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Dhruin
Stranger In A Strange Land
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 1825
Location: Sydney, Australia |
| Beyond Divinity: Review @ GameCaptain.de (German) |
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German site GameCaptain.de has one of the first <a href="http://www.gamecaptain.de/page.php?plat=PC&flap=2&r=24&file=showTest.php&id=1340" target="_blank">reviews</a> of Larian's 'Beyond Divinity'. The score is a disappointing 67%. |
Wed Apr 14, 2004 6:33 pm |
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Barghest
Head Merchant
Joined: 23 May 2003
Posts: 70
Location: How in hell do I know? |
So, what are the criticisms of the game? I tried Google translate, but it makes no sense to me.
English translation someone? |
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Wed Apr 14, 2004 6:35 pm |
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hammermd23
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 26 Oct 2002
Posts: 48
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Yeah, what in the world could be so bad? The demo seemed fine except for the voice acting, and all the English previews I've read seem pretty optimistic after Larian decided to push the release date back and fix bugs...? |
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Wed Apr 14, 2004 6:45 pm |
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Moriendor
Black Ring Leader
Joined: 19 Jul 2001
Posts: 1306
Location: Germany |
That's what they disliked:
- Dated graphics (which gets better after a few hours of gameplay because some regions are nice to look at)
- Poor level design
- Messy inventory
- Merchants still don't have enough money to buy everything the player might want to sell
- Interactive objects are hard to spot and interaction is cumbersome
- Enemies are too difficult (reviewer played a mage) .. Only way to get on par with monsters (in order to advance) is to grind levels at the battlefields
- Bugs
- No voice acting
Note: They reviewed the German version. The English version will have voice acting (reason for the delayed English release is -as we reported- that the voices are being re-recorded). The English version will also be better balanced so that you should not have to grind levels at a battlefield before you can advance to the next region/act. Additionally, lots of polishing and bug fixing should make the English version an overall much more enjoyable experience. Anyone who is planning to buy the English version should simply ignore reviews of the German version in my opinion. |
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Wed Apr 14, 2004 7:23 pm |
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Hindukönig
Guards Lieutenant
Joined: 27 Feb 2004
Posts: 170
Location: Halle (Saale) / Nuremberg [Germany] |
The article says:
- boring scenario (darkness, lava, bones everywhere)
- goals of the game: a) kill many many monsters to gain experience points b) tear apart those two souls c) kill the evil demon
- party consists of max. 3 people
- very diversified skill-system
- unfortunately some skills are annoying: e.g. durability of armor and weapons must be trained
- disgruntling, too: before one's able to learn some skills, you have to "buy" or read about them
- Diablo or Sacred like gameplay
- absolutely out-of-date graphics
- first: miserable optics, lack of inspiritional leveldesign + weak points of Divine Divinity
- complex [unübersichtliches] inventory, merchants still don't have enough money
- many objects to manipulate, but tricky to recognize and use those
- later, outside of the dungeon: graphics become nicer to look at
- messy combats; sorcerer is a whimp, monsters are too much and too strong; early stuck in progressing
- use of "key" opens possibility to teleport to a battlefield for leveling up and solving stupid quests like "find monster xyz and kill it!" (boooring); although this is called a "feature", it's quite obvious that the balancing of the game is shit
- good plotleading [Handlungsführung] and very nice quests in the general game
- good sense of humor in dialogues, books and comments of the death knight
- some weaknesses in dialogues, too; too quiet (no voices)
- motivation through hunting and collecting, individual build-up of characters, excellent music
- difficult to rate; Divine Divinity was better
- buying Beyond Divinity is recommended for hardcore RPG fans because of well told plot
BTW: other German ratings: 79% (Gamigo), 70% (Gamezone), 63% (4Players) |
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Wed Apr 14, 2004 7:24 pm |
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Barghest
Head Merchant
Joined: 23 May 2003
Posts: 70
Location: How in hell do I know? |
I'm still going to pick up the English version as I liked the demo. It's just that the poor German reviews worry me a bit...
But then again, the poor Germans got the first horribly buggy versions of Sacred before the UK...! |
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Wed Apr 14, 2004 7:46 pm |
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Guest
Guest
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quote:
- Dated graphics (which gets better after a few hours of gameplay because some regions are nice to look at)
- Poor level design
- Messy inventory
- Merchants still don't have enough money to buy everything the player might want to sell
- Interactive objects are hard to spot and interaction is cumbersome
- Enemies are too difficult (reviewer played a mage) .. Only way to get on par with monsters (in order to advance) is to grind levels at the battlefields
- Bugs
- No voice acting
I don't get it. Didn't Morrowind have all of these problems?
This is ArcturusXIV speaking, in case you guys don't know. I don't have time to log in right now. |
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Wed Apr 14, 2004 9:29 pm |
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Moriendor
Black Ring Leader
Joined: 19 Jul 2001
Posts: 1306
Location: Germany |
Umm.. Morrowind had dated graphics? Exactly which Morrowind are we talking about?  ... well, seriously, almost ALL games suffer from one or more of the quoted problems to *some* degree. The question is to which degree and to which degree it negatively affects the overall gameplay experience.
GameCaptain obviously found the quoted issues quite disturbing. You may find them less disturbing. The guy over there may find them unbearably disturbing. Matter of perspective and taste.
IMHO, it doesn't make sense to start comparisons between weak spots of Beyond Divinity and Morrowind though. Won't lead nowhere. The games are just too different and let us not forget that if you did compare them you'd compare a 2002 game to a 2004 game. |
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Wed Apr 14, 2004 9:49 pm |
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Wolfgarou
Guards Lieutenant
Joined: 29 May 2003
Posts: 163
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Am I surprised? Not really. I already got a bad feeling after trying the demo.
