RPGWatch - Drakensang Retro Review

But maybe you should play River of Time too, to complete the picture.

Thanks, Kordanor. But you do realize a review can be positive, right?

I am the Guardian of neutrality

Of course a review can be positive. But what I am saying is that a Contribution in such a book should most probably be positive and motivational. It should display it in a little shinier light, be more enthusiastic than an average review should be. At least that's my opinion.

I see a review a bit as "should I buy it" advisor. Lots of facts, and the final opinion whether the game is actually good for someone should be decided by the reader.

The book however I see more as advocate for RPGs, a gallery of cool stuff. Correct me if I am wrong and if it's not intended like that.

I prefer to promote great games with positive reviews when I get the opportunity.

We simply have different ideas on what a review should or could be. Nothing wrong with that.

Mr. Kordanor. I've seen in the past that you make videos for RPGs. Do you do any in English?

Curious, because I think you should join my Google+ community and share your videos, if you make some in English. Would love to have another YouTube RPG video person onboard.

No, sorry, German only.
I feel stupid enough reading all the English texts with my not-so-well pronounciations.
Also not a fan of google+

I wasn't a fan of it, either, but it's nice for communities and things like that.

Too bad you don't do English vids. You are still very welcome to join in the future, if you want to.

Fluent said:

I prefer to promote great games with positive reviews when I get the opportunity.

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The two underlined words are mutually exclusive, friend.

Not in my world, friend.

Fluent said:

Not in my world, friend.

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Fluent's World is your own thing. RPGDot / RPGWatch on the other hand worked hard for more than 15 years to stay out of promotion unless it is completely transparent and delivers a direct benefit for our readers (example: game giveaways). The exception were ads, which offered no benefit for our readers but at least were easy to identify.

A positive review is an indirect form of promotion, whether you like it or not.

My goal as a reviewer is not to promote games directly, but to give a review of my feelings of the game, point blank period. If the end result is a game I recommend, then so be it.

Kordanor said:

And apparently the Developer "Silver Style Studios" is also bankrupt and stopped hosting the servers.

Edit: Its actually quite a shame. I didnt like the game enough but the assets look really nice. I think they could be a great basis for an Indie developer intending to build an RPG.

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Silver Style went into bankruptcy (German law seems to be different, though, our german friends might explain it better). They were bought by Kalypso Media and ended up doing Demonicon (another RPG game in The Dark Eye universe - action RPG to be closer to the truth).

I'm also curious how the series characters are presented in the board game. From my understanding some of them are present in the board game and quite big.

My issue with the Drakensang games isn't necessarily that there's "too much" combat... well there are a lot of filler combat / trash encounters (and too many sidequests that are basically Kill x amount of y monster) but my main issue is that the combat system is just terrible.

I'm not a big of RTwP combat in general but Drakensang probably has the worst implementation of it that I've ever seen. It is extremely clunky, with plenty of pathfinding problems and it is nigh impossible for tank since characters can basically pass through eachother, almost like a blobber. IIRC your fighters can eventually learn a taunt skill to increase their aggro but that's not really enough.

River of Time improved on a lot of the non-combat mechanics, but the combat is just as terrible as TDE. I think it would have been so much better with turn-based tactical combat; I don't understand why a developer would ever want to adapt a pen & paper ruleset to real time combat when tabletop is inherently turn-based.

daveyd said:

I don't understand why a developer would ever want to adapt a pen & paper ruleset to real time combat when tabletop is inherently turn-based.

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Real-time-with-pause systems are basically turn-based games in real-time (as contradictory as that sounds). They have rounds, or turns, and they basically just speed up the turn-based process and allow you to pause when you like to issue specific orders.

RTwP is actually my favorite combat system for RPGs like this. Turn-based is great, too, don't get me wrong. But I think my favorite combat has been in games like Baldur's Gate, Drakensang, Pillars of Eternity, etc.

Fluent said:

Real-time-with-pause systems are basically turn-based games in real-time (as contradictory as that sounds). They have rounds, or turns, and they basically just speed up the turn-based process and allow you to pause when you like to issue specific orders.

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I understand that there are many similarities but I just don't see any inherent advantage RTwP offers over a properly designed turn-based system. The combat process is only sped up to the extent that you can leave the combat automated… In challenging fights (particularly in RTwP games where you have a lot of different active skills / modes to utilize) I find myself pausing constantly (or having it auto-pause in the case of PoE) to issue commands, make sure everyone is doing what I want them to do, and not about to die. And when I lose a fight, it is usually because of some frustrating aspect like poor path-finding that wouldn't be an issue if it was turn-based. When you have to do a lot of micromangement, It actually seems to take longer than if the fight were just turn-based.

The only potential "advantage" I see with RTwP is in the case where the enemies I engage with are so weak that I can get up and leave the game on auto-pilot while I grab a snack or go to the bathroom… And really, I think not having too many trash encounters would be a far superior design than dismissing them as acceptable because they go by quickly (except in fights where characters have a lot of HP / armor class, in which case they take forever).

Fluent said:

RTwP is actually my favorite combat system for RPGs like this. Turn-based is great, too, don't get me wrong. But I think my favorite combat has been in games like Baldur's Gate, Drakensang, Pillars of Eternity, etc.

