Drakensang - first impressions

Let's also not forget in the first trilogy they did have at least one adult theme in the game or are brothels not adult themes anymore?

Click to expand...

Perfect example:
There's a whore street in the docks, but the whores have names like "Sanfte Anna" -> "Gentle (mellow ?) Anne" and not for example "Lydia Man Eater"

The story ist presented like an old saga with humor like in the old "Robin Hood", "The 3 Musketeers" or the "The Crimson Pirate" movies. Hercules & Xena comes close, too. One NPC reminds me of the the old TV character Catweazle.

Dhruin said:

I would suggest this is a continuation of RoA in the same that Baldur's Gate is a continuation of the Gold Box series...in other words, not really.

Click to expand...

More accurate would be that this is a continuation of dark eye system like baldurs gate is continuation of series of top-down/isometric party based ad&d system rpg games.

You can google freely and read reviews of the past to discover that there is a definete connection between gold box, dark sun and baldurs gate. Even press mentioned dark sun as the new possible gold box but instead it was only short lived. Baldur's Gate was the first great AD&D game for the computer to come along since the Gold Box games from SSI -quote from reviewer. The three games are even somtimes mentioned together like they had a connection:

Like Shattered Lands, this game (dark sun) is a departure from the earlier gold box Dungeons and Dragons games and is more akin to Baldur's Gate in that instead of a first person "maze game" focusing on dungeon crawling, you have a third-person top down game with more of a focus on interacting with the characters and environment around you.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dark-sun-wake-of-the-ravager

Click to expand...

Since the release of the first gold box games I have always waited for the "next" party based ad&d game to continue the series. And there always was one.

Moriendor said:

It is. But you don't get to create your party at the beginning like you did in the previous games. Instead you pick up your companions (up to three) along your travels (like in BG).

Click to expand...

I didnt know that. Looking at the pictures I thought it was som kind of gothic/oblivion style game where you travelled alone most of the time. But its good to know there is atleast somkind of party in the game.

Here are my impressions so far:

The best thing that I can say about the game is that it looks really good and that it is nicely polished. I haven't encountered any bugs or crashes yet, solowdowns is framerate are also quite rare compared to other games. The gfx are not the best of what's out there (some of the textures could have a higher resolution), but overall the game has an artificial beauty that is quite stunning.

Once you start the game you'll encounter the first rather ambiguous thing about the game: The DSA rule system. You can choose from like 20 archetypes or so, you cannot change their appearance (although everyone looks different), but you can change the gender and, if you like you can enter an expert mode and change your skills and attributes the way you like it. Now, what I absolutely hate about the DSA system is that if you'e not into the rules you'll be overwhelmed by choice. Especially if you get points later on during the game, you often don't really know what to do with them. Do I raise my attributes, or rather my talents? Do I buy new and powerful attacks and/or spells? Or do I even invest in a new skill, I do not have yet? Do I buy hitpoints or raise my endurance. Basically all the skill ups are paid from the same pool which makes it hard for you to decide what's important and what not.

The story, as I've seen it so far, is okish... but unfortunatly hopelessly clichéd. There are no deep moral conflicts, no big decisions to be made - you ARE a hero and that's that. In terms of story this game has "oldschool" written all over it. But, and I have to admit that, the story is not as boring as one might think... at least it wasn't for me so far. The game is quite streamlined, you could say. I haven't experienced any free roaming yet. Once you're in a certain place (let's say a city) you can choose in what order you'll do the quests, but you cannot simply leave the place and go and explore for new areas. On the other hand you can return to certain places, so it's not totally linear.

The companions are ok as well, they got personality and although they are in a way also archetypical they are not so clichéd like the ones in Baldur's Gate for example. Their background stories are rather harmless as far as I can tell, no raped dark elves yet. They don't really interact, somtimes they'll make a few witty comments or complain about something, but they don't constantly chatter among themsleves or something like that. You can only have three of them with you at any time, but all the companions, even those not in your party, will get experience points after you've met them and wait for you in your very own estate.

