I think he meant you can't lockpick with a hairpin unless you use it on the quickslot....you can still picklocks but it won't use the hairpin.

I had to ask how to use the healing things on other characters because it never really explains it.

You do have a point Rune when talking about being hard on new games.

I think this comes from my years of dissapointment in releases since 3D became the standard. Since then everything has been about graffics and "actiony" combat. The worlds while beautiful and realistic just feel kind of dead to me, very little interaction or details to find when you explore around. A good example in this game is the houses are almost all just decorative, you can't enter any of them. I wanna know what inside them....

It still appears that 3D is so resource intensive on a dev team that a vast majority of the time is spent just making the world look pretty, but always seems to feel a bit like an empty shell.

The being said, I am enjoying this game so far. The atmosphere is pretty good, nice music and very nice graphics.

What I meant by "linear" is the areas are blocked off until you finish certain quests and get to the next area. You start in the area around one village and cannot explore the world until you finish that area. I would prefer to be able to freely explore the world as I want to. Also, dialog choices are very few, you rarely even get 2 different choices to choose.

I think Thomas appears correct when he says the game appears as a fun little romp, that appears to be the case.

If the world was wide open to explore, the enemies a bit more interesting, there were more dialog options I think this could be a great game.

I see what your saying and I agree to a point...

But think back to the realms of arkania....when you entered a house you gota generic picture and a get out....sometimes special encounters...this game basically didn't allow you to enter the houses that had nothing in them (some you can enter). How is having generic graphics for empty houses any better?

It's not because you cannot enter in a house that it is decorative, the house is one element that build the signification of an outdoor area. For example it contributes to setup a town. And I don't see the point to enter in a boring house of a farmer, The Witcher gives a brillant example of how this is useless, boring and even mood breaking (The Witcher is a great CRPG anyway).

See book 1, sure you can enter in all houses but it's because towns are fake towns with almost zero common houses. Use a more realistic town setup so throw many common houses and allow enter in all of them and you weaken your gameplay by pushing the player to explore many boring area. Or you'll destroy the whole RPG by putting too much effort into inventing cool stuff in any common house.

In fact I feel your empty house arguments more linked to a problem of modern CRPG the illusion of realism. Too much effort to setup a sort of detailled realism when the point is to setup the right symbolic. It's a small village, it's a little camp, it's a large town, instead of it's plenty realistic houses and you can enter in all of them.

If we are going to debate around old vs modern or 3D vs non 3D some example would be welcome. For me I regret old CRPG because of their gameplay, their puzzling quality, their difficulty level, their fights depth. But certainly not for having more open worlds (that aren't generic), nor for having more realistic towns or more life in their worlds.

About Drakensag, I clearly see some flaws like the lack of decision points, or the scenario development seems to have few points that seems not realist, there's also few gaming scenery funny but it's clear it's fake, the whole fight system isn't the best I've seen in CRPG, at the point I am in the game there's clearly a little problem of difficulty level too low, many little points showing a lack of polishing (beside many other very polished elements); and so on

But despite the flaws at the point I am I find it dam fun, and to be honest quite more than Book 1 (which is very good anyway) and quite more than most CRPG I played since the end of the 80's.

I got bored with this game about 10 to 15 hours in....I think Im going to move on to something else.

It's just too damned linear and the world just feels so dead, Ferdock is a great looking town but there isn't a single dam thing to explore and find outside of the main quest line that I have seen. Building all over the place but 95% you cant enter....Combat is too easy...Dialog isn't very good.

Positive points

Its bug free it appears
Its pretty, love the look of the town

Not a bad game, but very average and didnt hold my interest long.

Thered are lots of side quests there and if you think combat is to easy hit the giant rat in one of the dungeons.

Maybe I need to play some more then but I dont recall any side quests at all in the first part of Ferdock or the Docks area, at least not up until this point. So far everything I have seen is the main quest line back and forth.

Haven't encountered the giant rat yet, but nothing I have fought has come close to taking half my health bar. Maybe I should have played with something other than the Warrior.

I don't know I had to find some dwarf who welched on his bill and there was another to rescue a thief...I know there are a few more off the top of my head. The place I am at now is killing my guys all the time....so I left and will come back later.

You guys are still playing this?? I beat and uninstalled it awhile ago... ^_^

Right now I'm toggling between Xeen and Age of Empires 3. 0.o

Ha those young always in hurry, with time and experience you'll learn how much rewarding it is to take time to enjoy.

Weird then perhaps you don't put enough care in people talks in town. Most time when there's a street vocals talk it's the hint that there's a quest. Often it's just an events involving a mini quest but still. And also sometimes you get new mini quest through new dialog choices.

And you are quite close to start a new long quests linked to the town, the merchants war.


There's definitely a problem of difficulty level for the first area, but myself I felt it improves later.

Also don't forget it's a roster game you have plenty choice to compose your party and then you could do some more original mixes that could improve the challenge and the diversity.

It's a rude dungeon. The last parts are rough and the final battle is the tougher I've seen yet in the game, with a party level 6. The parts before the final should be done before like level 3, 4 or 5.

Well you know what they say.... "Thirty is the new Twenty..." ^_^

I spend plenty of time on RPGs I enjoy, I just didn't enjoy this one enough to explore all of it's ins and outs.

It's not about exploring all ins and outs, it's eating and take time to enjoy the flavor versus eating asap like a hungry young boy in hurry for something else.

I finished it and enjoyed it quite a lot, but that's just me.

I've been playing this for the last few weeks (yep, taking it slow 'n easy) and I would overall recommend it for RPG fans. It scores well on atmosphere (graphics, music, sound), OK-ish for rules (documentation is lacking but there is plenty of variety in character development) and mixed on the storyline (main story is cliched but there is a lot of variety in the side quests - with some humour there too).

The main downsides for me have been the lack of choice in conversations (typically there's only one "heroic" response) and the lack of reaction to player actions (you can break open barrels and crates to your heart's content without anyone noticing - just like Neverwinter Nights 1). On the other hand, I've not encountered any bugs (aside from a video memory leak which can cause framerates to fall drastically after a few hours - Alt-Tabbing out and back into the game corrects this) and the translation is top notch.

Hopefully, the sequel won't take as long to make it through translation.