Drakensang - Review @ IGN

See this is the sad state that both indie as well as foriegn rpg makers(aside from the witcher) face in a western dominated review by advertising budget....

When it comes to American reviews of foreign RPG my interest in a game has an inverse relationship to a declining score.

The lower the score, the more interested I become.

Past games like Gothic, Arx Fatalis, and Divine Divinity scored mostly low to mediocre scores in the American press. So the lesson there is that those reviewers don't know what the hell they're talking about.

So the reviews are still useful.

One interesting item to note about the review is really no mention of bugs... most reviews of rpgs spend about 1/3 to half of their review on the subject of bugs.
 
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When it comes to American reviews of foreign RPG my interest in a game has an inverse relationship to a declining score.

The lower the score, the more interested I become.

Past games like Gothic, Arx Fatalis, and Divine Divinity scored mostly low to mediocre scores in the American press. So the lesson there is that those reviewers don't know what the hell they're talking about.

So the reviews are still useful.
.

i toally agree, and believe it or not, but i was thinking the same thing !!
glad to hear more pople think this way.
 
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That's not thinking. That's reacting.

BTW when I google "TDE" I get nothing. Where are the rules for TDE documented on the internet? Hopefully in English, otherwise, nevermind...
 
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The lower the score, the more interested I become.
I wouldn't go that far ;). Some of those games really are lemons. But that's what sites like this are for: separate the wheat from the chaff.

What irks me is the often complete disinterest I meet as soon as European titles are mentioned. I post at another more or less gaming-centered forum with lots of people who play a wide range of games, with a stress on RPGs (both tabletop and computer). Even there, when I mention a European title, there's usually no reaction. Or, in the best case, a nasty remark regarding the localization.
 
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BTW when I google "TDE" I get nothing. Where are the rules for TDE documented on the internet? Hopefully in English, otherwise, nevermind...

They're not. You can buy the rulebooks translated at some spots, but I never found a good introductory guide in translation.

I've written one that will hopefully be helpful for GB. It'll be around in a while, I sure hope it will serve the curious.
 
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That's not thinking. That's reacting.

BTW when I google "TDE" I get nothing. Where are the rules for TDE documented on the internet? Hopefully in English, otherwise, nevermind...

Well, it is copyright material so don't think you'll find the rules in the Internet (at least through legal means). In the case of D&D 3rd edition it was different, since they made public the d20 rules. That's not the norm.
You can read a bit about the rules here in the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Eye
 
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BTW when I google "TDE" I get nothing. Where are the rules for TDE documented on the internet? Hopefully in English, otherwise, nevermind...
They sold an English version of the basic rules some years ago, but the game flopped. It didn't help that the basic rules didn't contain the magic rules. They are still available as pdf, plus an adventure product and the game world (Aventuria). That's about it.

Edit: I'm slow :).
 
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The majority of the formulae can be found in the game. Right-clicking on something on the character sheet will often explain which formula is used and which values are the basis.

The German manual was pretty good, it explained ca. 80-90% of what you needed to know. I suppose the English manual is based on it.
 
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<snip>
One interesting item to note about the review is really no mention of bugs... most reviews of rpgs spend about 1/3 to half of their review on the subject of bugs.
Well, there probably aren't many, specially of the game-stopping type. Remember this game has been out in Germany for several months, so they probably fixed them before we got the game (thanks germans!). If anything you'll probably just find typos and translation errors.
 
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There wasn't much to fix. It even seems patch 1.02 created more bugs than it fixed. ;)
 
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I really enjoyed the demo. Will certainly be importing this game from either the US or the UK. Will there be any differences between the two like there was with the witcher or is it the same game for both regions??
 
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That's not thinking. That's reacting.

The whole point of a review is to elicit a reaction by the reader so shrug. Just pointing out that my reaction tends to have an opposite effect as a score goes down when reviewed by an American reviewer.

The reason for this is because American reviewers judge a game heavily on its polish, its accessibility, and game controls. Not that these aren't important, but a lot of the 'foreign' RPGs released in the last 5 or so years have been really great aside from polish, accessibility, and game controls.

To make an analogy. Say I write a term paper. But it is full of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes.

Some people will focus heavily on the misspellings and grammatical errors while mostly ignoring the content itself. And some people will be more interested in what the term paper is trying to say and deal with the misspellings and grammatical errors.

I find the content coming out of many European RPG developers to be so good that I'm willing to ignore as best I can their lack of polish. But American reviewers will focus the bulk of their review on negative points about the game when there is a lack of polish and whatnot.
 
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I really enjoyed the demo. Will certainly be importing this game from either the US or the UK. Will there be any differences between the two like there was with the witcher or is it the same game for both regions??

Hard to say. The game is quite harmless though. I don't remember anything which asks for being removed.
 
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I have a few questions regarding Landstander's review of Drakensang.

I'm speaking specifically of his criticism of Drakensang's realtime-with-pause combat. He writes, "The turn-based rounds are all going on under the hood, but the whole presentation of the game is geared towards letting those battles play out in real time. The trouble is that, to play the game with as much tactical advantage as possible, you've got to stop and start the action every few rounds just to make sure that your characters are all doing what they should be doing at any one time."

Is that really "trouble"?

Don't NWN2 and the upcoming Dragon Age offer a similar combat system? Baldur's Gate? Plansescape? What makes Drakensang's combat system inferior to those games, from which it draws inspiration? Would Landstander's argument have been stronger if he had put this game into context with those classics? How "uncomfortable" is this style of combat to the degree that it gets a 6.5 gameplay rating?

Landstander continues, "On the downside, of course, that means more stopping and starting, but at least it's more interesting from a purely tactical level. Even if you do have a fight that you can afford to wage in real time, the rounds are too apparent." Too apparent how? Compared to what? Landstander doesn't say. "Watching all your attacks launch in unison is funny at first but it soon gets kind of depressing." Is Landstander saying he's disheartened by the fact that he has to pause the action and give tactical commands?

Isn't the "interesting" stopping/starting tactical combat something many consumers might be looking for in an RPG? After all, this is the first one since the NWN2 series that offers this style of gameplay and Dragon Age isn't coming out til November.

just my two cents. thanks for reading.
 
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Quite agree - with a caveat. Haven't played enough to say authoritatively but, yes, it's like NWN2 with a different camera and rules. Against the praise for most pause-based systems, it seems out of place.

The caveat is...he is right - pause-based systems make little sense to me; make it TB for good tactical control or don't bother. Except, it seems unlikely someone from IGN would make that argument and history has shown pause-based is very popular.
 
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