I got dragged to Best Buy yesterday, and happened to spot this for $30. Good deal, so I grabbed it.
I’m liking this game a lot so far. The leveling/points system is pretty unusual. In most games, you level up and get points to spend on whatever you choose. In this game, you get points to spend every time you gain exp. The level you’re at determines what the caps are on stats/skills. Very different, but quite nifty. I also like that you have to get someone to teach you most skills before you can put any points into them. The terminology and the way this is all explained is a bit confusing, but I sorted things out fairly quickly.
Is it just me, or does this game feel a lot like the Witcher? You start on the outskirts of a town, and have to perform a number of quests before being granted access, since the town is closed off to outsiders. Once you get into the town, there’s a murder mystery that you have to solve by running around and talking to people. Both games feature more realistic, grittier settings, either could have come straight out of Olde England in the 1500’s. Developers of both games have obviously gone to great pains to make the towns, gear, language, etc, seem authentic. I’m still working on the mystery, so I’ve no idea if the similarities will hold up or not.
I’m not suggesting the game is a Witcher clone or anything, there are a lot of differences in the two games. I’m a bit surprised at how little of the dialogue in Drakensang is spoken, most characters only speak the first sentence or two of their opening lines, the rest is text only. In The Witcher, I think just about every line of dialogue was spoken. Drakensang isn’t as dark as The Witcher - in the Witcher, most conversation options are shades of grey, you choose between being kind of a dick to a major arsehole, there’s few “good” options. In Drakensang things are a little more upbeat. Drakensang also seems to be more linear in terms of story and quests, but has much more customization where your character, skills, etc, are concerned.
Anyhow, I really liked The Witcher (although it wasn’t without a few flaws), and I’m also enjoying Drakensang a lot so far. I haven’t even heard of Dark Eye before this came out so I can’t say how true to the system it is, but this is a fun game. Bonus points for giving an install option for higher resolution textures for people with higher end computers. It seems the game is designed to run on a wide range of systems, which is always nice. I’m also pretty impressed at the English translation, a lot of non English speaking games suffer from pretty bad translation, but I wouldn’t have guessed that Drakensang came from a German company. The voice acting and dialogue are pretty good.