key-2-vip's Full Review: Shadow Of Destiny for Windows
As the title says, the main detraction from the game may be its unwieldy title. I think it may have sounded great in French of Flemish (it is made by a small Belgian studio, Larian), but in English it just comes across as trite and sounds forced.
Other than that, there's very little negatives to say about the game. I finished it twice, as two different character classes (replay value!!) and I would have to say it's one of the best role-playing game I've ever played, right up there with my all time favorites Ultima VII and Wizardry 7/8. It's got a great, if not fantastic plot, outstanding graphics and plenty of fast paced action. It has been described as "Diablo II with a plot" and I would have to agree. Since I really enjoyed the game, I will make this a longer review, in the same style as common gaming review sites like Gamespot or ITD games.
Plot & Game Design (*** minor spoilers ***)
This is an action role-playing game, meaning a role-playing game with a sizable combat component. The setting is a fairly typical, magical land of fantasy occupied by several races, like humans, dwarves, elves, trolls, lizardmen, etc. Superficially, aside from frequent orc invasions everything seems fine, yet even from the start there is that vague feeling something is amiss. As you progress through the game, you find that you are one of the three *chosen ones* who are meant to fight against an evil ring of magicians. The evil ring are bent on domination and turning the good land and its people toward evil. As you can tell, the plot and setting are somewhat predictable, but there's plenty of twists & turns that will keep you guessing and make the story as the whole more interesting than it seems.
Character Design/Role Playing Components.
You start the game as one of three professions: mage, survivor (a thief-like character) or fighter. Unlike lots of other RPGs, you don't have to debate which race to pick, or what type of magic to master. All characters play as a human. You can learn any spell whether you're a warrior or a thief or a wizard, and master any weapon as well. There are no limits on armor for spell-casters, other than Stregth/Dexterity requirements, which I also appreciated. You definitely want to learn a variety of spells since they are both very effective in combat and the graphics are spectacular.
You can play as either a male or female character. The game is very egalitarian in this respect and the only difference as far as gender goes is the character's appearance and the two skills you start with.
In terms of character classes, the major differences are how much one of your three major stats (strength, Dexterity, Intelligence) contribute to your secondary stats (Carrying capacity, stamina, Attack rating, Defense rating, mana and spell power). If you are a mage, for instance, you will get 8 mana points for every 1 intelligence point on a 'level up', but only 2 stamina and carrying capacity for 1 strength. The exact opposite can be said for a fighter. For anyone who has ever played a role playing game, this is a well-tested and respected formula and in the game it works well.
Graphics & Sound
As mentioned by Bayou Hannibal on his Amazon.com review: "The game uses 2D graphics, which are not breathtaking, but still good." As a benchmark, they're generally superior to Diablo II, but not by much. The environments look excellent, and rarely repetitive. The game is loaded with hundred's of NPC's many of which look unique and have unique dialog trees. The soundtrack for the game is not remarkable, but it is still very good feel and has a lot of different sounds for the game's different areas. There's a lot of 'atmosphere' added by the sounds and it can definitely raise you pulse with fast, pounding score to accompany frantic battles or key turning points in the plot. As a total curiosity -- the text for the game and some voice acting was clearly done by some non-native English speakers. It makes for some interesting and I would say really hillarious dialogue, but that's more of an exception to the rule. Overall most parts are quite solid.
Gameplay/Mechanics
RPG fans will be pleased to see that most of the quests are not of the mundane 'FedEx' variety - ie deliver something or fetch something for an NPC. If that whetted your appetite, more specifically, the game starts of with a 'starter' or training quest that involves facing an evil magician (seperate from the main quest) in catacumbs below the first city. It is a hard place to start and initially your character is at risk of death by nearly anything, but later on it gets better. This part of the game is possibly the most unbalanced, and may even unfortunately turn some people off.
One other note about the gameplay: toward the end it can also be a bit out of balanced. Again, as an example mentioned by previously cited review "If you can get any weapon that does decent damage and does frost damage, you can kill nearly anything from that point on fairly easily. You can still get swarmed under, but one-on-one no boss can match you. Also, the traps you can set with steel scorpions are ridiculously strong so I tried to never use them once I got to level 10 or so. Also, as soon as you can poison your weapon it gets much easier to kill critters since poison can more than double the damage you do and it continues for a few seconds" (SOME Of this may be too specific or detailed, but I just wanted to cite some examples).
I also agree that the game interface is also well-thought-out and the journal and automap are great. You can review conversations you've had to get more info for quests you're on or if you forget what was said. I guess one can always put more points into Strength??
Without too many hints from outside and taking advantage of many (but not all) side quests, the game takes about 50-60 hours real time to complete.
Replay value, comparisons to other games
Compared to Morrowind or icewind Dale, Divine Divinity certainly stands on its own, and it's at least on a par with Diablo II and even with it's problems it was more stable for me than Diablo II was.
As far as replayability goes, that seems to be very good too as I didn't hesitate more than a few hours before starting over with a new character. As any RPG gamer can attest to, it can be addicting to start with a new character class and make sure to better utilize skill points, to identify items and buy/sell for best prices.
Note on similarities to Diablo
This game has been frequently compared to Diablo II and has even been called a Diablo 'clone' (see my Diablo II review on this site).
Couple of last words:
Last a small complaint: it isn't the most stable game I've ever played. I have a decent PC, with AMD processor, ATI video card and over 1Gig of RAM, but I had to learn to save every couple of hours or so due to an occasional crash, especially when loading.
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