Beyond Divinity

aka: Beyond Divinity: Dwóch ƚmiertelnych Wrogów - Jeden Wspólny Cel, Beyond Divinity: L'Avventura Continua, Beyond Divinity: The Quest Continues..., Riftrunner
Moby ID: 13465
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Description official descriptions

When Lucian the Divine defeated the evil organization known as the Black Ring, he was late to prevent a dark ritual from happening: the soul of the Lord of Chaos was summoned into the body of an innocent boy. Unable to slay the boy, Lucian adopted him and raised him as his own son, naming him Damian. When Damian was fifteen, a young witch called Ygerna seduced him and taught him the ways of magic, hoping to unlock the evil powers contained within him. Lucian killed Ygerna with his own hand, and Damian was unable to forgive him. In order to stop him from unleashing his wrath on the world, Lucian had to seal Damian's memories and prevent him from returning to Rivellon.

A few years later, a group of paladins of the Divine order was fighting a powerful necromancer from the Black Ring. The necromancer summoned a demon called Samuel, who killed all the paladins but one. The survivor was imprisoned, awaiting torture, when a mysterious armor-clad creature calling himself the Death Knight appeared in his cell. Death Knight told the paladin that Samuel soul-forged them together, apparently as a punishment for something he did. The two must first escape the prison and eventually find a way to break the soul-forging.

Beyond Divinity is a role-playing game and a follow-up to Divine Divinity, its events taking place twenty years after those described in the predecessor. Most locations and characters are different, but over the course of the game the connection to the overarching plot becomes revealed. The game plays out in four Acts over a vast territory. The player begins in a large dungeon-like jail area and progresses out into a more open landscape (once escaping the prison), eventually exploring an imp village, monster-infested forests, atmospheres of fire and ice as well as numerous mysterious islands on the journey. Unlike Divine, there is no open world gameplay, and the game advances in a comparatively linear fashion.

There is a variety of non-player characters including friendlies and monsters of various types. Many sub-quests can be discovered by interacting with the NPCs, many of which are optional. In addition to the main game questing, there are separate "battlefield" areas within each Act that have nothing to do with the main plot but are accessed by finding special keys in the main game. Intended to help the player increase the skills of the two controlled characters, these accessory areas have more quests, multi-leveled dungeons as well as merchants and special objects that cannot be found anywhere else.

The game is both keyboard and mouse controlled and is played out entirely in third person, cavalier oblique perspective, with 2D backgrounds and 3D character models. The main protagonist can be male or female and there is a choice of several classes chosen during the character generation process. The Death Knight is controlled in the same manner as any other party member. Like the main character, he can be provided with equipment and direction while exploring and battling. He can carry just as much (sometimes more) inventory and has his own abilities and skills, which can be upgraded and customized freely.

Beyond Divinity uses the same basic engine as the previous game, but its combat is real-time rather than action-based. The player does not physically controls the attacks, but targets enemies and lets the battle evolve automatically. Combat can be paused at any time to issue commands to the two controllable characters. Like in the previous game, characters can learn any skills divided into Warrior, Survivor, and Wizard categories. Each of these consists of disciplines, ranging from weapon proficiencies and spells to sneaking, repairing, and others. Finally, the skill itself may often be learned in various ways (e.g. the player can opt to increase damage or accuracy of two-handed slashing weapons, etc.). In addition, the player can learn to summon dolls that act like party members. Many skills can only be learned when trained by a specific NPC.

Spellings

  • Beyond Divinity: ОĐșĐŸĐČы ŃŃƒĐŽŃŒĐ±Ń‹ - Russian spelling
  • ç„žè«­ć€–ć‚ł - Traditional Chinese spelling
  • 超越焞界 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

86 People (73 developers, 13 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 71% (based on 32 ratings)

Players

Average score: 2.9 out of 5 (based on 20 ratings with 2 reviews)

See beyond the flaws

The Good
Beyond Divinity is a sequel of sorts to Divine Divinity, a fantastic RPG that lovingly recreated the glorious days of Ultima. One could say that Beyond Divinity is to its predecessor what Serpent Isle was to Black Gate: more scripted, less open-ended, but as rich in interaction and core gameplay. The difference, however, is much more noticeable this time, since Beyond Divinity has a by far smaller world and is much more linear.

