Drakensang:RoT Got my Drakensang: TRoT import today…

JDR13

SasqWatch
Original Sin Donor
Joined
October 21, 2006
Messages
39,129
Location
Florida, US
Finally got my hands on a retail copy of The River Time. It was shipped from the UK, but I assume they got it from Belgium or the Netherlands.

Very nice 87 page full color manual. Although I'm quite irked that it was slightly damaged due to the design of the case interior (see photo). I don't understand why they would put a plastic ridge on the inner spine of the case. :mad:

Purchased mine from an Ebay vendor, and only paid $19.20 with shipping.

I was under the impression that it also came with a map, but my copy didn't. Anyone else here get this import? Did you get a map, or anything else besides the manual?
 

Attachments

  • 2011-06-01 17.21.29.jpg
    2011-06-01 17.21.29.jpg
    158.8 KB · Views: 118
Last edited:
Joined
Oct 21, 2006
Messages
39,129
Location
Florida, US
I think only the Collector's Edition and the Personal edition comes with a map.

And yes - packages with this "inner spine" are relatively normal here. One can find them every now and then. Maybe the firm which packages the game has once bought a huge numbers of "boxes" with this spine ? Because - as a tendency - I tend to see them rather for games which are published by dtp.

A short notice on the cover of the handbook : "Firun" is the name of one of the Zwelvegods who is symbolically connected with the North is usually associated with hunting.

Praios is the one of the Twelvegods who is symbolically connected with the South. You should already know Praios from the first Drakensang game (ever been in the temple there ? You can learn a few bits about Praios there). ;)
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
Your post made me worried and I decided to open my German retail version. It's exactly the same. :( The manual is slightly damaged.

The included poster is nothing special. A3 size paper with the German cover on one side and a skill tree on the other.

The Flexbox dvd case is inside a cardbox. I doubt foreign releases came with a poster, simply because their expected retail price was less than half the German one.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
7,830
Am I the only one who thinks back to his novella-sized BG2 manual when I see one of these DVD boxes? This is a big part of the reason why I'm slowly being converted into a digital download guy. :(
 
Joined
Nov 10, 2008
Messages
5,978
Location
Florida, USA
The manual for Arcanum was by far the biggest one I've *ever* seen for an RPG.
Only strategy games manuals were bigger.
Don't remember on the BG2 manual, though.
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
I love my trusty BG2 manual. It's a ring-binded version and very well used from years of referral. It's loaded with my notes in the back of party combinations/answers to riddles etc. The Arcanum manual was also a highly entertaining read. Needless to say, I'm a fan of the old fashioned manual.

Thanks to this thread and others here, I think I've found my source to finally pick up Drakensang TRoT. :) I had such a nice fun whimsical time with the first game, that I just have to pick this one up as well.
 
Joined
Jul 12, 2009
Messages
1,974
Location
Australia
I think a ring-binded manual is an absolute exceoption from the rule; I've never seen a thing like that.
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
/me greet sales representatives from dtp entertainment AG welcome to the party.
/me asks sales representatives to put on blindfolds so not to spoil the surprise.
/me signals for firing squad to enter.
 
Joined
Mar 30, 2008
Messages
1,163
Location
Scandinavia
I think a ring-binded manual is an absolute exceoption from the rule; I've never seen a thing like that.

Back then it was not that much of an exception. I remember quite a few games with ring-binded manuals from the 1990s. Mostly sims though like EA's excellent Jane's series of combat flight sims (F-15 etc.) or Total Air War (TAW). Those were some seriously big manuals, too. Just checked my boxed copy of TAW. The ring-binded manual has 334 pages.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
3,201
Well, I don't remember a single one - except BG2, of course.

Even those games from the 90s I know of (mainly adventure games, though, but also SIM City 2000, for example) had normal binding.

I must admit that I didn't play much simulating games, then.
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
Certain Paradox releases also had ringbound manuals. Hearts of Iron is one of those (and it actually looked really nice. One of the better manuals that I've seen overall).

Am I the only one who thinks back to his novella-sized BG2 manual when I see one of these DVD boxes? This is a big part of the reason why I'm slowly being converted into a digital download guy.
You could almost fit my BG2 manual into a DVD case. Had they changed its format slightly, it would probably have been possible (or they could have done it like they did with Age of Wonders 2 and Europa Universalis 3 and put everything in a sleeve that could hold both the game & the manual)

Also, have you seen the thing that comes with the X-superbox? While not a manual (it is an encyclopedia of the universe) it is still rather massive. Almost 300 pages of information about the game world. The arcanum manual is just shy of 200 pages, and contains a lot less information.

