Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[lumin]

So Diablo III has got me excited about action Role-playing games again.  I haven't been keeping up with all of the Diablo "clones" so I thought I would look around for some that have come out in recent years.  There's a lot of crappy ones out there, but I've found a couple that look pretty promising.

I had never heard of Divine Divinity before, until I found it from Gamespot search.  Probably because it came out the same year as Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind (2004).  I think everyone was so caught up in the shiny new 3D RPGs that nobody really cared about anything else.

From what I've read about it, it can be best described as Diablo meets Baldur's Gate.  It has the fast-paced hack-n-slash action of Diablo with tons of random loot, but also has a deep quest system with lots of dialogue and moral choices.  Also, it has a huge world with free-form exploration.  The screenshots look pretty good for a 2D game.  In fact, I think it's the best looking 2D action-RPG I've ever seen.  The designers really put a lot of work into the details.  According to reviewers it has an awesome soundtrack as well.  I think I might have to get my hands on this one.  Link to review.

Another game that has me even more excited than Diablo III, is Sacred 2.  I've never played Sacred 1, but I've heard it got mixed reviews.  Some loved it, while others hated it. 

The world of Sacred 2 is supposedly 22 square miles - even bigger than Oblivion's 16 sq mile world.  When developers boast large game worlds I remember that Oblivion also said the same thing, but it was full of repetitive dungeons and monotonous forests.  I think this game may actually be an exception because it is going to have several different biomes, from forests to deserts to volcanic regions.  They say if you walked from one end to the other without fighting a monster, it would take 6 real-time hours.  This doesn't include dungeons either. 

The game is going to be completely-free form, but will have tons of quests and unique campaigns for each class.  You will also be able to choose between a light and dark campaign for each class, which gives a lot more replayability.

The other really cool thing is that this game will be really multiplayer-friendly.  For the PC, you can play with up to 16 players in the world.  For the Xbox 360, you can do 2 player coop on the same screen or play with up to 4 over xbox live.  Players can drop-in or out very easily and take what you earned in your MP game to your single-player game.

I usually lean more toward RPG-oriented games like Baldur's Gate, but this sounds pretty cool.  The game is set to be released in September.  I really didn't like that Titan's Quest forced you through a linear plot and have always thought that a free-form Diablo would be really cool.

The graphics are not as great as some other recent games, but I wouldn't expect them to be since it is an action-RPG.

Here's a bunch of screenshots:
Here and here.

Anyway, if you've got some other recommendations for good Action-RPGs, post them here.

[Torak]

Sacred was a good game, until every jackoff figured out how to duplicate hacked items.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Serephim bikini armor technology!

 I hope the PC version of Sacred 2 isn't consolized.

[Kagus]

I've got Sacred, and I managed to have a mixed review.  The fights were great fun, but I remember the English voice acting as being somewhat on the terrible side...  There was something else too, but I've forgotten what that was.

Sacred II looks nice...  Looks very nice...  But there's no free demo, so it's obviously junk.


Never heard of Divine Divinity, but it also looks like something worth looking at...  I'll give the demo a runabout once I've milked the Witcher demo for all it's worth.

[Fishersalwaysdie]

Divine and Divinity is pretty good, it has good object manipulation, an OK story, and alot of places to explore.
Too much dungeon crawling for my taste though.

[lumin]

I was able to play both Divine Divinity and Sacred 1 over the weekend. 

I have to say, Sacred is pretty awesome for all of the crappy reviews I've read.  The character combat and magic animations are really good and the combat feels good to me.  I also like that towns feel alive - more so than a lot of other ARPGs.  I didn't really like the interface though, it's pretty messy.  All in all though, maybe I haven't played long enough (couple hours), but I totally think Sacred was under-rated. 

I do see how people could complain about drops.  It seems like I was getting an insane amount of loot and uber items in the first few minutes of the game.  I don't think it's right to be dishing out so magic items so early.  Then again, I can think of people who would like that.

Divine Divinity is very good too.  It's definitely not your typical hack'n'slash game.  The animations are not as good as Sacred, but the lighting effects are amazing - finally a game where the dungeons are actually "dark"!  The interface is also very clean and easy to use.

The quests are really fun and they involve a lot more than killing 'x' number of monsters.  There are a lot of hidden secrets all over the world waiting to be discovered.  Sometimes you will find a key that you won't what it opens.  The dungeons feel really creepy and you will sometimes have to sneak past enemies.  Treasure seems to come at appropriate times too, this game doesn't seem to have the same weakness as Sacred.  There are also lots of books everywhere to read and learn about the lore of the world - it just adds so much more flavor to know why something exists.

