Overview
I was skeptical at
first:"Drakensang The Dark Eye? A pen and paper game by a German
developer?" Fortunately all my suspicions were unfounded. Drakensang
turned out to be a very good pen and paper RPG, even though the story and
characters aren't all they could have been, arguably its the best work Radon
Labs has done, a now, unfortunately defunct developer. It will take you about
50 hours to complete this huge RPG game, so you can be sure that Drakensang is
worth the price tag, which should now be as cheap as dirt. The game has some
truly beautiful graphics and environments, and to be honest i was surprised.
The music is well done, especially in the dwarven mountain city of Murlosh, and
on the loading screens, but where its all at is the gameplay, the shining
beacon of Drakensang, so despite all the flaws this game may have, it still manages to be a very good RPG game. Chances are, if you enjoy video games with a pen and
paper character system and ruleset you'll enjoy Drakensang.
Pros Cons list
Pros
A rather long game taking up to 30-35
hours to complete.
Complex character system.
Great gameplay.
Good music.
Many classes, or rather archetypes to choose from.
Several races and cultures for archetype characters.
Several interesting locations including a zombie infested swamp and a mountain
city of the dwarves.
Cons
Undeveloped characters and at times weak and unconnected story.
Bad voice acting.
Lacking in lore.
Plot & Characters
The plot of Drakensang isn't up to
the excellent gameplay, and unfortunately, neither are the characters. For the
first quarter of the game I've enjoyed the story, but due to underdeveloped
characters the story started to suffer and became less and less original to
finally become a typical, average "the world is in danger, a champion must
save it" RPG template for plots.This sort of plot works really well with
RPGs, a hero who will do great deeds, from saving the world from a blight, to giving
free and clean water to a desolate wasteland, but it still has to be done well
there still has to be a reason behind actions and a reason behind goals, and
Drakensng doesn't do it well, its not bad, its okay, but it could have been
great, and the unimaginative, sometimes unexplained story and underdeveloped
characters bring down Drakensang from being a truly great RPG game.
The main character is invited by a letter from his old friend and mentor Ardo
of Boarstock to help him in events he didn't explain in the letter. Once the
player reaches Ardo's house he finds him murdered, he must then stop the
murderers, who are dragon cultists that worship the old dragon gods. After
stopping them the character is proclaimed to be the champion of the Dragon
Quest by the Oracle, as for why it was never explained. The character then must
go through 3 trials to prove that he is worthy of the title of Champion by
claiming 3 artifacts.. After the three trials the character must finally stop
the evil that is threatening the world by going to the dwarven lands.
This was just a brief overview, but during the game i found myself
wondering:"Yeah but why is he doing that, is there any motivation behind
his actions other than him being an evil noble?" a lot of the times no.
Even later when you do find the reason behind characters actions its too little
too late. As for the Dragon Quest you've no idea why you were chosen
champion or why you have to get the artifacts, its only later revealed that you
need them in order for them to show the way to a great evil the character must
vanquish.
Now the companions, there are some really interesting companions in this game,
Forgrimm a lovable dwarf that blames himself for Ardo's death, Jost a
battlemage coming from a land that lives by similar rules as the Qunari in
Dragon age, where peoples purpose and future is predetermined, Dranor a rogue
coming from a small village trying to pass himself off as a nobleman, these are
just to name a few. The companions you gain early on, Rhulana,Dranor,Gladys and
Forgrimm are well devloped, they have an interesting backstory and have several
dialogue options,but the companions you recruit after only have one dialogue,
you can only ask them one question and other than that you can exit the
dialogue screen or tell them to wait at your house in Ferdok and the dialogue
never gets updated depending on the situation or location the party is at. It
just seems like the developer got lazy.
In conclusion the story isn't Drakensangs strong suit, and it seems its there
only so the player can have some purpose behind defeating hordes of enemies
rather than engrossing the player in the world of Darkensang. The same goes for
the characters, this is the bad guy, he worships Dragons, slit his throat,
though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the story and some of the
characters are like holes in Drakensang, holes that should have been filled.
Despite this, Drakensang still manages to be a very good, fun and enjoyable
game.
The World of Drakensang and Atmosphere
Its not as dark as say The Witcher
or Dragon Age Origins, its more of a happy world where you know at the
beginning that good will triumph over evil. There are however segments of the
game that hit you out of nowhere, for example the death of Archmage Rokarium's
apprentice Rufus in Moorebridge where the player will be forced to kill the
young apprentice he met in Avestrue due to the simple reason of him turning
into a zombie. Still it has a rather "the sun always shines"
atmosphere, which is now that i think about it, true, the sun does always shine in Drakensang. The world of Drakensang
is filled with lore, but lore that feels incomplete, you keep on hearing about
the 12 gods but you only hear about 6 of them, Hesinde goddess of art,science and
travlers, Rondra goddess of war and anger, Praios the major god and Boron god
of death, Phex god of thieves and Peraine goddess of agriculture.
Then you hear of a popular game in the Drakensang universe imman, but you never
see it being played or hear of its rules.
Most of the lore you'll have to read during the loading screens instead of the
typical codex entries of the Stalker,Dragon Age,Mass Effect or Witcher
universes, which is unfortunate, because I'm the type of player who enjoys the
lore of the world, and i realize that the developer
can't put in all of the lore in the game which is why the codex concept exists.
