Divine Divinity

Divine Divinity is an isometric action RPG by Belgian studio Larian Studios, which dropped the player into a fantasy world threatened by a dark lord and his armies, while the main hero gradually uncovers their own connection to divine power. The game combined real-time action combat with a deep system of skills, spells, and items, similar to isometric RPGs of the Diablo type at the time, but with a significantly greater emphasis on written content, side quests, and exploration. The player could shape their character through a combination of melee combat, ranged attacks, and magic schools, while the main storyline gradually revealed the hero's connection to the deities and forces behind the world's conflict.

The game world was unusually densely packed with detail and humor, with the ability to interact with nearly every object and character, which was unusual for its time and showed the studio's ambition to go beyond genre conventions. The graphical style and music matched the standards of isometric RPGs of the era, but the sheer amount of content and the number of hidden details made it an unusually rich experience for an independent production of the time. The environment combined sprawling outdoor areas with elaborate underground dungeons and catacombs, which offered self-contained side stories and rewards separate from the main storyline.

Divine Divinity laid the foundation for the later Divinity series, which Larian Studios gradually developed all the way to the internationally acclaimed Original Sin titles. At the time of release it was a smaller, European production without major marketing, but among fans of isometric RPGs it earned respect for the depth of its systems and breadth of content, and in retrospect is seen as an important step on the studio's path to its later successes. The game was later re-released on digital distribution platforms, allowing a new generation of players who discovered the Divinity series only through its later, much better-known entries to come back to it.

Why play it: Fans of isometric RPGs and admirers of the later Divinity series alike will find it a lesser-known but surprisingly rich, systems-deep foundation of Larian's entire body of work.