Drakensang vs. TRoT
 

So I've played TRoT recently, and I can't for the life of me understand why people rate it more highly than Drakensang. I think it might just be that you'd expect a sequel that doesn't change the basic formula of the predecessor and that was in development for 2 years to be more refined, but in this case, it really isn't.

The story is generally more epic in Drakensang, 1/3 murder mystery, 2/3s artifact hunt. In TRoT, you spend 80% of the game looking for the pirates that hit you on the head.

Combat is essentially the same in both games, or almost the same as you have some limitations in party composition in TRoT, i.e. you can't have more than two magic users. There are IIRC three new activated abilities in TRoT, and they aren't even among the best, so no real difference there. Skills and spells are exactly the same in both games.

Exploration also isn't vastly different. When I first read about TRoT I thought "yeah, having a ship as your base sounds fun", I was thinking of a kind of open world scenario. It isn't, and sailing that ship up and down the same river over the course of the game is as boring as it sounds. Adding insult to injury, there are no random encounters in TRoT. These tended to be fun (especially the first time around when you didn't know what you'd run into), and a bit exciting (when your party was weakened and out of supplies). The "base" itself is as inconsequential as it was in Drakensang, with the same option to use a gold sink and install some workbenches that you don't really need.

The writing certainly isn't any better in TRoT than it was in Drakensang; it has the same stereotypes, the same "harmless" light tone. If you didn't like it the first time around, you won't like TRoT either.
Rakorum was actually fun to meet in Drakensang, as it goes against the (Western?) stereotype of the intense, brooding wizard. In TRoT, he just has a short cameo. For shame.

The only improvement that I can see is that, without random encounters, you can no longer farm herbs, which makes the system a bit less broken than in Drakensang. But if you're really looking to get into the series, start with Drakensang, and then if you can stomach a slightly weaker successor, try TRoT. It's definitely not like BG2 > BG1.

I enjoyed both games - the last addon for TRoT was crap.

I enjoyed both also but I don't consider then the best games I ever played. ;)

HiddenX is right about the last expansion it felt like it was rushed. It probably was due to them shutting down after releasing it.

I couldn't believe how good first Drakensang felt. And still can't believe some ppl haven't heard about it or played it.
Was TRoT worse than it? IMO no, it was just slightly different. It definetly wasn't pumping in more stuff like "let's add romances", "let's add planescape episode", "let's add stronghold", etc BG2>BG1, but it was still awsome.
And unlike Couch, in my case Drakensang games are one of the best I've ever played.

Because of whatever silly publishers' decisions, I've never had, bought, played the addon so can't agree or disagree with HiddenX. Couldn't buy it anywhere, not on english language. Till now.

Amazon.com doesn't ship games to my country. But I did my homework, found some "smugglers" who ship stuff from anywhere to anywhere as long as it is not drugs and I got the saga DVD from that very same amazon.com:

http://i44.tinypic.com/i4r91j.jpg

Oh and I went arguing with their support stating that not shipping bloody DVD worldwide is a pure discrimination, racism and stuff. That didn't help, it's US store, it's normal they believe outside of USA only animals live and what positive can you expect from it when it comes to exporting goods.
You may say I could buy it on amazon.de as they do ship games to my country, but I don't speak german!

Anyway, the plan is to start Dragon Commander this weekend and after finishing it the next thing is (re)playing the whole Drakensang so I learn if that addon is crap or not.

I wish both were available at release like they are now. Like you said a certain publisher was terrible at getting the game released. I had to import mine and pay more than the usual.:'(

Because of that cretinous publisher sales were not good as ppl simply couldn't buy the game in some "normal" and not complicated way. RadonLabs went down and was sold to BigPoint (free2scam online games, aggressive and annoying advertising on eurosport).
I wish Kickstarter existed back then.

I wont even mention that F2P browser abomination. As for that publisher at least there gone now. Last I heard they went bankrupt and finished liquidation.

In my opinion, The River Of Time is so much better mainly because of making its handling much more intuitive, and just more smooth, so to say.

The story isn't epic; but on the other hand it's kind of refreshing to see something non-epic these days, isn't it ? ;)

The "save the world" thing has been explored/exploited a bit too much these days, imho.

The original voice actor for Rakorium Muntagonus died at a time after the game was finished.

