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Drakensang: The Dark Eye
Developer: Radon Labs
Publisher: THQ
Genre: Action RPG
Release Date: 02/24/2009
Developer: Radon Labs
Publisher: THQ
Genre: Action RPG
Release Date: 02/24/2009
When it comes to role-playing games, I tend to favour the Japanese variety. I grew up on Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, so I typically prefer a game that tells an epic, albeit linear story, great characterization, and a text based battle system. I’ve never really deviated from that too much. Even now, my favourite games in my collection currently are Dragon Quest IV and V and Chrono Trigger. Western RPGs, on the other hand, haven’t had quite the grasp on me. It’s not that I don’t think they’re good – I don’t want to turn my inbox into a WRPG vs. JRPG flamewar the likes seen on every message board on Earth – it’s just that they don’t particularly cater to my tastes. This isn’t exclusive to video games; I could never get into tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons, nor could I really get into The Elder Scrolls or Fallout. It’s not that they’re not great games, it’s just that they’re not my proverbial cup of tea.
With that stated, I was a little apprehensive when I received Drakensang: The Dark Eye. In short, I was afraid I couldn’t do the game proper justice. It was described to me by Alex as being “like Neverwinter Nights“, a game I’ve barely played in my life. Furthermore, the game is a derivative of the tabletop game The Dark Eye, which was first released in Germany in 1984. If I’ve learned one thing about RPG fans, it’s that they have a tendency to be fanatical, as the feedback for my review of Mount & Blade proved. In short, I felt like I was walking into a minefield, especially if I didn’t like the game.
While I’m not entirely sure I can do such an involved game with such an involved and decorated history (It’s Germany’s RPG of the Year for 2008) justice, I can definitively say one thing: Drakensang is a good game that deserves attention.
When you load up Drakensang, the first thing you get is a loading screen, with a voice over asking you to visit an old friend. At that point, you’re brought into character creation. There are a lot of choices for characters, with most categories (human fighter, dwarf, magic user, elementalist, etc.) having multiple choices in that area. For instance, you can have a dark magic user, a healing magic user, or a character that “dropped out” of magic school. The choices are varied and give a good amount of flexibility, even when taking the stock character choices. For those that don’t want a stock character, there is an advanced editor, with the emphasis being strongly on “advanced”, as just the tutorial for it made my head spin, with a seemingly limitless array of stats that can be “rolled”. After replacing the keyboard I shorted out from the unconcious drooling I’d done, I decided I was good with a stock character, and proceeded to dive into the game.
Apr 02, 2009 Drakensang: The Dark Eye Review This epic role-playing game has great depth, but is hampered by a number of significant design flaws. By Brett Todd on April 1, 2009 at 6:01PM PDT.
Your new character, upon creation, is thrust into Aventuria, a standard Medieval fantasy world, where your first order of business is to talk to a local guard who tells you… that you won’t be able to get to the town where your friend is, unless you have two people vouch for your good nature. Naturally, to get two people to vouch for you, you have to do something for them. Thus begins the #1 way to get anything done in this game: the fetch quest. Drakensang is LOADED with fetch quests from top to bottom. While the story eventually evolves from the middling beginnings you have and starts to feel like the epic that it truly is, you’re never going to get away from the fetch quests that are necessary to get anything done. Furthermore, most of these quests involve a lot of walking to far away lands, which can be an arduous task for someone low on time or patience; thankfully, you’re given a marker on the map to go on for the vast majority of your quests. Long story short, if you don’t like having to go to points W, X and Y to get objective Z done, you’re not going to like this game – or really, this genre – very much.
Thankfully, the fetch quests – something I’ve never cared for in any game of any genre – are made more tolerable by the fact that the people you have to talk to, while a bit stereotypical, are generally well-written characters. There’s nothing outrageously innovative about what you’re going to see on your day to day travels. I haven’t seen one archtype that hasn’t been done in every style of game you can think of, but the script writing is great, especially considering the fact that this was translated from German. The game was localized beautifully, though some of the voice acting – the bit you hear – is laughably overdone. Furthermore, the game is exceptionally scenic. On the top level, the graphics are great, and I just stared at a brook watching the water flow for awhile, amazed at how great it looked. With that said, my computer could give Big Blue a run for it’s money. A lesser computer could have serious issues with this game. The minimum requirements are a touch above standard at this point (though I couldn’t run it on my 2.2GHz PIII), but the recommended stats are pretty high.
