I got play the Divinity Fallen Heroes demo at PAX East 2019. From co-developers, Larian Studios and Logic Artists, Divinity Fallen Heroes is a spin-off of Divinity: Original Sin 2. While I clearly only scratched the surface of this deep narrative driven turn-based tactical game RPG elements, I left me extremely impressed. The demo started out with the player’s ship, the Lady Vengeance, arriving in port, only to find the city is being attacked. After taking counsel with two of your shipmates, you’re left with two options.
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You can go into the city and protect the divine leader who is besieged therein, or you can rush to the docks to aid some trapped civilians. Since the Divine was accompanied by some manner of the guard I opted to save the civilians or at least attempted to. This left one of my crew most displeased with me, while the other was clearly relieved.
Upon making my decision I was taken to a party select screen. My first choice was to select one of my two shipmates to lead my party. I opted for the mage as I always love using magic, and she was the one who wanted me to save the civilians in the first place. After that, I had to choose which generic troops I wanted to fill the other three slots in my party. I was given a healthy six options to choose among and I ended up settling for a healer, a solider and a mage. The last thing I got to select were two special items to take with me I chose an apple that let me heal a character completely and an all-seeing eye to help if stealth was needed.
I was then taken to the docks where I was shown groups of civilians huddled in corners as enemies approached. The game went into its turn based portion at this point. During the player’s turns, they activate each of their characters. Characters each have three action points to spend on various action such as, casting spells, walking, attacking enemies and so on. I immediately moved to engage the enemy and then things immediately went horribly wrong. I discovered very quickly how deeply elemental attacks interact with the environment after I had my mage freeze an enemy blocking my path on a small bridge. This was very effective in dispatching the minion, however, as my other characters attempted to cross the narrow walk they would slip on the ice and become stunned.
I eventually made it across and cut down a couple more opponents, but I was not able to save the requisite number of civilians to complete the mission. While I might have failed miserably I still found the game entertaining and look forward to getting another chance at navigating the dangers of its turn based combat.
The visuals were very well executed in both the prestige narrative, as well as during the mission. As is generally the case strategy games I don’t think the graphics will set the world on fire, but they succeed in showing a great deal of detail, while still being very clear with where everything was on the map. And that’s the most important part.
If deep, strategic gameplay, driven by a narrative that branches as you decide which missions to take on and which to ignore, I have a feeling Divinity Fallen Heroes is going to be one worth keeping your eye out for.
Divinity Fallen Heroes is currently slated for a release later this year for PC.
