Drakensang: TDE - A Closer Look Video

That's not very far into the game, DArt, and the game gets better as you.

ut I feel the game has plenty of toys to play with. Every Talent in the game has skill checks that come up in dialogue and quest opportunities. You can pass certain checks or fail, and it goes so far to actually influence the minute-to-minute gameplay as well.

Another example of Animal Lore. I killed an Emerald Spider (which is no small feat, mind you), but my Amazon wasn't skilled enough in their lore to loot the remains. I find little quirks like that very interesting. It adds to a lot of unique opportunities to use skills in the game.

The game, unlike many of this sort, actually rewards clever characters as well. Playing an Alchemist or scholar is actually worthwhile, and you will get rewarded for your cleverness. In fact, Cleverness is actually a stat in the game, and some of your Talents are based on that.

The game states in a hint screen that you can't only rely on sharp blades and good armor, but you actually NEED cleverness and wits to get the most out of the game, and that's pretty refreshing to me.

To each their own, indeed. But I'm not sure if you gave it enough time to really get absorbed by it.

Has anyone played drakensang: the river of time?
It's actually a prequel from 2010 to darkensang.

I did. And imho it's a lot better than Drakensang 1.

@Fluent

I took at good hard look at the character abilities for my preferred class (IIRC, it was a bow user of some kind), and I just wasn't excited at all. I created my own class or whatever, and the amount of special powers was extremely low - and the actual combat system completely run-of-the-mill. It was solid and it worked, but it wasn't for me.

If a game isn't entertaining 10 hours into it, I'm not going to bother.

It's great about Animal Lore and stuff like that, but if combat, exploration and dialogue bores me to tears, it's not going to cut it.

We simply don't get excited about the same things, and that's all there is to it.

It's ok that we have different preferences. It better be, because we have no choice.

For instance, you seem unexcited about games like Witcher 3 and Star Citizen - and I'm just as excited about those as you are about PoE.

Plenty of us liked it Fluent. Keep playing. I'd love to see you do a RoT lets play. It's a fairly well ignored game which is a shame.

Fair enough, for sure, DArt.

Todd, I will consider your request for a RoT Let's Play, for sure. Probably won't be for awhile yet, since I have a lot on my plate currently.

I'm also surprised how polished Drakensang is. I was expecting a more low-budget feel to the game, but that hasn't really been the case so far. Pleasantly surprised I guess you could say.

Most people found it better (they added voices) but I prefer the first.

Morrandir said:

I did. And imho it's a lot better than Drakensang 1.

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I don't consider adding voices a sign of being a better game. Not by a longshot.

Morrandir said:

I did. And imho it's a lot better than Drakensang 1.

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Would you recommend it? It looks pretty dull to me but TDE
Is a plus.
Also, is the story interesting? It would be disheartening to find out that not only it's story is disappointing but also the story of the first game.

ToddMcF2002 said:

You're not pulling a fast one are you?

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I'm not pulling anything and if I believe a game deserves to be loved or hated because of some reason I'll repeat it endlessly.

The series has been known very well here in Poland, maybe because we are so close to Germany, where it came from.
Anyway, it was great to play, and i enjoyed it a lot.

Thanks for the video : for what it's worth, here are my notes about Drakensang: The River of Time (Drakensang 2, which is a prequel) compared to its predecessor D:TDE, based on online reviews :
better story, less generic / more atmosphere, quick travel points (no long boring walking anymore), less trash mob and more interesting combat, denser tighter shorter experience (30 hours long compared to 60 hours).

I don't know how much of this is true, but maybe we'll know in a next video Fluent

I wish GOG had this whole series listed in their catalog. OK, now my Ring of Three Wishes has only two left!

Guys, The River of Time is part of a current Groupees bundle - but there's only for a day or two left.

TRoT improves pretty much everything. Especially the storytelling is much better.

TRoT improves pretty much everything and is a prequel, but I can't recommend playing TRoT *before* Drakensang:TDE nor skipping TDE.
You'll miss a lot on NPCs!

Thx Gorath for the info and here is the link :
https://groupees.com/bm18
Runs for another day and a half.
They say "Redeemable on Steam" but I can't find Drakensang: The River of Time on Steam's catalogue (only Drakensang 1 shows up).
Weird… I guess I'll pay and see…

DArtagnan said:

I didn't care for the character system, which while nicely thought-out, just wasn't fun in terms of toys and powers. It felt like an attempt at realism without the fun parts.
The story was dull, the characters were dull, the combat was dull and the environments were dull.

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Maybe you are not much into low fantasy? There is not much in terms of "toys and powers", especially at starting levels and locations.

Regarding the story and writing - I understand your opinion, because english version (which you probably played) was below average translation of german original. There are many mistakes, duplicate names and some logical nonsense. Some of it is not initially visible, the game seems ok, but if you will carefully read the journal (for example) or or if you know the lore, you will find it. Worst thing is that publisher dtp opted for cheap translation with truncated texts and dumbed down lore-related stuff. The game was written and designed for german audience because they have generally good understanding of TDE lore. Problem is that english audience dont - so in order to tell to tell the story right and make the world more interesting they should make some additional work. Like make some changes to dialogues to explain some lore stuff (especially about the main journey of the hero), put more lore books into the game etc. Unfortunately dtp didnt want to spend some time and money on this effort and opted for opposite direction to make story look more simple, more like generic fantasy to be accessible for english audience. Its not surprising that they were unable to promo and sell the game internationally.

BTW: River of Time is prequel so even if you dont play sequels of dull games you could try it sometimes.

Olivoist said:

Thx Gorath for the info and here is the link :
https://groupees.com/bm18
Runs for another day and a half.
They say "Redeemable on Steam" but I can't find Drakensang: The River of Time on Steam's catalogue (only Drakensang 1 shows up).
Weird… I guess I'll pay and see…

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Me too, that's really odd.
Does it work for you?

Edit:

I confirm Drakensang: The River of Time is 4$ (or more for charity !?) for the redeemable Steam version.
There's a bunch of other games, some of them RPGs, and even music in that sweet 4$ bundle.

https://groupees.com/bm18

Runs for another day and a half.

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Thanks a bunch man! will buy.
And yes they do charity similar to humble bundle.
It's no new stuff, even EA did it (to encourage people to subscribe to origin but thats just trifling detail).

If there are any German gamers seeing this topic, I can't help but wonder, what is the correct German pronunciation for Drakensang? And what is the meaning? Dragon song?

By the way, I played the first game and liked it. The second game was similar, but I hit a bugged quest and stopped playing.

I remember I restarted Drakensang about three times, just because the first 8 hours or so were pretty boring to me but once you get to the first city the game really picks up and it ended as one of the best RPGs I have played. I enjoy the TDE system much more because of it being more complicated or realistic than most DnD type systems, thats what probably made me sweat through the first "boring" part of the game. I mean you have to buy soap to clean the muck of from crawling through a sewer, where have you ever seen that?