The combat system is as old school as it can get - pausable real time. It's piss easy at the beginning, but it's getting a bit harder at some point... there isn't really much more to say, if you know NWN, you know how it looks and feels. I had the feeling that it's rather slow paced which isn't the worst thing really.

The gameplay itself is okish and again oldschool. I really liked the city of Ferdok, but some dungeons are really extremly boring. I haven't seen them all, but what I've seen was sometimes linear and somtimes simply outright boring. It's a bit like in very old rpgs where you fight hordes of enemies to get through a dungeon, very often of the same type. Somtimes you're allowed to destroy a barell, because that seems to be the Aventurian storage space of choice. They put everything in there, from torches to dwarves. But, the dungeons look rather nice, so I guess that makes it a bit easier to fight your way through them... did I mention they are boring? Some dungeons have nothing in it, but the same type of monster and barells - no traps or riddles, and strictly spoken that sucks big time, because it's simply lazyness of programmers. In the preview of a German online magazine which was published a few months ago this was already criticsed and the programmers said they would add a lot more, but... oh well...

My overall impression of the game is a mixed one. On the one hand I really like how the game looks and feels. As people already mentioned it's fairytale fantasy, quite naive, but fun and good looking. On the other hand it's simply not overly exciting to engage into plots that are more or less predictable. Especially the main story line is big bs, as far as I can tell right now, it's about dragons (who would have guessed it), the biggest fantasy cliché ever. Don't expect a deep story with moral choices or underlying analogies, you won't find them in there.
What's rather well done is the character management... as I said before, it's a bit too complicated, but it also offers a lot. You can really put together the party you want by influencing pretty much everything. But it's not just their attributes, skills, etc. there is also a lot of choice when it comes to appearance. There are lots of weapons, clothes, and armor to be found in the game, so you can also make your characters look cool. And yep, it all looks antique, medieval or 17th century like (Aventurien is a bit of a mix), so it usually looks a lot better than the over the top fantasy crap you'll find in D&D.
The problem is really the story and gameplay. It's ok, but not all too exciting. For me personally it's a tiny bit too oldschool. There is nothing innovative about this game, nothing which improves the genre of rpg.

Any date for an English release?

Doesn't exactly sound too exciting.

Not that I expected much, really, but there's always that inevitable hope.

Oh well...

I played both games not very much, but from my viewpoint it's much, much better than The Witcher. Probably because I thought the Witcher to be an unappealing character to play.

JDR13 said:

Any date for an English release?

Click to expand...

Translation has just begun - with the release of the gold master.

They wanted to have a fully working German-language version first, especially to support translators to try transferring the "feel" of this world into the English language.

So far I like the sound of this game and can't wait for it to get released. I don't mind that a lot of people are saying that it has a real fairy tale feel to it, so did Divine Divinity and that game rocked. Thanks for the first impressions guys, this has gone onto my must buy list.

ISS, or Alrik perhaps, Can you give us tips on where/how to spend those skill points, since I doubt many of us are familiar with the rule set.

Well, the demo doesn't allow several classes, and no "expert mode", so i had a kind of pre-defined character before me.

I chose a female ... ranger I think is the right word. I think sdhe's an Elf, but the Elves look somewhat human, unlike in the P&P documents.

In the first level-up (there are not really levels anymore since you can level-up *any time*, if you have enough points left) I decided to put her skills into a few fighting skills (the bow, especially), and healing. Plus, I put a few points into the -1 and -2 values of rather town-related skills.

From this list here http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4870 you can see several skills.

I chose especially "human nature", since Elves are no humans and therefore - especially if they come from out of the woods - have next to no knowledge of the "human nature". I wanted her to learnm more about humans so to say.

Plus, I increased her skills of animal lore and plant lore - because with them, the character is more able to not only distinguish animals and plants, but also collect plants (skill check) and take things out of dead animals in a similar fashion like in Gothic, only with the difference that you'll have to do an right-click on the dead animal. Then, you get several options, for example Beute = Loot, or the skill check towards animal lore, the icon looks like a flattened animal skin.