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It just comes down to personal preference and I'm not trying to claim turn-based is objectively superior to RTwP. I know some people like the chaotic cluster**** that RTwP combat can become… I just think it's a bad idea to try to convert TB tabletop rules to a semi real time system (where you inevitably have to alter how things work). That said, I'm all for innovative ideas that would make turn-based combat faster paced, as long as they don't sacrifice tactical depth. Little things like speeding up combat animations can help. I think I'd like to see more TB games where turns are executed simultaneously.

Still hoping I'll enjoy Serpent in the Staglands, but I have a feeling I'll be thinking that the game would so much better with TB just as I have with PoE, Drakensang, BG, etc.

It's just a personal preference, as you said. My preference is RTwP whenever it's available. I also love turn-based. Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland 2 are both great games and the combat systems suit each game just fine, IMO.

The advantage of RTwP, to me, is that it's a bit faster than traditional turn-based as well as a bit more exciting. Fighting a difficult fight in Baldur's Gate is thrilling, because once you've paused and issued commands, you un-pause only to watch your tactics play out in real-time, where *anything* can happen. A bad roll in real-time and boom, you have to now take care of a character who is wounded, all the while making it work without actually being turn-based. It's an exciting system and a bit chaotic and crazy at times, which makes it a lot of fun and very unpredictable, which I like.

I can understand someone who wants total control at all times to not care for that system, but for me it's a lot of fun.

Right now I'm playing some turn-based games and really enjoying them as well. Elminage Gothic has a great turn-based system as well as Hyperdimension Neptunia Re; Birth 1.

Serpent in the Staglands is not based around micro-management as far as I can tell. You can't actually issue commands in battle other than casting spells. Combat skills are used automatically by your characters, which confused me quite a bit at first as I couldn't figure out how to activate the skills in battle. Once you add them to the Quick Skills bar, they are used automatically. You can manually cast spells, I think.

I think we had the discussion several times now. Still I am going to add my short version.

Imho the one big advantage of RTwP is that depending on other game systems you can get through the fight faster if A: The Enemies are weak. B: You are playing on a low difficulty.
So especially for players, particularily within the mainstream audience (which isn't meant negatively in this context), who don't put a lot of emphasis in combat, RTwP is the superior combat system. And that is why we saw lots of games switching to this system, while amongst others kickstarter is to thank to bring back turn based combat.

For hard fights or players playing on hard difficulties, or if you take an extreme case like me, who wants to maximize everything in every single fight, turn based combat is generally the superior system.
Now, what is a hard fight? Of course that is also hard to say with RTwP because the frequency of pressing pause plays a fundamental role in difficulty.
There are basically two ends of the spectrum:
If you press no pause at all. In that case even on easy some combats might become incredibly hard.
If you press pause so often that you make use of everything perfectly. This, depending on the game, caps out at about 2-3pause per second.

For me personally a hard fight is when I need to pause every 2-3 per second and still need a couple of tries to beat the encounter.

What I am saying is, that if the combats you are facing require pausing the game 2 times per second, the turn based system offers a more fluid gameplay while being less frustrating and twitchy, and it's easier to implement as it requires less AI (just think about pathfinding in Pillars) and other polishing measures.

Edit: And of course there are also games which, due to its game design, do have a RTwP System which does not require to pause 2-3 times per second as it will not help you to max out your possibilities. FTL and Dungeon of the Endless are two great examples. In these games, RTwP is imho a great combat system.

Kordanor, don't make this a superiority contest.

Both systems have their place. Each have their strengths and there is no 'bad' system, nor is there a 'superior' system.

I'm starting to get the feeling that turn-based around here is the PC Master Race system of choice.

I didn't say (or I didn't intend to express) that one of the systems is generally superior to the other.

While there is a bad and a superior system this is always in combination of playstyle and circumstantial game systems.
E.g:
My Playstyle + Circumstantial Systems in PoE -> TB is superior
Your Playstyle + Circumstantial Systems in PoE -> RTwP is superior
Independent Playstyle + Cricumstantial Systems in FTL -> RTwP is superior
Independent Playstyle + Circumstantial Systems in Civ5/GalCiv -> TB is superior

Where RTwP has a big advantage for me is spacial tactics.

If you take any turn-based blobber then you are always stuck with limited movement in your tactical environment. You cannot disengage your archer and have them run away from the tank, they are glued to the spot. Some people don't like the fact that in RTwP you can get a tank to chase around a character while you pelt the tank with missiles, some think of this as cheese. I consider it a sound tactic. A tactic that is unavailable in most turn-based games where the invisible wall of the battlefield limit prevents such things as circling and distraction.

The whole magic of the Infinity Engine RTwP combat system was the sheer flexibility of your characters, it has very little to do with the things you've listed. It was about scouting an area with a rogue or invisible character, trying to manipulate engagement, reacting to events as they happen in a more human way - such as fleeing the second you saw a fireball animation.

You could aim a fireball right in the middle of a brawl and, at exactly the right moment, disengage your entire group of brawlers so that when the fireball hit they were all exactly at the right distance to avoid the blast, while the enemy is still restructuring to the changed positions.

Such things cannot be performed in real time, as you wont be able to move six charatcers with such precision and such things are not possible in turn-based because the fireball is fired on the mage's turn and no-one gets to move while the fireball is in the air. RTwP is the only common solution for this kind of extremely enjoyable form of tactical maneuvering.