Realms of Arkania: Star Trail
 

So RoA: Star Trail was released in Early Access yesterday.

Anyone here playing yet, or thinking of doing so? I don't usually buy EA games and I don't intend to do so now, but I'm curious to hear impressions. Hopefully they learned from the shoddy release of the first one -- though I guess that's why they're starting with EA to get feedback early.

Haven't played it and won't until its release probably. BUT, as for "learning" from the bad release of the first game, from what I understand most of that release was out of their hands. Thus the game got released in a bad state when it wasn't ready, etc.

That said, they patched it a lot and it became way better. I played it and enjoyed it. There aren't any other RPGs like that on the market right now so it's cool that we can play the originals or the remakes of a very unique RPG series.

I'm not touching this. Not even with a 10 feet long stick.

I have the original trilogy, but like the OP I no longer buy anything from EA!!

Fluent, did you play the original RoA they did? I was just wondering how close their version was to the original. I would like to give their version a shot since they have updated it. Thanks.

I haven't played the originals yet, but I know that further patches for the remakes added more of the original features that weren't present at release. How much more I couldn't really tell you. I would direct you to the Crafty Studios forum for the game which I used to post on but I don't know the link anymore. You can add Chris Firefox directly on Steam, though, and he'll talk to you about it I'm sure. Just tell him Fluent sent you.

I do know certain things like "market days" were added (traveling markets that would be open on certain days, etc., so when you received a rumor that such-and-such town was having a big market day it would actually happen), shopkeepers getting ticked off at you and not wanting to do business if you said the wrong thing or pushed them too hard, and more of those type of small (but important) ideas from the original were added. I can also say that the remake was entirely playable after a certain patch early on (I had played awhile and did run into a game-breaking bug that was fixed in the next patch), and the patches after that refined the game more, updated visuals, fixed more bugs and generally made the game much better overall.

It was a fun experience for me even if a bit rough around the edges, simply because it was still a remake of a type of RPG that simply doesn't exist nowadays. Having never played the originals, the remake was the first RPG I can remember playing where you had to dress warm and keep a bedroll for your characters if traveling through the mountains in the winter (and even then it was very treacherous based on the deepness of the winter and the time of year it was, etc.). The "dungeon-diving" was fun, combat wasn't *too* frequent and it had those "flavor text" scenarios that gave you choices. Sometimes you'd come across a hole in the floor and could use your rope ladder to descend, or a random event would happen and you would need a certain item in your inventory to solve it, etc. Characters could die as well based on your choices, or get hurt in some way, or find some rare treasure, etc. It was really great in that way and I loved that type of experience.

The character building is great, they added a lot more spells from the originals and all the skills/stats/attributes you could want are there. Again, the remake was my first encounter with that sort of The Dark Eye system with Plant Lore, Animal Lore skills, etc. etc. Also, the wonderful addition of Phobias worked so well. Your characters had phobias for different things that could impact the game in several ways. I remember a character I had being claustrophobic and getting scared the deeper we want into a dungeon. It got to the point he ran away to wait for us at the entrance (lol). That dungeon dive was also deep and one of the tensest I've ever experienced, since healing items and overall party survival is heavily based on advanced planning and item management. We made it through by the skin of our teeth, heavily damaged and about out of healing spells and items, yet hauling back big treasure that made it all worth it. It was a really wonderful and unique experience. That's another thing, money is important in the game. The economy is pretty "organic" in the sense that you are never going to be rolling in dough unless you really tackle some of the side dungeons or optional things.

I haven't really played the first part so far as I found the combat extremely tedious. Not just looking ugly, but unprecise and animations taking longer than they should and so on. And there is tons of combat in the game.
Combat in the original games was somewhat fine (you could speed up animations if I remember correctly) though missing that offten sucked as well. But that's the TDE systems fault.

From what I remember of their diaries they wanted to overhaul that for the second game a bit. And hopefully they then implement that overhauled version into the first game (at least they didn't say that they wont do it for sure).

So…TDE1 is still on my to do list. And i just added TDE2 to my wishlist.

They are a true remake and representation of the first game, but they *did* add options to the first remake to speed up combat considerably. You can double or triple the speed, I believe, and even turn off movement animations, etc. (I think, don't quote me). But there are definitely speed up options in the BoD remake.

I played with no speed-ups activated and it was fine. It is slow but I can appreciate the fact that it is a faithful remake of the originals and not really "dumbed down" in any way. Some of those battles are quite intense as well even at that slow speed.

I don't understand RPG gamers desire to speed everything up in the first place, but that's another topic. Everyone wants things in a blink of an eye nowadays. Dang kids with their smartphones *grumble grumble*. :P

Well, with tedious I mostly meant something like: You issue a command, you wait for a second, the charcacter is moving and hits, then there is a second of nothing happening before you are able to issue a command again.

Now the middle part is fine, though I like faster animations. But the unnecessary wait time where nothing is happening was what made it feel tedious.
To be fair I don't remember if it was exactly >this< but it was something along these lines what I didn't like about the combat when I tested it.

Right, I understand. There is a delay where the character seems to "size up" the enemy they are attacking. It is definitely slow and I didn't mind it but I see what you're saying. I do think they addressed at least some of that with later patches. I know at some point there were several "overall speed up" options added and also overall customization of combat elements, but I'm not sure of all the details of that.

This reminds me I have yet to play the remake of the first one. I decided to wait for patches and then forgot about it.

I think a lot of people did that. I played it after a few patches and it was playable after the game-breaking stuff was patched. It was patched and updated more even after I played it.

I just bought the game installing now…I will give my feedback on it in awhile.

The problem with the first remaster was that it was released too soon. And the devs had problems with their publisher and got caught in the bankrupcy of that publisher. They've continued to patch the game and they offered two DLC's for free (only the first one was paid, the final two were given for free to the peeps owning the game and to the new buyers).

The remaster has its charm and can stand aside the Drakensang games. The original trilogy respected the Dark Eye rules quite well and the remaster is no exception.

Blackguards and Demonicon might be set in the universe, but they use a simplified version of the rules. I can understand why, but i was no fan of those systems.

Nicely said. The remaster is definitely close to the originals and respects the TDE rules very much. Future patches added even more of the ruleset to cover smaller things that weren't in at the release.

I'm glad they take this approach and it's a big reason why I like remasters when they are done in this way and not simplified. And to be fair Blackguards and Demonicon aren't really as "hardcore" (IMO) as the Realms of Arkania series.

I wouldn't even compare them. Blackguards (which I played) is more of a puzzle game than anything else and Demonicon (which I didn't play) is a hack and slay.

The better comparison is the Drakensang series imho.

I did mention that Drakensang is the only Dark Eye series that can be compared with.

Blackguards and Demonicon are using simplified rules (very simplified i dare say). While both games have good stories, they are nowhere near the Dark Eye rules, and in terms of gameplay are a far cry from Drakensang and Arkania.

Arkania introduced me to the universe and Drakensang was a blast to play (the last old school RPGs, in my opinion), but i wouldn't dismiss Blackguards and Demonicon, as the games have great stories.

Are you sure you've actually played it. ;)

Blackguards is a strategy-RPG with heavy emphasis on the strategy.

Yep, I did. Only the first part though. And I cannot disagree more. ^^

I have to agree with Kordanor. So many maps in Blackguards are designed with a "right" way to complete it that there aren't really many strategic options. Also the game features none of the non combat skills of a gaming system with lots of non-combat options, and thus can only be compared marginally to Drakensang or Arkania-