The Dark Eye: Drakensang PC Review
Greetings, player.
I am writing to inform you of a matter of great urgency, and you are the only one who can help. I need you to pay full price for a game. Not just any game – a done-to-death, clichéd and downright boring format of orcs, goblins, elves and dwarves. The road will be long and treacherous, and more than likely full of one-dimensional forgettable characters, and the type of gameplay that makes you remember why you haven’t bought a game for your PC in over a year. I wish you the best of luck on your travels, and for god’s sake, don’t forget to save around every corner.
Your old friend, Dead Bastard.
The game opens with a letter, from an old acquaintance, who is in trouble. If only you had the skills and potential to go out into the world, follow this call for help to its conclusion, and find hijinks and adventure along the way. Oh good, it’s a computer game; Let’s Do A Fun!!!
Forgive my callous, mocking tone, but Drakensang is mediocre rubbish, and deserves to be addressed as such. For instance, let’s start with the thing that I and many other players value from an RPG – your character. This is the instrument with which you enter the world, your link into this new and interesting environment, your only way to interact, the main pulling factor behind your desire to gain knowledge, learn spells, better your skills, and generally want to play the game. And we are left with preset character classes, with very little to change in the way of appearance, or starting skills, in fact there is no way to change either of those fields. This in itself is not a crime, many RPGs have implemented similar systems, and have not only told an interesting story, but have become classics in the eyes of many. But when choosing a character to use, I like a hint to how they’re going to play beforehand, be it via a brief tutorial showing me how spells work, or the melee system reacts, or if ranged attacks are at all useful. Drakensang requires that you guess at which character class you will prefer to play as, doesn’t teach you how to make good use of their unique abilities, and then makes you run around a town for 20 minutes until you even realise your sword isn’t equipped for an important fight.
I’m as forgiving as it gets with this type of game; I die through my own careless nature, by running into an area I wasn’t supposed to yet, and I say to myself “It’s okay, that’s realistic, it’s not the developers’ fault for letting me run there unprepared. Just like in real life, there are consequences for stupid actions. The game is just teaching me slowly, it’s okay.” And I carry on as best I can, learning what the game feels I need to learn, when it deems I need to learn it. Some games take a turn, where you start making the right decisions unknowingly, or you become more adept at reading combat situations, and you end up learning more the hard way, becoming a better player. Drakensang only taught me one thing, though; that I should never underestimate the multitude of horrific ways there are for a thief to die.
I even switched around the classes, trying to find a character I could relate to, or at least could survive a fight with (keeping in mind each of these character tests required me to repeat the first 20 minutes of game, word for word, move for move. Just so I could see how their abilities fared in combat). I eventually settled on an elf that can summon animals to help him fight. What I am admitting there is that summoning a rat to fight for me was my best plan for survival. I am sure you are as excited by that news as I was.
You see, the game runs on a Dungeon & Dragons-esque dice-roll combat system, or at least its German counterpart, where apparently low rolls are better than high rolls, which has no significance to anything other than it is happening behind the scenes with every strike, and that it decides whether you win or lose. I wish I could say that this system worked well, or that I can understand how it made it to video game format, or that I am totally glad of its arrival. But with situations where a creature randomly goes on a critical streak for no reason, and wipes out your entire team, or your characters suddenly have a complete inability to hit, when in all previous fights against the same creatures they have won effortlessly, resulting in another total wipe. I can’t help but think that the combat system would have been best left in the realm of pen and paper, where an overseeing game master can have the final say on whether the game was fun enough to end yet.
That being said, if the game consisted of nothing but combat, with some freak accidents or bad decisions leading to my death, I could plough through with ease. As is the way with RPGs, the promise of stronger attacks, or better abilities can be enough incentive to make you push through any mound of entertainment sludge. But what we have to offset the main course of unpredictably enjoyable action, is a side dish of long contact quests running from person to person, ending in you finding a piece of information that is neither interesting, nor relevant, which sends you on another string of boring contact quests.
