Finished the replay of
Drakensang, this time with Ergo's fixpack.
You run a party of max 4 members, but can have one additional temporary summoned creature and in some areas one more NPC will join the club to make things easier so it's max of 6 members. The combat is realtime but mostly you should use pause to issue spells/pots/skillshots or simply to tell a certain party member where to move or who to attack.
The base of the game is TDE ruleset and in this game it got a very rich representation. Not only many combat skills are in the game, but also noncombat ones have their purpose. However, only partially and only to a certain limit.
The limit example? There is no use of getting arcane lore over 18 as you'll be able to identify everything with 18, also there is no point of getting superhigh pickpocket as you can buy a ring of pp+2 and pickpocket everyone with 18 (except, well, demigods
). Partially means you honestly don't have to up some skills at all, FastTalk on one hero and Haggle on another will be more than enough to get max experience in all dialogues, although to get some fun and humorous responses it's still nice to have high seductive skill. Crafting skills, and there are three of those, are pretty much pointwasters as have no use while exploring and thus you should up those only on recruitable NPCs you don't plan to have in your party ever. Till the end I never used alchemy and bowyer at all, simply had enough of pots from loot and shops, and didn't want a bows/xbows party member master. But did have to use smith - there are some nice weapons you can get from it, for example an OP sabre you can craft in the second half of the game (attack and dodge values incerased, 5% chance of wounds, high damage).
Exploring the game is fun, story and substories are nice although somewhat cliche, there are many items to loot but rarely worth picking up (you'll very soon have so much cash you don't need to pickup/sell every mousetrap or apple), you can't but adore many different quests and I have to add a few pretty good puzzles.
Ergo fixed a few things, one I have to mention is faster "skinning" and now it's not an annoying feature unlike the first time I've played the game. However some things are still unchanged, a few barrels you cannot loot (not that it matters, as I said most of the loot you really don't want to pick like cheap pipes and handkerchiefs) and a couple of fights won't stop when you kill every hostile unless you walk away from dead enemies. But those are things practically not worth mentioning and only a nitpicker will notice them - the game is polished.
Visually, although "old", the game is IMO eyecandy and can ashame all those today's nicelooking wannabees. Can't believe that recent german RPGs didn't (want to) use this engine. Music is not some masterpiece, but fits nicely into the game, especially the dwarven areas score.
Fights are sometimes easy, sometimes hard. Sometimes you have to walk away and return when you grab a few levels more. It's by design. And design is something you can't see usually.
An example. You have a dwarf in the party and you push only two-handed axes on him just like you should in TDE (never make jack-of-all trades, d&d's f/m/t wouldn't survive here). You have points to up it, however you're capped not only by the combined value of combat attributes (courage/strength/agility) but also your overall level prevents you to be a master in one weapon as early as possible. Not only that, but derivation based skills, like armor use for example, depend on your strength, and thus your party NPC who is a sort of a thief/mage and can have max strength 13, simply can't max the armor use.
Not that it matters, but I'm just trying to say, you can't make godlike characters in this game and I can't but adore the ruleset implementation here. It's somewhat tricky, on the other hand it's enjoyable to decide where you'll invest points into.
There are plently of different mobs and bosses that need different strategy to nail (for example marshes evil tree is best dealth with from a distance) and the game also contains respawns. Endless respawns. OMG. Still the game is not a classic grinder with annoying respawns, ofc if it was like that, I'd spit on it and instauninstall.
Yes, there are endless respawns - until you do something to stop them. For example, to stop undead constantly appearing in marshes, you find and kill the necromancer responsible and respawns are done with. Some grindlovers will be very disappointed if are trying to grab experience from killing respawns - once your level is much higher than those, you get 0 XP for killing.
I adore that scheme!
There are only two big complaints I have. The first one is I'm spoiled by movement speed in Blood Dragon. And running in Drakensang, compared to that, is very slow. Second one is that the game didn't get an addon/DLC. As you'll discover, some things are impossible to do/explore. For example, you can't find a quality spade that should be an object of an unmarked sidequest. You can't open a certain door in Praios temple. You can't enter the dwarf quarter. Etc.
And I wish there was an addon because I'd love to play this game more. Instead, I'm now off to play Drakensang 2.
Oh, the score? Epic RPG with some useless loot/skills, slow movement, visually great, exploration on high level, a few bugs, humor, etc… This simply can't go under:
9/10
[EDIT]
Completely forgot to write as planned about inventory system. As you know, encumbrance due to weight affects your heroes' combat performance and lowers attack and dodge value.
In Drakensang each person has it's separate inventory as greater strength means more weight to carry without getting overcumbered. Sounds easy to manage? Not quite. Encumbrance depends also on items your party member equips. More weight on NPC's shoulders, bigger encumbrance number you want to avoid at all costs. You can train armor use skill to level 3 which automatically lowers encumbrance by -3.
For more than that there is a solution. Some armors protect not only chest, but also back and hands or even feet. So you'll equip just that armor and unequp gloves for example. Unless of course those gloves are imbued with, again an example, +1 dexterity. Then you'll mix something else. Awsome system if you ask me and again, not "dumbplayer" friendly.
Still I liked the Blackguards shared inventory system more as you don't need to open separate inventories. Perhaps I'm just too lazy.
Excess stuff you can sell or store in numerous containers in your house.
Items don't stack automatically in inventory if pickpocketed, now that's a bit of annoying, not much though as you really won't go pickpocketing everything, just things worth using or selling, and money of course. Cash, whatta surprise
, does stack when pickpocketed.
Also forgot to mention that unlike Bioware games not all NPCs have their own quest. It's such a shame as the amazon sidequest one of your party members will get was fun. Very hard one as you get attacked by 4 amazons which are better equipped than you and your amazon (only 2 of you will take that fight).
I said very hard? Third thing forgot to mention is that there is no easy/normal/hard difficulty. The game is as it is. And is not easy. There are very hard fights, but with a bit of thinking, strategy and luck, you'll manage to pull through - don't even think about finishing this game without either heavy use of pots or not having a summoned creature under your control.