Tinker, Bard and Shepherd would have been awesome and unique choice for classes. Unfortunately they come up such "imaginative" classes as Mage, Rogue and Warrior. And races are also a "big surprise"; Dwarf, Elf and Human. But wait, at least the attributes and skills must be something new, right? No way, they just copy-pasted everything from D&D, renamed and simplified. They really must have a mastermind behind all this designing. :aaaa: And if you take a look at this video, then it's a bit difficult to believe that this is suppose to be THE over-hyped-redefining-ultimate-RPG called Dragon Age...
I will admit I dont like the zoomed in fighting look, but I really like the ToEE style tactical look shown in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI9r0mkyUjQ
I'll try out this.. but I must say i'm higly skeptical due to what you can see in the videos. Let alone the Marylin Manson music (no, i don't think heavy metal and rpgs match well) I really think this it's just not the d&d i used to love when I was a kid.. ala baldur's gate 1 (10 times better than bg2 to me:assaulting a gnoll fortress for me it's 10 times cooler than fighting against daemons or the like.. I just loved when at the beginning of the game buying an ordinary "plate armor" required hours of gameplay.. while on modern games you find magic items out of nowhere after 5 mins on some random monster). I mean.. just look at those armors that look like they came out of a manga.. then you have a black npc with white dreadlocks..a jumping rogue-like char that makes some awfull b-movie jokes.. everyone looking gayer than bradd pitt. I don't know.. i really would love a great crpg to come out.. but sadly I think that the mature western setting i've always loved it's just demodè this days.. even d&d 4th edition with dragonborns, tieflings and the like as core race isn't good for me anymore. Only place i can still cal "home" due to the setting it's warhammer fantasy. Oh well.. sorry if, maybe, i got OT a little.. What I was trying to say it's just that I fear i'm gonna hate this game for all the opposite reasons that make me still love a game like ToEE after years (as well as bg1 and fallout 1-2)..
Wow, I think I just found my soulmate. I agree with every word. BG1 has that special magic that keeps me returning to it at least once a year even though I remember every encounter and quest from Nashkell Mines to Undercity, but the beauty is that you start with very open world and you don't need to necessarily start with Friendly Aerms Inn as it suggests. And I cannot name a game where you start as weak and yet grow so strong by the end; the lightning bolt and the fireball can destroy a (Xwart) village, but also maybe your whole party if you ared not careful. Dragon Age felt like a some hack-n-slash mmorpg in solo or an adventure game... Not for my taste. PS. I recommend Drakensang to you if you haven't played it. It at least gave a bit BG kind of feeling.
your whole paragraph about BG gets invalidated by mentioning Drakensang in the same vein, rofl I can hardly believe you're serious
I finished Drakensang and I can say it was a good game, however it was quite linear and mostly combat oriented. On the other hand you could finish it without revealing the plot behind your friend's (Ardo's) murder like I did. Of course I figured it out at the end. The worst thing about Drakensang though was it's unbalanced difficulty level. The last boss as well as the dragon were a cakewalk unlike the rat mother.
only if you 1) didn't max concentration on all chars 2) didn't use shields on all chars (incl. mages) otherwise the rat mother would be easy too. even at lvl 4/5 drakensang=boredom incarnate all it has is bloomboobs, orsum grafix and barrels to bash :yawn:
Guys.. forget the video with marylin manson soundtrack and b-movie jokes.. the game is splendid.. go and buy it!
NO. It uses TDE ruleset, which IMO is very intuitive and alone making the game great. It has its issues, like the barrels, but if there is more than 60 hours of gameplay you cannot except perfection from small company. Read the GameBanshee review and give it a shot with my fixpack. Dragon Age on the otherhand doesn't have anything new or unique, everything has been already seen thousand times before.