That's alot of negatives in the reviews that you guys posted. Some things like bad graphics, voice acting, difficulty or 'merchants not having enough money' can be overlooked, especially for a cRPG-er. But the things that trouble me the most are bugs, messy inventory, poor level design and objects that hard to spot (from the demo, I think the color palette is the main problem. DD had the same problem to, at least for me, but then objects didn't blend into the background). I thinko I'll hold back from buying the game until a few more reviews come up, especially those from Gamespot or Avault.
Btw, if BD is like Morrowind (except for the 'bad graphics', Morrowind was superb if you have the rig to support it) I'll give this a pass. Didn't like Morrowind back then, I doubt I'll like another game like that.
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The world is small, nasty and complicated, and everybody dies alone... - Sam Fisher |
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Wed Apr 14, 2004 9:52 pm |
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Guest
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I cant believe they have kept object manipulation the same as in DD ... it is so frigging backwards, mouse-drag resulting in movement is so annoying. |
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Wed Apr 14, 2004 10:45 pm |
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Barghest
Head Merchant
Joined: 23 May 2003
Posts: 70
Location: How in hell do I know? |
I'll wait and play the game before getting too critical... |
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Wed Apr 14, 2004 10:47 pm |
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Myrthos
Spoiler of All Fun
Joined: 07 Jul 2001
Posts: 1926
Location: Holland |
It doesn't state in which mode he played. If he played in the normal (tactical) mode then there should be far less fights than there were in Divine Divinity, making it even less of a Diablo like game. I wonder if he played all 4 acts. He only refers to the frist act and only slightly touches act 2, by mentioning the change of scenery. There are no references to what happens in Act 3 and the Raanaar in Act 4.
Personally, I like the new skill system a lot more than the old one. I don't mind having to learn a skill before being able to use it by investing skill points in them. Especially as you can't have enough skill points you will have to choose which ones to pick.
As to playing a "whimp mage" as he put it. If you spend your earned stat points correctly, then there is no reason that your mage ends up as a whimp. I seriously doubt that he understands how the primary stats effect the secondary stats, which effect damage and defense. I don't think that his incorrect choices resulting in a whimp mage can be blamed on the game.
I do agree with the messy inventory and that the shopkeepers just do not have enough gold to take the load of your shoulders. As to the interaction, it really takes getting used to.
I have no issues though with the graphics. They are 2D with 3D characters running around. They are not the best I ever saw, but they aren't bad either. I would qualify them somewhere around ok to good, going at occasions to very good.
Also I thought you can have 4 summoning dolls, leading to a maximum of 6 characters under your control. But then again if he only played act 1 and a part of act 2, then he only found one doll.
I've played some of the preview versions at Larian Studios, when I visited them, and from what I played upto now I would rank the game in the high seventies or the low eighties. I know that I can be considered to be rather biased, but the game doesn't deserve this low score in my opinion.
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Wed Apr 14, 2004 11:07 pm |
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Guest
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quote:
- Merchants still don't have enough money to buy everything the player might want to sell
Well one could say that he only needs enough gold to make change. If you go to a car dealer with 20 cars to sell to him I dought he will have the money. I see merchants more as traders instead of money givers (maybe they should have a bank in BD)
quote:
boring scenario (darkness, lava, bones everywhere)
What did you expect in a demon dimension. Froliking nimfs where the sun always shines and all is right???
quote:
messy inventory
As for the messy inventory. Theire is one way to make it less not messy at all. A limited size inventory but I think nobody wants that or do you?
quote:
goals of the game: a) kill many many monsters to gain experience points b) tear apart those two souls c) kill the evil demon
Did he talk about the sidequests at all or doesn't he know theire are side quests?
quote:
use of "key" opens possibility to teleport to a battlefield for leveling up and solving stupid quests like "find monster xyz and kill it!" (boooring); although this is called a "feature", it's quite obvious that the balancing of the game is shit
Yes his hand was twisted into going into the battlefields. I tought that a good player didn't need to go to the battlefields? He clearly should play on the very easy level.
I'll wait for a review from the dot before buying it. At least they know what theire talking about. |
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Wed Apr 14, 2004 11:51 pm |
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sealight4
City Guard
Joined: 02 Sep 2002
Posts: 130
Location: Massachussets, USA |
The fighting by pressing the ctrl key is a good point. Chasing polymorphed rabbits was a blast to watch. DD was a great game and BD should be eminently playable even though I didn't like the early demo. I'm keeping an open mind, the game is ordered anyway. I just enjoy rpg type games and the new worlds they offer. Think Sacrifice, one of the greatest imagined worlds.Not an rpg by definition but close enough. Original and interesting. I digress, apoligies. |
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Thu Apr 15, 2004 12:57 pm |
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ArcturusXIV
City Guard
Joined: 03 Dec 2002
Posts: 142
Location: Oz |
Actually, there was nothing wrong with Morrowind graphics, other than lagg and clipping problems. I accidentally posted the whole message as a quote because I was rushing my post. My main points were that Morrowind had no voice acting in the dialogue trees, the merchants never had enough gold, and the game was one giant insect. Actually, not as buggy as Daggerfall, but I had quite a few crash problems. Overall, though, I really loved Morrowind.
The only real problems I had with Morrowind were the ease of maxing out a character, the poor AI, the short dungeons, and the incessant LAGG. Still, the good outweighed the bad. I didn't mind the journal or map as much as most people, since I rely more on my intuition and memory to get quests done. I practically have the whole island memorized right now anyway.
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"Madness is the first step towards unselfishness. Be mad and tell us what is behind the veil of 'sanity'. The purpose of life is to bring us closer to those secrets, and madness is the only means." --Kahlil Gibran |
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Thu Apr 15, 2004 3:09 pm |
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