Depending on your class and skillset, there’s a lot you can do here. One of the first skills you learn is plant lore, which allows you to pick plants to use in medicines and recipies. Everytime you try to cultivate something, the game “rolls” as it would in the actual tabletop game. If it fails, the plant dies. This is the case with a lot of actions in this game, and though it’s true to the metrics taken from the actual Dark Eye rulebook, it can be a bit frustrating to have the first seven plants that you try to take die on you because your skills haven’t been developed yet. For even more fun, try picking a lock and not getting absolutely frustrated. With that said, anyone that takes the time and dedication to developing their skills will find some seriously rewarding gameplay. It’s not exactly like you’ll be short of chances to do this, either; the main quest of the game can take up to one hundred hours for completists to get through, and along the way, you usually find a place to work and hone your craft of choice, such as the Dwarves having workbenches to forge weapons on. However, with all this gameplay, and all the quests you can take, there’s only one ending to the game. I’m not asking for another Fable or Fallout, but a couple of deviating paths would be a nice addition, considering the fact that, through four characters, I’ve followed the same path for each character, almost to the letter.
The game’s interface feels like it’s a marriage of Baldur’s Gate (which the game’s website lists as an inspiration) and Diablo, in that you have a list of skills along the bottom of the screen, and some main options in how you like to get around. With that said, you have to do all item management through the character sheet, which can be a bit kludgy, having to stop and start everytime you want to use an item. Some quick-key support would have done well. What really got on my tits about the interface in general is that it doesn’t seem to like to tell you when you can or cannot do something. For instance, in the beginning part of the game, you rescue some wussy little nancy boy from some thugs. He’s a typically flamboyant fencing-type, but he does have the skill to pick locks, a skill which none of the characters I historically play as come with. This was nice, but I spent five minutes trying to pick the lock of the chest, failing, waiting for his hands to stop shaking, and trying again. The character had hairpins, which would have been nice, but I had no clue if I was actually using them or not; it’s not like I could select them and actually use them, so I had to assume that they were necessary in order to pick the lock. After five minutes, the lock was finally picked, though to be fair, I am still unsure how effective the hairpins were. Along with that, there’s an unnecessary delay before your character will do something such as healing a wound, ostensibly to give you a chance to cancel the move. I found this unnecessary, as when I select a move, I am certain of what I want to do. Finally, moving inside tight spaces such as caves is a pain in the rear because it doesn’t seem to be too clear what is land that you can walk on, and what isn’t; the 360-degree camera helps this somewhat, though not enough to mitigate this, as I had some difficulty getting around in the tighter spaces because something – either a character, or some scenery – were usually in the path.
Finally, there’s combat. Fighting enemies in this game is deceptively simple, mainly due to the fact that every character class has the capability to competently defend themselves physically. For melee fighters, combat is more or less a sit-and-wait affair; click on the enemy you want to attack, wait until enemy drops, occasionally stop to possibly heal yourself or run if things get hairy. For magic users, the system is a bit different in that you have to select a spell than select targets as applicable. However, one thing I noticed was an annoying lag between me selecting a spell and the spell actually being put forth; I would select a spell, select the target, my magic user would continue fighting physically for a couple more rounds, and then, if the winds blew right and he just flat-out felt like it, my guy would finally cast the bloody spell. Thankfully, the interface didn’t get in the way enough to make the game unplayable; it just annoyed me more than it should have. As for dying, there’s two ways to die in this game; being “wounded” four times, or running out of HP. Wounds can happen randomly, and have to be bandaged, whereas HP regenerates over time. It adds another element to the game, though bandages are easy enough to come by, either by finding them, getting them from other characters or purchasing them.
It should be noted that there are a LOT of statistics involved within this game; everything from combat to skill usage to magic usage to the way you level up is meticulously managed by a complex stat system – much of which I still don’t understand even after a week with the game – that takes just about everything – from weapon weight to the amount of times a skill’s been used, to your character’s base stats – into account. The skill branching system is tiered, meaning once you use a skill enough, you can get the next strongest skill, and can go from that branch forward in various disciplines; you can also learn certain minor skills from merchants that can teach you at a cost of money and learning points. Thankfully, you don’t need the stats to do well in this game. I, someone who’s grown more averse to micromanaging stats in my RPGs as I’ve gotten older, was able to do just fine under my JRPG-like policy of “bigger numbers are good”. To one-line it, Drakensang’s strong enough for a dungeon master, but PH-balanced for a weeaboo.
One major plus in Drakensang’s favour is that there’s a lot of game here for a very affordable price; the game retails for $30 in both physical and download format. It should be noted that the abominable SecuROM is on this game. However, to my surprise, they actually told the truth in stating that all it does is check for the physical CD in the drive. I can personally – as an IT pro – attest that the game made no SecuROM related registry or file changes to my system. Furthermore, this game is available on Steam with no SecuROM DRM of any kind, though at a 6GB download it’s a bit of a bandwidth killer.