And about that "harmless tone" thing : With it, it stands in hard opposition to nearly ALL "modern-day" RPGs. Of course no-one buys a thing that goes completely against a fashion …

Developer : Radon Labs :
Drakensang
Drakensang 2 : The River Of Time
Drakensang 2 : The River Of Time : Philleasson's Secret
-> Bancruptcy
-> online games maker "Bigpoint" buys developer Radon Labs
-> Radon Labs still has the Drakensang assets & art material
-> Brand name "Drakensang" still belongs to Radon Labs -> Bigpoint now
-> Online game using the brand name "Drakensang" is developed

The very last game of Radon Labs is "Future Wars", and retro-style TBS game.
And of course "Philleasson's Secret". Which even bears the Bigpoint logo on the packaging already.

And, by the way, the publisher "dtp" nearly went bancrupt, too.

That's where we come in, refuse to buy a "musthave" crap and use the money we saved to grab an underrated gem.
The world can't go forward if only mainstream stuff gets bought.

But we have another case here where a good game, if advertised and distributed effectively worldwide could have earned dozens of millions. Instead, it flopped as the target market was one or just a few countries.
Couldn't they learn from Holywood? They don't do such mistakes. The recent example is Pacific Rim (still haven't seen it shame on me). It flopped in USA probably because hidden criticising the wall on USA/Mexico border, while in China it's #1 hit this year and earned a huge sum probably because of the same wall as they have their own.

DTP is the publisher I was talking about. There to blame for Radon Labs closing. There is another game they were funding being developed by Deck 13 that is basically vaporware right now.

Even Larian had trouble with them with Divine Divinity 2. Like I said last I heard DTP went bankrupt and were sold off. There nothing but a shell of what they once were now.

I had nothing agaisnt Radon Labs Alrik my problem is with the publisher DTP. I sometimes wonder what Radon Labs could of made with a better publisher, or as Joxer said with kicksarter.

By 'handling' do you mean the UI? Did that even change at all?

It's generally not epic if the reasons for adventuring are purely personal. But plz, make it something a bit more complex/ interesting than "I'm looking for those yokels who beat me up yesterday".

Oh, I didn't know that :(

Yes, of course - but it's all history by now. :(

( And Larian didn't go bancrupt, by the way. ;) )

After River Of Time, just to make this clear.

Never said they did I think we have a communication failure here.:) My post was all about DTP,

You put Larian and "they" into 2 sentences, one following after the other one. ;) This can easily lead to misinterpretations, yes.

Pacific Rim is a big hit in the Asian market because they love Godzilla, and robot movies.
Well it's fixed now.;)

China and Japan are not the same thing. China and Godzilla? Cmon. Dragons in China are good and friendly creatures.

Also keep in mind that because of the hard socialism, any fantasy or similar thing like wuxia genre was forbidden in China and was filmed only in Hong Kong. That market is hungry for fantasy, sci fi and horror of any kind!

So, I won't change my thoughts. Great wall in China = love for the movie. Great wall between USA and Mexico = hate the movie. Depends where you live.

On topic, I can't find a person who hates Drakensang. Maybe because there are no walls or schoolbuses (hint: Arnold's recent movie) in it? ;)

It's called a generalization Joxer it's much easier to use them then type out three paragraphs of text.:biggrin:

Anyways don't get me started on there version of what a dragon is. It's nothing but a big snake. It's blasphemy as everyone knows there giant lizards that breath flame, and other elements.:shakefist:
People do it just seems that many on RPGwatch don't.

Why are you using "first reaction when EA is mentioned" emote in this thread?
:D

It's more of a how dare they emote, but I use it in EA topics also. :blush:

To get back on topic how far are you into the complete package? I remember being annoyed at the lack of audio and bugs in the first game, but soon learned to tolerate them, and enjoy the game.

I only played a few hours of the first game but plan on playing both when (if) I get done with skyrim.

Should I start with TRoT because it's a prequel? and where does the expansion come in story wise?

I would start with Drakensang: The Dark Eye first. Then play Drakensang: The River of Time with the expansion installed.

The expansion is tied into The River of Time. Think of it as an add-on instead as a quest apppears as you play the game.

Ok, thanks.

I will have to do some reading on stats and stuff. If I remember it seemed quite a bit different than D&D.

Is it possible to gimp your party so bad that you couldn't beat it or can pretty much any party and stats make it through.

GameBanshee is a good place to read up on Drakensang.

http://www.gamebanshee.com/drakensangthedarkeye/

You were annoyyed by the lack of bugs in the game ? :lol:

You can do a right-click on almost anything within the game (especially within the character sheet !) to get explanations !

Plus, here in the Drakensang sub-forums are a lot of explanations, too.