I played Drakensang, I had it preordered because 1) it was DSA (like RoA games) 2) it was advertised as BG2 in 3D. Two good reasons. And what did I get? - MMO-esque combat, devoid of any challenge or tactics. What can kill you in this game? Wounds. So if you become immune to wounds (see above) this danger is gone for good. What else? Fire. So in the 4-5 situations in the whole game where you're attacked with fire (like when fighting the dragon) you have to use the salve that prevents fire damage, and it gets handed to you by the dwarf right before the fight, duh! And that's it, no other form of challenge present in this game, you'll never die of HP loss. Think about it in Drakensang a dragon is a boss monster because he has 1000 HPs, a weak attack and a fire breath (but you have the salve). The only challenge is to have the patience to mow down his HP while drinking a potion once in a while. - a rudimentary character system. Yes it's rudimentary in comparison with DSA. Skills you can pick but will never be used. How appropriate. Here's a shining beacon of skill usage in Drakensang: If you have etiquette at least 4 or something a chick who wants you to save her will be polite when you first talk to her (she's a noble). If you don't have the etiquette skill she won't be polite but unfriendly (in her first sentence). Consequence? None, you'll do her quest either way. That's the super awesome skill usage in Drakensang and with super awesome I mean completely retarded. But fear not, you'll most likely won't encounter more than a handful of these "skillchecks" throughout the whole game. - a rudimentary spell system, you'll most likely end up spamming the same few useful spells over and over and over throughout the whole game :dizzy:, you can recognize how awesome a spellsystem is when your mage spends 80% of his time mimicing a weak fighter in combat, than actually do any casting. Here's mages casting during boss fight to give you an image of drakensang combat for mages: flesh to stone on strongest monster, thunderbolt, thunderbolt,thunderbolt, drink mana potion, thunderbolt,thunderbolt,thunderbolt, drink mana potion, flesh to stone on strongest monster, thunderbolt,thunderbolt,thunderbolt, drink mana potion - MMo-esque monster respawning, on you quest to save the world, which requires in your current location to go from A to B, back to A then to C and then A-B-A-C-B-C-D-A-D-C-B-A you will find identical mobs on the very same spots everytime you pass I could go on, the point is I finished the game, started anew and discovered that the game provides no incentive at all to replay it, everything is identical, I quit out of sheer boredom. IMO a RPG is defined by character system and combat. Drakensang fails at combat. The character system is interesting but too rudimentary implemented. I can. They could charge me 55€ (which was the price at amazon.de where I preordered), so I can have certain expectations for a DSA (TDE) game. A successor to RoA or BG2? Not in a million years.
Drakensang was 25% cheaper than "normal" PC games. I pay 24€ if memory serves, in the week it was released. And you played the game over 40 hours, so I think that's very well worth the money. You really had a bad deal, since everywhere else the price was basicaly half of it. That location revisiting is so untrue, you cannot even return to previously visited areas in most cases! Only the social talents are weak in Drakensang, rest of the talents are actually very well done. Yes, there isn't that many spells in the game, but does it matter if you have Lesser Fireball, Major Fireball, Greater Fireball and Master Fireball or if you have fireball that keeps getting better when you invest some xp in it? Again, every problem you were saying about the game; the locations, the balancing, lack of spells, lack of variation in monsters, lack of dialog options etc are all because the low budget, but so is the price. You say system and combat. What new Dragon Age brings in this area? Absolutely nothing. If I want to have a story driven game, then I play Monkey Island.
Well... I'd say Dragon Age has everything that Drakensang has but it executes it a thousand times better. I found the gameplay quite similar, except for the poorly developed character system. It's fun and all but it's too simple IMO. However, combat is good and challenging at times. Tried to fight those damn Revenants? I barely can beat them and let alone a dragon.
1) I obv got the german version since I am german, half a year before it was released in america, and that was the price (55€). 2) I can't speak about Dragon Age, although my preordered copy arrived already, I just keep on playing ToEE :yes: whatever, low budget or not, it was a disappointment, if you expected a successor to Realms of Arcania. I don't say it totally sucked. I finished the game after all and don't regret it, but it was a disappointment nontheless.
