyond Divinity charms the pants off GameSpy

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Beyond Divinity

<a href="http://pc.gamespy.com/">GameSpy</a> has written <A href="http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/beyond-divinity/511172p1.html?fromint=1">their review</a> of <A href="Http://www.riftrunner.com">Beyond Divinity</a>, giving it a <b>4/5 stars</b>, and generally finding no fault at all in the body of the writing. Though, they do mention voice acting and bugs in the cons, but that's pretty much it. Here's a clip:
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<blockquote>Perhaps the most important addition to the game is something called "Battlefields": randomly generated alternate universes that can be successively accessed act to act, from anywhere in the main game. Stuck on some insidious puzzle? Wits fried by some impossible-to-beat beasty? Slip over to one of these pocket dimensions and you can trade with the well-stocked locales and take up mini-quests that plunge you into dungeons where you can accumulate extra experience and loot. Aside from making the game highly replayable, the genius of this approach is its simple variety, preventing epic burnout by letting you blow off steam in mindless McDungeon crawls. </blockquote>
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I'm just curious how interesting this battlefields actually are. I've only heard two options, and neither of them were that positive on the subject.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.larian.com">Larian site</A>

 

[Vault Dweller]

BF=bad clone of D2: an area filled with identical monsters and a dungeon filled with the same monsters in the middle. Overall, playing BD, it's hard to understand how did they manage to screw up DD original concepts so badly.

 

[Fireblade]

BF=bad clone of D2: an area filled with identical monsters and a dungeon filled with the same monsters in the middle. Overall, playing BD, it's hard to understand how did they manage to screw up DD original concepts so badly.

Very true.

The much-touted "randomness" of the Battlefields is basically bullshit. The overland map for the Battlefields (in each Act) and the location of everything there is static. The quests are the same simple "retrieve an item" stuff, only thing that varies is which merchant gives you which quest. The dungeon walls and the items within are generated randomly, but big deal...nothing special's ever in those levels, and all the monsters are identical, so how does that make it replayable? Monsters don't respawn or anything. The whole thing is basically just an excuse to not have to create as many high-quality areas in the game. Not to mention the quests and dungeons in the Battlefield are buggy as hell. Quests not appearing in your log, quests re-appearing in your log after you've finished them, monsters and objects (like bookshelves) spawning in the middle of walls in the dungeons, women being referred to as "he" in the quest log, a quest monster named Abe being referred to as "an Abe" in the quest log. I went to my conversation log to look over my conversation when a Battlefields NPC gave me a quest. Apparently, he said I needed to kill "the $NPC$".

 

[Barghest]

Try the latest patch. Fixes some of those problems.

The Battlefields are still shit though.

 

[Fireblade]

Try the latest patch. Fixes some of those problems.

The Battlefields are still shit though.

Actually, I am using the latest patch. But one or two of the problems I mentioned are fixed now, yes.

 

[Barghest]

I have a horrible suspicion that BD was originally developed around co-op play 'D2 style' Which explains those fucking Battlefields, the second character, and a few other oddities.

Not a bad game so far. That is the best you can get out of me for most games!

Still damn buggy in places though.

 

[Fireblade]

Yeah, it's pretty good regardless of the bit of stupidity they introduced.

 

[Transcendent One]

Judging from what you guys say, these "Battlefields" are starting to sound to me like some of those really poor quality Daggerfall dungeons, but in an isometric environment. Oh well, ut I had high hopes for them achieving something special.

 

[Dhruin]

I have a horrible suspicion that BD was originally developed around co-op play 'D2 style' Which explains those fucking Battlefields, the second character, and a few other oddities.

Not a bad game so far. That is the best you can get out of me for most games!

Still damn buggy in places though.

No, there was definitely no intent to have any sort of multiplayer. The battlefields aren't good at all - just ignore them altogether and enjoy the rest of the game.

 

[Fireblade]

Patch 1.41 just came out today, BTW. Claims it fixes some more of the Battlefield bugs.

No, there was definitely no intent to have any sort of multiplayer. The battlefields aren't good at all - just ignore them altogether and enjoy the rest of the game.

Unless you're playing in the easier modes ("easy" or "action"), it would be very tough to get very far in the game without fully using the Battlefields.

Also, I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to say multiplayer was ever really planned, but a guy on the BD boards has analyzed the executable file for BD and found lots of functions that sound multiplayer-related. Sounds like they were working on it, perhaps in preparation for Divinity 2 (which is supposed to have multiplayer).

 

[Jebus]

You guys watch it now.

Nobody's gonna be dissin' a Belgian game when I'm around!

 

[Dhruin]

Patch 1.41 just came out today, BTW. Claims it fixes some more of the Battlefield bugs.

No, there was definitely no intent to have any sort of multiplayer. The battlefields aren't good at all - just ignore them altogether and enjoy the rest of the game.

Unless you're playing in the easier modes ("easy" or "action"), it would be very tough to get very far in the game without fully using the Battlefields.

Also, I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to say multiplayer was ever really planned, but a guy on the BD boards has analyzed the executable file for BD and found lots of functions that sound multiplayer-related. Sounds like they were working on it, perhaps in preparation for Divinity 2 (which is supposed to have multiplayer).

I'm pretty sure there was no intention to have multiplayer but DD2 *will* have multiplayer, so perhaps that explains the .exe files. I personally have no connection to Larian but several staff members at RPGDot work/have worked for Larian and MP is something I have specifically discussed with them.

I did do the first level of the first Battlefield but otherwise I have completed the game on Tactical without returning to the Battlefield dungeons (just the traders for selling etc). I would argue that the "Action" or "Easy" modes are more in line with the action-RPG concept but I (mostly) enjoyed the difficulty of Tactical, even though is affects the "action flow".