Why yes and I'm glad someone spotted that. Have to get others to buy the game you know.;)) Even if it's a lie.:mwahaha:

Can't help myself sometimes sorry everyone.:rotfl:

These games were actually among the most bug-free games I had ever encountered.

Of course randomly distributing your skill points will gimp your party. Just as it should. ;)
Just keep focused. Powerlevelling is unnecessary.
It's important to remember that you will be outnumbered in the majority of the fights though. So make sure to have an answer if 5 skeletons appear next to your mage. Every character must be able to hold his/her own in close combat, at least long enough to give the others time to sort things out.

You have to weight up whether you want more suspense by playing the prequel first (-> some characters must survive because they appear in DraSa too!) or if you want to play the older, slightly more uncomfortable game first. Then it would be easier to play TRoT because the learning curve would be flat.

Borrowed the first one from a friend and only played it a couple of hours before I dropped it.
That had several reasons though I only remember them very foggy: 1. The story just didn't get rolling. First quests you did felt like doing some random quests in a MMORPG. In order to get X you need to help 3 NPCs, each want you to do a "kill 10 X" quest. Was a horrible start. I also remember that Drakensang had longer Texts, which were not interesting enough to keep my attention for their length (in difference to Avernum for example where the content and importance per sentence ratio was much higher). Last thing I remember negatively about the game was the time spent for running. After a little conversation you spent Minutes of running through the city again to get to the next snippet which then again sent you back running through the city. And with running I actually mean walking slowly without fast traveling.

River of Time basically improved all of it: The quests were more interesting, the texts were all voiced with extremely good voices* like the voice from Brad Pitt, Ben Afflek, Leonardo Di Caprio, Julia Roberts and I also remember the Spongebob voice on the market. One of the most memorable moments in the game I had right in the beginning when you try to listen to the other passengers mumbling and as soon as you got close to them they said like "pssst, the boy is coming over again" and started to talk about random crap like the weather. Combined with the creme de la creme of voices the staging of the game was awesome. Of course that is the German version. Can't speak about the english one. I guess that the high costs for the voices in the German version might then also be a reason why the money management for the game did not work out so well. They maybe should have spent more attention to the international version.
But back to the game: I mentioned the horrible traveling times in the first Drakensang, they fixed it in the second game. And while I don't remember much of funny moments in the First Game, River of Time had several of these. So you meet some philosophers in the Inn which were talking about hilarious stuff, and it also had a funny reference to the first Realms of Arkania game as you met a group preparing to follow Hetmann Tronde's call.
http://my.buffed.de/mb_useruploads/1…2/artikel2.jpg
If you speak german and played Dragon Age, you might want to take a look at the comparison I wrote a while back on myBuffed

After that I couldn't wait for the expansion: Philleassons Secret. And I can tell you that this was one of the most horrible expansions I played so far. Not just that I didn't like this egypt-like setting: The quests were also stupid and random, you were also sent back to random places for a couple of fights as if their goal was just to throw random content into the world. Out of the 6 hours of total playtime it brought, 4 were boring as hell (I can hardly remember the content but I wrote a little something about it back then):
1. Find 3 artifacts for 3 people and go into 3 caves for that, to just revisit all zones from the basic games. The caves are done within 5 minutes.
2. Fight for 6 artifacts in 6 rooms, where you encounter the same enemies over and over again together with a NPC which gives you the same sentence each time. After you did this you had to use these 6 artifacts in 6 different rooms. Pure boredom.
3. Thre were dialogue-quests like "if you want to join us, you have to make an oath on an element. Speak to my servants and chose one". You speak with the servants, chose one and get a reward. Completely without content and with totally dumb dialogues.

So to summarize it:
Drakensang wasn't exactly my taste, too many flaws. But it might be enjoyed by others who don't have problems with these.
Drakensang River of Time was an awesome game (in German at least, can't say anything about the translated versions) and almost on par with Dragon Age 1.
Phileassons Secret was a horrible experience and I would recommend to skip that. You might even skip it if you already own it because it might ruin your overall impression of the game.

EDIT: What I forgot to mention is that the normal Collectors Edition (not the persolanzied one) of River of Time also included the best coth map I have gotten so far. I framed it and put it on my wall (59cmx42cm):
http://ndnw.net/no-hp-stuff/drakensang-map.jpg

*for non German people that's probably hard to understand but in Germany some voices like the voice of Bruce Willis (which is not in the game) are cult by themselves)

For more discussion/comparison, check out my own thread here at the Watch on the same topic. I think posters like DeepO get to the heart of the matter and don't fritter away so much on the details. However, the main virtue that I extol the original over the River of Time, is most certainly the greater party configuration options. Otherwise, the stronger narrative and better dungeon design made the second game overall, the tighter experience.