I understand that the developers have created a detailed world, bustling towns, decrepit bars and mystical locations, but does anyone really have the time to be spending 80+ hours playing a game where most of the time is spent running between locations, only to have to sit through loading screens that take slightly too long, especially after an unprecedented defeat? The simple answer is yes – me, when I was 14. There would have been a point in my life where 80+ hours of gameplay would have been a major incentive for me to buy it, and I think I should take it as a positive development that I am unwilling, at my age, to use a game as anything other than a form of decent, focused entertainment; not to use it as an excuse for a large chunk of my life to disappear on something mediocre… like Heather Mills did on Paul McCartney (her leg fell off).
Overall the game looks impressive; detailed character models, impressive green vistas, well done animations (although a bit long for some skills/spells), and generally compelling to watch humanoid to humanoid fighting. The game comes into its own with character skills; in some ways it makes sense that initial customisation of your character is absent, as you can essentially change any character to be any other class on the fly if you put in enough time, money and training points, although obviously the beginning stats will limit your potential maximum effectiveness. This may be an issue with fellow number crunchers like myself, but to the average Joe there is almost a game within a game for the amount of combat, passive and situation-specific skill choices for your character to take (although while controlling a party of 4, it is obviously better to diversify).
I won’t say that this game is a no-go area, because I suspect people of a Neverwinter Nights temperament will adore it, and there’s certainly enough here to keep you entertained or masochistically frustrated until the ice-caps melt, in fact I suspect I will see you floating on a life raft with a mobile power generator and your laptop screaming at the top of your lungs “Just a few more minutes, this dwarf wants me to fetch him some ale, BEST GAME EVER!!”.
However I will say that I have spent enough time on this game to encompass my two playthroughs of Mass Effect, or both of the Knights of the Old Republic titles. And I can honestly say that, in comparison, I didn’t enjoy one minute of it. Good-day.
21 comments ↓
ugh
May 27th, 2009
Your wall of text can be summed up too:
“I don’t like this game, so I’m going to find all the things wrong with it and make them seem terrible.”
Steve
May 27th, 2009
God dam these reviewers! reviewing things
Joe
May 29th, 2009
After reading a few reviews of the game this guy sounds like hes a bitter PC gamer gone console. ADDH maybe strong in his blood…
Apopas
June 3rd, 2009
Seriously… do you have ever played RPGs before? If no then stop review RPGs. If yes then you wasted your time with things that are not for you… Just buy a copy of Counter Strike and play, you are not for RPGs!
Rob
June 4th, 2009
Well… Maybe he’s just telling the truth, that happens with reviews sometimes.
Apopas
June 4th, 2009
No when you don’t have idea what you are talking about…
Myrddin
June 7th, 2009
So he didn’t like it. Who cares. I thought it was fun, well worth 29 bucks and made the delay of Dragon Age Origins a little easier. He was comparing this to KOTOR and ME, which may both be RPGs but are vastly different. It would be like comparing Final Fantasy to the Elder Scrolls. A 74 on metacritic for a german RPG is pretty damned good. And every other review out there is above in score from this one.
Shame on you
June 20th, 2009
You should be ashamed
Horrible review
June 25th, 2009
Just a horrible review. This should be reviewed by someone who has at least played Baldur’s Gate, to even have a clue as to how the combat system works. Also, you seem to highlight your incompetence with playing this sort of game rather than the game’s faults. To anyone here reading these comments after having read this review, please go to a game review aggregator and find some competent reviews on this game. This reviewer was beyond awful. Note: I am not a fanboy and don’t even own the game. But am reading reviews to get a feel for it, and this review was sincerely pathetic.
Seth
June 25th, 2009
Oh wait.. So you’re disagreeing with a review for a game that you haven’t even played?
That’s… horrible
Labico
July 3rd, 2009
Horrible Review
You not have played this title but only look the photo or trailer.
Learn to play, lear to write review.
Rise
July 11th, 2009
What a horrible review. Why put a reviewer who doesn’t even like RPGs to review a RPG? Now I’m not referring to streamlined, easy to get into, so called “RPG”-games like Mass Effect (which I loved btw) but more like D&D-games that requires you to THINK before you rush into your death.