I wouldn't have placed the above sentence in the "Good" section if the game didn't play whatever cards its designers dealt it really well. In other words, I prefer the first game's design any time of the day, but as far as "restricted" RPGs go, Beyond Divinity is top of the line. What I particularly liked is how, in spite of all constraints, the developers managed to make the game world rich and even expansive. Yes, Beyond Divinity takes place in confined locations, each serving as the sole setting of an act, without an open world to tie them together. But then again, Planescape: Torment was like that too. As a matter of fact, the two games have quite a lot in common: both hardly excel in quantity, but try to squeeze every drop of quality out of every location they contain.

When I heard that the entire first act of the game would take place in a prison dungeon, I was ready to toss it away. But then I decided to give it a chance and slowly got absorbed into its world. Exploration of a hostile, closed-off prison almost reminded me of the claustrophobic wanderings in System Shock. Every room has something interesting in it, every friendly character you encounter has a tale to tell. There are plenty of optional locations and sub-quests not required to finish the game. You warm up to the cozy advancement and after a while stop noticing the restraints. This is what happens when developers seriously work with whatever material is accessible to them and try to do their best regardless of limitations.

The more scripted nature of the game makes it decidedly more "edgy" than its mild medieval predecessor. The atmosphere is darker and the characters you encounter are more eccentric. There are fewer locations, but each one is more memorable than wherever we have traveled to in the previous game. Dark castles, desolate lava mountains, an exotic imp village, a mysterious academy with crazy enemies - each location has personality and style, imbuing the game itself with a certain distinctive charisma that wasn't quite there in the first title.

The story is also more interesting, and more personal for once. Instead of assuming the role of a schematic world-saving chosen one, you are cast as a simple paladin whose initial goal has nothing to do with saving anyone and involves a prison break. Afterwards, it becomes about breaking the curse of being soul-forged to a grumpy, cynical Death Knight. This premise is quite original, building up an unorthodox intimacy between two most unlikely companions, and the interaction between the hero and his reluctant accomplice provide many amusing moments. This plot is also worth following to the very end, where a bomb of a plot twist awaits you, not only shedding a completely different light on everything you've learned so far, but also tying this game's story to that of its predecessor in a most unexpected way.

Humor is still present, but this time it is grittier, more grotesque, sometimes even bordering on the macabre. Attentive players will derive much pleasure from the game's attention to detail - there are all sorts of funny optional dialogues and descriptions everywhere. Death Knight himself can be a walking comic relief, with some priceless scenes such as procuring an item that colors him pink. In short, the game doesn't take itself too seriously, but manages to combine humor with a fairly dark setting, which is something only very few titles can pull off without deteriorating into tasteless mishmash.

Beyond Divinity retains the addictive, Diablo-influenced character building. This time you have two characters to manage, since Death Knight behaves as a fully controllable, customizable character as well. Both he and the protagonist have access to all the skills, and the sequel goes even further than the first game in providing endless variations of building up the character of your choice. There are more skills than ever before, with detailed weapon and damage proficiencies, vast survivor and magic categories, and a whole new "summoning dolls" discipline, allowing you to bring in a third party member and even customize it to a certain extent.

There is a huge variety of items in the game - again, more than before, so at least in terms of character-building opportunities Beyond Divinity certainly surpasses the previous game. There is loot everywhere - fallen enemies, containers, shops, etc., so outfitting your characters and trying to get the best randomized items will occupy you for a long time. As it should always be the case with RPGs, gradually turning your initially weak characters into powerful warriors is an exhilarating, deeply addictive process.

Since the actual world of the game is fairly small and enemies don't respawn, the developers found an original solution to the resulting lack of material for character building: they made separate open areas with huge randomized dungeons accessible at any time once you've found an appropriate key within each correspondent act of the main game. This may sound like an artificial attempt to enforce grinding, but in reality it works surprisingly well. The game invites you to take a break from heavy, scripted environments and engage in nearly mindless, but addictive and rewarding Diablo-like slaughter fest with disarming honesty. Thanks to these "battlefield" areas, as they are called in the game, you are able to clearly organize your playing sessions and take refreshing breaks from the restricted advancement of the main quest.

