Drakensang, who wants to play it?
 

After I played G3 and the Witcher, Drakensang is a game I don't want to play. Bye bye Drakensang!

With the limited amount of RPG's on PC today, picking two out of 3, and then bidding farewell to a game one haven't played, on a forum for that game…

Unless this is satire or bad humor, it strikes me as highly immature, inflammatory, attention seeking and trolling.

"I do X, therefore I wont to Y/Y is bad/Y is wrong/people who do Y is stupid/everybody should do X" is a logic I often had in my teenage years, but as I grew older I realized how silly it was, especially when it's related to entertainment.

Examples;
* I use computers, therefore it's wrong to use consoles
* I use PC, therefore it's wrong of me to like Macintosh
* I use PS3, therefore I should vow to never own a XBox 360
* I like Star Wars, therefore I shun Star Trek
* I play storytelling games, which makes me too sophisticated to play Dungeons & Dragons

Speaking of party RPGs, Drakensang is the best substitute for Baldur's Gate out there. NWN or NWN2 are much worse and I think most of us are sick and tired of the progress how D&D rules are evolving. TDE feels fresh (at least to me) and interesting.

You obviously like single character RPGs better and that's okay.

PS. Your thread start is very trolling too.

can we change the username to rpgtroll?

The fact is I played for 15 minutes and just couldn't continued. The game is so old and slow. So you think in this forum I have to praise it cheers cheers! Is this what you want to hear?

What kind of person goes to burger place shouting that he hates burgers? Or do you go to Toyota forum complaining that you hate the brand?

Play few hours and then give your real opinion. You obviously only read few bad reviews, tried for a second and now come to here trolling. I understand real critic, but just shouting out that you don't like it doesn't make any sense, especially in this forum.

First of all, the game is not old and graphics are decent. And the game isn't that slow (if you mean the characters). I'm welcome to hear your opinion after you have given a real shot with the game.

But for now, bye bye rpgdude!

Well, on your list (Gothic 3, Witcher and Drakensang) Drakensang definitely is the odd one out. But why post this here? There is no informational content in your post.

Then you have essentially heard one note of one song and decided you didn't like anything by the band. Sound useless? Yep.

Asked the same myself.


Opening a thread with a misleading title (which sounds like an invite into playing)
in the appropriate sub-forum
and stating in the very first post that one doesn't like a game at all

generates the most maximum level of attention.

To me, this feels like a thoroughly planned deed.

Well, I'm working thru the second city right now, so I guess the answer is, "Me".

@Mike- that's just a bit scary.

@ Mike: Good Godfrey Daniels!O_O And I thought this guy was bad!
http://crazy0122003.files.wordpress….pg?w=200&h=300

@dte: so what do you think of the game--how's the interface? I'm on the border about it.

So far, so good, Mags. When I can concentrate on it for an hour or more, it gets downright engrossing. Unfortunately, that's a little rare for me. The interface isn't bad at all. I struggled at first (particularly since my first character --"first" is more appropriate than "main" the way it plays-- was a hocus-pocus type), but I'm getting much more comfy now. I've still got combat pausing every round, but I issue orders quickly enough now that it's no longer jarring. It's a little early for me to give you a definite opinion, but initial impressions are good and it's only $30 at Best Buy.

I've been holding back since I've heard the character development aspect is not very meaningful (i.e. choices you make don't seem to make much of a difference).

Thoughts?

There were some reviews here, for example by Corwin.

Regarding character development he said that it was one of the highlights of this game.

For me Drakensang is one of the best CRPGS of the last years. In particular I liked the option for auto-pause after each round, because it reminded me of the infinity engine.

I believe that it was a big mistake to sell it for 30 $ in the US from the beginning, so people get the misconception that it is a budget title.

I'm still early in the game, so I'm not sure I can answer that for certain. From my experience, a few points in a skill has made a noticeable difference in performance. Covering a range of skills with your party also appears useful.

As a diehard spreadsheet RPGer, I still have the feeling that I'm "not doing it right" since I don't completely understand the Dark Eye system and haven't finished the game to understand what matters and what does not. That's just my particular craziness, though. I haven't quite got used to the "allocate points whenever" approach, either.

Overall, I'd say character development will be a lot of fun.

OK, I must have heard wrong. Maybe it's time for an ear canal flushing.

You can find a couple of paragraphs on character development in both our reviews. It's not a weakness, it's Drakensang's strongest point.

Hmm but I have heard that there are a lot of skills that are rather pointless to develop. Maybe the translation from PnP to CRPG wasn't fully leveraged?

Are you perhaps talking about the Realms of Arkania games? They offered a myriad of skills to characters, not all of which were useful. But Drakensang? I'd say the best strategy is to have all talents represented in your party setup. I don't remember any of them being really pointless.

Very interesting. I get a contradictory story from the Codexers.

