Game News Drakensang English demo released

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Drakensang

<a href="http://www.gamershell.com/news_66194.html">You can now download the English demo to that German RPG thing from GamersHell</a>.
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<blockquote>First level included. dtp entertainment AG has released a playable demo of Drakensang: The Dark Eye, allowing you to try out this PC adaptation of Germany's most popular pen & paper RPG. Developed by Radon Labs, Drakensang: The Dark Eye is now available in Germany under the ANACONDA label.</blockquote>
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It's 500 MB. Someone will be along shortly to tell you if it's worth it.
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Thanks <b>Morgoth</b>!

 

[Barghest]

Wait. No signs of hate or RAGE here yet?

 

[DemonKing]

I tried it for 5 minutes last night before bed.

My first avatar got stuck in some bushes and couldn't move anywhere - had to restart.

Second time round I got to a conversation or two. Looks like the translation is less than perfect ala Russian games.

Might play a bit more tonight if I get a chance.

 

[Barghest]

It isn't too bad so far. I would have liked too have full access to the character creation options for the demo.

The camera/movement is a bit annoying . WASD to move, and hold right mouse button to look around.

 

[trais]

I've just finished the demo.
- It's short and have only couple of very simple quests, but I've spotted one skill check in dialoge.
- Combat is NWNish, so it's rather meh, but nothing frustrating either.
- Dialogues are also meh and often tl;dr, voice acting is rather bad, but not terrible.
- Crafting system in not available in the demo, which is disappointing.
- Graphics look colorful and pretty, although the game suffers from 'too much bloom' syndrome.

Overall, it's similar to NWN2 OC.

 

[flabbyjack]

Overall, it's better than NWN2 OC.

Fixed!

 

[Shoelip]

It's similar to NWN2 OC, except actually fun. For instance you can take off the female characters' clothes then make them gut an animal.

 

[Delirious Nomad]

Yes it's very close to NWN2 but the stripped down DSA rules in Drakensang are much less fun and complex than D&D rules backing up NWN2.

 

[vazquez595654]

The demo was still in German even though it said English version. The only english part was the intro dialogue. Everything else, including all the menus were in German.

Has anyone else encountered that problem?

 

[Shagnak]

Nope.

Though I got my English demo from Strategyinformer.

 

[buccaroobonzai]

The demo was still in German even though it said English version. The only english part was the intro dialogue. Everything else, including all the menus were in German.

Has anyone else encountered that problem?

Its most likely due to the site you downloaded it from. Try a NA site.

 

[vazquez595654]

I downloaded it from fileshack and it had English in the demo title.

 

[Black]

Downloading it now, will try it out later.
Sieg hail!

 

[gumbomasta]

Good

I like it so far... very promising. Better dungeon and world design than NWN2... the world is more organic and fluid-looking a la Gothic. The game mechanics provide a deep stat system reminiscent of Wiz 8. I also like how you are constantly able to upgrade your stats. You don't have to wait till you ding the next level. Lots of numbers, skills, colorful icons, good stuff.
The voice acting strikes me as campy, though not amateurish. When is this coming out?
-g

 

[Dabrinko]

More impressions please.

 

[MasPingon]

Re: Good

I like it so far... very promising. Better dungeon and world design than NWN2... the world is more organic and fluid-looking a la Gothic. The game mechanics provide a deep stat system reminiscent of Wiz 8. I also like how you are constantly able to upgrade your stats. You don't have to wait till you ding the next level. Lots of numbers, skills, colorful icons, good stuff.
The voice acting strikes me as campy, though not amateurish. When is this coming out?
-g

All true. First location is really good, lot of quest and skillchecks. Then the game begins and everything dissapears.

 

[Delirious Nomad]

The game mechanics provide a deep stat system reminiscent of Wiz 8

: :shock:

 

[ricolikesrice]

drakensang doesnt offer much in terms of CnC or skillchecks - even slightly less than the NWN2 OC and probably around on par with SoZ, i.e. you can ocassionally help dude A instead of killing him or kill him for dude B but thats about it.

writing and story arent great either, i especially loathe the dialogue where your character always has lines that sound as if you were playing harry potter (well, what i imagine potter sounds like.... i.e. stuff straight out of children fantasy tales )

that being said if you didnt absolutely hate the NWN2 OC but merely found it mediocre or even good, drakensang might be your game. it looks better, plays better, has some quite decent combat & a good ruleset and 100s of small things that add up to make the game good, even though nothing really stands out as great (well..... in comparision to other cRPGs released in the last 5-10 years ..... the combat may actually stand out as great, but thats mostly because everything else is so incredibly shit in that deparment )

some examples:

