Drakensang? Meh

A couple months ago I got a copy of The Dark Eye: Drakensang for cheap from somewhere and started playing. Hey, it was pretty good! Well, at the start at least. After playing a while I lost interest.

I frankly don't remember exactly where I even was in the game. I think a dragon attacked some village or something like that. I also don't really remember what the plot was, who any of the NPCs were (party or not), or much else about the story which isn't a good sign.

The game system seemed interesting but the game story/plot/characters were just dull, dull, dull...

Anyway, does it get better toward the end of the game or is it more of the same meh?

Well I didn't had this feeling and wonder what RPG story was good enough for you. So I'll hardly be able give you any advice. But at least beat the dragon, few after there's a funny part with a character who is a sort of false Don Quichote.

I bought this title shortly after it was released in the US. I was initially turned off by the WoW-esque quests (e.g. kill x amount of wolves in the forest), then the early quest to find the wizard in the cave bugged and I haven't been back to it. Do the quests improve at all and actually require any amount of problem solving?

RoA/TDE is my favorite CRPG series from days long passed, but I'm afraid Drakensang is a shadow of its former self. Am I wrong?

EvilManagedCare said:

I bought this title shortly after it was released in the US. I was initially turned off by the WoW-esque quests (e.g. kill x amount of wolves in the forest),…

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I could become senile but have you really played it? I don't think there's any quest like that.

EvilManagedCare said:

RoA/TDE is my favorite CRPG series from days long passed, but I'm afraid Drakensang is a shadow of its former self. Am I wrong?

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Never played it, but many here will probably agree even if they'll hate quote it because they found some charm in Drakensang. Anyway I'm curious what sort of great quests there's in Realm of Arkania?

Dasale said:

I could become senile but have you really played it? I don't think there's any quest like that.

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I didn't have any issue with that quest but it's actually one of the very first quests. The ranger dude in the opening area wants you to go kill the wolves. You have to kill one specific one but I think it won't show up until you've killed some number of other ones.

Well, personally, I'd advise you to make a "cut" between Realms Of Arcania and Drakensang.

Both are in the same world, but both have very different approaches to this setting.

Since I'm a fanboy, I'm biased, but even me I was a bit turned off by the amount of fights within he game. Which was one of its greatest criticisms, all in all. Almost all articles I remember fund the needed amount of fights too much.

In pen & paper gaming, here are severalm "traditions" on ho to approach the Aventurian setting.

One is the "fairy tale approach", which can be seen in both Drakensang games.

Realms Of Arcania is a different one, and it takes place roughly BEFORE the infamous "Borbarad-Invasion", I think.

With Borbarad, the Black Lands evolved, which not only installed a portion of the horror genre within Aventuria, but in their wake another "tradition" of an approach evolved, leading into something some fans call now "Greyturia". There's no more black & white like in the earlier Fairy-Tale approach, but a huge amount of "greyness" ... - which kind of upsets some players, in special those who had been fans of the "Fairy-Tale approach".

Although Drakensang takes place alnost 10 years after Borbarad, it still uses the "Fairy-Tale Approach" to this continent.

But this is only ONE region shown. Other regions are much more grim, and others much more different. The area of the second ROA game would nowadays be a little bit "lighter", because there isn't war anymore, and even the Orcs have settled down a little bit, but it would still be grim, because the Ocs are still the major orce in this region and they press tributes from the towns.

Since Demonicon takes place within the "Black Lands", it will very cerainly much more grim than Drakensang. In the "Black Lands", the followers of the Zwelfchurch are in the minority, and cults making demons to the central point of churches have evolved, too.

Sorry that I couldn't say that much about the actual gameplay of/in Drakensang. I wanted to explain why it might be so. I cannot say too much, because I liked Drakensang mostly because of what it was, although man say that the rivalry of both merchant houses (Stoerrebrandt vs. Neisbeck) is possibly the strongest point in the game, some even say it is even better than the main plot.

BillSeurer said:

I didn't have any issue with that quest but it's actually one of the very first quests. The ranger dude in the opening area wants you to go kill the wolves. You have to kill one specific one but I think it won't show up until you've killed some number of other ones.

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No the ranger don't want you kill all the wolves or x wolves but only one special big wolf. I checked some walkthrough and none quote your supposition that you need kill x wolves to make spawn the big wolf. Anyway the quest isn't to kill x wolf.

That quests thing is a good point but 99% of RPG don't avoid the problem in their quests and I doubt Realms of Arkania do much better.

BillSeurer said:

I didn't have any issue with that quest but it's actually one of the very first quests.

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The "intro area" is really for "first steps". It does get much better than that. This is in principle nothing but a tutorial, kind of.

Everything before you enter the big city in the 2nd region is just a (too long) tutorial. AFAIR there aren't that many "kill X" type quests.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Since I'm a fanboy, I'm biased, but even me I was a bit turned off by the amount of fights within he game. Which was one of its greatest criticisms, all in all. Almost all articles I remember fund the needed amount of fights too much.

