Gaming The Dark Eye: Drakensang

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2009/04/01/the-dark-eye-drakensang-pc-review/1

Welcome to Adventuria, a place of high fantasy and plentiful loincloths. Based on the classic German tabletop RPG system, Drakensang is a game of old-school experience harvesting and character development, so we sent Mark in to see what he thought.

 

Seems promising, and might definitely be worth a look, but I feel a little deterred by the slow paced combat. I'm okay with an RPG being slow to play, but not in combat. Combat should be fluid and rapid, though with the option of pausing if there's a lot going on that might need some particular fine tunings. Good review as always.

 

Combat isn't really "slow", but you'll find yourself fighting hordes of identical enemies most of the time.

 

KOTOR with spells anyone?

 

hmmm sounds like I might really like this! thanks for the review!

 

Ah so you liked the Battle Mage also lol, reminded me a lot of the Necromancer from Diablo 2.

I played the demo and quite liked it, for me it really is the perfect RPG layout. I like the whole 3rd person view with out having to aim, you just click the target, I think it makes the combat much smoother. That's the one thing I didn't like about Oblivion, when in 3rd person mode you had no cursor, you had to guess.

 

A revamped NWN2 with upgraded graphics?

 

Not quite - the underlying game system is very different (The Dark Eye rather than Dungeons and Dragons) and one downside is that the game manual doesn't provide anything like enough detail about how these rules work (how does one build up spare Talent or Spell Points for example?).

Graphically it is quite beautiful and performs far better than NWN2 (it can be demanding on video memory though). You can see some compromises in the simpler lighting model (move close to any object with a light source and it will suddenly start glowing and if you use the right-mouse button to change your viewpoint, all the leaves turn with it, as if the trees are looking at you!). The music suits the game well also (I'd give NWN's top-notch tracks the edge though) and the gameworld does have a good feeling of depth and history.

The biggest downside in my view is the often limited choice in conversations. Too often, you are presented with only one "heroic" response when dealing with NPCs compared to NWN's "good/evil/jerk" dialogue options. You also have no reaction to character behaviour - aside from being able to wander around towns breaking into barrels and crates without anyone reacting (just like the original campaign in NWN1), I found it wonderfully ironic that your character is, at one point, able to reform a pair of tomb robbers, setting them on the straight and narrow, before going on and sacking several tombs himself.

It is however largely bug-free (something that can't be said about NWN2, even after a couple of years of updates), seems well-balanced and provides some fresh blood into a genre that greatly needs it. I think that the very modest score awarded doesn't recognise these qualities.

 

This game is awsome!
It is pretty hardcore though so you need to put alot of time in.

8/10 from me for being a excellent RPG adventure.