Coming from Germany as a value priced title Drakensang snuck into the US market with little fanfare. With few exceptions European CRPG’s are just not my cup of tea, more often than not they present little in the way of character variety beyond a limited number of templates and plot-wise there is a feeling of being railroaded.
Drakensang mostly mitigates my first issue and wraps just enough choice and variety into a very linear plot. There is an overarching story that is played through the game, but there are enough side quests that Drakensang can quickly become immersive. Overall as a player you are railroaded through the game on a nominally good path, though there are certainly choices to be made even if they do not greatly impact the game.
For example a tribe of goblins in a tight spot grabbed farm hands and are using them as leverage to get pigs from the a local farmer. You need this labor to accomplish a task for a side quest. Do you negotiate with the farmer for some pigs or do you kill the goblin tribe to free the captives? I chose option B, goblins are nothing but trouble.
The main plot itself is a well worn cliché of your character being a relative nobody destined for greater things. Over all the plot is well done with enough surprises and red herrings thrown in to make Drakensang interesting. Players expecting a paradigm shifting plot, will probably be disappointed… but given the CRPG genre at its best is derivative of past works why people would expect this is beyond me.
Characters
At the start there are many different options for the character to choose from, but all of them stem from a multitude of humans and a few elven and dwarven options. While there are a multitude of choices they more or less boil down to what the templates are initially good at: combat, magic, skills. Very often the template is a mishmash of each category. There are enough skill points in the game as it rolls along that a character can be reasonably good in several areas.
Likewise you get many followers to fill in the additional three character slots in the party. I decided to go with the elf ranger as my main character, which is obviously good at outdoor skills, ranged combat and some magic. It is a tough class to play as the game favors the main character being a melee oriented given the perks that comes along with the quests. No one character at the start will be perfect however…
Drakensang has scads of trainers and any PC can learn any other skill save magic which is determined by the initial character selection. Even then, magic is split into two schools; human and elven. Human magic is the far more useful of the two as it’s spells have far more offensive capabilities. Elven magic is more focused on buffing and the game environment. The ability to train in any skill, weapon or ability (more on abilities later) make it so that your party can eschew a rogue in favor of another tank or spell caster. For example I trained my Amazon follower pick locks, pick pockets and haggling and then dumped both rogues which are acquired at early on and perpetually got knocked out of combat as the melee combat favors toughness over quickness.
Additional to skills are abilities. These are special combat moves or passive bonuses that are acquired via experience points. None by themselves are spendy, 100-400 experience points, but given experience points are always rolling in and you can bank these points for a rainy day… or trainer. It is a simple ability tree and the number of abilities a PC can use is finite as many are only for specific weapon groups. But the ability to acquire these abilities are spread through the game.
Gameplay
For the most part Drakensang’s game play is decent. Getting used to the underlying German pen and paper RPG will take some getting used to as the math is more complicated than say D&D3e, but less so that Rolemaster. The fact that the game mechanics are not well explained or documented does not help. But after clicking on items on the character screen explanation windows pop up and after an hour or two a player will have the basics down pat.
Skills have a cap based on level and cost to upgrade a skill is determined by the class. Luckily many skills and spells can be capped off at a certain point. For example pick lock and pick pockets need not be fully developed. Also as a note anyone in the game can have their pocket spicked and an attempt does nothing to impact the game beyond an NPC telling the character to get away from them.
Combat in Drakansang is a mixed bag. The premise is an attack is made, if it is successful the opponent gets a chance to parry or dodge it. But that parry or dodge is not impacted by the quality of the hit (so far as I can tell). So combats can drag on in a attack-parry/dodge routine. However very bad things happen to a monster or character that gets surrounded, as they can only evade so many attacks. However beyond basic positioning there is very little to tactically do when a fight starts. Characters will follow queued orders or continue fighting. One item which seem s a horrible oversight is characters do not have zones of control, a pc or monster can barge through a character to get to the mage or archer. It works both ways, but it makes a fight look a little silly and ignores some common sense ideas in gaming. For small encounters in wide open spaces this issue is less noticeable, in a dungeon with lot of opponents it is glaring.
Related to this is the fact that abilities (special combat moves) and spells must be manually selected and the IA does not handle this at all. So there is a lot of flipping between characters during combat. At least until endurance points, which fuel abilities, run out. The AI will issue vanilla attack commands for characters who have no active orders. Which can be bad when a mage with plenty of magic points goes rushing into a battle. It mars what is otherwise more than adequate game play.
Magic in Drakensang is far less diverse than other CRPG’s, the total is about 40 spells. This feels like a small number, but honestly when I was playing Neverwinter Nights my spell selections were not much more than what Drakensang offers. Combat spells are single target or area effect… a nice touch is the area effect spells can and will damage the PC and allies… so usually I had my battlemage do a haste-like spell, then volley in as many fireball spells as he can muster (usually two) and then shift him to single target spells.
The other magic selections are manipulation spells (i.e. sleep), buff spells (some more useful than others), summoning spells and protection spells. Even at fairly low levels these spells can last as long as you practically need them and most battles do not last long enough to run out of a buffing spell save for a few critical “boss” battles.