The higher these two lore values are, the more special things you can cut out of the plant or animal. And sell them afterwards, to alchemists, for example (I read).

Edit : The values in all nature-related skills are already relatively high with *all* elven characters, I think, but perhaps also with human hunterers.

Dwarves, on the contrary, are more stone-related. Their skill called "Zwergennase" ("dwarven nose") gives them an natural ability to "sniff out" raw ores, so to say.
But since dwarves are not humans, they might have a few difficulties with the "human nature", too.

2nd edit: There are "work benches" all over there in Aventuria, but in the very first town I only discovered two: One for alchemy on the small market place, and one at the hunterer's house for bow-related work.
A third type is the anvil for smithing.

These can be used in conjunction with the apropriate skills - and perhaps a few receipes, which can be bought, too.

Hello to all: new member coming in. First of all, I'm not a native english speaker, so forgive my english.

Having played the pen and paper version of The Dark Eye (TDE) and now playing Drakensang, I'm maybe able to contribute to the first impressions of the game.

I played the game for like 10-15h now. I took my time, cause I wanted to dive into the world I know form the p&p-sessions. I'm a game master for a p&p-group. So I invested some time getting known to the ruleset, the world and the ideas behind TDE. The lead designers of the game themselves were p&p-players of the game. The story was written by authors, who mainly write the adventures of the p&p-game. TDE has several differences to AD&D (although I must admit, that I hardly know the AD&D rules and adventures --- so I'm standing on thin ice... ). Magic is not that big in Aventuria. It is very uncommon to wield a weapon, which does magical damage. Weapons won't get buffed with a "+1" like in AD&D. It is more like: The stronger the charakter, the more experienced he is with techniques of melee combat - the higher the damage he is dealing. Sharpening your axe will do more damage. OK, there is still some magic in the world. But the general idea is, that magic should be something special, seeing a magic sword should be unique and only legends know what it can do. So there is in general no "+n, n=1,2,..." in this world.

Another thing is combat. In the p&p-games you really have to try to avoid confrontation. Healing is not like drinking something and everythings fine. There are healing portions, but again, they are rare and expensive. The p&p-adventures are more about riddles, exploring, talking, interaction and so on. Still you will have your boss fight. That is also the reason, why you have so many skills and special talents. So even a scientist, who doesn't know which end of a sword to hold can be a essential member of your group. Cause he can help you with all his knowledge skills to solve some riddles. Also his high standing in society may grant you more rewarding quests.

The new rule set, which was used for the game (4th edition) changed a lot. The idea was to get a little randomness out of the character development through the life of the hero. The thing is, when you create a character, you role the dices until your character is satisfying. There is no chance in that. And later on. (In the 3rd edition you had to role dices to level up your skills) You maybe have bad luck an the character won't get the needed skill upgrades. In a computer game you will just save/load the whole time, where is the joy in that. Thats the reason for this point-distribution-system. The level itself has now no meaning anymore and is just used to somewhat get an idea how far your hero has evolved and which adventures may be to though for him. You just spend your experience points for the skills and abilities.

Another important thing of TDE is, that things you do really change the world. So things that happen in the game change the world as played in the p&p-adventures. As a small example: For the game they "needed" a Hesinde (goddess of knowledge) temple. So there was one build in the world itself. Therefor in the newspaper of the gameworld (Der Aventurische Bote - information source for the p&p-players of the changes in the world) there was information (and I think a little adventure) why the temple is build. Anything that happens during the game can/will be referred to in this newspaper and the adventures to come.

That is more or less the basis on which the game was developed. And they had to please the p&p-dudes like me as well. In my opinion they did a great job. The p&p-ruleset has many more professions, races with different cultures and far more skills. So I think they already simplified it as far as possible for the game, while still keeping some TDE in it. So you have just a small number of skills and special abilities. I also like the way they included it into the world. The already mentioned "Zwergennase" (Dwarf nose?) is as far as I experienced it in the game to find hidden treasure. So if there is a dwarf running around with you having that ability places of hidden treasure will be marked on your minimap depending how high his skill is.
They also increased the possibility to use magic. It is somewhat easier accessible (the mana regenerates much faster then in p&p) in the game then in the p&p. So you can use spells more often. I think it is hard to create a game which satisfies both. The newbie and the hardcore p&p-TDE-Dude. Both have to make compromises. For the new player there will be a stuff to learn about the rule set. The one who knows the rules will have to give up some of the many possibilities he is used to in the p&p-world.

