Drakensang - first impressions

Graphics are fine IMO - Choices and Consequences is what I miss - The Witcher and MotB are much better in this Department.

Also the joinables are rather boring - for this zombies they skipped Party-Creation ? Bioware and Obsidian are in another league in this area. And those damned Barrels…

It's really not a bad game, but some design-decisions are just stupid.

OTOH the battles are fun and the atmosphere is great - if there weren't those stupid barrels…

Installed the demo, runs fine on a P4/3GHz/8500nvidia on 1280x1024 afaics. No complex fighting scenes so far though.- Unfortunately it doesn't offer my preferred resolution of 1152x864 . I'd say the graphics aren't state of the art but who cares, it's still veeery beautiful, if you love medieval settings. Great overall atmosphere. OK, you can try to trick a guard 5 times with no consequences, but über realistic KI is not too important for me. Thanks for your good review, HiddenX.

The official forum gets more or less infiltrated by WOW-players.

Some use typical WOW terms as if Drakensang was a WOW-like game ("tank", "aggro", "buff").

IPersonally, I hate this, because

a) DRASA is no WOW

b) these terms do not apply to TDE.

Okay, people use them, but in the official forum I ind them *extremely* out of place. Which has to do with the fact that TDE has in parts *its own* language.
Plus, the German language has enough own words so these terms should be unneccessary, imho (I'm quite touchy regarding language things).

To me, this is a clear sign of the dominance of Blizzard over ALL RPG markets. It's already so much fixed in the heads of the players that they use their specific terms even where they are completely out of place.

Someone even complaied that there are "far too few items" to ind, ith too few variance.

Well - that's just TDE ! It's not suppoosed to contain a high variety of collectable items ! It is rather oriented towards being realistic !

Anaconda did a lot to appeal to the WoW-Crowd - no Collision-Checks, fast regenerating Mana und Health, *Treasure in Barrels*, Idiot-proof Automap with colored Question-Marks… the WoW-Players are the spirits they called

Even the Side-Quests are ripped form MMORPGs: Gather 10 One-Berrys, bring me the Pelt of the Alpha-Wolf, bring me the head of the Problem-Bear…

Drakensang is a single player game. Why do you care if WoW players become interested in it? You should be happy about everyone who buys it.

What disturbs me most in the official Drakensang forum is the whining of all those hardcore DSA players. They are never happy. They can´t stop complaining about completely irrelevant details. Even about things which were clear years ago. Drakensang is exactly what has been said for years. Everybody who expected a 100% correct DSA implementation simply had wrong expectations. A transformation to another medium always means something is left behind.
What does a new visitor to the forum see? Negative emotions everywhere. These #*!%$s don´t understand that they scare a lot of potential customers away and hurt their chances to get an even better Drakensang 2. I´d much rather they STFU and leave for a hardcore DSA forum.

Then why did they create a TDE-Game ? Just to get a (at least in Germany) famous Name ? If you don't want to create a TDE-Game, don't write TDE on the Box

DSA is no famous brand. Die Maus is famous. 50% of the population have no idea what DSA is.

It´s DSA if the license holders say it´s DSA. The fans can only decide whether or not it´s enough DSA for them. A 100% "correct" implementation was never on the table because it was necessary to adapt it to the new medium. That´s not rocket science, it´s normal business. When Batman, Star Wars, Mickey Mouse, LotR or THHGTTG goes to a new medium it gets re-focused and adapted to the things expected on the new medium.

I guess DSA is still the greatest PnP-Game in Germany, isn't it ? I haven't played DSA PnP for maybe 15 years, but I seriously doubt that blue and green Questionmarks are Plot-Devices nowadays, and if my players back in the days would have started to hack at the *barrels* on the marketplace of a greater City, they would have ended in the care of that priestly order wich cares for the Madmen

Minor details. You can switch off the map and draw your own.

There's is no quest related item in barrels - just ignore them.

Originally Posted by HiddenX
There's is no quest related item in barrels - just ignore them.

With only one exception.

@Alrik: As someone concerned with language you use a lot of abbreviations…
@Gorath: What the heck is THHGTTG???
@Fenris:

Even the Side-Quests are ripped form MMORPGs: Gather 10 One-Berrys, bring me the Pelt of the Alpha-Wolf, bring me the head of the Problem-Bear…

Never found Quests like that. So I don't see your point.

The Hitchhiker´s Guide to the Galaxy.

As you all might know me a bit (or two ), I'm preferring combat as the abolute minimum, if possible.

Meanwhile the NLT had quite a good part of non-combat role-playing, DRASA has it not.

As least as far as I went.

Actually, I'm becoming more and more angry, because I had expected a gameplay in the style of the NLT, which means, with lots of athmospheric role-playing, but with relatively few combat.

Okay, I must admit that the NLT had quite its share on combat, - but it never felt so much ! At least to me.