Over the course of the game you will pick up many NPC followers. There is enough variety that many different kinds of parties can be built. Just be warned many areas in Drakensang are set pieces, you go in once and leave never to return. Thus you have to have your party balanced out for what you think you may need ahead of time. That said so far as I have found, I typically go with my jack of all trades ranger, a fighter with rogue-ish skills, a pure fighter and a battlemage. You will note there is no healer or cleric. Human and elven mages can cast heal spells and the healing skill itself is almost as good as magic… or better in some circumstances. And here is why.
A neat aspect of combat is characters not only have hit points, but they can also suffer wounds. Run out of hit points or suffer five wounds and they go down until a combat is over. Some particularly nasty monsters can dole out a lot of hit point damage and wounds if a blow lands. Critical wounds can only be healed by the healing skill and not magic. All damage can be healed quickly after combat, but managing damage during combat has proven to be a fun challenge.
Crafting and Loot
Crafting in Drakensang is straightforward. You will find or buy ingredients and then apply them to recipes for bowery, blacksmithing or alchemy at a workbench. Having one NPC dedicated to each skill is handy as to not have those skill points soaked up by your main character or the regular followers. But I have found alchemy is particularly useful to have in the active party the others… less so. Adventuring lets the PC stock up via finding materials from plants, monsters, etc… then more often than not between chapters using that stockpile for potions, salves and ammo for the next chapter.
Crafting however is critical as many of the nicer weapons can only be made and not bought… Likewise having a good stockpile of endurance potions (abilities use endurance points), healing potions and buffing potions is needed for the more challenging engagements… and there are a few that your party will only scrape by via being resourceful.
For power gamers expecting mind bogglingly great treasures… Drakensang will disappoint. Most equipment as your party rolls through the campaign will offer incremental benefits to stats, skills or combat. I guess the flip side is most of the items are passive in nature so there is no need to manage the equipment but it would have been nice to have a wider variety of items, not to mention what those items do. Over all I like the feel of equipment and what it does, but it is not sexy either.
Armor in Drakensang is piecemeal by body location. Early on the options are limited, but as your characters advance the options increase. What is great about the pieces of armor is they are reflected on the character model, but it also ads a layer of complexity as each item adds encumbrance which impacts several skills.
The Moving Parts
Graphically Drakensang is amazing, double so that it is a bargain title for less than 30 dollars. The game looks like a well decorated movie set. However the interface to these graphics leaves a little to be desired. The camera angles are mediocre at best and the program makes some odd choices as to how it would like to place it. This is very noticeable in the close confines of dungeons and caves, less so outside. As well an option which would have been great to see would have been a keyboard command that highlights loot as objects the party can manipulate.
The character models are well done and nicely detailed, but this is at the expense of only having a limited number of templates. Equipment is well represented on the characters but more effects for magic weapons would have been a nice option.
Spells are probably the one area where Drakensang’s graphics are below par. They are very rudimentary and mostly boring. Which given how few spells there are it seems a curious choice to have subpar graphics for this area as magic in a fantasy game is a big component of the game play.
Like every modern CRPG Drakensang has an automap. Nothing special about the map, but how quests are annotated on it is kludgy. But this also related to the quest list being poorly done in regards ot organization and how it is displayed. It would have been good to see quests represesented on the map without having to select them in the quest log, but also if the quest is buried a map or two deep pointers to get to dungeon entrance for example.
The sound in Drakensang is uneven. The sound effects are nothing special. The score is pretty good and I have kept it playing through the game. The voice acting is obnoxiously bad at points, but for the most part it is mediocre. This is more a function of budget as Drakensang is a translated work at a bargain price point.
Speaking of translations, for the most part the developers did a decent job of translating a complex game into English, but there are a few spots where Drakensang’s text shifts back to German.
Lastly, there is no multiplayer in Drakensang, it is a single player experience. This was not a concern for me, but for people who like having a friend coming along for the ride this might be a disappointment.
Synopsis
Overall Drakensang is a very solid game, it is a warm blanket of cliché that soothes this old school gamer’s bones. Drakensang’s flaws are forgivable, but a good AI for NPC’s is the most glaring of them. It adds more management into the game play than I like and it is reasonable to expect that a mage will cast spells as long as they can before entering melee or a fighter will use an ability during combat.
The plot is as cliché as a CRPG can be, but I did not mind that. Not every game has to be a paradigm shifting event in the genre… Matter of fact most are not. The main plot is very linear, but there are enough interesting side quests in Drakensang that branch off from the main quest or compliment it that the linear game play is mitigated.
Graphically the production values are high. Drakensang looks fantastic. Other areas of the game do suffer from flaws, but none of them are deal breakers. Better voice acting and spell effects would have been good additions.
The Good
Very lush world and well anointed
Every fantasy cliché in the book
A surprisingly deep RPG engine
Character customization
A hybrid point buy / level system
Incremental PC improvements
Many followers
Single player game
Cost
Magic system
Crafting system
The Bad
Quest logging and management has a muddled interface
Maybe a bit too much walking back and forth
Every fantasy cliché in the book
Better explanation of the RPG engine
Many initial character templates
The inventory system is a little buggy and cluttered
Combat feels tilted towards luck and not skill
Very poor implementation of combat tactics
Voice acting
UI a little primitive
No multiplayer options