The Scores
Story: Decent
Graphics: Very Good
Sound: Mediocre
Control and Gameplay: Decent
Replayability: Good
Balance: Great
Originality: Bad
Addictiveness: Great
Appeal Factor: Mediocre
Miscellaneous: Great
FINAL SCORE: ENJOYABLE GAME
Story: Decent
Graphics: Very Good
Sound: Mediocre
Control and Gameplay: Decent
Replayability: Good
Balance: Great
Originality: Bad
Addictiveness: Great
Appeal Factor: Mediocre
Miscellaneous: Great
FINAL SCORE: ENJOYABLE GAME
Short Attention Span Summary
Drakensang: The Dark Eye doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Instead, what it does is give fans of all walks of RPG a highly evolved wheel that has something for everyone. It’s simple enough for newbies and people that don’t need stats, but has rulebook-perfect stats and depth for those that want the full pen-and-paper experience. Furthermore, for only $30, there’s almost too much gameplay to be legal. I highly recommend Drakensang to any gamer with enough patience to see through a well crafted, single player role-playing experience.
Note: Skip to the bottom of the page marked 'Conclusion' to get the overall feel of the game.When it comes to Western RPGs, I'm a junkie. Games like Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, and Baldur's Gate are my brand of heroine. Whether it's real-time combat, point-and-click, or turn-based, the appeal of a personally created character running through a rich world of lore and fantasy, stealing everything that's not nailed down, slashing everything that looks at him or her with crossed eyes, and talking back to figures of authority always produces an awesome feeling, and the compulsion to experience different worlds has made me delve deep into the RPG genre. I was honestly surprised when I saw this game on a store shelf because the last time I played a video game based in 'The Dark Eye' universe, it was in 1996. So I thought I was in for a real surprise.Let's start by saying that Drakensang is a serviceable time burner, but by no means is it an above-average RPG.
A weak main story, monotonous and inconsistent combat, and shallow characters definitely cut the game at its kneecaps, not to mention it has an atrociously pathetic ending that makes Fallout 3 look like the conclusion of an epic novella. But let's move on to the actual review.The Good BitsDrakensang has a deep system when it comes to leveling your characters. Upon slaying a monster, completing a quest, or completing a particularly difficult speech skill check, you are awarded experience points.
These points can be allocated to quite a wide variety of stats, from survival instincts to picking locks to I'm not kidding the ability to talk so fast that people don't know what you're saying and therefore agree with you.It does a fairly decent attempt to break away from the standard attributes of Strength, Agility, etc., putting in a few unique ones like Courage and Cleverness. Itemization is fairly straight-forward; melee wears big and heavy armor, casters don't wear armor at all, and the in-betweens have their own class as well.
There's also a fair pick when it comes to weapons, as well.There's a good selection of opening characters to choose from and there are some innovative classes to pick; Dwarven warriors, Elven rangers, Human wizards and alchemists, etc. There's a total of around 15 classes to choose from, all from unique backgrounds with unique appearances. This also carries on over to your companions, which come from all walks of life and allow you to shape and shift your group to vary in a lot of ways.There's also a large amount of entertaining sidequests, as well. My favorite involved having to convince three trolls to leave a city tavern how they got inside in the first place is beyond me.There's a shiny crafting system, as well.
Your character can choose to become an Alchemist, a Bowyer, or a Blacksmith, and recipes for powerful weapons and armor are sold by merchants around the game world. Conveniently, the materials for such items are often sold close by as well.The Bad ChunksFirst, the combat.
The combat in Drakensang is a bit of a chore and tends to jump between two areas; combat lasts for either ten seconds to a minute, or stretches out from two to five minutes long. This is in-part due to a failed attempt at some innovation; melee classes rely on a Mana-like power called 'Endurance'. Endurance allows you to perform special moves to end a fight quickly, or allow you to defend yourself and counter.
The problem with Drakensang is that even at the end-game, you'll only have enough endurance for three moves, four tops if it's a good day and you just won the lottery, and Endurance regenerates at a repulsively slow rate. This makes 80% of the combat you'll see in the game consist of you and an enemy trading auto-attacks until you regenerate enough Endurance to use a special move, which ranges from twenty seconds to a minute. Boss fights which should be exciting instead play out to you staring at your Endurance bar for endless stretches of time, waiting for the moment you can finally smack the enemy with a Mighty Blow.And then there are the combat skills. Melee classes have a pretty varied array of special skills to specialize in; counter-attacks like Whirlwind, rapid attacks like Stormstrike, and heavy hits like Strike of Wrath. They also have some defensive countermeasures to pick from.
