Drakensang gamespot review a sad day for hardcore RPGers
 

In the review they are complaining about "Too many stats" and "too hard to learn"

That made it clear that gamespot is writing reviews for mainstream gamers……………

Its more of a niche game that divides peoples opinions greatly than one designed for all and none specifically. Critic average is 73% while users give it 80%. Some groups of players find the game good as is shown by the gamespot user reviews:
Not perfect by anyone's standards but if you are the target group then you might have some fun with it.

Also the game sold for 23€ as new so its not full-price even.

Typical - they'll give GTA4 for PC which was released fundamentally broken and with 10-year old gameplay a 112/10, but 'meh' to this. Apparently they didn't bribe well enough …

No. You don't say?

Well, in all fairness, GameSpot is writing for a mainstream audience. It's not a good review but it probably isn't that far off for their average readership.

Come back Deslock, all is forgiven!! :)

If it is a hardcore fighting game for example with a lot of complicated moves, they would add it as something good!, I guess I should have written they are reviewing the party based CRPG genre ( which in my opinion SHOULD be full of stats and rules and not be simple) like it is mainstream action game.

I agree, but then I learned long ago to ignore the numerical score and just read the review. Many times (in fact, probably most of the times?) I find that a game's "problems" are actually something I prefer or don't care about. When they say 'game lacks multiplayer', that probably takes 5 or 10 points off the numerical score, but since I don't care about multiplayer, I ignore that comment. Same with 'bad voice acting' for example, or 'game starts slow' or 'game is difficult' (in this particular case, I find that what they don't consider difficult like jumping sequences and memorizing combos are the things that are difficult for me, while learning the stats/skills and using strategy is not)

The reviews on Amazon are almost all glowing.

One question though (and this blends in with a discussion on the D & D RPG thread), when did heavy stats and rules, etc. become such an important part of cRPGs? (I realize that they have been a part of PnP RPG's for a long time) I can't remember any RPGs prior to 2000 that were that heavy in stats and rules. The rules may have been heavy on some of the implementations of 2E AD&D, but the stats/abilities/feats certainly were not particularly robust (nothing like the 3E and 3.5E implemenations).

If anything, this trend towards more streamlined stats and rules seems like it is getting back to the way cRPG's existed for most of the genre's life. And, if it lets developers spend more time on developing the story (though sadly it seems most will just spend more time on graphics), that sits well with me.

What is Deslock doing nowadays? And why did he leave Gamespot?

To be fair, if the manual sucked less, this would not be mentioned that often. As it is, it's mostly useless. Most statements in the manual are incredibly wishy washy and don't really spill the bones. Yes, you can find most of the information in the game ̶ somewhere ̶ but it's hard to get an overview in the beginning. That's why you already start picking your character pretty much blindly.

This doesn't change anything with the point that the review sounds somehow helpless. The game is not that complicated, as you will figure out after the first confusion.

I can see where people who don't know anything about Arkania would be confused about some of the stats. I didn't have a problem figuring out the mechanics of the game because of my Realms of Arkania experience. It helped a lot that I still have the manuals to those games as well. Although a few things have changed, the basic rules were the same.

Just imagine if Drakensang had a chance meter when upgrading skills like in ROA. There was always a chance that you failed to upgrade a skill even when investing points in it. It would be hilarious how Gamespot would react to that. :D

Quests are many and feature myriad goals that run the gamut from keep-busy jobs such as killing a white wolf and tracking down a stolen diadem to cleaning out a crypt of the undead and solving riddling rhymes. Just about the only touch of originality comes from the main plotline's focus on dragons, which at one time ruled the world before a scaly civil war.


Notice these are all early quests making me wonder how far the reviewer went in the game. The game gets much better the farther you go and lately there is nothing out with this kind of depth. I didn't find the voices offensive at all especially compared to some of the other RPGs in thelast year so I think he was way off in that regard also. But, a 7 score is actually a good mark from that site.

What a weak review.

I'm not surprised though. It was clear that sooner or later one of the pro sites would do their usual spiel of phoning in their review for such a non mainstream game. This time it was Gamespot, next time it will be somebody else.

I wonder why people keep reading those sites.

The last sentence should be … "But, a 7 score is actually a good mark from that site for a game that didn't pay them money or gave them exclusive interviews"

It's still the same answer it has been for years:
As far as the review budget brought him. ;) If he gets, say, 350$ a freelancer can spend ca. two days on playing and writing if he doesn't live in an expensive area.

Yes, compare that to what we get paid here and you'll understand why our reviews are so much better!! :cm:

Desslock went on to PC Gamer. As far as I know (and he does call through here from time to time), he isn't writing much these days. Keep in mind he has a day job (lawyer).

Thanks Dhruin. I always loved his articles.

As I understood him on QT3 he has no plans to continue his game writing career.