It is a game very close to the TDE "philosophy" and it is not trying to just use the ruleset and do whatever liked. It really tries to fit into the world. So if you want to get a glimpse of the very complex world Aventuria, then the game is a very good start.

@Corwin: There is no real level up in the game. You can increase your skills anytime. So you can also save your points in the beginning and then just see, what may become handy. You have to visit a teacher to learn new skills or special abilities. The skills are well described so dont worry.

I started for example as a Thulamid alchimist. He is a noob when it comes to weapons. But he can do some spells. As Alrik, I boosted his animal and plant lore points, as well as the social skills. So he is my talking head of the group, making light if needed, doing some spells, getting herbs and other stuff to craft items form it. I did not boost any combat skills. I now have a group of four. Two of them are now the strong fighters and the remaing one helps me with the not so lawful stuff. One of the fighters is also educated as a smith. I just wanted to use the stuff my alchemist is always getting from the killed animals.

From what I've read here so far... I'm pretty excited about the game. I really loved the original trilogy, and it sounds like they've done it a fairly good modern reincarnation... nothing's perfect, of course, but it sound pretty good to me.

Thanks, Rohal, an very extensive covering of the whole topic !

Also, I found it interesting to read the point of view from a game master.

Thanks Alrik.

I have to add something. There are surely not so good things about the game. As said, you don't have real choices. Even if you take the quest or not. Some of the side quests maybe. The main story is surely very straight forward. So somewhat of an interactive movie. But still I like it. Maybe cause I'm a TDE nerd.

Thanks Rohal and Alrik. Every bit helps with understanding a new (to me) rule set. and welcome to the forums Rohal, I hope you stick around!!

Nice writeup, thanks Rohal. And your English gets the job done, so don't worry about that.

zakhal said:

The one reason I never played much oldies before was because I always played the newest games first (new => old). I have found out that by doing it in the correct form (old => new) makes it much easier. You even get to apprieciete the continuity and development during the years.

If drakensang was like dark messiah of mm is to might magic series (dm is not a real rpg even) then I might consider it as totally seperate. Drakensang though is a rpg, its based on the same ruleset (its the 4th dark eye video game) and world - thats enough for me to consider it as a modern successor.

Click to expand...

Think of it more in terms of four seperate Novels in fantasy universe X (lets say Forgotten Realms). You don't really have to read every novel from the whole series, they just happen to be situated in the same universe.

Besides, gameplay mechanics (in Drakensang as compared to Realms of Arkania, as well as in the 4th P&P Ruleset as compared to the 3rd edition of the P&P rules) have changed a great deal. So you might reconsider.

The old games are still excellent, though, especially for RPG-addicts such as us, although from a technical standpoint they seem more then crude today. Still very deep games with great story though.

P.S. From reading your next post I see that I probably wouldn't have had to say all that

As a 25 year Dark Eye vet from Germany I should say this: The Dark Eye has never been as "dark" as D&D Faerhun, there always has been this slight Fairy Tale thing in it, and thats why I personally loved the Dark Eye over other pen and paper games, as much as I love the D&D Forgotten Realms setting. There is something "homely"in Aventuria (or was the translation in English Arakania??).

That doesnt mean it is not adult. There is murder, betrayal and vileness. Sure, you dont expect gross blood orgies like in Age of Conan, but there *are* prostitutes in the dark allies standing around, or a gentlemen who left his tobacco box at a whore and asks you to fetch it but not let his wife know, and when you come back she is standing there, so you can give it back to him and either say where you got it, or just "hey Sir, I think you dropped this". But all in all I ragard it mild, its free for ages 12+ in Germany, but I felt thats fitting to a Dark Eye game.

