Beyond Divinity at all worth touching?

[Stabwound]

I loved the original Divine Divinity when it first came out. When the second came out, it had some fucked DRM and I could not get it to run on my computer whatsoever (never experienced anything like that before or since) and never tried it at all.

I know it got universally panned by fans of the first game, but is it at all worth trying? What is it that makes it so shitty compared to DD, which most people agree was a decent game?

I find it funny that the newest game is called Divinity 2. Are we supposed to forget that BD existed?

 

[Jaesun]

It's not worth playing.

 

[Gragt]

I find it funny that the newest game is called Divinity 2. Are we supposed to forget that BD existed?

It was never considered as a sequel but instead as a spin-off. Larian already had the Divinity engine and wanted to make a new game by reusing the ressources from the first game and thus finance Divinity 2, the real sequel.

To Larian's credit, they tried to do something different by allowing you to control two characters (and more), change the skill system and give a tighter progression with more puzzles. The problem is that it isn't that, despite the premise, the whole story isn't very interesting; you can build a party but most encounters are just filler with little strategy; puzzle are mostly of the "find the lever" kind and few make use of the presence of the two character. Add to that other annoyances like mediocre writing and bad voice acting (the first game had a comical take on voice acting and, whether it was intended or not, it worked pretty nicely), or a limited and not very rewarding exploration, and BD will leave you with a rather bad taste in the mouth.

I'd say it's worth a try and it does have some fun parts even if rare. Just don't expect anything like Divine Divinity and, well, don't actually expect too much. The only undisputably good thing in that game is the music, also by Kirill Pokrovsky, even if most of the tracks are lifted from the first game.