The battlefield areas also offer all sorts of traders and trainers, all conveniently located to sell your accumulated loot to, identify items, stock on potions, etc., only to happily venture into the next monster of a dungeon, hacking skeletons to pieces, collecting more loot, selling surplus again, leveling up, spending cozy moments with the menu screens, trying to build up the best combination out of your two characters, and then, satisfied with your progress, return to the main game and kick some serious butt you weren't even able to scratch before. Once you find a key to the respective battlefield area you'll feel like you are taking a vacation from arduous work, and you sigh in relief.

The actual combat is also more interesting than in the first game. They made it real-time rather than action-based, which means that you only need to click on an enemy to initiate automatic attack rounds, and can cast spells in real-time as well or pause the game to drink potions. Combat is therefore more tactical and also relies on cooperation between your two (or three) controllable party members, bringing it closer to Baldur's Gate games. It is also very fast, so when you are sufficiently powered up you'll be able to storm enemies with heavy blows from both characters, ending the battle in a mere second and giving you an illusion of action-oriented combat. The game is also quite challenging, with some encounters you can barely survive, though abusing the pause key with intense potion-drinking can certainly reduce the stress.

The Bad
Beyond Divinity is a lot like a nerdy, insecure, pimpled genius teenager on a date. Looks don't matter, they say, but fire up this game and you'll see that they do. Yes, there is personality and inspiration in the design of the world, but the actual engine is horribly outdated, and there is something poor and sad in the way the game looks. The world is not vibrant, lacking the visual warmth of its predecessor, and the game loudly screams "low budget" when you are treated to the barely animated intro and then wind up in a lackluster prison dungeon. 3D characters only irritate you because there is no camera, and the zooming is atrocious, magnifying the washed-out backgrounds and making them look like a SNES game. Also, higher resolutions make everything look unbearably small, so in the best case you'll be stuck with backgrounds that ceased to be the norm several years before the game's release.

Then you'll have to endure the ugly menus with archaic windows and gloomy fonts that further discourage you from discovering the depths this game harbors. And once you get used to all that and even accept the poor graphics, sacrificing your insatiable, sybarite lust for shiny 3D on the altar of true role-playing, the disastrous voice acting keeps ruining the pleasure. Death Knight, the game's most important character and its actual narrator, tries really hard to make you believe that soul forging invariably leads to severe constipation.

These issues aside, the game's biggest problem is the change in gameplay. Divine Divinity was an open-world action RPG, while the sequel is a more tactical real-time game with a much more linear progression. In the first game you could theoretically go anywhere right in the beginning; in this one the entire first act, a quarter or so of the game, takes place in the first location, the huge prison dungeon. Gradually exploring it is fascinating in its own way, but lack of freedom can feel particularly suffocating because, judging by your acquaintance with the previous game, you don't expect it at all. No matter how good Beyond Divinity is on its own merits, it is perplexing and even misleading as a sequel.

The Bottom Line
Sequels that remove or reduce key features of their predecessors are doomed to be trashed by fans for all eternity. But once the initial shock caused by low production values and dubious design decisions is gone, a dedicated follower of the role-playing cult will most certainly find a lot to love in this game. Addictive and deep role-playing isn't exactly common, and this game offers it in spades. Don't judge the book by its cover, and you might be pleasantly surprised: Beyond Divinity is a flawed gem, but a gem nevertheless.

Windows · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2014

Beyond mediocrity.

The Good
Say this for the developers of Beyond Divinity (BD): They sure haven’t forgotten the classics. BD is a veritable trip down memory lane for anybody who played RPGs between 1990 and 2000. There are many elements here from a number of notable titles in the genre.

The graphics and sheer number of items in the game make BD major dĂ©jĂ  vu for Ultima VII players. It’s paradise for anybody who likes a really finicky role-playing game, complete with tough combats, devious traps, lots of item management, branching skill trees, etc.

