Drakensang - Previews @ GameSpy, Games Radar

Indeed, if there's one outstanding attribute to Aventuria, it's just how "ordinary" the place is. The Dark Eye is a very low-enchantment fantasy universe in which magic of any type is fairly unusual. Player spellcasters will not be lugging around spellbooks filled with 174 different incantations. Instead players will have a few different categories of spell available that a real medieval citizen might need -- strength of body, for example, or healing or a light source. Indeed, the biggest "bang" in a spellcaster's arsenal will come from a small group of direct-damage spells based on things like fire and thunder that are far less showy than most fantasy world's smallest fireball spells. Magical items are similarly rare. Most "upgrades" comes from finding better-quality but otherwise ordinary equipment. Adding actual magical effects to items will have to be done through the game's crafting systems and will often come as the result of long and difficult questing.

Much like the universe it's based in, the gameplay of Drakensang also feels like a return to an earlier era. Min/maxers who love getting deep into numbers will appreciate The Dark Eye's old-school stat-intensive role-playing system. Characters have eight attributes that are combined together whenever a skill is used, and experience points can be pumped into either improving basic attributes or focused on improving a specific skill. The kicker is that with so many combos, depending on how a player wants to develop a particular character, points spent in a particular attribute might not help every skill, while points spent in a skill are more immediately useful but aren't as economical as attribute increases.

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Combat is very simple at first, but quickly becomes a juggling act of managing each party member, casting spells, using special moves, and repositioning member in danger of being killed. While the pace of combat is somewhat slow, following a distinct round-based structure, it still can become hectic due to the requirements of managing multiple characters and abilities and dealing with surprisingly lethal enemies early into the game. While the powerful foes seemed too strong initially (we got our ass kicked by a couple of wild boars), the dynamic ensures that the combat was not boring by being too easy. After applying a bit more care and thought, those terrifying boars became nice pelts for selling later.

Managing your party outside of combat is still complex: if a character sustains wounds, which are separate from straight health damage, you’ve got to bandage them up. Classes are not bound by a narrow range of weapons, so swapping from a club to a sword to a bow and arrow can happen between every battle if it suits you. Interacting with NPCs is equally complex and flexible: you’re often given three or more nuanced response options, and depending on what you say can have dramatically different outcomes.

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