The Codexers don't like Drakensang, for whatever reason. Maybe their sunglasses aren't strong enough for the game's graphics. ;)

Radon Labs indeed cut out 75% of the DSA system. But the rest is still quite a lot. Some of the skills are certainly underused. That's no surprise for a dev's first RPG.

You need is patience, though. The game gets better and better with increasing complexity. As always things start really simple. ;) Or more directly: The start ( = the demo) is the game's slowest and most undemanding part.

LOL! Plus it's not turn-based. ;)

As an aside, anything requiring patience seems to be under-appreciated in that crowd.

I tend to agree. Maybe THQ had some prejucides against German RPGs, cynically said.

But I assume they rather wanted fast cash, instead of anything else. Apart from cash, they didn't care about it.

In some details, they even changed the rule system. The way wounds are "produced" doesn't seem to be taken from the P&P rule system … At least not the way I heard about it, but I must admit that I'm not that deep into the whole system.

But the greatest change - imho - is the recuperation. The way of Drakensang how to get life points and magic points back isn't in the system at all, it's Radon Labs' invention.

There are a few more changes I heard about, but I'm not that deep into the rules so I can't really tell for sure.

Character development is the best thing about the game. It's a complex system, even after finishing the game there were things I didn't fully understand (like the parry/dodge multiattack thing), and yes, there are a few things that don't make a difference. Specially some skills that don't need to be raised part a certain point. (Just seems like there are too many skill points per level so you can max a bunch of them instead of specialize).
I loved the game, can't wait for the prequel.

$30 is stil a bit too steep for me. I've got a huge blacklog of older games to plays still. Just getting through the Forgotten Realms Collection silverbox will take months. ;)

$30 for ~60+ hours of gameplay, plus solid replayability based on the varied character development system? So what would a game like Modern Warfare 2, with a 6 hour campaign and no inherent replayability outside of multiplayer, be worth … $0.02? ;)

That's about right, since I have no desire to play it. ;)

Some context. I rarely buy a game a soon as it is released. It's not only not cost effective, but I don't like to beta-test and wait for patches, and I rarely have a state of the art PC to take advantage of all the latest whizbang graphic features.

Recent exception was Geneforge 5 because I knew there was no advantage to waiting very long after the first patch.

I'm also usually waiting. Since I'm not that wealthy I'm usually waiting for budged versions of the games.

Me buying a full-price game is most unusual and in my case a deed of appreciation of the game. I just can't afford full-price games.

Plus, lower-priced collector's editions of the "Gold Version" kind of games usually combine all patches - and in rare cases a few bonuses.

There is also a way to speed up the character movement considerably. You need an SQLite Database Browser for this, though. Works like a charm and helps a lot if you have to run back and forth across the same map all the time.

I never understood what people have against the speed. Why must everything be so fast nowadays ? In my case, I was very much enjoying the landscape meanwhile running. The only place where i found all the running too much was before the first castle (forgot its name), but even around Tallon I could very much enjoy the landscape.

Sounds stupid isn't it ? ;) :D

Totally agree. With Gothic 3, I had to stop and enjoy the view a several times. I actually told my wife to see how beautiful the river looks in Silden. :D

The point where it got a bit much for me were the Blood Mountains. I had to go back and forth on that map all the time. Additionally, I had some troubles finding the last bandit camp, and as, by that point, I knew every flower on the main map area by first name, I wanted to get forward. The map looked nice, but enough is enough.

Yes, it sounds stupid. ;)

*I* want to have the choice. If I want to do sight seeing *I* set the speed to walking instead of running. Having the default set to snail speed is not acceptable.

Absolutely agree - recently played a DS game (Black Sigil) that had fast/slow travel in town but only terribly slow speed on the overland map … very frustrating …

For me, the default running speed of Divinity 2 is too fast - now when I say in a forum that I let my character almost only walking in towns, people will very likely call me stupid, because I 1. I refuse to use the running speed in towns (just looks unrealistic to me (I'm *not* running towards the next shop to buy my newspaper in real life !) and 2. because I decide to "slow the game down" at all.

No matter what I do, I'm lost, because I'm not doing what the majority does.

Really? I'm a little gullible when it comes to people joking around, but you really switch your character to walking speed in towns for the duration of the whole game? Not just this one?

I wouldn't call that stupid, but you sure are more hardcore than I am. I wouldn't have the patience or time to do that. If you have the time and don't mind walking around everywhere in a town then I guess it sorta makes sense. You'll definatly be playing the game longer than I would.

But that is like salt and food - if there are two speeds, you can choose the slow one and someone else can choose the fast speed. But if the fast speed *is* too slow … you are out of luck. Make sense?

I'm currently doing that in Divinity 2 as well. Of course, *sometimes* I switchtowards running speed in towns again, but especially in Drakensang everything looks just so beautiful for my eyes that I don't have the desire to turn running speed on - at least not in towns. :)