More could have been done on the lore part of Drakensang, you hear and read
about thorvalian pirates, about people like your companion Nasreddin that live
in the desert, all of these things and many others are mentioned, but are just
as quickly forgotten once you stop talking with NPCs. If you want to read up on
monsters,lore and factions, you're out of luck
Gameplay
If you've played D&D games
you'll probably be familiar with Drakensang's ruleset. A series of die rolls is
used to determine whether or not the action a character is preforming is
successful or not, from hitting an opponent, to healing a wound, curing poison
or identifying magical items to the damage inflicted on an enemy die rolls are
used to determine everything.
You start the game at the creation screen where you choose one from 20
archetypes, each archetype has different skills learned at the beginning,
though all archetypes can learn any number of skills during the game. Each
archetype also has different bonuses, from bonuses to vitality (hitpoints) to
combat skill bonuses to astral energy (mana) bonuses and many others, also each
archetype has a different culture and race. The greatest difference perhaps is
those that have astral energy, and those that don't, as combat skills are
powered by endurance, where as magic is powered by astral energy, mages can use
both, but warriors and rogues can only use endurance. Unfortunately however,
the only customization options at character creation is the expert mode, which
will allow you to invest experience points as you see fit, however you won't be
able to alter your characters appearance though you can change the characters
gender. Some archetypes are more suited for an archer, where as some for
a warrior and others for a mage. There are archetypes that can, for example focus on being both a mage and an
archer, the elven ranger is perfect for an arrow firing spell using character.
The world of Drakensang is huge. you have 8 locations, of which each has its
districts and environments you can enter such as caves, houses so on and so
forth. As mentioned it will take you around 50 hours to complete the game, if
you do the secondary quests as well.
There are many skills in the game, in all there are 36 skills in all, allowing
for a different feel each time you play Drakensang. In order to upgrade skills
you've learned you need experience points, where as adventure points are used
for leveling up, so for example you need 7000 adventure points to reach level 10,
you do however gain adventure points at the same time as you gain experience
points, if you kill an enemy worth 5 experience points, you also gain adventure
points. Skills in the game focus from collecting ingredients, to making
weapons, armor, potions etc. from the collected ingredients to talking with and
persuading people to disarming traps and picking locks, there are many others.
Then there are weapon skills, as you increase one of your weapon skills
(daggers, swords, two handed axes and maces just to name a few) you're parry
and attack value when using that weapon increases as well. Attack of course
determines whether or not you hit an opponent, and parry whether or not you
block the attack, dodge is used to determine if you completely avoid an enemies
attack.
You also have combat and magic talents, as mentioned astral energy and
endurance are used to utilize these talents, you can only learn them from
trainers, which is the biggest flaw in gameplay, instead of choosing abilities
at each level up, you have to look around for trainers, and there aren't many
of them, especially for combat talents, the first trainer that can teach you
every combat talent is in Murlosh (chapter 8), which is quite a far way away
from the beginning of the game.
Some time must pass before a talent can be used, a warrior can use mighty blow
in one combat turn, but a mage must wait up to 4 turns to use some of the more
powerful spells, curing wounds an poisons takes 5 turns.
Indeed, the gameplay element of Drakensang is its strongest element, you will
advance your character and party, buy and find incredibly powerful items, and
destroy your enemies with a hail of arrows, a mighty two handed sword, or a
powerful spell. Each time you play through it, you can choose a new path, do
you want your warrior to be a seducing nobleman, that is learned in etiquette
and seduction, you can do that. Or do you want to play a mage that has
knowledge of animal and plant lore all the while being able to pick locks? You
can do that too. Its unfortunate that the characters and story aren't quite as
good as the gameplay and graphics, as it would have been a truly great
game.
Graphics
The graphics are rather good, its no
Mass Effect 2 or Skyrim or Witcher 2, but it is beautifully designed and the
landscapes can often be captivating. From that river surrounded by trees, to
going before the Oracle and being chosen a champion beneath rays of sunlight.
To a Dragon scorched land where you can still see embers glowing, it really
does have some beautiful environments.
Other than that the textures aren't bad, and the character models are straight
out of Neverwinter Nights 2, not surprising considering Drakensang was built
using Bioware's Aurora engine (same one used in Neverwinter). The characters do
look rather epic when you equip them in full plate mail armor and give them a
huge two handed sword to wield. Again, the graphics won't make you drop your
jaw in awe, but for a small German developer, you will be surprised.
Audio
Drakensang features a rather good
soundtrack, you almost wish loading time is longer so you could listen to the
loading screen music, it ranges from scary in Moorebridge marshes to rather
epic in Murlosh, so like i said, its rather good, i wish however the same could
be said about the voice acting. In the English version the voice acting ranges
from God awful where you'll wonder how the hell can someone even be so bad at
voice acting to rather good, it all depends on who's doing the talking, i
actually laughed when archivist Loisane was kidnapped. As for the sound effects
they are there to do what they do, be sounds, there is however a time when you
order your character to destroy barrels so you can loot the contents, thats
when you wish that you're playing with your speakers off.
Conclusion
A
diamond in the rough, Drakensang has many flaws and holes, and yet it
still manages to be good. If you're looking for a game with great
story,memorable well developed and interesting characters, a great universe filled with lore and information then
you're better of looking elsewhere, if however you're interested in a RPG game that
is rather long and costs little, an RPG game with excellent gameplay, good
graphics and a good soundtrack, you needn't look any further, Drakensang is
here.