Drakensang - first impressions

I agree with Gorath and Fenris, that there are a lot of design flaws and a lot of things could have been done better. The stealth thing Fenris mentioned really is annoying. But I think it is overall a real beauty. As often said: the details, the atmosphere --- I sometimes just like to watch the world of Aventuria, with all the light and stuff flying around.

As Gorath said: They had a limited budget and I think a hard time to find financial support. So they had to limit their list of features to a realistic amount. You always have to keep in mind, that it is a fresh start in the TDE universe. You could say it also had predecessors like the Realms of Arkania triology, but to bring it to the modern gamer they had to start from scratch. So I hope that with the commercial success that it seems to be. And also some good concepts which seem to work. Drakensang 2 will be a much better game. Where they can rely on the things that worked in Drakensang 1 and can add stuff they had to leave out.

I think have several ends, a lot of choices --- an open gameplay sure is nice, especially in rpg. But it is also a lot of work for the developer, if you want to do it right. I think there is no need in having 10 crapy endings instead of one good one.

I'm probably a fanboi as well... damn... But I really trust the guys from Radon Labs, that they did the best they could. They have that necessary amout of geekness and they have played the pen and paper version; worked with the original authors and seem to have a realistic view what can be done in a certian amount of time. (As there are not too many bugs the game seems thoroughly tested.)

The game is solid, nevertheless.
Imho.

Two aspects of the copy protection consist of

a) the main character suddenly fings himself or herself within an in-game prison cell

b) a necessary main quest giver just isn't there.

So, if the Drakensang program/executable detects some tampering, or the DVD missing, it does just this.

This means, if someone reports a "bug" of this particular main quest giver missing, the reader can be sure that the person reporting this doesn't have the original DVD in the drive.

(I must admit though, that a few people seem to have problems with this despite using the original DVD. This could be caused by some incompatibilty ? between the copy protection and a few drive types. But this isn't certain yet.)


Today, a guy wrote in the official forum that he couldn't find this quest giver. But not only this, he also suspected, that this "could be some kind of copy protection". Unfortunately he didn't have the DVD, and any cracks didn't work.

dtp Betty just answered: "But you know that you are in the official forum, don't you ?" with a laughing smiley behind that.
(Roughly translated into English language.)

I will keep this moment in my memory. Unfortunately I didn't copy this text, it was just too funny to read of someone who admittingly didn't have the DVD and used several cracks.

Only a few days ago, an exclusive beer mug was sold via ebay.
It reached almost 60 Euros.

It was given only to press people and could be won in a few contests.

I'll never understand why press people get so much exclusive stuff. In my opinion, this imho wasted money should rather be invested in the product, not in exclusive press kits that will be stored on a few shelves and will never be seen by "normal" people.

I think, I'm against exclusiveness anyway.

Do you think a few thousand bucks more spent on the game would have made a difference?

From that perspective, you are of course right.

No, I'm against exclusiveness in general.

And specifically, I don't believe that press people shouldn't be "bribed" with extra special exclusive things.

In my opinion, a uniform press kit does the job, too.

Exclusive press kits are in my opinion only made for the purpose to let the editors shift towards a bit better reviews.

A beer mug doesn't contain much information an reporter could put into a review of a game; therefore it's just wated in my opinion, from an information perspective.

This goes for all of the oh-so-spcial things reviewers get, too.
They just don't add any information, and information is the pure essence of being an reporter.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

And specifically, I don't believe that press people shouldn't be "bribed" with extra special exclusive things.

Click to expand...

Here we are in agreement.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

No, I'm against exclusiveness in general.

And specifically, I don't believe that press people shouldn't be "bribed" with extra special exclusive things.

In my opinion, a uniform press kit does the job, too.

Exclusive press kits are in my opinion only made for the purpose to let the editors shift towards a bit better reviews.

A beer mug doesn't contain much information an reporter could put into a review of a game; therefore it's just wated in my opinion, from an information perspective.

This goes for all of the oh-so-spcial things reviewers get, too.
They just don't add any information, and information is the pure essence of being an reporter.

Click to expand...

We live in a world of massive information overflow. You have to shout to get noticed.
One of a reporter's primary objectives is information selection. Gimmicks help him make the right choice.
Furthermore this is standard business practice. Even end customers get little gimmicks everywhere. There's a whole industry selling giveaways to companies.

Gorath said:

Even end customers get little gimmicks everywhere. There's a whole industry selling giveaways to companies.

Click to expand...

You are right in this point, too.

On the board games fair in Essen, which has a comic fair since a few years, too, Panini/Dino comics gave away stuff as well - although I had not much use for the collecting card protective thingies (I have only one collecting card game, and that's Dark Force, the game which was once made for TDE/DSA. The cards are even a bit "bigger" in format than standard collecting card games cards).

Patch 1.02 has been released. Quite a nice feature list.

And as a bonus a texture pack with 4500 (!) high-res textures for all kinds of in-game stuff. Size: 1.7 GB.

http://forum.dtp-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?f=146&t=11411

Now I'm ca. 25 hours in. My impression has stabilized: The German reviews are correct. Drakensang is an 8x% title. Nearly flawless, just not brave enough to aim for the top. The game is very polished. Hundreds of minor things nobody noticed were fixed with the latest patch (typos, text formating, clipping errors, etc.).

I'm playing on an AMD X2 with 2000MHz, 2 GB RAM and a GeForce 9600. The latest patch and the big textures are installed. Resolution: 1024*768, 4x AA 16xAF, everything on max. Fluent, rock stable.
PC Games Hardware wrote the big textures have close to zero negative impact on the performance. Sounds correct.

Only one bug so far: My main char got stuck in his place during a fight. He could still act, just not move. I was ALT-Tabbing and doing other stuff in the background though. It's not impossible that I caused it.

I have one big complaint: The running speed is toooo sloooow. And walking and sneaking are even worse. Thank god the game configuration is stored in standard mySQL files. A copy & paste of an SQL command into an open source editor solved the issue. This simple hack is a must.

Many people also complained about the running speed.

To me, it seemed quite natural, I didn't want to have a fast game.

There are parts where I wished the characters could run faster, but that's nothing I couldn't get myself accustomed to.

Hey guys is a english version out in some country?

Beginning of next year.

Japhgur's got a new home!

I read about this gimmick after I had finished the game. Guess how a visitor to Ferdok can distinguish between dragon hunters and lesser mortals.