Melee special moves total up at around 12 Special Skills, excluding six stances and including three defensive parry skills.BUT, ranged weapon classes have only four skills to use five skills if you specialize in throwing weapons. Talk about a down grade!
That's not even mentioning the fact that most of the ranged weapons you have have an exorbitantly long reload time. I can understand crossbows, but if it takes TWO combat rounds to reload a bow or a throwing knife, then it just sinks.Magic isn't as necessary as you'd think. Most of the spells you end up learning are just useless attribute boosters or armor buffs that don't really impact you in any way. Also, some of the spell graphics are just lazy.
Take for example the first spell you get, Thunderbolt. I don't really know what a thunder bolt looks like, but apparently the developers thought it was just a shiny ball of white light that makes people fall down.You would think that with a big amount of companions to choose from, you could vary it up a little. But eventually you get to that point in the game where you suddenly realize that anything that's not wearing plate armor and wearing a shield has an ungodly chance of dying, because in Drakensang, even rats can boot your ass all the way to Narnia. The game practically forces you to go with three tank characters and one person who can heal.
That also brings up the issue that a lot of the stats, as well, will end up becoming useless, with you just stacking Strength and Constitution for your plate-wearing dwarf ripper.Maybe I just suck and believe me, I'm definitely considering that as a possiblity but after exiting the big city and entering undead-ridden swamps, I literally could not find one combat situation that my non-heavy armor wearing companions could live through unless they were hiding behind at least two of aforementioned heavy armor wearing companions.My second issue was the story. Drakensang's story is just bad.
It's cliche, it's boring, and it explores practically nothing of the Dark Eye universe. It consists of you being the Chosen One and stopping the Big Bad from destroying the world. Hell, you'd learn more lore out of the loading screens than actually playing through the main game. Also, the game just shackles you to its story. Not only to its story, but to its morals as well. If you want to achieve the salvation of the world on a pile of infant corpses with gallons of blood raining around you, you can't.
I started wondering why they even let me choose dialogue if it wouldn't even let me define my own character!Most of the interactions you go through consist of you flipping through text screens like you're playing Final Fantasy, and the only time you'd choose something else is to say 'No' to a quest or ask a merchant to see his goddamn six-foot swords. That being said, I should warn you that there is practically no point to invest points in the speech skills. You use them a grand total of about fifteen times throughout the whole game, but otherwise the game has you tied to the front engine of its train. And it doesn't matter if you don't have them, because NOT having them doesn't affect at all 99% of the time.Also, your companions are downright shallow. Almost none of them have backgrounds stemming with any sort of originality, and you don't even interact with them except to tell them to bugger off.
Oh, sure, sometimes during combat or after boss fights they spout little quips like 'Our task is done' or 'What the hell was that?' But that's it. Every time I had to update their skills or equipment I just got annoyed because it became busywork. There wasn't any really compelling reason for me to do it.
I wasn't personally attached to them-or for that matter, to my own character-because they were so unbuilt and flat.The AI for these characters are awful as well. The game gives you the option to pause and plan out your attacks, but if you're busy trying to save your party and you're pausing on and off, it breaks flow. Not to mention that your characters don't relieve the burden of command at all by using their own skills; they require individual commands. This multi-tasking can get somewhat tedious during pitched combat.ConclusionAll scores are out of 10.Recommendation: If you're a die-hard RPG fan, then you can play this game. I say 'can' because there are better RPGs for you out there.
If you do want to pick it up, I guarantee you'll play through it only once. It's good for burning time waiting for other releases.Graphics: 8.7 Pretty graphics; definitely the game's strongest point. Shading and lip-syncing is fairly accurate. Realistic settings and visuals illustrate a beautiful ambient feel. Imagine a DX10 version of Neverwinter Nights 2.Sound: 8.0 An epic score and cool weapon sound effects.
However, there is a seperate track of music for combat, and if you're jumping quickly between combat situations, then the music tends to be schizophrenic and turns on and off and can get quite annoying. Voice acting is good, to my surprise, but there's not that much of it to go around.Gameplay: 7.0 The story isn't really compelling, but the rewards of magic armor and weapons is usually enough to compel the bored adventurer to keep doing what the voices tell him to. The stiff skill layout and monotonous combat can get on your nerves, but it's serviceable and at least it works.Replay Value: 6.0 Not much. The only reason to play again is to A) Play a mage or B) Finish some missed sidequests.Overall: 7.1 Good for killing time, gameplay isn't broken. The kind of game you play when your PS3 is doing a system update.