Beyond Divinity

Beyond Divinity is a direct sequel to Divine Divinity and the second installment in the Divinity series from Belgian studio Larian. The player takes on the role of a death knight, one of the elite warriors of a fallen empire, who is betrayed and magically bound to a demon in a dungeon – from that moment on, the player must control both characters at once and switch between them depending on the situation, since the death of one means the end of the other as well.

This dual control is the main mechanic that sets the game apart from the rest of the series: the knight and the demon have different abilities, their own inventories, and different approaches to combat, so the player must constantly weigh which character to deploy in which situation, and their interplay becomes key to progressing through the game. The combat system combines real-time action with a pause for issuing commands, which was typical in 2004 for action RPGs built on an isometric perspective, and the game offers a large world full of side quests, crafting, and character progression, including an extensive skill tree for each of the two bound characters separately.

Compared to Divine Divinity, the game was seen as darker and mechanically more complicated, with a harder entry point due to the need to handle two characters at once, but it also offered more elaborate and tactical combat, where the player has to decide when to deploy the stronger but more vulnerable knight and when to rely on the demon instead. Larian later reused and further developed the mechanic of pairing and mutual dependency between characters in later series entries, so Beyond Divinity also works as an early glimpse of the direction the studio gradually took toward more systemically interconnected RPGs.

Why play: Beyond Divinity will be appreciated by fans of classic isometric RPGs who enjoy the unconventional mechanic of controlling two linked characters at once, as well as Divinity series fans curious about its early roots. Anyone looking for an entry point into the world of Rivellon, however, should reach for Divine Divinity instead, which this installment directly continues from.