Deus Ex Mardaneus

The only gaming in my house of late (besides my wife's Dragon Quest exploits and a few pitiful runs of Geometry Wars) has been Divine Divinity. I was really struggling with the early areas as a Survivor (what you would call a Rogue outside Belgium) because I could not, for the life of me, obtain a decent bow or dagger. Wielding a dirk in the midst of swarms of skleletal warriors is nearly the epitome of inefficiency. However, once I scored a sweet composite bow of swiftness, I was dropping skeltons like it was my life's calling. This should seem as weak as, if not weaker than, my previous stabbing exercises, but the experience is still awesome.

I reached a particular part of the game, though, which really irritates me. Without dumping spoilers all over you, your character finds himself (or herself) surrounded by a number of enemies roughly equal to the gross national product of Albania. To sweeten the pot, some of these foes are capable of conjuring even more monsters, and one of them summons monsters which can -- get this -- summon minions of their own. Now I get why summoned baatezu in D&D cannot use their own summoning powers. Anyway, my wicked awesome bow and I successfully eliminated every creature in the room except the aforementioned conjurer summoner, who could cripple my guy in a single shot even without his instant army. Needless to say, I died in quite an ignominious manner. After reloading, I made a run for the room's exit once I cleared a path from myself to the door; I was basically desperate for some sort of terrain advantage I could exploit. When I reached my destination, an NPC marched into the chamber and promptly annihilated the rest of the room's inhabitants.

I am definitely one of the last people on the planet to assign my opinion to others, but who plays games to watch other people do cool stuff? If I wanted to relish someone else's exploits, I would grab a novel or a movie. Or cast Bahamut Zero or Knights of the Round. I have always had a soft spot for running away with my tail between my legs while the real heroes ® deal with whatever problem I have caused. Remember how Drizzt tells you to get out of his gnoll-killing way in Baldur's Gate? Of course not -- that would sort of suck the heroism from your party at roughly the time they start getting strong. In an action-oriented game like Divine Divinity, I claim that moves of this sort are even less forgivable, since much of the game's appeal is seeing how effective a killing machine your character really is.

I guess I could claim some kind of moral victory in my near-clearing of the room, but I cannot help but escape the feeling that the designers meant for that last guy to hand the player his or her head on a charger. This will possibly weaken the rest of the game for me, since any defeat will make me wonder if I should bail out because the fight on my hands is supposed to be too much for me. Cue the Monty Python jokes, people!

By the way, if you got the rather obscure reference in the first paragraph, you are officially eleven kinds of awesome.