Drakensang The more I play the more disappointed I get

gah, puzzles. I dislike them because they usually feel entirelly out of place. Like the one with the fountain levers.

What I wish would be more in-game consequences for action like breaking a chest beside a merchant, more interaction with your party members, that they react in a more significant way depending of your action. More of them. A real day/night cycle that would make villages and cities feel more alive. That you could return there eventually after you have completed the missions in the area.

To me, puzzles just belong to RPGs.

wolfing said:

Or they could take the worse but more common approach of making it more 'westernized' and just add full voice-acting, more flashy spells, more eye and hair color options and call it "full character customization" instead of adding anything to the actual gameplay, like puzzles and non-combat options.

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Depends on the world of Aventuria. They imho shouldn't do things that are inconsistent with this world.

We'll see the results in the prequel ...

I don't see what playing a role "as in role-playing game" and solving puzzles have in common.

vanedor said:

gah, puzzles. I dislike them because they usually feel entirelly out of place. Like the one with the fountain levers.

What I wish would be more in-game consequences for action like breaking a chest beside a merchant, more interaction with your party members, that they react in a more significant way depending of your action. More of them. A real day/night cycle that would make villages and cities feel more alive. That you could return there eventually after you have completed the missions in the area.

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I nearly completely disagree.

1. Proper puzzles belong into every RPG that contains at least some extended dungeon crawling section.
2. I can really live without having to reload after a failed lockpick / theft because of harsh consequences.
3. I am more than content that they left day/night cycles out of Drakensang and did a plot-related change of lighting instead. Day/night cycles may be fine for simulationist games, but in games with stronger narrative they can really disturb. Either dusk and dawn set in at (drama-wise) inappropiate moments and/or you have to wait for certains NPCs to appear or events to trigger because they are timed (boooring). Nah, I can live without daytime simulation, at least in a more narrative RPG like Drakensang.

As someone else stated, I feel this game has too much combat as well. It's not that I don't like the combat system, but the camera and the characters running all over the place is extremely frustrating. I wonder if this game would have been a lot funner if it were turn-based? Regardless, I'm trudging through it, mostly because I do like the skill system.

The story is decent I suppose, but I really like most of the dialogue.

You can always set the combat to auto-pause and assign targets manually if you don't like the way the AI controls your party.

vanedor said:

I don't see what playing a role "as in role-playing game" and solving puzzles have in common.

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I don't see what playing a role has in common with Computer RPGame, that's a common confusion coming from the tag.

Gorath said:

You can always set the combat to auto-pause and assign targets manually if you don't like the way the AI controls your party.

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Still not as tactical than if it would have been classical TB because you have only a very vague control on movements unlike in a classical TB. And the AI makes shine the NWN2 AI but well in Drakensang you just don't use it.

Thoth said:

As someone else stated, I feel this game has too much combat as well. It's not that I don't like the combat system, but the camera and the characters running all over the place is extremely frustrating. I wonder if this game would have been a lot funner if it were turn-based? Regardless, I'm trudging through it, mostly because I do like the skill system.

The story is decent I suppose, but I really like most of the dialogue.

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Um, how more turn-based can you get? I've got mine on pause every turn, and it's like Fallout. It's even more turn-based than the D & D games, where you don't even get to pause the turns. I'm really curious as to how more turn-based one can make a game than what this one already is?

Quote @ Dasale:

Still not as tactical than if it would have been classical TB because you have only a very vague control on movements unlike in a classical TB. And the AI makes shine the NWN2 AI but well in Drakensang you just don't use it.

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I have exact control over even the weapons my party members are going to use with every turn, who they are going to attack, using which spell/weapon/special ability. How more tactical can it get? The only single thing I cannot change or control in mid-combat, is the armour they wear; - otherwise I can control their every single movement.

Not that it's helping me much at the moment, as the amoebas are owning me...
Oh, and do you truly think that the AI is good in NWN2? The expansions, maybe...
EDIT: Oh, sorry, I see I misread what you said there... -well that is a little point we seem to agree on.

@Vanedor:

What I wish would be more in-game consequences for action like breaking a chest beside a merchant, more interaction with your party members, that they react in a more significant way depending of your action. More of them. A real day/night cycle that would make villages and cities feel more alive. That you could return there eventually after you have completed the missions in the area.

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Hm, I can sort of agree with the first part of that, especially the party member interaction. I have to strongly disagree about the day/night cycle though, as I was cheering in delight that finally we have a game again that doesn't impose those terribly irritating night time pauses, where you just need to somehow fast forward time or go pick flowers while you wait for dawn...

RivianWitch said:

Um, how more turn-based can you get? I've got mine on pause every turn, and it's like Fallout. It's even more turn-based than the D & D games, where you don't even get to pause the turns. I'm really curious as to how more turn-based one can make a game than what this one already is?