Overall I give a slight edge to Divine Divinity over Sacred because of the overall depth.  I hate to admit it, but DD puts Baldur's Gate (1 & 2) to shame in a lot of ways.  I feel like I'm playing something closer D&D more in this game than BG.

By the way, sounds like the devs for Sacred 2 are doing a good job of building the interface for each system.  PC doesn't look like it will be dumbified because of the Xbox controls. Info here.

[Pnx]

Baldur's  Gate 2 is probably one of the best games there, but I had two issues with it, 1 is the linear feel of it.
You get a quest to go do thing A in location B, you go do it, get in a big fight, and explore a dungeon, then when you're done you move on to the next one.
Whereas in the first one you explored the map looking for treasure performing quests, figuring out locations of people. It was a lot less linear.

The other issue I had with BG 2 was the magic items, not only do they give out large quantities of powerful magic items, they hand them out early in the game as well. I missed how it was in the first one when a +1 sword was considered quite a good thing early on,  and you would count your blessings if you found something in the area of +3. Whereas if I pick up a +4 sword of doom I look at it and say, "Don't I have like 5 of these already?" and then I would check and find out I really did...

That frustrated me, the [ARTIFACT OF INCREDIBLE POWER] would seem somewhat mundane in the game, whereas in BG 1 it would be amazingly valuable. You know the part where you meet Drizzt Do'Urden? If it were BG 1 I would have killed him to get his magic weapons. In fact I did kill him in BG 1, and was somewhat disappointed.

[Cthulhu]

Divine Divinity?  Are they joking?  Sorry to be shallow, but that's the worst name I've ever heard in my life.  Let's call Dwarf Fortress "Fortified Fortresses".  The game itself sounds pretty good though.

Action RPGs...  Action RPGs...  You already mentioned Titan Quest, I have a multiplayer-induced glitch where when I talked to Feiyan or whoever in Fancy Asian-Town, she acted like I had already completed the Jade Palace thing, and sent me off to fight Typhon.  Apparently I needed the loot/experience from the Jade Palace, because I'm getting curb-stomped by the trash mobs just outside the city.  Other than that, the game's a lot of fun.

If by "Action RPG" you just mean Diablo-likes, that's all I have.

[lumin]

Divine Divinity?  Are they joking?  Sorry to be shallow, but that's the worst name I've ever heard in my life.  Let's call Dwarf Fortress "Fortified Fortresses".  The game itself sounds pretty good though.

Yeah the name is terrible.  Most people agree with that - it's probably part of the reason why it never got any good press.  If you can get past the name the game is good, REALLY good.  I've been playing it for the past few days and it amazes me just how much depth is in it.

I would say it rivals BG 1&2 in the depth of it's quests and is way better than Diablo 1 & 2.  The good/evil system works better than the BG games as well.  If you steal something or cause trouble in a town, there is a level of reaction to the crime.  At first guards and people will just give you a warning and be annoyed.  If you keep being bad, they will take more severe action.  People will throw you out of their houses and guards can put you in jail. 

I've played for a good 6-8 hours now and haven't even left the first town yet because there are so many side-quests and things to do.  The world is massive though - over 20,000 screens big. 

You can find pets or monsters to join you and they will follow you around.  You can pick up just about anything in the world (that's pickupable) and use them.  Like use a hammer or even a pie pan as a weapon.  You can learn herb lore like Morrowind and create your own potions or just eat food for health.  The 3 classes in the game can learn skills from other classes, so you can have a fighter with some spells or a rogue with great sword-skill.

Combat is actually very challenging.  It's suicide to just run into a pile of monsters and start hacking away like Diablo.  You've got to use a strategy like sneaking.

The story line is pretty cliche, but the execution is above average.  The game comes with a 27 page PDF prelude story that helps in understanding the lore of the world better. 

One thing I thought was dumb in BG was that there was tons of books everywhere, but other than giving you a good backstory, they weren't good for anything.  In DD, books and parchment actually give you hints on solving quests and they are important to take with you.  For example, early in the game there is a quest to find a way to duplicate a magic healing gem for two wounded soldiers.  Through searching, you find a paper that describes how gems can be duplicated by dropping them in a pool of water with a magic mirror.  The parchment says that the water has to be "natural" and "deep enough to submerge the mirror in".  If you forget these clues, it won't work. So taking the paper with you helps when you eventually do find the magic mirror.

There is just so much depth. Like I said, I'm still in the first town and have had almost all of he experiences above.  The first town alone probably has 3-4 minor dungeons and 1 major dungeon.

Maybe the name "Divine Divinity" is appropriate for this game, the gameplay really is heaven-sent.