That’s a common complaint with the pacing at that point. I felt much the same. If you persevere it does open up a bit. Skim a walkthrough for this bit maybe?
Interesting…thanks. I may find a guide and slog through this bit.
This thread is full of comments like yours. I felt the same way as you did. Pushed through it, and the game really opens up after you get out of the first town. I ended up really enjoying the game. As far as getting killed when you leave town, you sort of have to go in sequence to clear the map. I think the easier battles are N/NW of the town and then slowly work your way outwards. Stay away from SW and E to begin with.
This exact sequence of events absolutely killed this game for me as well. It’s one of the worst game flows I’ve ever seen. Before you even really have a handle on the combat, mechanics, or UI, you’re thrown into this huge town where you have to play needle in a haystack for hours. Possibly the least fun I’ve ever had in a game.
Sad thing is, I had the start of really digging this game, I love party based RPGs like this, if they would have at least let you tool around a few more hours before plunging you into where’s waldo hell, I might have stuck it out, as it stands, just the thought of that city makes me pretty sure I’ll never try this again.
I didn’t find this a particularly hard problem to solve for, I figured out early on where I could go outside of town and still hang with the bad guys (as mentioned above it’s N/NW) and bounced back and forth between that and the murder mystery in town.
This solution was stumbled upon both because i wanted to occasionally spice things up from the investigation in town but also because I was early on trying to basically do every single thing I could find to ramp up my characters so they were strong enough for me to tackle other areas outside of town.
I think I solved the murder about 1/3 of the way thru the game. I just found a way out of town and started walking. Sure, you will get your ass kicked going certain directions but there is a direction or two you can go and you will learn to win fights. While most games like this start slow because of your underleveled party, this one is starts even slower. But get a few levels in and it will open up.
Well, I finally got around to this, the EE. I can’t remember what I was doing when it came round the first time but it was some other game I was absorbed in, just didn’t have the time for this. It’s truly an incredible game, and I’m really looking forward to the new DOS2.
What a HELL of an interesting and involving stat/character/combat system! (And the rest of the game is great too :) )
I see what Larian did here. Basically it’s Larian returning to their original Divine Divinity roots, having learned from their excursion into 3d games, but they’ve added the amazingly absorbing and addictive turn-based type of combat system that Trion Worlds opened up with TO:EE, which was a real eye opener of a game, showing what could be done with a system that tries to be realistic-in-miniature (like D&D did) and tries to follow real world logic, when you put it in a turn-based combat setting.
It’s funny, I’d been longing for someone to iterate on what Trion did with TO:EE and I never quite realized until actually playing this that that’s what Larian did with this game - only of course they have developed their own rule system to work with that type of combat. Fuck D&D, Larian’s system is better - and more “realistic” too.
This game (and presumably its sequel) may well be approaching a yummy kind of perfection for this type of CRPG genre. The other route that the Elder Scrolls tried, with the computer trying to be your DM, hasn’t really quite worked out yet, and Bethesda sort of lost their way with it, but that’s the other possibility. Either hand craft a fixed, incredibly detailed world/story, or have the computer carpet a world/story in front of you that responds to your actions, like a DM would.
Troika
Yah I’ve installed and started this game 3 different times now, and have quit in that first city every time lol.
Larian said they’ve always wanted to do turn-based but their publishers made them do the first few Divinity games with action-based combat, and it really didn’t work out for them. Original Sin’s combat, on the other hand, is magnificent.
Divine Divinity was perfectly serviceable diablofest though. Didn’t play Beyond or Divinity 2 though, though IIRC there weren’t any complaints about Divinity 2’s combat?
Divine Divinity was a good game, with combat best described as forgettable, and didn’t make much of a splash. People really didn’t like Beyond Divinity for a number of reasons, the combat being one of the primary reasons. Divinity II also didn’t make a huge impression. Original Sin and sequel are lighting the world on fire, especially the second one. Since they’ve always had similar ambitious design ideas and wackiness, I think the high quality of the turn-based combat has been a major factor in their recent successes.
I just wish they did a bit more play-testing in their last two areas. I would also like a quest system that gave you a bit more help. I had to do a fair amount of googling to figure out some quests.
Doh, yeah.
Yeah the thing that was hooking about DivDiv was the atmosphere and the detail. The combat and build system were passable, but not what made the game special.
Even at that stage you could tell that the feel Larian wanted was of a highly interactive, realistic world-in-miniature - it felt like they were going for the opposite of the bizarro “game logic” you used to sometimes get in adventure games, and instead aiming for something that the player would react to as they would react to things in the real world (the wonderfully logical rock/paper/scissors of the elemental magic in these games is just an extension of things like cup + orange = orange juice). Of course for the sake of balance there are still a few quirks, but on the whole they’ve done a great job in making a game that you can get along in just by thinking logically as you would in the real world.
It’s odd that they went on a detour into full 3-d third person games - those other “dragon” games weren’t bad, but they didn’t strike a spark like DivDiv and these recent two games did, although they also had that quirky Larian touch to them. They must have learned a lot from their excursion into 3-d though, because their detailed 3-d world looks just as good from the hovering perspective as the fully hand-painted stuff in games like Baldur’s Gate and Pillars of Eternity, and it plays really smoothly - but it’s 3d! You can zoom in and look at it from any angle! You can zoom in on your wee characters! You can zoom in and look for things like hidden keys under closets!
The other great thing they’ve had going for them, and not to be underestimated as a contributor to the greatness of their games, is Kirill Pokrovsky’s music. Every third tune is strangely beautiful ear worm that you find yourself humming throughout the day. Shame we won’t hear music from that particular alien dimension any more (he died apparently, game is dedicated to him).
On the con side, I agree with what people are saying above, that the early part of this particular game dips a bit, which I think must have been off-putting to a few. I found myself itching to try more combat at level while in Cyseal at around lvl 3/4, but it took a while for me to find where it was (in the West of the city), and meanwhile I had what seemed like a forbidding amount of investigation work on my plate and no clue at that point how to proceed. But man, the game was a rocket-ride once I got past that hump.
You’re making me want to replay DD. I never finished it, but I loved what I did play of it. Such an underrated and misunderstood game (a Diablo clone it was not).
I think I bought it again from GoG a few years ago but it would not run properly on my laptop.
I thought the first Divine Divinity game preceeded the “Dragon” games? Okay, google says yes. It is a turn based game that is a lot of fun.
Divine Divinity is their first game and it is definitely not turn based in any sense of the term. It plays like Diablo if Diablo also had a high level of world simulation and responsivity and were much more about story and questing than farming loot.
Been awhile since I played it but I thought it was turn based. If I am wrong then i am wrong.
I no longer remember details or have that save, but when I first played Divine Divinity I hit on some warrior based build that could routinely smear enemies 10+ levels higher than me so I had no trouble progressing really. I just got distracted from the game, as happens all too frequently with me. I’ve tried to go back more recently but, well, fun fact: the game doesn’t autosave, and I didn’t notice this, and…