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I meant turn-based as in the original fallout with action points and all. I get annoyed with games that have you waiting for your character to attack in real time and I don't like all the auto pausing, probably because pausing makes everything all dark. I'm very picky and annoying. But I'm more frustrated with having everyone gang up on one enemy and then running all over the place trying to find a spot. The camera starts to freak out and everything. Oh well, I'm still enjoying the game.

I don't know, a game where it's eternally 'noon' just break it for me. Seeing Ferdok night-life could be pretty interesting... and would make some quests (like those in the port) feel much more coherent. As for having to wait... in that sort of game, there's always a 'wait x hours' option so I really don't see how this might bother you.

Dasale said:

I don't see what playing a role has in common with Computer RPGame, that's a common confusion coming from the tag.

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Because what's what the R stands in RPG?

Anyways, you play a role. Sure, it's not PnP but unless it's an action rpg, you still usually have moral/strategic decisions to take and you are able to put yourself in the skin of someone else, be it an elven maid or an evil necromancer.

Thoth said:

I meant turn-based as in the original fallout with action points and all. I get annoyed with games that have you waiting for your character to attack in real time and I don't like all the auto pausing, probably because pausing makes everything all dark. I'm very picky and annoying. But I'm more frustrated with having everyone gang up on one enemy and then running all over the place trying to find a spot. The camera starts to freak out and everything. Oh well, I'm still enjoying the game.

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Oh, ok.
I must agree with you about the non-pause option not being the hottest. That's why I set mine on pause every turn, and although it is more tedious, it's fun in non-repetitive situations. It can become tiresome, though I suppose.

vanedor said:

I don't know, a game where it's eternally 'noon' just break it for me. Seeing Ferdok night-life could be pretty interesting... and would make some quests (like those in the port) feel much more coherent. As for having to wait... in that sort of game, there's always a 'wait x hours' option so I really don't see how this might bother you.

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Well, I suppose night-time would be nice if they made some decent quests that would fit in to night time. I'm not a huge fan of Oblivion (although I was of Morrowind) ; but with some of the thieve's quests in Oblivion, for instance, you could pleasantly while away the night time hours...

Turn based can be great... but when I walk in the dark forest and get attacked by wolves/boars/bears/bandits every two minutes, I'm pretty glad it's real time. That game would have to be totally modified to make turn based interesting.

vanedor said:

Turn based can be great... but when I walk in the dark forest and get attacked by wolves/boars/bears/bandits every two minutes, I'm pretty glad it's real time. That game would have to be totally modified to make turn based interesting.

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Yeah, exactly what I said just now, -if you keep fighting relatively easy wolf-rats/wolves every 5 secs., it's probably less trouble just to set it back to continuous time for a bit.
Of course, you can also just remain in paused combat mode and keep pressing space bar and let the AI do it's own thing for the most part, but even that can become tedious.

So I think it's prety nice that you have three different combat settings for this game. ("Real-time" , "paused at start" , and "pause every turn" )

vanedor said:

I don't see what playing a role "as in role-playing game" and solving puzzles have in common.

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Curunír said:

I nearly completely disagree.

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This is what I call a "cultural difference".

I assume that Curunìr might be of German origin, and he seems to see things differently than vanedor from Canada.

Dasale said:

I don't see what playing a role has in common with Computer RPGame, that's a common confusion coming from the tag.

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Where does the name come from, then ?

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Where does the name come from, then ?

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It's all about history. First, the origin is RPG as in pen & paper RPG. In those games you are playing the role of an imaginary character. Rules used stats/skills to help with this 'roleplaying' (i.e. if your character had a low intelligence, you should play as if your character is dumb), plus it helped determine what your imaginary character could do in combat, but the essence of the game was in playing the role of a character.
Then came the computer games that tried to emulate those RPGs. Since they couldn't really act the part of the DM (dungeon master, the player that presents the 'universe' to the players), all they could do was to take the ruleset (stats, skills, etc) and just have a game with combat based on that. The 'RP' (for roleplaying) doesn't really mean much in most computer RPGs (cRPGs). It's more an indication that there are stats and skills in the game instead of it being pure adventure or pure action.
Not all cRPGs are like that though, the RPGs that are usually considered the best are the ones in which you can actually assume the role of a specific character, and the game allows you to make decisions close to what you would have done in a PnP (pen and paper) situation.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

This is what I call a "cultural difference".

I assume that Curunìr might be of German origin, and he seems to see things differently than vanedor from Canada.

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In my opinion it doesn't have to do much with me being German or vanedor being Canadian. It's just a matter of personal taste. I'd agree that German players have a different taste than North American players in tendency, probably originating from some different "cultural background"*, but the taste of a particular individual is always an individual taste. Erm, if you know what I am trying to say with that...

PS: I am the same Curunìr that frequents the official Drakensang forums. (Surprise!)

EDIT: Actually, from the German boards I got the feeling that I am in the minority regarding pickpocketing consequences and such, many German players seemingly want those. On the other hand most American opinions I've read either don't mention it at all or are positive about the fact of not having to do save-reload orgies.