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As someone who finished Drakensang with warrior, metamage & ranger, I must say that mages & archers are overpowered in Drakensang. The mages' shield spell gives them better protection than the heaviest armour (not to mention, main character gets armour that allows spellcasting), and there are overpowered spells like Skeletarius that make the entire game a breeze.

As for magic not being powerful enough... it's as powerful as you develop it... but keep in mind that Drakensang is a low-magic world.

Archers with Master Marksman skill one-shot enemies.

As for Dragon Age... there is no balance in that game at all... mages rule combined to other classes. Plain and simple.

Dragon Age may have better character interactions, and indeed it would've been great if Drakensang had this also, but personally I don't care about this. For me, what is most important in a RPG is the setting/gameworld, followed by combat system. Dragon Age doesn't do either of those well, imo... Thedas is just another Tolkien-inspired high fantasy generic world, and the combat boils down to very simple tactics that I used in games like Dungeon Siege 2 and that work against every single enemy in the game (as opposed to huge variety of enemies and needed tactics in D&D based games)...
As for Dragon Age's vaunted 'choice & consequence', there aren't any... what the game does is giving the ILLUSION of choice. No matter your 'origin', the game will always pan out the same... only difference choice of origin makes is a few different dialogue lines.

Anyway, 'choice & consequence' & character interactions alone do not make a great RPG. While Drakensang can learn a lot from Dragon Age, the reverse is true as well... when it comes to art direction, character models & level design, Drakensang blows away Dragon Age. Just compare the city of Ferdok with Denerim, for instance... in Denerim NPCs remain rooted in exactly the same spot the entire game and it is impossible to interact with most of them, while Ferdok feels like a real, bustling city where people move around... not to mention one can speak to every single one of them.

At any rate, the prequel greatly improves on Drakensang when it comes to character interactions & 'choices'. So it is highly recommended to play.

virumor...

Well, you certainly played Drakensang more than I did. I only finished it once, after all. After the first time, I wouldn't even have tried it as an archer or mage, given how completely useless I found them on the first play through. Are you familiar with the actual Dark Eye system? I'm not, and that may have made the difference.

With DA, I've played every origin story and gotten most of those characters significantly far into the game. The choices you make DO have real consequences, not just in the multiple endings (With no spoilers given, there are at least three different ways to finish the end fight alone) but also to the point where you can unlock missions in game by playing a 'darker' character that you can't unlock by being a good guy. There are a ton of things you can do that have very real effects on how people will deal with you, whether or not they side with you or against you and a whole host of other things that really do affect the story. Your choice of origin can also have some very significant effects on the game (Like the ability to marry certain characters that will only occur if you have certain origins). It's even possible to get members of your own party to attack you if you do some really bad things.

I do find it ironic that you say DA is 'just another Tolkien-inspired high fantasy generic world' - well, of course it is. But so is the Drakensang world. There's nothing new or original about that either, and it's a blatant AD&D clone to boot. The DA system is at least developed with computers in mind.

I definitely agree that Ferdok is a far better realised city than Denerim (or Orzammar, for that matter) but as for the world itself, I thought Thedas was vastly better realised, with far more obvious depth, history and believability than Drakensang. I wouldn't want to live in Thedas, but the clear cultural development, customs and religions made the world itself really come alive, for me. I saw none of that in Drakensang.

"'choice & consequence' & character interactions alone do not make a great RPG" - this is true, but they sure as heck go a very long way towards it. PS:T is not widely held to be the best CRPG of all time because it looks incredible (It doesn't) or because the combat system is all that great (Being designed for tabletop gaming, it's not all that great for a computer game).

As for combat - the DA system is better as it's actually been designed for a computer system rather than from a tabletop system, but there's still definitely room for improvement. In terms of tactics, neither can hold a candle to a proper tabletop game, of course. I did have to vary tactics slightly in DA, but never in Drakensang, where 'run up and hit it' was a pretty good universal cure-all.

Four tanks solved everything in Drakensang. Try that in DA and you'll be dead faster than you can yell 'we're out of healing poultices!' Not only is there better class balancing in DA, but you actually NEED all classes, which you really don't in Drakensang.

Are mages powerful in DA? Sure. but so is a properly equipped warrior or rogue. You have to be pretty high level to start kicking major damage with your mage, and if you get too happy you'll end up blasting your own party by accident. One on one, archers are as good as mages at direct damage, and once your warrior gets there he'll be better yet. Especially if you've given him dual wield, which is just nasty.

Not that the balancing is perfect, don't get me wrong. Two handed weapon users are definitely weaker overall than dual wielders or shield users and some of the schools of magic are more useful than others. Some of the specialist classes are also a lot weaker than others.

But overall, DA is by far the better game.

As for the other Drakensang game - I will certainly be getting it. As I've said, I LIKED Drakensang. It was very playable, certainly enjoyable and absolutely something I'd recommend to fans of CRPGs. It just isn't a patch on Dragon Age. But then, as a party based CRPG only PS:T is superior, so it's hardly a slight to Drakensang to say that.

Drakensang is far from a blatant AD&D clone. As I said before, the setting is low magic, which the most well-known AD&D settings (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms) are not. The setting is also more inspired by medieval Germany rather than an emulgation of all fantasy tropes in the book like AD&D.

If it has to be compared to any AD&D setting, it's closest to Eberron.


In Dragon Age, most of the world's lore is conveniently written down in 'the Codex' instead of shared with the player through the actual game world.

In any case, it's very hard for Dragon Age to compete with any established PnP setting like DSA or D&D which are over 25 years old. The sheer amount of lore in Drakensang just meant that the devs couldn't copy paste all of it in the game like Dragon Age.


Using an all tank party in DA works too, since one can make unlimited health potions (while in Drakensang it's much more difficult to obtain a large amount). In fact, mages make the game so much easier that for a challenge one should probably play without one.

I found that my mage became unstoppable as soon as she picked Cone of Cold spell, which she did in the first town after Ostagar. Freezing enemies followed by shattering wins any battle, since all battles outside of bosses are essentially the same.

I don't understand what you said about archers, they seemed totally useless in my game.


That's subjective of course, but I think Drakensang is on par with Neverwinter Nights 2, and both to be better than Dragon Age.

virumor...



Being low magic does not stop something from being a D&D clone. Let's face it, ALL RPGs are ultimately derived from D&D in some way, just as everything Fantasy ultimately owes its origins to Tolkien. There's no escaping the shadow of either.

Doesn't mean any of the clones are not good games in their own right.



It's not just the lore, it's also stuff like the Chanters, Leliana's stories (& her song), Morrigan's mother and her connection to the history of the world... The characters seem to be immersed in their world, not separate to it.



True. But judging Drakensang just as Drakensang, rather than an extension of TDE, it does not do a very good job of conveying the idea that the world would exist whether your character did or did not.



All tank parties never work out in DA, because the difficulty ramps according to the toughness of your party. Or at least it seems to. Any time I tried it, I got completely massacred. I didn't find it that easy to accumulate masses of poultices, either.

With Drakensang, all you need is the bandages & the tea and you can pick them up in vast amounts. Four tanks aren't going down so you'll never NEED combat healing.



True. Some more variation in encounters would have been nice. