Ah damn. I wish I’d known this before I pulled the trigger. I though I remember the original Darkensang having good 360 controller support? Maybe I was thinking of Eco Draconis, or whatever the name of that other European RPG was.
Oh well, only $3 gone, no big deal. I’m just not in the mood for lean-in gaming these days. Only the lean back gaming that the 360 controller provides. Working too many god damn hours these days. I’ve even stopped my playthrough of Bioshock Infinite for this reason too. Using a mouse and keyboard just feels like work after a 14 hour work day and one hour in traffic.
It’s too good a game to dismiss like that.
And I say that fully cognizant of the fact that the English localization has some pretty cringe-worthy voice acting. (The writing is fine, the delivery, less so.) Even so, such a game. It definitely is a Baldur’s Gate sort of thing (actually, the first Witcher game is a better analog for me), but zoomed in closer, and for a game that’s 3-4 years old, it still looks gorgeous.
Seriously, some day you’ll discover this thing sitting on your steam least and wonder what the hell it is, and after three hours you’ll wonder why the heck you ignored it for so long.
If you search, you’ll see a thread on QT3 where folks seriously discuss this as a possible game of the year contender, an RPG that was only $19.99 at launch at full price.
The game is that good. It might be one of the top 3-5 RPGs of the last 10 years, in fact.
I think it’s the setting and presentation. You become aware pretty quickly in the game that the universe does not hinge on the actions of your character. It presents an interesting world, an absorbing series of quests and locations, but you feel like the world you’re playing in is “real” and would still turn if your guy wasn’t present in it. In many ways it’s a better job of world-building than a lot of open-world games, and this isn’t an open world situation by any means. It’s just a place you want to spend time in.
robc04
1923
The skill system is different too than the typical Bioware style RPG. If you can muster up the motivation to give it a try I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. I appreciated playing an RPG that wasn’t exactly the same as every other DND style RPG system.
Despite being a huge RPG fan, I was unable to get into Drakensang RoT. I haven’t given up on it completely, but it’s pretty far back on the back burner.
RickH
1925
Plug in that 360 controller and finish it, man!
Drakensang was a poor man’s nwn2. A pretty good game in its own right, but i could never recommend it to someone who hasn’t first played the (very) superior nwn2 and (even more superior) nwn2: mask of the betrayer.
Still, it was good enough that i’ll pay a few bucks for the sequel (or prequel?) that i’ve yet to play.
The PC version supports the 360 controller this time? I didn’t know that. Bioshock 1 and 2 didn’t have controller support.
I recently bought whatever bundle contained Drakensang, the First. I am playing through it right now, and this comment about it being very much like NWN2 is spot on. It’s not a bad game, but I would recommend playing something else if your backlog includes some more recent games.
Yep they did. I just checked Bioshock 1 and it’s in the options menu: Use 360 Controller.
In my case, I couldn’t stand NWN2 (tried multiple times) and could never will myself to get more than a couple hours into the game, and yet I really enjoyed the heck out of River of Time. Haven’t played The Dark Eye though (or Mask of the Betrayer for that matter).
habibi
1931
Rockman, it seemed you started a thread on this in 2011; lol. I find it funny because I read the Bargain Thread and thinking of doing a search of the QT3 archives for this game and then I saw it on the main page; behold, it was started by you! It’s a stranger coincidence worth a laugh!
This is why I love these forums. This bargain thread contributes horribly to my meta-game of endlessly shopping for and reading about games (instead of playing them), but the commentary also helps steer me through my backlog. I’d partially given up on NWN2 after I got off to a rocky start with it the last time (weird stuttering camera issues, network/multiplayer issues, and then Steam decided to try and redownload the entire 10gb install every 5 days). Still, you guys have successfully redirected my enthusiasm for Drakensang into enthusiasm for restarting NWN2… I just hope that enthusiasm can last the next 2-6 months required for me to finish the games I’m currently playing. :-)
Oh, I remember starting the thread because of the good reviews it was getting. I did intend to buy and play the game one day. But that’s because I always seem to think that I’ll eventually get time to play every game that I think I should play. And that clearly isn’t the case. Plus I still thought it had controller support back then. :)
NWN2 is a good game. My only criticism of it is that the nuts and bolts of it, the mechanics, are the D&D engine, which can feel… I don’t know, my words are failing me right now. Let me try again.
D&D in NWN2 feels bound by sooooo many rules. A cleric is governed by these rules. A wizard by these rules. A sorcerer by these rules. A thief by these rules. They’re all very special rules, and it can seem overwhelming and not worth remembering sometimes. I actually like non-D&D RPGs better, like Fallout, or other systems where video game makers didn’t adopt a system like D&D but instead made their own. That way the system fits the game that they’ve made. Then you don’t have to wonder if a lowest level spell that will distract someone in NWN2 will actually do something from within the game, or if it’s just a damn relic of the D&D system that happened to be accidentally included within the game. (I have played and almost finished NWN2, and I still don’t know the answer to that question).
I’m currently playing NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer. The story is very interesting. But I’m running up against those D&D rules a lot, and the whole system feels so archaic and fiddly to me now. It’s over designed and too detailed, and I find myself getting in the weeds of it and not realizing that I’m wasting away hours without having any fun because of my need to understand all these systems.
So that’s my only complaint about NWN2: That I wish they didn’t have the D&D system. But had instead designed their own system specifically for this story/game/adventure.
habibi
1935
Yeah, thanks for bringing this up. It convinced me to give it a try at $3. Somehow I have this RPG itch which I do not know which game can scratch. I am hoping Wasteland 2 or Torment 2 will do it but in the meantime, I will try Drakensang. Dragons Age Origins is nice but something is missing.
A bit off-topic but try scratching your RPG itch with Dragon’s Dogma. Best RPG (or perhaps game) I’ve played this year.
A bit off-topic but try scratching your RPG itch with Dragon’s Dogma. Best RPG (or perhaps game) I’ve played this year.
Tony_M
1938
Neverwinter Nights 2 is an excellent game, and I don’t think it gets the credit it deserves in the Bioware linage (probably because people unfairly associated it with some of the stench of NWN 1).
Having said that, I agree I’ll be happy if I never see the DnD ruleset in another game again. I say that as someone with a huge amount of nostalgia for DnD and a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of 2nd and 3rd edition. But its just too arcane for a computer game. When Baldurs Gate arrived I considered it a present from God and possibly the last game I’d ever need. But I’ve come to accept that computer games and pen-and-paper games are different and have different needs from the ruleset.
Tony
Well, i like the D&D rules. They were well fleshed out and reasonably balanced. I’m not sure what you’re talking about when you say the rules don’t really fit the game well to be honest. The only instance where i think what you say might apply is in the sleep system. In D&D you can’t sleep every battle, but in nwn2 (but not mask of the betrayer) you can sleep any time basically. This changes the class balance to some degree, making certain classes (warlock) not very good.
It was refreshing to not have mages spamming fireball every second for hours due to the mana system used in almost every fantasy game.
This is actually my problem with drakensang. The rules aren’t mature, the classes really aren’t interesting and everything feels the same.
I don’t know how much longer this is free on Desura.
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