The Dark Eye Drakensang Preview

There have been a number of games that have followed the pen-and-paper ideals of the role-playing genre. Icewind Dale, the Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights franchises may spring quickly to mind, but Radon Labs has teamed up with publishers THQ and dtp to bring an old game to new life with Drakensang: The Dark Eye.

Drakensang was actually penned by long-time writers of the P&P games and it shows in the way the game moves along. You are cast in the role of a single adventurer, given a successive of missions. The idea is to put together a party (up to four), sally forth, upgrade and become a powerful force in the land.

The game takes place in the land of Aventuria, a world populated with many of the kinds of inhabitants that should be familiar to players of fantasy-style games. The quests you receive will generally ramp up the difficulty as you move through the world. Keeping an eye on your skills, your equipment and your coin purse is a must.

The game is very much a D&D title with combat handled via computerized die rolls. In a fight, which is carried out in alternating rounds with a roll of the die determining the attack value, but before that is carried out, the opponent rolls to get a parry value. And all those rolls of the die take place behind the scenes; you don’t actually see what happens, just what the results are. A successful attack will have the hit points of the weapon offset by the armor rating to deduct points from the opponent’s vitality. If you receive more wounds than you can sustain, the game ends and you begin at the last save point. Fortunately, the game does have auto-saves to protect those who might not be on top of that element.

The pause button will also be your best friend. Hitting the space bar allows the player to halt the game, change weapons, pick strategies, perhaps cast a spell, and so on. If you are equipped with a ranged weapon and the enemies get within melee range – depending on the melee weapon you have in your inventory – switching might not be a bad idea. Many of the opponents you face, even early on, are very social in nature – meaning that if you target one, you might get several. That puts this game on the tactical level very quickly. Don’t look for a way to dumb down the difficulty. In the build received, the game had one difficulty setting and that means you had best be on your toes from the start. Take baby steps into this world, explore and don’t try to tackle too much until you get better gear and have had a chance to level up a bit – this bit of advice should serve the newcomer to a game like this well.

Crafting is also part of the game. You can pick up certain ‘lores’ during the game, like animal lore (which helps you take apart an animal for additional resources), or plant lore (which allows you to gather and then combine ingredients into healing balms).

Movement is handled in one of two ways – you can use the WASD keys, or simply click a distant spot on the ground and your character will move to the location. Pathing seems to be well done.

The sound of the game is also handled well. Some of the NPCs will speak, while others merely use text (and you often have a variety of responses). The musical score is solid. Graphically the game is pleasing on the eyes. Some of the animations are a bit stiff, but generally the flora and fauna of the game look very good and react well.

The release date for Drakensang is mid-February and with a bit of additional polishing (yes, there were a few bugs in the build received) this could well be a game that will be a treat for pen-and-paper adventurers looking to have that experience on the PC. Drakensang is shaping up quite nicely and should be a very enjoyable game.