*post contains spoiler between .s*
The only thing that BD has to "envious" of DiabloII its the Cut-scenes!
Well, there's the voice acting in diablo2 too, that is way better than this demo and you can argue about the music and the background scenes, but gameplay comes first place IMO, so I won't complain about GFX or SFX. I see others have done that already before me.
DD&Beyond Divinity is a choose your class path as you progress,which you think suit best to you!
Now in DiabloII you just choose at start 1 class character,having to use ONLY a few skills(which most are useless)!When you find THE BEST WEAPON/MAGIC its over you just kill easily everything!It gets quite boring just hit&slash all the time,
I think BD still has to prove itself in this respect. Whatever the other forummers say, I've only been able to make melee fighters, archers/xbowmen and wizards casting either an elemental missile or an instant elementalal attack.
I suppose you could make a hybrid, but the result would be a character that is worse at two or more things.
They say i shouldn't compare BD demo to the full diablo2 game, so I'll compare BD demo to the d2 demo then:
In the d2 demo you can only make a melee specialist(barb) who does basicly the same as any warrior in any game including BD: hack at things with his weapon. True, they didn't include magical attacks in the d2demo, but you could also equip him with ranged weapons, so you could mess around with different play styles.
D2 did a fair demo impression of the full game: you got access to all weapons and armor upto ringmail quality (even rare and setting type); 3 random dungeons (den of evil; bigger cave and crypt under graveyard), the camp with shops and the wilderness. I think the total play area was 10x as big as the BD demo and 100x as many items + the whole area layout and interiour was random.
I remember if you explored everything you would have killed about 200 baddies. compare to BDdemo with 10-15 kills depending if you go out of your way to get everyone.
So the d2 demo gave a fairly accurate impression of what the full game was going to be.
there are NO real quests and YOU #MUST# FOLLOW THE STORY line that is given to you,unlike in BD where you have much much more freedom to do what you want!
I didn't discover a lot of freedom. To get to the exit pit in the arena you have to do the following in sequence:
***SPOILER ALERT***
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>walk out of cell; kill the guard in the south; get his keys; open the SW cell door and enter; uncover the hole and go through; get the rope from the imp corpse; kill the skeleton; climb up using the rope; kill a guard; go south and then east; kill the torturer; get his key; go east and north to the lever room; pull levers in sequence; go further east kill guard; east-kill 2 guards; get key; west and south- pull both levers- north and follow the corridor; kill guards; enter arena and click on the pit. END<
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***end spoiler***
You must do all these things in sequense. So you don't have to talk to Ed, the skull or the thirsty guy and you can avoid some fights, but how is that different from the d2demo?
d2demo: >talk to priestess; clear den of evil; return and talk to priestess and rogue; kill evil rogue in graveyard; return to camp; talk again<
Again you can choose to explore the rest of the wilderness or explore the big cave or the crypts, or don't.
Both equally lineair I say.
At first BD seems a bit confusing and boring because of THE TOO MANY resistances,complex skill creations,armor types(crushing ect...) but you get used to it!
The only significant resistancies I found was the ghosts who got near immunity against fire,air,water and earth.
All the other creatures didn't have any significant resistance or weakness. Using melee I slaughtered everything indiscriminately. Only some took a little longer to kill, like the torturer. Same thing for magic, except against ghosts.
Crushing, slashing or ranged didn't make a difference and the results remained within the statistical margin or error.
In other words you didn't need to use your brain to win the fights; just click on the enemy and wait and occasionally drink a potion if health or mana got low.
It also gives you the opportunity to CREATE 2 different characters as you progress,meaning most items you find you will either use them on one PC or the other PC.One can be a warrior and the other a Ranger with lots of Survivor skills(lockpicks,traps ect.)
BUT having TOO many characters like in Dungeon Sieges makes the game BORING
Boring? You mean like in BG, BG2, planescape torment, ultima7... LOL
Back to diablo2 vs BD, I now recall the d2 demo also had roughly 2x as much spoken dialogue(or should i say monologue) than this demo.
I'll repeat once more: the BD demo is too short; shows too little(rp,action,puzzles) and is too easy (for myself and, i think, for most gamers out there).
