Divine Divinity Divinations

[vometia]

I have to say I loved FoV - well most of it, I'll come to that later. I wasn't sure what to expect since it's all set in Aleroth, and there wasn't much to Aleroth when I saw it last time. It has been nicely expanded, not huge, but big enough that it accommodates a whole bunch of quests quite nicely. The quests themselves are varied, sometimes poignant, often humorous and frequently obtusely difficult, but no so much that you find yourself going nuts.

As far as being based in a city is concerned, it reminded me somewhat of Tribunal in that sense, another game that didn't suffer for its limited environment, and which also felt a bit more "political" (well it was overtly political in Tribunal's case, but you get the idea. I hope).

It wasn't quite as long as I expected: not short, at 20+ hours it was longer than some full games so it's fine for an expansion, but I'm not sure how the claims of up to 60 hours came about since my style of gameplay is normally pretty slow. Unless there were huge swathes of it that I missed, but looking at the help sections on the official forums I'm not seeing anything unfamiliar, so I'm slightly puzzled by that.

The only real fly in the ointment is the final stage. It's an escort mission, which is probably all you really need to know. And even as escort missions go, it's a damned annoying one, at least rivalling my previous downer experience with Divinity II, the "protect Zandalor the Slow" stage that I've moaned about extensively. But it's right at the end, so even if you don't fancy it much, it shouldn't really detract from the rest of the expansion.

At the time of writing there are still a few bugs and wrinkles, however, such as being able to enter the Hall of Echoes. Their support guys seem good, though, so I imagine they'll sort it out before long.

[vometia]

It wasn't quite as long as I expected: not short, at 20+ hours it was longer than some full games so it's fine for an expansion, but I'm not sure how the claims of up to 60 hours came about

I've just realised that 60 hours is likely for the whole of DKS, which sounds not unrealistic. Doh, etc.