Serpents in the Staglands - more Drakensang than D&D?
 

This is just another first impressions post about the game, as my characters have only completed the first 2 map locations and are just slightly short of level 3 - so no spoilers please!

I saw a lot of people comparing this to a form of D&D before I bought it, but I'm getting a much stronger feeling of Drakensang actually playing it.

The classes aren't greatly separated. It's like I'm playing with four fighters and a mage, even though my original character designs were for more of a one-of-each approach - Sword/Board, Big Hitter, Archer, Healer, Mage. My last fight consisted of four ranged and a Sword/Board.

The character sprites don't dominate their space. So there's no use of chokepoints, making weaker characters such as mages feel like they need to armour-up as enemy goons zip past your front-line like it wasn't there. The mage skills themselves are somewhat uninspiring and feel like options rather than goals. It's great that everyone can cast spells if they want to, but it dilutes the uniqueness of the healer and mage-like classes IMO. It's really quite difficult trying to notice if the spells are having much of an effect and it's kind of annoying/boring having a caster/healer locked into one spell for the entire fight.

The leveling-up of spells seems the logical thing to do, and for the fighter classes it's obviously beneficial, such as an extra 1 point in AC per level-up of the Sword/Board skill. However, leveling-up the Heal spell just reduces it's cool-down-type-thing by 0.5 seconds, which, when the cool down type thing (called a 'proc' I believe, for whatever reason) is way out at 8 seconds to begin with, makes it feel like a massive ant-climax to leveling and something that requires too much cross-synergy than simply casting a healing spell should require.

Also, like Drakensang, the skill points cover all three sub-skills of Fighting, Spell, Personality sub-menus, whereas in D&D 3.5, for example, each sub-category of skill has it's own unique points to spend - such as Feats being a different pool of points to Skills. With universal points to distribute, it's harder to know what is important to prioritise at each level and whether you should even just be saving points instead of potentially wasting them on low level stuff or stuff that won't have a big relevance.

So you get to level-up and with your whole 2 skill-points (no matter your class) you have to decide if you want to spend it all synergising getting just a simple heal spell to work better or if you want that person to have any other skills - such as discovering that you can't use the Summoning Horns without skills in a specific personality trait (but it won't tell you how many points you need in that skill to use the Horn). D&D would just restrict the Horn's use to Bards.

The fights so far have either been extremely easy, as in click-all-attack and single enemy dies, or really, really tough encounters that require 15 reloads to find the exact positioning and order of events to fully pin-down the optimal method of victory (such as the Goblin King and the Thugs with Alvin). The severity of the difference is so vast that you end-up thinking you've done it wrong and that maybe you were supposed to leave them for future quests - but in both cases they auto-attack you… so maybe not?

In essence, D&D tends to be more pack-oriented, and presents you similarly powered packs, where as Drakensang tends to be more individuals or huge packs, to which the power can be really quite varied. In D&D you'll fight a pack that's, say, two fighters, two archers and one mage-like, but in Drakensang it's five fighters or five archers or five mages in the pack, for example. In Serpents its, so far, very uniform packs.

This is neither criticism nor praise, just an observation.

(I know it's loosely based on Darklands, but I'm putting it in perspective for modern audiences and the things they can relate it to, who might not have played Darklands, I know I haven't yet).

I wish more people were talking about this game, it's fun and it's really not as hard as people say if you use a few tricks in the beginning… like sending those armed and armored NPCs to battle against the animals and crop goblins instead of going after them with your butter knife or frying pan. :) Everything in the system is quite different, from the magic to the setting.

It didn't get a lot of press, which is too bad… but I hear there may be an expansion/update coming?

I don't remember anyone comparing it with D&D. We compared it with IE games but not because of its rule system but the camera, party play, RTwP and how you got free exploration of the maps.

Yes, there is a free expansion coming.

Yes, I agree, now that I've finished it I'm yearning for forum posts about different ways people approached the game and different secrets and unsolved quests that they found. It's like watching a brilliant movie that no-one else has seen but your praise goes on mostly deaf ears because it's subtitled from a foreign language and doesn't have any CGI.

I wouldn't recommend using NPCs to help out in battles, I used all battles, and especially hard battles as an opportunity to try out new things and really get to grips with what my possibilities were and were not. I don't think it really matters how OP you make your starting characters, it's all possible by means of what's at your disposal. Heck, I defeated the Goblin King at level 2 and most forums that are talking about this game suggest most people 'come back to that later'. I was just rolling with a common-sense but somewhat messy n00b party.

The magic and setting (including monsters) are both the unique aspects of the game, with one being far superior to the other. The magic, while unique, isn't amazeballs interesting like in IE and is much more a kind-of added skill to regular warriors. I had a pure mage, but I still ended up kitting him out in +7 AC regular armour instead of the normal mage robes.

The setting though, OMG, that is AMAZEBALLS lovely. Indescribably joyous to experience the first time, from leech-infested bog areas to underground puzzle dungeons and from busy cities to desolate and eerie lumber yards. And the monsters, what wonderful variety and originality, from Bog Shroomers to Chicken-Riding Goblins and from Harvesters to Spirits, each with it's own unique way of fighting. How great it is to once again play a cRPG where regular humans are not the bane of every encounter and the monsters are more than just various form of HP bloat.

At the end of the game the credits inform you via a voiceover that your save has been recorded for the expansion… so it's intended and planned that there will be an expansion.

I did the Goblin King with lvl 3 party of only 3 members (since I didn't make more than one avatar and killed the 3rd companion you can get in Lumen village since I didn't agree with robbing the tombstones).

Anybody know if there's a peaceful way (be it stealth or talking) to reach the certain corpse in Corem? Killing all the dock workers isn't too hard but it'd be interesting to know how much there's different solutions in various quests.

I've seen this question asked quite a lot around the internet and as far as I know there's no way to get to the corpse without causing the dodgy characters to turn on you. It's also a bit buggy in that all the unrelated locals will join in the fight on your side, for no apparent reason, but then turn on you as they then walk into your area of effect attacks.

It's the only really bizarre encounter in the game and so stands out for most people . I didn't even go in there until late-game loose-end clearing, so it was no major issue for me just hosing stuff down and the plot-aspect is relatively unrequired anyway. It's easily the mid-game's most WTFish event.

sounds good except

that's just a huge letdown.

This was just my first impressions about character creation and mechanics, so any combat mentioned in the OP is also just about the first few screens. There's a whole variety of combat throughout the game, the most interesting coming from the game's unique monsters, which, IMO, are worth the price of admission on their own. In my post in Game's You've Completed thread I go into more detailed detail about the combat throughout the game.