So I'm finally playing this.

Not too far in, just a few hours but already I'm liking it more than NWN 2 (I know, shouldn't be too hard, heh).

Anyway, liking the skill system so far, seems like it will be flexible.

It's very fun, and has a lot of charm.

If you want some links to stuff that explains the rules and in game notations, let me know…

That would be great, thanks!

Yes, charm it seems to have, something which is lacking in a lot of RPGs.
I already like most of the characters I've come across expecially Dranor.

Graphics are also really lush, much more detail than NWN2 and performance is better.

And also don't forget to try out right-clicks on things you don't understand ! Or on items, might work there, too. (Right-clicking on corpses of dead wolves for example offers 2 ways of dealing with them, if you have the appropriate skills).

Personally, I found the possibility to do a right-click on all of the skills, spells etc. to get an explanation very helpful. :)

I have a folder with about ten of them, zipped up. Where should I send it?

Could anyone here indicate how difficult it is? Perhaps compared to DAO (since that is fresh in my mind at the moment) levels?

I will not be shy about stating I prefer to play games on eay to normal levels of difficulty. I tend to enjoy the exploration, quests, role playing, etc. more than combat. I like combat but not to the extent I want to drag every battle out into some epic endurance contest.

I heard somewhere that the game was considered difficult to the average crowd (versus those who love the really hard stuff) but now I am thinking maybe I am getting that mixed up with Risen.

Thanks for any feedback!

About the same difficulty, IIRC. It might be a bit more difficult in terms of understanding the skills and talents if you are not familiar with the Dark Eye ruleset, but you can always click the right mouse button for things that are unclear.

I always play on normal, don't remember if there was an easy setting or what it did, maybe someone else can elaborate on that.

I've also forgotten whether Drakensang has adjustable difficulty levels. All I know is that River of Time will have them, and it might be a novelty.

Drakensang's difficulty is medium I would say. Most cannon fodder is pretty easy, but some of the boss fights are quite heavy. So you might need 2 or 3 tries sometimes. Fights against large groups of enemies, for example a dozen skeletons, are also not so trivial. But it's all manageable if you keep your characters focused.

Once you understand the rules, I'd say it is a little bit easier, on average.

It really helps being able to autopause each round.

There are no mages that can take your party out with a fireball like DA. ;)

Ah cool - thanks for the feeback. Medium/Normal I can deal with fine and I don't mind a few tries on a boss. Just don't want the majority of the fights to be "epic"

I still have the game installed and just checked. It doesn't have adjustable difficulty levels.
With the exception of one fight against (I just put the name of the critter in spoiler tags and nothing else so it's only a light spoiler)…… I thought that the game was leaning very much towards the easy side of the scales.

Drakensang has an awesome character progression system. In my personal opinion it's actually the best system that I have ever had the fortune of experiencing in a party-based CRPG.

It offers a very natural progression because you acquire (adventure/experience) points all of the time by defeating enemies and by solving quests. With the exception of special abilities and new abilities that you need to buy from NPC trainers first, you can put your acquired points into any skill or stat at any point while playing. You don't have to seek out a trainer or wait for a level-up. All you need to do is open the stats page and distribute the points that you collected from the last few quests or fights.

Due to the nature of this system you can obviously make adjustments to your character(s) on the fly on an as needed basis. If you keep some points "in the bank" at all times (definitely recommended) then you can easily react to any sort of challenge as you go.
I have definitely not made the best of choices when I developed my characters. As usual I put too much emphasis on "my" (created) character and tried to make her a jack of all trades until I realized that I really needed to spread all of the required skills and abilities across my party.
In spite of the mistakes I made, the game turned out to be fairly easy in the end.

There's always a bit of luck involved as well. The game is based on dice rolls to some extent so if a critical spell misfires at the wrong time or your enemy scores a critical hit at the wrong time then you may have to reload but overall it's a pretty forgiving game. Definitely not on the "epic" side you mentioned. You can waltz right through the game ~95% of the time.

Ah, so there is no chance of "respeccing" later in the game?

Respeccing is for pussies! :gorath: ;)

Yes the character progression system is awesome. Just spending the XP is both simple and gives the player a lot of control.

@Arhu:

How can I edit somebody else's thread title? This typo is getting on my nerves.

On the forum display page double click on the cell of the thread title you want to change. I hope mods can do it too. I changed it now.

Thanks :)

Yes, mods can do it too.

The game was a little too easy. Not on some of the boss fights, but for the cannon fodder units I could blast through them without a second thought as to actually getting hurt.

Ergo's fixpack helped with that.

That actually sounds quite similar to Dragon Age, or at least the way I play it. The major difference of course being that you have to level up first before getting your stat/skill/talent points.

One thing is different. Talents and Spells are taught by a trainers. Once you're trained in a talent/spell, you can increase its strength by allocating adventure points to it.

Hmm all of this sounds very cool. Think this will be the game for me after DAO (I went ahead an ordered it). I love lots of complex character building with variety and plenty of things to put points into. The difficulty sounds fine to me as well.