The Dark Eye: Drakensang

Product Details

The Dark Eye: Drakensang From ValuSoft List Price: $9.99 Price: $8.85 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Ships from and sold by NYC Electronics 13 new or used available from $5.99 Average customer review:

Product Description

Make friends – because your enemies will be numerous indeed! In a world where darkness lurks, evil forces are at work in the city of Ferdok. Summoned by a letter from an old friend you suddenly find yourself bound to investigate a series of strange ritual murders. But getting to the bottom of this only means scratching on the surface of a much bigger, even more sinister plan... Only if you gather trusty companions will you have a chance against a huge conspiracy threatening to change the world of Aventuria forever! Behind closed doors sinister figures are pursuing their dark schemes, spreading fear and terror among city’s population. As the adventurers begin to investigate the series of murders they are constantly confronted with new questions and mysteries. What is the connection between the murders and the proclamation and what role does a mysterious arch-magician play in the story? Aventuria is waiting for you to uncover the ancient mysteries!

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1518 in Video Games
• Brand: ValuSoft
• Model: 755142730567
• Released on: 2009-04-08
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: .35 pounds

Features

• More than 40 spells, with over 30 talents and almost 40 special abilities allow a large range of possibilities for character creation.
• Rich story by the authors of the original The Dark Eye books and adventures and based in Germany`s #1 pen & paper RPG system The Dark Eye.
• Huge, detailed medieval 3D world with authentic looks of historic European architecture.
• Versatile, round-based combat system, a talent-based dialogue system and individual party skill development.
• 2-4 multiplayer support.

---

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Product Description Welcome to the dark ages. The Dark Eye: Drakensang is the first PC adaptation of Germany's most popular and long-standing pen and paper RPG franchise in 10 years. In the last twenty years a thriving The Dark Eye community of millions has grown, as its fantasy universe of Aventuria has been expanded in books, board games and computer games. And now with an incredible attention to detail, the world of Aventuria comes to live on the PC in Drakensang in state-of-the-art 3D graphics that bring to life the epic vistas and stunning variety of this one-of-a-kind fantasy world.

Adventure with up to 4 players. View larger.

Deep character customization. View larger.

Breathtaking environments. View larger.

Challenging quests. View larger.

The Story In Aventuria, the legendary continent of heroes, adventure and mysteries, something is on the move. It is an event which role players have been eagerly awaiting ever since the Nordland Trilogy. The story centers around Ferdok, an important trading city on the Great River. The feared female lancers of Ferdok and Ferdok's famous beer have given the city a reputation throughout the continent and the humans here live in harmony with the dwarves. But despite the cheerful and peaceful atmosphere, the peace is now being shaken by a mysterious series of murders. Sinister figures are pursuing their dark schemes, while the fear among the population grows with every new murder. And while the adventures are still pondering whether the crimes are connected to the proclamation made by the Church of Hesinde on the tenth anniversary of the Dragonquest, they themselves are dragged into the mysterious events by a very particular murder. Character Creation The Dark Eye: Drakensang provides a choice of 10 archetypes for creating characters. These are pre-generated gaming figures that already have a background story and for which all basic properties, talents and abilities are predefined. This is particularly helpful to newcomers, who are not familiar with Dark Eye rules, giving them an easy entry into the game. Within these, areas of specialization (e.g. warrior magician - specialization: charlatan) open up a huge range of possibilities for choosing a personal gaming character and then entering the great adventure. In addition, there is an expert mode available to experienced players. In this area of character generation, all properties of your hero can be altered individually and adjusted even more precisely to fit your personal gaming style. Key Game Features:

• Rich story penned by the authors of the original franchise books and adventures and based in Germany`s #1 pen & paper RPG system The Dark Eye.
• Huge, detailed medieval 3D world with authentic looks of historic European architecture.
• Versatile, round-based combat system that brings tactics back to combat.
• Talent-based dialogue system.
• Quest in groups of up to four adventurers.
• More than 40 spells, with over 30 talents and almost 40 special abilities allow a large range of possibilities for character creation.
• Individual party skill development.
• Numerous and varied enemies and monsters from the DSA universe, such as linnorms, ogres, undead mules, giant amoeba and many more.
• Rule-compliant implementation of the DSA license in the tradition of the Nordland Trilogy.

System Requirements:

	Recommended Specifications:
OS:	Windows Vista/Window XP with SP2
Processor:	Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 with 2.6 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+
RAM:	2.5MB RAM for Vista, 2MB RAM for XP
Video:	NVIDIA GeForce 8600 or ATI Radeon X 1900 with 512 MB RAM
Sound:	DirectX 9.0c compatible
DVD-ROM:	4x DVD-ROM drive or faster
Hard Drive Space:	6GB of Free Space
Other:	Internet connection required for online play

---

Customer Reviews

GAME OF THE YEAR! To start, let me say that I love traditional CRPG's. I haven't noticed many CRPG's in recent years, most new RPG's are console RPG's, ported over to the PC. But here is Drakensang, a new pure CRPG, and I am loving every minute of it. I'm just going to list what I like and dislike about this game. MUSIC The music in this game fits the atmosphere, I love it. I remember when Baldurs Gate first came out, the tavern music, the wilderness music, it all fit in that game. It was one of the first games I ever played where the music fit in with the atmosphere in harmony. Here in Drakensang, the music fits. Tavern music sounds like tavern music, and while exploring the city, calm beautiful music surrounds you. Music is suppose to draw you deeper into the story, deeper into it's magic, and here it does just that. Music of the year needs to be awarded here. I would love to get a soundtrack CD for this game, and I have never wanted one before for any other game. GRAPHICS I don't like big flashy graphics, in fact, I hate big flashy graphics. Since Fallout 3 is popular, I will use that as an example. In Fallout 3, there are a lot of blood effects that fill the screen, there are also a lot of blur effects, and all they do is obstruct my view. I like nice clean graphics, I don't like or want all that extra flashy stuff. In Drakensang, the graphics are nice and clean. The graphics stand out and are colorful without resorting to using extra flashy graphic effects. The clothes and the architecture of buildings reminds me of old Europe. If you have ever been to the Renaissance festival, that is what this game feels like. Colorful jesters, big muscles, big bosoms, fanciful outfits with potions, daggers, and scrolls attached. It's almost perfect. SOUND EFFECTS Sound effects are abound. Birds chirping, monsters growling, weapons swooshing, companion's comments, it's all there. But of course it is, isn't it? What is there to say about sound effects, but that everything is splendid. And speaking of your companion's comments, the voice acting in the game is done well. The companions you can gather to fight with you will speak and make comments about situations. You are also able to talk to them anytime you want to learn more about them. They all have their personality in their voices, easily recognizable for each. There is one possible drawback to the voice acting. Every line in the game is not spoken. There is a lot of dialogue in the game, but only the first lines, and sometimes more, are spoken. Therefore, you will have to read many lines without a voice actor reading with you. I don't have a problem with this, I love to read! STORY Speaking of the dialogue, the game is full of story. Generally, there are two types of RPG's. One type of RPG has a story for you to follow with a lot of dialogue, and the other type of RPG is just action with little dialogue. In this game, there is LOTS of dialogue and a lot of story for you to follow. You can, of course, skip a lot of the dialogue if you wish, but for those that want it, there's tons of information to find out. The game is also linear, it draws you along a path. A game like Daggerfall lets you travel the world as you please, here in Drakensang, you can only go in a certain direction. There are, of course, many optional side-quests to perform that don't follow the main quest, but have little stories of their own for you to solve for loot and experience. I do love the story, it has pulled me in like a good book. I want to keep playing to find out what happens next, and what I will be doing next. Because the game was translated from another language, it might make you wonder if the story turned out good in English, as a lot of games that are translated have ended up poorly written. The good news is that here the story has been kept intact, the English translation was pulled off marvelously. COMPANIONS Since you are only able to create one character, you will find many companions to join you in your adventure. The biggest thing with companions in a story-based RPG is "Do they have background stories and are interesting?". To answer that, I have to say "yes!". Okay, I love the companions available. In Neverwinter Nights 2, I only liked some of the companions, as I do in most games. Sometimes I can't stand them. But here, they somehow managed to create companions that I like having in my party. CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION When you create your character, you are offered a wide array of professions. These are the typical affair, such as a warrior, archer, alchemist, different types of mages, and so forth. There are about 20 in total, each with a male and female choice. The only drawback for me when creating a character, was that they only had one look each and they could not be changed. You can not change their hair color, their hair style, their faces, their body type, etc. For example, if you want to be a soldier, he will look a certain way with no option to change his looks. However, each class does look different. A mage might look Mideastern, while the soldier will look European. So even though you can't change your character's looks, each class does look different, and the different looks are so wide in selection, that I was able to overlook not being able to customize the look of my character. I usually prefer to customize my character's looks, but I was happy with this just the same. There is also the character sheets. There are a lot of skills for you to raise when you level up. There are social skills, fighting skills, crafting skills, thieving skills, and many more for you to raise. I love having many skills to raise, it gives me more choices when leveling up my character. I wish