DRASA, however, is different. The game feels more and more like a simple hack & slay game to me, with combat as its highest priority.

Okay, I might be exaggerating, but I do so because I'm becoming angry because the game didn't deliver what I had expected.

It just fuels more the wish in my to return to Adventures.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Actually, I'm becoming more and more angry, because I had expected a gameplay in the style of the NLT, which means, with lots of athmospheric role-playing, but with relatively few combat.
[…]
Okay, I might be exaggerating, but I do so because I'm becoming angry because the game didn't deliver what I had expected.

But why did you expect it? Baldur's Gate had quite a lot of combat.

It just fuels more the wish in my to return to Adventures.

Good idea. Play Edna Escapes on Linux.

Originally Posted by Fenris
Idiot-proof Automap with colored Question-Marks…

Yep,that's about the most disappointing thing I've heard so far… together with the
oversimplified quests and total lack of choices that is…

And also it seems that switching the Map off doesn't do the trick, since the quest
givers dont give you enough directions to find the location yourself… (or did I get
that wrong ?)

together with the
oversimplified quests

as in every crpg there are some simple quests like
a) fetch item a
b) kill monster b
c) speak with person c

but in Drakensang you get quests that are much more complex, too. For some of the best weapons you need
a) a recipee
b) some components (maybe made by yourself, too)
c) many additional ingredients, some of them can be unique and need a special sub-quest

The bigger quests require often many sub-quests, to be solved.

total lack of choices

There are a lot of choices to make, there could be some more long term-consequeces.
You can join opposing groups: merchant group 1 or merchant group 2, bandit group 1 or bandit group 2, the witches or the follower of Praios.
You can solve quests in different ways: Killing, persuading, bribing, threatening …, of cause you need the corresponding skills in your current party.

And also it seems that switching the Map off doesn't do the trick, since the quest
givers dont give you enough directions to find the location yourself… (or did I get
that wrong

How much detail (plants, traders, NPCs…) you see on the map is depending on party skills, too. If you are a hardcore player you can live without the small map.

I am using the map for the approximate directions and then explore every bit of the area for myself.

I'm not very far into the Game and haven't played a few Days, IIRC they give some vague directions, so it could work this way. The Maps aren't that huge and since you can't go back if you advance the story it makes sense to explore them complete anyway.

At Rohal:

The Examples I have given are all from the first Region "Avestreu"; you get them if you talk (long enough in some cases) to the Merchant with the Backpack and the Hunter at his Lodge in the Darkwood.

It's not really a bad Game, but sometimes it plays like a "Fairy-Tale-Diablo with a Party of four" - well, except that it has no Collision-Checks. Good that I even like Diablo somewhat, and the Party evens the incorperal Enemies out

Basically it has a great Atmosphere, but sometimes it borders to LARPing to enjoy it. Once again a game that could have been great but seems to be mediocre atm. Maybe it gets better (I'm at the first Part of Ferdock atm) or the good Sale-Numbers and the constant whining of the TDE-Fans will lead to a great Expansion-Pack (hey, it worked with Neverwinter Nights this Way and if I compare DraSa with NWN 1 OC its already much better).

Another thing, I'm really not a big fan of abbreviations as you may have noticed… I can live with imho and so on, but since DRASA is catching on, I'd like to ask: Is it really necessary to shorten a word of 10 letters to an abbreviation of 5? Aren't we all fast typers enough for 5 more keystrokes? I'm sorry. I don't want to start a big discussion. But it is sometimes hard to guess what is meant. I understand when someone doesn't want to write The Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy, but THHGTTG is really hard to guess. And sometimes jfgi does not work… It also took me a while to guess NLT.

Originally Posted by HiddenX
as in every crpg there are some simple quests like
a) fetch item a
b) kill monster b
c) speak with person c

but in Drakensang you get quests that are much more complex, too. For some of the best weapons you need
a) a recipee
b) some components (maybe made by yourself, too)
c) many additional ingredients, some of them can be unique and need a special sub-quest

The bigger quests require often many sub-quests, to be solved.


There are a lot of choices to make, there could be some more long term-consequeces.
You can join opposing groups: merchant group 1 or merchant group 2, bandit group 1 or bandit group 2, the witches or the follower of Praios.
You can solve quests in different ways: Killing, persuading, bribing, threatening …, of cause you need the corresponding skills in your current party.



How much detail (plants, traders, NPCs…) you see on the map is depending on party skills, too. If you are a hardcore player you can live without the small map.

I am using the map for the approximate directions and then explore every bit of the area for myself.

Those are some very welcome details HiddenX, thanks.

It just seems that I hear a lot of criticism on the points I raised but perhaps
people are just not far enough into the game ?

Anyway I am most certainly going to see for myself in a few months when the
English version is out. This seems a very solid RPG criticism or not.

Also judging from the demo the atmosphere and art direction is very well done
(certainly to my taste, and I always value good art direction over cutting edge
gfx)