Jane's AH-64D longbow's manual is 236 of pure information. I would dread trying out Total air war, considering how hard Longbow was to get into. Because the manual lacks conventional numbering of the pages, I just added the ones noted in the index together, any pages containing only images are not counted (and there are a few of those)

I've also never come across a Maxis game with a ringbound manual. Most of them were surprisingly thick though. SimAnt clocks in at 176 pages, and that was one of their lighter games (of course, about 100 of those pages were information about ants, that had little to do with the game itself)

*edit* The Nordic release of Dark Omen did by the way have a 272 page manual of gibberish (poorly translated into 4 different languages)
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jun 2, 2011
Messages
1,756
Location
Stockholm, Sweden
Certain Paradox releases also had ringbound manuals. Hearts of Iron is one of those (and it actually looked really nice. One of the better manuals that I've seen overall).


You could almost fit my BG2 manual into a DVD case. Had they changed its format slightly, it would probably have been possible (or they could have done it like they did with Age of Wonders 2 and Europa Universalis 3 and put everything in a sleeve that could hold both the game & the manual)

Also, have you seen the thing that comes with the X-superbox? While not a manual (it is an encyclopedia of the universe) it is still rather massive. Almost 300 pages of information about the game world. The arcanum manual is just shy of 200 pages, and contains a lot less information.

Jane's AH-64D longbow's manual is 236 of pure information. I would dread trying out Total air war, considering how hard Longbow was to get into. Because the manual lacks conventional numbering of the pages, I just added the ones noted in the index together, any pages containing only images are not counted (and there are a few of those)

I've also never come across a Maxis game with a ringbound manual. Most of them were surprisingly thick though. SimAnt clocks in at 176 pages, and that was one of their lighter games (of course, about 100 of those pages were information about ants, that had little to do with the game itself)

*edit* The Nordic release of Dark Omen did by the way have a 272 page manual of gibberish (poorly translated into 4 different languages)

Pretty sure my Sim World manual was ringbound. But... why are you guys having this discussion???
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
3,508
My SIM City 2000 manual wasn't ring bound. Neither was my Railroad Tycoon II manual.

Could it be that this is a country-specific thing ?
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
You could almost fit my BG2 manual into a DVD case. Had they changed its format slightly, it would probably have been possible (or they could have done it like they did with Age of Wonders 2 and Europa Universalis 3 and put everything in a sleeve that could hold both the game & the manual)

You must have received a different manual than I did. I don't think the book that came with my BG2 Collector's Edition would even fit in two DVD cases, much less one.

Also, have you seen the thing that comes with the X-superbox? While not a manual (it is an encyclopedia of the universe) it is still rather massive. Almost 300 pages of information about the game world.

I was so pissed that the X-superbox wasn't released over here. I kept hoping that a copy would show up on Ebay or something, but it never did.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Oct 21, 2006
Messages
39,129
Location
Florida, US
I was so pissed that the X-superbox wasn't released over here. I kept hoping that a copy would show up on Ebay or something, but it never did.

I guess you are a victim of some video game industry beliefs that some games just wouldn't sell in the U.S. … "not contemporary", maybe ?
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,908
Location
Old Europe
You must have received a different manual than I did. I don't think the book that came with my BG2 Collector's Edition would even fit in two DVD cases, much less one.
If I remove the DVD from a single-DVD DVD case, I can fit the manual into it into it. Had they been able to remove ~20 or so pages from it (which would have been possible if they changed the format, and removed the adds (and possibly credits)) then it would not have been a problem at all to fit it into a DVD case.

Have you tried to order X-superbox from Amazon.co.uk? It is usually not a problem for me to order from amazon.com, so the reverse might be true (I don't live in the uk though, so I don't know if amazon.com will ship to the uk). Shipping is not prohibitively expensive, at least not from the states to europe (~$8, which often means that if I order 2-3 books (or 1 pen & paper RPG rulebook/supplement ), it will be cheaper to order them from the states than to buy them over here)
 
Joined
Jun 2, 2011
Messages
1,756
Location
Stockholm, Sweden
If I remove the DVD from a single-DVD DVD case, I can fit the manual into it into it. Had they been able to remove ~20 or so pages from it (which would have been possible if they changed the format, and removed the adds (and possibly credits)) then it would not have been a problem at all to fit it into a DVD case. )

I'm pretty sure we're not talking about the same manual. :)

Have you tried to order X-superbox from Amazon.co.uk? It is usually not a problem for me to order from amazon.com, so the reverse might be true (I don't live in the uk though, so I don't know if amazon.com will ship to the uk). Shipping is not prohibitively expensive, at least not from the states to europe (~$8, which often means that if I order 2-3 books (or 1 pen & paper RPG rulebook/supplement ), it will be cheaper to order them from the states than to buy them over here)

I just checked, and there's only 2 Amazon stores that sell it, and both are used copies. I'm guessing the Superbox was somewhat of a limited production regarding quantity.

It's easy enough to buy the DD version, and you get the X encyclopedia on PDF, but it would have been nice to have a physical copy.
 
Joined
Oct 21, 2006
Messages
39,129
Location
Florida, US
It´s a friggin´ great game, just play it already!
 
Joined
Apr 4, 2008
Messages
2,437
Location
Prague
Back
Top Bottom