more games had tons of skills like this to raise. THE RULE SET This game uses a rule set from The Dark Eye, it's a lot like Dungeons and Dragons. There are stats and skills, everything based on points and rolls. Like a lot of Dungeons and Dragons video games, you don't need to know the rules to play it and have fun. So you don't have to learn the rules if you don't want to. However, there is the option to let you know all the rolls and behind the scenes numbers, so if you want more information about what is going on, it's there for you. I honestly don't know a single thing about this rule system, just like I don't know anything about the Dungeons and Dragons rule system. I am able to enjoy this game just the same as I enjoyed Neverwinter Nights. COMBAT Combat in the game is real-time with pause. It's a lot like the combat in Neverwinter Nights. There are turns that happen, but it all happens in real-time, giving you the ability to pause, and choose what spells and skills you want to use in combat. I would prefer pure turn-based combat, but the combat here I am enjoying just as much. You will have to select each of your characters and order them to use their skills. The A.I. does not use their skills on it's own, it needs player intervention. But, the A.I. does attack on it's own, so your companions don't just stand there when attacked, they just don't use their skills on their own. It feels like turn-based combat, even though it's in real-time, which is probably why I like it so much. STABILITY I want to mention how the game runs. A game can run slow for several different reasons. Sometimes, your computer isn't fast enough, sometimes it's a wrong driver, sometimes it's the game engine, sometimes it's something else. I have a medium range computer. I have a few of the graphic settings turned down, and I am able to play the game perfectly smooth. I experience no choppyness at all. The game has not crashed once after playing for over 20 hours. The game is stable and it plays great! However, I have noticed one small thing about it that I had trouble with. On rare occasions when casting a spell, the game would pause for a split second, then continue. I never did figure out why it did this. If this was it loading it into memory, or what, but other than this, I have not experienced anything else. Since it doesn't happen much, I just forgot about it. I'm very happy with it's performance! INTERFACE It's a CRPG! In other words, it has an interface fit for a computer. This is a big deal to me, because when a game gets ported over to the PC from a console, it leaves it's console interface on it. It makes it clunky and hard to use, and even sometimes annoying. I've played my share of PC games with bad interfaces too, don't get me wrong, but it's nice to play an RPG with a good interface that works. Thanks for giving me an interface that works! DRM The game uses Securom for it's copy protection. It does NOT require internet activation of any sort. Securom is only used for a DVD check. So you do need the DVD in your computer to play. CONCLUSION I love this game. I'd recommend it to anyone, of course. But if you love CRPG's, you should give it a try. With the low price the game came out with, I don't see how anyone could refuse. I am truly in love with this game. I even heard they are making a sequel to this game, which means more CRPG goodness. Maybe the CRPG genre isn't dead afterall? Great crpg game that came out of nowhere Drakensang is a happy throwback to slightly older 3D PC RPG games like Gothic 2. There's quite a lot of RPG depth in Drakensang that will either please you or make you run away. Basically if you liked Gothic 2 you will likely love this game. There are plenty of differences too of course between those 2 games: in Drakensang you manage a small group rather than just one character. And Drakensang incorporates a semi-real-time, semi-turn-based combat system. You can pause the combat at any time with the space bar, make combat decisions for all of your team, and then unpause. Its a pretty good system and there's some genuine strategy to combat. After about 10 hours of gametime, your team will have learned a bunch of combat skills to choose from. It doesnt hurt that the graphics are great. I suspect some want hi-end graphics like Crysis and will be disappointed. But the graphics are detailed and quite often imaginatively conceived. The mood lighting is also well done. You can tell a lot of effort was made in designing the look of everything. So what are some of the negatives? there arent many. I havent completed the game but the larger story is a little bland. The quests are great, though there's nothing really innovative or new about the kinds of quests you will get versus other PC RPG games. The combat is fun but the combat animations are a little stiff looking. The game wants you to explore so you will spend lots of time walking around. If you want a fast paced action game, this is not the game for you! In general, the game does everything really well, but no one aspect of it really stands out either. That isnt knocking this game though, and I'm enjoying it quite a lot. There's a demo and if you arent sure, you might want to download the demo. Fun, old school rpg. Pros: 1. The game's main story is much longer then that of an average $50 game. Also this game is cheaper, so you get a lot more bang for your buck. 2. Interesting advancement system makes it a fun game for those who like to play with numbers in their RPGs. 3. Story is pretty decent and gets better the farther you get in the game. 4. Fairly wide selection of characters that can join you. They aren't mute dolls either, they have some personalities. 5. Very good graphics. Cons: 1. Advancement system can be a little tough on those new to RPGs. 2. Slow paced game, those looking for an Action RPG won't like this game. 3. Could be more voice acting, as it is only the first sentence of a conversation is voice acted. 4. Other playable characters are spread throughout the game, works with the story, but makes it longer to get the party you want and gives you some characters with experience allready assigned to less useful skills and abilities. 5. Some monsters and their rewards are unbalanced.