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When I read this section I wonder if it was for Drakensang or for Realm of Arkania. I quote it because I think it's for Drakensang but the point is that how many RPG released before 1995 hadn't a huge amount of fights? At least in term of play length.

Dasale said:

... a huge amount of fights? At least in term of play length.

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That reminded me of a gripe I have about how the game system interacts with the game story. There are, what, 5? different "social" skills any one of which you will use at most a handful of times in the entire game and which will have little effect on what happens as far as I could tell. Compare that to the combat skills which you will uses hundreds of not thousands of times as often. Yet the social skills cost as much as the combat ones.

I agree with the original poster. Nice looking, polished game that was bug-free for me. Bored me silly eventually. I made it to the swamp area, clearing out the crypts and whatnot then gave up after about 4 hours in that zone.

It had potential, but was too slow and poorly paced. How many amoebas did you have to fight in the Temple dungeon? 30 or more, all the exact. Same. Fight.

Ovenall said:

It had potential, but was too slow and poorly paced. How many amoebas did you have to fight in the Temple dungeon? 30 or more, all the exact. Same. Fight.

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And a particularly annoying fight at that as they always diseased or poisoned you or whatever.

Ditto to the streams of rats in the brewery.

I enjoyed it for its polish and charm, and didn't mind the repetitive fights at all. The party controls could have been better, though.

Dasale said:

When I read this section I wonder if it was for Drakensang or for Realm of Arkania. I quote it because I think it's for Drakensang but the point is that how many RPG released before 1995 hadn't a huge amount of fights? At least in term of play length.

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Well, I do know the Drakensang community, and there and in general game comments on magazine web sites people criticise that there is too much combat in Drakensang.

It's not something I've made up, but it is rather something … although I read it every now and then, I cannot compute how important this point of criticism actually is.

But … in Drakensang 2 there are far less fights - but more difficult ones.
This was also wished by the community of the official forum.

BillSeurer said:

That reminded me of a gripe I have about how the game system interacts with the game story. There are, what, 5? different "social" skills any one of which you will use at most a handful of times in the entire game and which will have little effect on what happens as far as I could tell. Compare that to the combat skills which you will uses hundreds of not thousands of times as often. Yet the social skills cost as much as the combat ones.

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Yes. But in Drakensang 2 they are used more frequently.

These social oriented skills play of course a much greater role in TDE P&P play.

BillSeurer said:

Ditto to the streams of rats in the brewery.

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This caused a LOT of "unrest" among the players.

As far as I know these rats are kind of a joke gone rong - or at least not as good as intended.

The "joke" was that in EVERY C-RPG, the newbie hero gets a task like "Get these spiders out of my cellar" or "get the rats out of my cellar".

Rats are usually for newbies. Low-level heroes.

Now, in Drakensang, this was reversed. The end rat-boss was not at all intended for newbies ...

I loved Drakensang until the last 25% of the game, in which it became too combat intensive. But still, I liked it a lot overall, specially since I'm a number cruncher and that games has NUMBERS

BillSeurer said:

And a particularly annoying fight at that as they always diseased or poisoned you or whatever.

Ditto to the streams of rats in the brewery.

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In both I agree that the design should have used more diversified monsters. In both I really appreciate the slow difficulty increase as you go deeper. I don't think there's a single duplicate pattern in the fights of the brewery, and if there's few double it's very few.

But many players didn't even quote the fights was different and get focused on all monsters looking the same (but in fact not one type of monster) and i can't deny this result shows that this dungeon had something wrong.

For the temple it's more complicated because if here too there are many different patterns you could break plenty of them through a very cautious approach to isolate as much than possible, something impossible in Brewery dungeon.

Overall I agree those both dungeons worth be pinpointed even if they wasn't that bad than many players quoted.

But I don't see much RPG not failing in that problem. The Witcher, DAO, Divine Divinity, all of the best JRPG (and the worst too), NWN series, even the BG series has it similar moments like a dungeon full of beholders only or a whole wood with only 2 type of monsters. So ok those two Drakensang dungeons push the limits a bit too far but that's not much for a whole RPG.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

But … in Drakensang 2 there are far less fights - but more difficult ones.

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Yes even if I enjoyed the two dungeons quoted, that approach is probably quite better. But well not many RPG used it.

But Drakensang 2 already when I just started The River of Time? Makes you feel like to be out of the time in a second dimension.

Complaints about those dungeons were silly when compared to Drakensang's peers. The only valid complaint was the difficulty of Mother Rat available so early. But you could always com back when you are more leveled up; which is how a good RPG should be designed anyway. There should always be some challenges to try again later. Makes leveling much more relevant.

Those swamp area puzzles... I almost put my fist through the laptop! Yeah the rat was brutal but I didn't mind that. Overall I'd rank it pretty high. Better than NWN2 at least.

Dasale said:

But Drakensang 2 already when I just started The River of Time? Makes you feel like to be out of the time in a second dimension.

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Alrik means TRoT.