How to enjoy Beyond Divinity - a controversial opinion

[Pharnabaze]

Beyond Divinity is the most despised game from Larian Studios : long drawn story, tedious quests, hilariously bad voice acting, dated mechanics, cryptic progression, linearity, bad controls, aso,.

Albeit this is true, let me show you that it's a matter of perspective. And no, I'm not a Larian fanboy, even if I came to respect them and adknowledge their consistency and their talent.

Beyond Divinity should not be played as your standard RPG. It's supposed to mess with you. You start the game half naked in a dungeon, when a quite unsavory character shows up and the both of you are supposed to flee. That's it.

So, basically, the first of four acts is a pure dungeon crawler. You'll start with nothing, but you will soon learn that while exploring is good, hoarding is not. You will find so much useless crap, that will clutter your inventory. In a real life situation, would you really pick up tons of trash? I hope not.

Your main focus is to understand how the game mechanics work and to think strategically. For instance Beyond Divinity is one of the only games that allows you to reset your skills (not the attributes) in the menu! Basically, the game expects you to rearrange your build as you go untill you have plenty of access to gold, merchants and easy exp to be whatever works the best.

For instance, Beyond Divinity only allows you to increase skills after you have discovered their existence through a master. Some of those masters can be enemies, if you don't pay attention to the hints that the game gives you. If your companion advises you to wear a guard uniform and to sneak, you should probably do it.

Note that equipment scales with your level. So, nothing really matters untill the end of the game. You might find some nice (non random equipment) in order to make your progress easier. However, it's not mandatory.

Now, most pros would advise you to max one stat and dumb down the others. This is partially true. Imo, you should keep your 5 attribute points/level and allocate them as you go. The stats in Beyond Divinity do not work as you would expect them to (read what each does carefully).

Your companion, the Death Knight, is incredible. You will very soon notice that his armor scales automatically with each level, without any STR requirements. Basically, this means that he's your core grunt, that should take the hits (at least in act 1). You can make him use any weapon you want (including archery), even if he's perfect for two-handed swords + crossbows.

Your main should start as a survivor. Then, you can define your path.

What do you need? Very few things actually : a place to sleep + food + a strategy to defeat your enemies. Wouldn't it be nice if you could find a "bed roll" that you can carry with you everywhere? By clicking on an item, you automatically pick it up. Did you know that you can drag them in your inventory?

A bout the strategy: do you really need to fight every crappy enemy as you go, especially in a game that has diminishing rewards, as your level rises compared to the one of your foes? Not really.

Like in all Larian games: sometimes it's better to skip fights in order to get easy experience. You can leave a note on your map in order to come back later. That's what the Battlefields thaught me. Let's talk about them.

The *urgh* Battlefields are Pocket dimensions (one per act) with multiple layered dungeons, that you can access to, by finding some magic keys in the main game. They are randomly generated and provide some quests (defeat a boss in the lowest level of a dungeon, find an item, bring it back to a merchant). The first act has 3 huge dungeons (with 3 levels each) and I was looking for 5 bosses/items. I went through the first dungeon, without finding a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g.: just some waste-of-space crap. The second dungeon was barely any better...(found one boss in the third level). Then came the third: there was nearly nothing to loot, just drops (thank you luck stat) and the 4 bosses were all clustered together on the third level... Got the exp + could keep the items!

This shows you exactly what the game expects from you: don't waste your time, except if it's obvious: find a kitchen? Good. There might be some food to loot. There's a closed door? How do I get behind? And yes...lockpicking is *nealy* useless. It might give you better loot.

If you start playing the game like this, you will find it much more enjoyable. And, I would advise you to skip the Battlefields entirely, except for the merchants, if you want to dump some loot and you really are underleveled.... For the rest, they are just a distractions that interrupts the pacing for the game and the intended difficulty. Without trying too much + buying equipment from the Battlefied merchants, I finished act 1 with 60k+ gold... useless, when an excellent piece of equipment costs around 3k-4k by then...

A last word on combat: there are very few commands, but all of them are usefull. Left click is your primary skill, right click your secondary and space is the pause button. The real fun happens beforehand: you can set the AI to aggressive and F1-F3 allows you to select the character that you personally control. F4 is to select all of them, which I highly advise against, unless you plan to run away from combat...
The AI will automatically spam your primary skill. One strategy is to have the AI fire at will on your opponents, while you kite them around. Another way, is to have your tank have a healing skill as his secondary skill. You catch my drift.

Hopefully, you will have more fun on your next playthrough. Any contribution is welcome.