Games like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale are also hard to get in to, in those you die all the time as well. And although BG II is fairly difficult from the beginning to the end it still is one of the best games ever made and one of the most loved…
Kostaz
August 2nd, 2009
Dear reviewer ,
Please don’t ever again play or review any non console RPG.
Sincerely
Everyone
Alrik Fassbauer
August 3rd, 2009
Review of someone who doesn’t understand the underlying rule system, and probably hasn’t even bothered to try to understand the TDE rule system (I thought it shipped with the game as a PDF file ?).
Most information would have been available through right-clicking on objects – even on character stats. I thought this would have been stated in the handbook, too.
Some remarks leave in me the impression that the reviwer tried to play this game without the use of any kind of healing talents at all. Not to mention protection abilities, armor and such stuff.
On the other hand, a review of an (A)D&D RPG played by someone unfamiliar with the (A)D&D rule system could look similar.
Alrik
Elevoros
August 11th, 2009
My only complain about Drakensang is that the characters move fairly slowly around the map…but other than that it is a pretty good game. Note that this is a game for people who have played this type of RPG’s before…I think that I prefer the old D&D ruleset over the DSA though…
PS : That review was a biased piece of shit.
Hayate
September 26th, 2009
As it happens, he’s right. The game is very dull to start with, and very unfriendly to new players, and obviously not the best RPG in the world. In the other hand, it doesn’t have to be. Drakensang is ok, but the miss streaks that can happen… kinda often, is very annoying (I began playing it after a very late night, sleep deprived, and kinda went angry German kid a couple of times, no pun intended. Anyway, don’t be pissed because he’s etlling the truth in this review, sure he only seem to point out the crappy side of the game, and maybe he didn’t give it a real chance, but from a professional view Drakensang is not a great game.
Hayate
September 26th, 2009
Oh dear… a couple of spelling errors… (still the same late night).
” Anyway, don’t be pissed because he’s telling the truth in this review”
There, I’m gonna go crawl under a rock again…
mike butterfield
November 14th, 2009
I got this game for five dollars at deal on D2D. What a bargain. I would be willing to pay 29.99. I am 23 hours into main quest and only about a 1/3 through the main story line. THis is a learning curve but only at the beginning. I love the fact that I can change up my party of four and go with three tanks one healer, or mix it up and have tank, dps, buffer and healer. You have great ability to change the base stats of your characters as you progress them. The story line had drawn me in. I am a fan of oblivion, Fallout, old SNES RPG. Never played baulders gate. If you want a fun and story driven RPG give it a try. In regards of the reviewer of course this is a cliche fantasy based game and I don’t see a problem with that. Is it no differend than playing a new COD game every year?
Mike
Raikon
December 16th, 2009
NICE REVIEW !!! This game is 2 hard, i played whit all the classes ( for the first 20 minutes
) and they all suck. I managed 2 pass the first city and after, when i go in the swamp it’s really really really hard, u get wiped every 10 minutes …
Now you have 2 ask your self if the guys that made this game intended on you to finish the fucking game or not …
Now i installed the game again and and will try 2 finish the god dam thing, BUT plz if u have any advice on what class and skills i should use plz tell me
P.s. Before any of you start saying i don’t know how to play RPGs like that asshole Apopas did whit the review guy, plz note i played allot of grate RPGs like : Dragon Age: Origins, Fallout 3, The Witcher, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion ( and III ), Risen, Mass Effect, Neverwinter Nights 2 ( and 1 ), Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic ( and 2 ), Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, TorchLight, Fable and much much more and this are just on the PC.
Apopas
December 16th, 2009
Thanks a lot for the compliment Raikon…
Obviously it’s me the asshole here.
Kantos
January 13th, 2010
Truly the most off base and unfair review of a quality game I have ever seen. I have played RPGs since well before Baldur’s Gate and Drakensang was very entertaining all the way to the end. Ignore this guy. His opinion truly blows.