I've also never really understood the problems with Philleasson's Secret. Whilst I've only played it the one time, I didn't mind it at all - the more content the merrier. Mind you, I was very much in love with the setting at the time. :)

@Pessimeister Did you also play and enjoy the DA1 DLC "Return to Ostagar"?
Imho that had pretty much the same design and level of quality as Philleassons Secret.

I have to give you a high five for your comment.:highfive:

It wasn't the best expansion, but at least it added more content to the game. If you read up on the development I'm surprised it even came out.

Agreed that running in Drakensang could be tedious. Although, it was a compromise between your movement speed and the enemies' speed, certainly. You still ran fast enough to run away from pretty much any enemy - as long as you didn't have to turn back or clicked someplace inaccessible.

Hum? If you don't like "kill 10X" quests, what did you like about the starting vignette for fighter characters (the only starting vignette I've played)?

Eh. Forgrimm's voice was the same, Cuano's voice was selected (and the script written) to be a 1:1 copy of Dranor, which certainly wasn't the height of acting.

Weren't there three philosophers (or were they supposed to be bards) in that one tavern in Drakensang as well?

Uhh, yes…but I think they're entirely different settings and experiences to be a valid comparison. They're both hack and slash heavy I suppose, but that's about it.

From memory, Return to Ostagar wasn't especially meaty. It was a DLC and not an expansion after all, full of fairly generic darkspawn laden combat. I guess the atmosphere and background lore to the whole thing was ok. I liked Philleasson's Secret more though. :) Maybe it was Forgrimm and all of the wacky screenshots I took at time that made my time with it decidedly more memorable…

Of course the one was a DLC and the other one a Add On, but considering the Add On only had 6 hours of content, which a DLC may surpass I think you can compare them pretty well.
But what I am going for is that both "expansions" just recycled old game content and put something new in it which was more tacked on than thought through. Well, the egypt style area in Philleasons Secret was completely new of course. But both of the expansions added a lot of boring fights (they were not challenging at all) and almost zero content, and the content which was added was of very low quality.
In Return to Ostagar you had almost no comments from your party members and the "only quests" consisted of "go there, kill the boss, and find the next part of the armor", which was pretty much the same in Philleasons secret. It did not expand on the game in all levels. It just added some fights. Like if you added an Arena in a game where you can fight through 20 waves of enemies.

As you said yourself, they were very hack and slash heavy. But neither the core game of Dragon Age nor of River of Time was hack and slash heavy. So you did not get more of the game you liked from it. Bit more of one game element.

Well, if you enjoyed this game element (hack and slash) a lot, that's fine. But I guess the majority of the players expected something more in line with the core game and was therefore disappointed (especially considering the retail price of philleasons secret at around 25€).

Yeah, I blame DTP for the demise of Randon Labs as well. I totally don't understand why they delayed the English version of TRoT for so long. Getting it out on Steam and other digital vendors could have made a big difference. Sure, calling a sequel "The River of Time" probably didn't help either, but not making it available for potential buyers for so long was in my opinion the biggest mistake.

And now we'll probably never see a sequel. :(

You're making it too easy. While dtp clearly screwed the publishing up and missed the boat on digital distribution, Steam was simply not an option at that time. It's a closed platform, and dtp wasn't on it back then.

Yes, but even at that time it was already quite obvious how important being on Steam was, and I don't understand why publishers wouldn't have done their best to sell their games on that platform. Or was there a reason which was out of dtp's control other than not having bothered early enough?

I thought my last post was clear enough, but let me repeat it even more directly: ;)

Steam is a closed platform. You need Valve's explicit permission to sell there! It's incredibly hard (or at least it used to be incredibly hard!) for small publishers or developers to get access to the Steam platform. Just imagine 2 guys in an office at Valve HQ, who get 25 submissions per day. There is no time to actually play the games for more than 5 minutes before making a decision. So you had to get lucky to be allowed in.
A year ago Daedalic (Memoria, Blackguards, Deponia), ex-dtp guys, partnered with Deep Silver. Not because they needed a co-publisher, but because Steam didn't let them in, while Deep Silver was Steam's new best friend after selling 3 million Dead Islands. After that Daedalic was granted a publisher account at Steam, probably based on the positive experience with Chains of Satinav.

Steam, PS3/4, XBox, Wii, iOS, … all are closed platforms with a gatekeeper between publisher and market.