-unlike most cRPGs there s not hitpoint sillyness, i.e.you end the game with roughly double the HP you started with, not 10times that number. maybe you dont care - i really appreciate the somewhat more realistic DSA ruleset over the 5.000 prestige classes of DnD.
-unlike most cRPGs lower level in high numbers still represent danger. a band of 10 goblins can easily kill a high level character if they swarm him whereas in NWN2 a high lvl character is basically immune even to 1000s of goblins.
with that said, its not only boss fights who are challenging but even standard fights at least require SOME attention (not saying those are hard, but they at least require some strategy compared to the "click attack and watch TV" of 95% of NWN2s fights. )
-magic loot is just about right. you find magic items here and there but they are rare enough that even late in the game mundane stuff is still desirable. here it feels like an accomplishment finally having your fighter covered in fullplate whereas in NWN2 you can buy that from the first barkeeper in some backwater swamp tavern and by lategame you have 10 different Fullplate +3-5 sets.
...its tons of those small things that drakensang does really well compared to the competition.

i enjoyed it as a nice dungeon crawler with some good quests, good variety, overall satisfying and enjoyable combat , nice graphics & art direction etc. etc.

hopefully the addon or drakensang 2 will bring back some elements from the RoA games and/or introduce meaningfull CnC and this will be a great game.
so far its easily around 7/10 though and imho more fun than either SoZ or Mass Effect (which have just as little CnC/story as drakensang )

 

[Shannow]

Pretty much agree with rico, apart from the combat which is the same RT shit that most current RPGs are. While it is slightly more involving than NWN2's it also has a lot less spells and thus less options in combat. As aparty RPG it really suffers from not being TB.

The mainquest story is realy meh and that only if you like cliché fantasy...
But I liked quite a few of the side quests. They fit the setting, try more than fetch x/ kill y, have a little c&c in them and the dialogues were at least ok in German (dunno about the English version).

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

When is it slated for release? And what specs are required for play?

 

[Claw]

XP, 2,4 Gig P4, 1 Gig RAM, GeForce 6600, DX9c. 6 Gig HD space it says on the box, although it takes only 4,5 on my HD. Maybe for temp files? Also, savegames are sizeable.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Sounds passable, and certainly better than most games on the horizon. I will keep my eye on this one.

 

[Gorath]

I played it on an X2 4000+ (2* 2 GHz) with 2 GB RAM and a GeForce 9600GT. Max. details on 1024*768, high-res texture pack (not included in the demo!), 4* AA, 16 AF. The performance was pretty good everywhere.
This is in line with the dev's claim that you need a GeForce 8800 for full details.

The combat can be slowed down to "stop after every (party) round". Still not TB, but at least clearly slower than RT. Of course this influences the balancing a bit. I made it a habit not to spend all my XP because things would have gotten too easy with thoughtful combat.

The combat complexity grows throughout the game because the mages get stronger. They can use a lot of spells to influence strength, ranged weapon precision, etc., get at least one mass damage spell (including friendly fire), can freeze enemies, can cure effects caused by enemy magic, etc. But all this is of course limited by AE (aka Mana), so you have to choose.
Of course it would be an exaggeration to say the combat is near the genre top. It's decent and way above all those action-RPGs. And it works well on top of DSA.
The exact feedback via console is also nice.

It's hard to say what makes Drakensang the good game it is. Maybe it's the absence of stupid mistakes, the rock solid RPG system, the superb stability and lack of bugs, the quite decent visuals and music, and the at times incredible attention to details.

There are also a couple of points which fit into the mix but could be seen as negative:
The world is too big (or the interaction density too low, if you like), the walking speed to slow (can be fixed with a simple MySQL command), the story needs a dozen hours to take off (but then it's okay), most areas get locked when you leave them (compromise -> saves money), only the first line in most dialogs has voice overs (compromise -> saves money), the combat system is the typical genre standard compromise (this time not for money ), and the world simulation is lacking.

My impression is that the developer aimed at 85% with a lot of compromises - and he hit exactly that. Next time aim higher for chrissakes! And rip off Gothic's world sim.

 

[Claw]

Of course it would be an exaggeration to say the combat is near the genre top.

I'd be interested in hearing which game's combat is near the genre top.

Drakensang's RTwP is the closest to TB I have ever seen. In fact, actions always seem to occur sequentially, the only thing that is clearly simultanous - and sucks - is movement.

 

[ricolikesrice]

As aparty RPG it really suffers from not being TB.

agreed but the RTWP in drakensang is pretty much as good (or "least shit" might fit more) as it gets. and like gorath said you also have the autopause thing (didnt try that though)

where i breeze through 95% of NWN2/MOTB/SOZ content without ever doing anything but buffing (if even) and the occasionaly damage spell (if even) drakensang had many interesting boss fights and even the "trash" fights required at least some strategy most of the time.

still a lot of improvements necessary before one could call it great but its the first RTWP cRPG i played where combat felt half-decent overall ( i dont like infinity engine combat much either .... ) with some really great moments (the rat mother being a prime example but there were plenty other fights such as the end of burg gimmzahn or what it was called - me not being able to remember the name of the boss speaking volumes about the forgetability of drakensang s story :p).