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 Bits
Drakensang 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 Chunks
First, 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.
Conclusion
All 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.
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 Bits
Drakensang 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 Chunks
First, 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.
Conclusion
All 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.