Divine Divinity Retrospective Review

[GameBanshee News]

The guys at RPGWatch have conjured up another retrospective review, this time returning to Larian Studios' Divine Divinity.

A major quest section in Ferol is dealing with the Orc stronghold to the southeast. What I love about those quests is that they accomplish multiple purposes: they forward the story in a logical way, they allow for some politics to leak into the quests as you deal with many characters with different agendas, and of course there is loads of combat and the opportunity to level up several times.

Each area of the game was rich with experiences similar to Ferol: loads of combat, loads of quests, massive areas one on top of the other, and a sense of wit and fun that makes it all worth doing! The Dark Forest areas seem to never end. You keep hitting unfolding regions as you go through the region - and it is easy to miss some of the fun little quests while taking it all in. The Dwarven Halls and Mines are yet another massive area that will take you hours to work through but are rewarding in many ways. The city of Verdistis is completely different. There are dungeons and sewers and plenty of combat, but it is largely a quest-filled area that will have you going to and from the other areas. This is great in a couple of ways - first it is wonderful having a city with so much going on and so many ways to role-play and find quests; but it is also nice that rather than just having a 'dungeon section' and a 'city section' that you get a nice mix of combat and questing throughout.

Some of the stats from the game are impressive - there are more than 20,000 screens, 150 interactive NPC's and 100 moster types to encounter as you play. The three characters you choose - warrior, wizard or survivor - each have their own 'Ways', which is made of four 'Paths'. Each of these have eight skills that can be taken up to five levels. Add on the final Divine 'Way' and you end up with 96 skills and 480 places to put skill points. Of course, there are also the standard character attributes such as vitality, mana, strength, agility, intelligence, and constitution to chew up the five attribute points you get per level.

Nice annotated map. I wonder where they got it?