A search turned up lot of comments in various sale threads, but nothing dedicated to the game, and since it comes out Friday I thought it was time for one.
More news on the final release, both good and for some, bad:
First the good: There’s now a demo available that includes the new character creation options, which I have been curious about. Also the demo saved games will be compatible with the full version.
The bad: If you’re on the fence, better make your mind up quick, because at release the price will jump to $39.99. No word on how much longer Steam’s “early access” price of $25 will remain in effect.
I’m already through, including chapter 5. Must have taken close to 80 hours with some reloads. Good game. I had a lot of fun.
Character development asks if you want to play a mage, then allows you to select gender and look. You can type in a name and then spent a lot of AP among all stats as you like, until you reach certain limits, for example 5 points max on magic resistence. You can choose your gear too, but that’s pointless because you lose everything when they throw you in jail.
Edit: Early access save games are compatible.
It’s worth mentioning that Daedalic added lots of explanations / help texts to the final version, including an in-game DSA newbie overview which explains the most important formulas.
It’s not officially out, although a couple of German shops might already be selling the non-Steam retail version. They sent me review code. The first tests are popping up on the net. I just saw two German reviews giving it 85% and 86%, which sounds about right. A couple of mediocre elements and the pragmatic production values keep it below 90%. You have to enjoy TB combat and stat heavy character development though.
I played a couple of hours of the demo yesterday. The only pragmatic production issue that bothered be was the horrible voice acting (does it cost a lot to get decent voice actors?). I suppose its best to shut that off and read the subtitles. Other then that it seems interesting.
The character models and the animation aren’t that great. Some more variety in the enemies would have been nice. The soundtrack is nice though. I had to smile when I heard that Italo western tune a couple of hours in.
I found the voice acting tolerable, but maybe it’s an advantage that English is a foreign language. ;)
Voice acting can get relatively expensive if you need it in 5 languages and your project budget is only very low 7 digits (if at all).
I checked out the demo (at work, on my office Mac) and was generally impressed. The voice acting…yeah, it’s bad. And there’s a sort of rough and ready feel to the whole thing, visually, though it’s far from unpleasant to look at. It’s pretty cool overall.
I found the combat to be pretty brutally difficult right from the get go. It also seems like there is no way to farm experience, and you really don’t know what you’re supposed to do first when presented with 3 options.
For instance, I had two options after the first few battles… go to the south to a new town, or go kill a forest troll. The forest troll totally stomped me when I tried it, so I went to the southern town. I then had two more optional side quests and the main quest. I went on one of the sidequests, and it stomped me again. I then went with the main quest, got my butt kicked again, and then replayed it and barely eked out a win.
Overall, the whole thing was a bit too stressful for me… and I play the new Xcom on hard and Fire Emblem on ironman.
Some of the comments on the Steam forum for the game sort of echo this, in that the game is fight after fight and very little down time or exploration. It’s very much like Fire Emblem without the optional side quests or paralogue stuff (in Awakenings at least) apparently.
I found the demo intriguing, though the UI is kind of opaque. I’m not willing to spend 35 or 40 clams on it though.
It was twice as hard in the Early Access version. ;)
There’s indeed no easy way to farm XP in chapter 1. Or to say it in a positive way: There’s not much filler material early on. The battles usually require some sort of strategy, and often you can choose between several. In case of the wood troll - I hope I remember the correct map - one strategy is to lure him onto the gas bubbles in the swamp and then use fire. This kills him quite easily. At this point of the game some of your chars should still carry a torch as weapon.
A dialog option in the first town should allow you to explore the cemetary with the babe’s grave. That’s 3 easy maps and one of medium difficulty to gain some XP and cash.
Glad I picked this up, really enjoying it so far. Liking the eyecandy though it’s fairly simple, seems like a lot of love was put into it. Combat is refreshing after the horrible mush of Banner Saga, especially how it’s looking like each battle has unique wrinkles to it. Haven’t seen enough of the story and writing to go either way on it, but it is grabbing my interest more than Banner Saga did. Voice acting as mentioned isn’t very good, but on the whole I prefer hammy overacting to Bioware “i am going to monotone this entire fifteen minute sequence of dialog explaining the mating habits of space beetles”. Dialog hasn’t had much in the way of choice so far. Possibly because my character doesn’t have high charisma and I’m not yet sure if you get to see alternate dialog options you’re unable to pick due to stats/skills or not. If not then it’s possible I’m not seeing options because I went warrior and I hit things.
Also gotta say I’m digging the way movement is handled. Just clicking to encounters and having a town be a single screen where you click to visit merchants/healers/inn is nice. No horrible RPG filler of rummaging behind bushes and in barrels to pick up garbage.
Only downside is I’m probably going to move Blackguards to the back burner tomorrow when MMX is released. Which isn’t much of a downside 'cause hot damn, seemingly good turn based party RPG shortly followed by hopefully Xeen-esque new Might and Magic. About time!
Played the demo - it seems interesting but it’s a bit on the pricey side for me to take a risk on it, and I have Banner Saga to finish… more positive impressions would help seal the deal though ;)
I have enjoyed my time with the game so far. I’m a hardcore turn based tactics fan so that is probably coloring my opinion a bit.
My only real issue with it is the system the game is based off of. The Dark Eye may be a good system to use as a base for full rpg game(I honestly have no idea), but it seems kind of lacking when you’re only including the combat aspects of it. IMO, it’s too old school for a PC game… it’s kind of like if someone based a new game off of AD&D 2nd edition.
Though tor the tactical game, I think they make up for a lot of the game system limitations with the great battlefield environments. From the special tiles that can cause characters to slip and fall, to the interactible ones like the beehives you can knock out of the tree to create a field of AOE damage. Like I said, I’m having fun with it for sure.
This looks right up my alley, heavy tactical combat with an established rpg system behind it – although dark eye can be rough in the early levels, no? I would love to hear more from people who have finished it?
Oh, and, are there decent fan-made guides for character progression?
I’ve been liking this so far, but my only complaint is that the game seems REALLY imbalanced.
From what i can tell, dual wielding is completely useless and Two handed blunt and axe/mace are WAY WAY WAY better than the other weapon types for meleers. This is likely true even without counting all undead seeming to be super weak to maces and super resistant to swords/fencing/daggers.
I really hope this is something that the developer can deal with as it really limits character customization a lot.
