Drakensang: The Dark Eye Preview
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The basic party will consist of 4 people and it will be important to properly balance them out (like having a tank-like for combat, and a mage or elf is always handy). You can also pick up some additional followers, usually temporarily. You can play it through solo, but the game is designed for a well-balanced party so that choice would make the game a lot tougher. The combat runs in real-time and can be paused whenever you want to. Much like in Baldur's Gate, there's a turn-based system running underneath which makes calculations based on the DSA system to determine the effect of your actions in combat and you can even pop up a console to see the calculations being made by the rule system.
Some impressions
This game has a budget of 2.5 million euros, which is a joke compared to the 20+ million dollar budgets you can see for RPGs like Oblivion. And it shows in graphics, which are aeons behind Oblivion or Mass Effect. But, in this previewer's opinion, shiny graphics are less important than the developer's approach to said graphics. In DSA's case, the world is quite well-crafted and looks quite good from a bird's eye view. The developers are paying a lot of attention to world design (including transferring a real-life fort 1:1 to the game) and from the demoed areas I saw it does show in the final product. Don't expect AAA-title graphics, but expect a well-designed world nonetheless.
Gameplay-wise the combat looks like the standard RTwP fare, with little innovations or detractions. I'm not a big fan of RTwP myself, but if you've enjoyed it in BioWare's products it looks well-executed enough here to be just as enjoyable, with a party to manage with spells and talents offering a bevy of tactical options.
The designers strike me as an honestly dedicated and intelligent lot. They don't have a whole lot of experience designing RPGs, having mostly made action and adventure games. But the DSA authors are known as a skilled lot, which promises a well-crafted plot for the game. I'm personally somewhat worried about their intention to cut down on dialogue, which might dampen the experience a lot.
Some conclusions
The biggest foreseeable problem for this game is the same problem any German product faces: localization. It is worrying that developer Radon Labs hasn't shown any active interest in the English-speaking market so far. On the other hand, their publisher Anaconda is a pretty large publishing house with a not-bad reputation in international publishing (they recently published Legend: Hand of God).
In this RPG-starved time, it's time for a lot of RPG players to stretch their necks and watch the European market. However, Drakensang doesn't seem to be offering much beyond its great setting and RPG system, taking a somewhat uninspired approach towards combat and dialogue.
This game is clearly one to watch, but without a clear impression of dialogue or quests I can't really endorse it blindly. Will it live up to the originals in writing and plot at least? If it does, this might end-up a must-have for RPG fans. If it disappoints in that area, it's not really offering much to please anyone, though it might still be something you might want to try in this time of few RPGs.
