Review Divine Divinity Review at RPGVault

[Ibbz]

Tags: Divine Divinity

<a href="http://rpgvault.ign.com">RPGVault's</a> feature of today is a extensive <a href="http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/375/375482p1.html">review</a> of Divine Divinity, the CRPG by Larian Studios. Overall impression is quite positive with the only downside in the reviewer's opinion being a lack of Multiplayer. Here's the conclusion:
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Divine Divinity has surprising depth and variety, astonishing when one considers the developer is a relatively small company (reportedly 17 people) and did all this without a budget resembling those of other games of comparable scope. Every trip to the forum, I learned a new tactic suggested by other players, one I would never have thought of myself. While the game does crash rather frequently (perhaps once every three hours or so), this is not much of an issue for player who saves often - a habit common to most gamers.
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While Divine Divinity has everything it needs to be a good game, it does lack multiplayer, which will obviously limit its appeal among players who look for and even insist upon the ability to go online and play with friends. That these individuals may never hear about, much less play Divine Divinity is most regrettable, as it is a worthy addition to any gamer's library.
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[Sheriff_Fatman]

I don't really see how multiplayer would have worked in the context of DivDiv. The merit of the game is the strength of its pretty linear story and the interaction with the sometimes quirky NPCs.

It isn't party-based and is in the story is very closely tailored to a single player progressing linearly through set encounters.

A multiplayer option would have been nothing more than scouring the land looking for fights and items, ignoring the story and the NPCs. Given that the combat system of DivDiv is not very interesting, and the diversity amongst items has relatively small impact on the game, it would have been VERY boring.

I think people are being misled by constant reference to Diablo and are evaluating it along the lines of "how well does it dot he things Diablo does." The similarities are superficial (although VERY apparent) and do not translate to similarities of game play.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I have to agree with Sheriff_Fatman. There's a lot of things that make for a great single player CRPG that are.. well.. screwed if you try to slap multiplayer on it.

Heck, look at BG2. It doesn't even have a lot of those nice CRPG quests and things like Fallout, and it's multiplayer sucks.

If they did add multiplayer, I'd hope they'd have sense enough to do it like Prince of Qin did it where it's basically two different games for multiplayer and single player. Single player in PoQ is a lot like your traditional CRPG faire, only with that annoying Play and Pause scheme I don't like much. Multiplayer is like Diablo 2 with better quests that are semirandom.

After all, single player needs to be hand crafted. With MP, you can get away with random quest generation/granting because of the different style and flow of both types.