The perspective in BD is a little bit like Diablo and Diablo 2, but the actual gameplay bears little resemblance to those games. The only significant gameplay similarity is the presence of a randomly-generated-battle arena, tacked on for the sake of adding greater replayability. Baldur’s Gate is probably a better point of comparison overall, since BD has multiple player-characters, pausable combat sequences, and numerous dialogues.

The plot/characterization has lots of potential. It’s essentially a darkly humorous, medieval “buddy movie.” Our Beyond Divine Odd Couple—one good guy and one bad guy—is “soulforged” together, meaning they don’t like each other much, but they are going to have to cooperate through the plot to regain their freedom. Some of the dialogue is quite amusing, albeit a tad anachronistic. Some zany sideplots also make things more interesting. One particular quest in the starting dungeon—in which you have to persuade a skeptical ghost that he really is, in fact, dead—sets the tone early on.

Too bad the gameplay in BD isn’t better, or I might have wanted to play it through to the end.

The Bad
The graphics in Beyond Divinity are a mixed bag at best. The 2D backgrounds are fairly good, but the 3D character models are rough and look very out of place here. Character movement is especially jarring, producing a weird kind of “ice skating” effect that is very unnatural-looking.

While the musical soundtrack is pleasant and appropriate, the voiceover work ranges from mediocre to atrocious. You can simply turn it off, but it would be nice to have the option to listen to all of the dialogues as well as read them (replete with numerous typos).

The opening dungeon sequence is disappointing. This seems to be part of a larger trend that I call “Elder Scrolls Syndrome.” The player is dumped into a starting dungeon, without much context or feel for the game world, and told to start fighting right off the bat. Whatever happened to the notion of easing the player into these games gradually? Nobody likes a really slow start, but just throwing players in the deep end of the pool doesn’t seem like much of an improvement to me. (Bethesda has been pulling this stunt since Arena, so I blame them for this trend in modern RPGs.)

In theory, you can develop your two starting characters in any number of ways. But it’s so logical and helpful early on to designate your armored death knight as a self-buffing tank and your other character as a ranger-mage, why you wouldn’t do this is beyond me. Kind of undercuts the branching skill development system when you know where it needs to go right from the start, right?

BD’s inventory management system is truly horrible. There is no grid-based system or any other reasonably useful organization technique here. Items are just randomly pasted, often right on top of other items, in the inventory viewing area. There are a few filter buttons you can select to cut down on the clutter a bit, but that’s just putting a tiny bandage on a giant head wound.

You can’t avoid using the inventory, either, because as I mentioned above, this is a very finicky RPG that requires constant item management and tweaking at the margins. Most of this tweaking is, frankly, not much fun. The worst example is the endless repairing and replacing of worn out items. Weapons and items decay at a crazy-fast rate, so you constantly have to swap out this or that weapon for one that isn’t broken. This undercuts the whole portion of the game that’s about getting newer and better equipment. Why work so hard to get new stuff if everything is just going to break right after you've gotten it?

If the combat or story were anything truly special, then Beyond Divinity might be worth all of this effort. But they aren’t, so it isn’t.

The Bottom Line
Remember Ultima VII, Diablo, and Baldur’s Gate? Beyond Divinity does too—but it’s not nearly as good as any of those classics. It may hit your sweet spot if you are an RPG veteran, but proceed with caution. Download and play the whole demo before buying.

Windows · by PCGamer77 (3158) · 2010

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Got rare version very cheap festershinetop (9572) Nov 12, 2008

Trivia

Limited bonus pack

Larian created a limited bonus pack (only 500 produced) upon release. Each bonus pack contains the novel Child of the Chaos, signed by Rhianna Pratchett and a custom-signed audio CD with the game music, composed by Kirill Pokrovsky. As of 2004, you can buy it on the Digital Jesters site.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Gonchi.

Macintosh added by Cavalary.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Indra was here, Jeanne, Sciere, DeathKnight, formercontrib, Klaster_1, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Cavalary, Danfer.

Game added June 2, 2004. Last modified March 11, 2024.