On a personal note: from time to time I read some people said it looks bad, and trust me its no partiotism when I get angry at that. I find the visual GREAT. In my opinion the landscape and world detail almost matches Oblivion, and in matters of atmosphere even surpasses Oblivion. I didnt find the Witcher a great RPG also, for many reasons I dont want to bore you with. For any true Roleplayer Drakensang is a dream come true - standing in the legacy of games like Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Nights and the like. Something all too rare these days, and I hope we will see MUCH more from these guys.

Btw. the game is BIG, and it has some very tought boss fights, but I like that both. Hope ya get an English version soon!

EDIT: Having been a Dark Eye game master myself I can onlly fully support Rohal's writing. If you compare the character advancement with a MMO, its a bit like the old pre-NGE SWG. While there are levels to show the advancement, and while you get a starter archetype, you are fully free to develop your characters into every direction from all the available skills. You get XP for kills and quests, and gathering these experience points in a pool you can directly spent them in learning new skills from teacher NPCs or distribute them over you various skill at any time. So often you find yourself you may need more "convincing others" skill, and you have some experience points saved and raise convincing right then - if you had it learned. I started as Thief as main character, but now I mainly developed combat, fencing as a kind of quick, lightly armour guy, and my thieving beginning is now only one skill of many. I love this new Dark Eye 4 rules, since they give you a much greater freedom to develop your character.

As Rohal said, Dark Eye is not about magic stuff everywhere. It is indeed Old School, but those who have magic abilities (magic classes & elves) are as strong as others in their ways, since the Manas (Astral Energy) renews fast, as does health, with both is very good in a PC game. I always loathed this running to an Inn and sleep for 5 days in the Northland Trilogy. PC games just need slightly other rules than pen & paper. Oh and you will get PLENTY combat later on, and some will be VERY tough in the later half of the game, hehe.

ulixes said:

Think of it more in terms of four seperate Novels in fantasy universe X (lets say Forgotten Realms). You don't really have to read every novel from the whole series, they just happen to be situated in the same universe.

Besides, gameplay mechanics (in Drakensang as compared to Realms of Arkania, as well as in the 4th P&P Ruleset as compared to the 3rd edition of the P&P rules) have changed a great deal. So you might reconsider.

P.S. From reading your next post I see that I probably wouldn't have had to say all that

Click to expand...

Ill reserve the judgement to myself once I get to test the game . Arx fatalis was called unofficially ultima underworld 4 and in som ways it was similar type game but it also lacked some of the things that make underworld good. Drakensang allthough a more "modernized" rpg (i.e turn based => paused realtime) is atleast based on the same world and in somways same ruleset - arx fatalis had nothing to do with ultima.

ulixes said:

The old games are still excellent, though, especially for RPG-addicts such as us, although from a technical standpoint they seem more then crude today. Still very deep games with great story though.

Click to expand...

Its always good to see old game systems continue. AD&D has had more than its share and Im kind of tired of the whole system so dark eye is somthing new. Rpgcodex has a thread on RoA and just reading it made me wanna start playing it.

elikal said:

There is something "homely"in Aventuria (or was the translation in English Arakania??).

Click to expand...

It is Aventuria.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Eye

elikal said:

Oh and you will get PLENTY combat later on, and some will be VERY tough in the later half of the game, hehe.

Click to expand...

Sounds as you are through the game already! Fast one.

I still want to add something to my first impressions of the game. It surely has some flaws like having not much choices. Does that change elikal? But probably this game is one of the first of more to follow. So as all the other rpg series didn't start perfect but promising, Drakensang may be a first step for this company (Radon Labs) to develop rpg's. They don't have the experience of Bioware, Bethesda etc. but I think it is a very good start. The graphics engine (Nebula Device) is an open source engine mainly developed by Radon Labs, so they can also advance at this end. And as often said. I had no bugs and no crashes so far. Some little annoyances like the map sometimes takes a while to pop up while in town. It is sad, to be happy about so few bugs, since it should be standard...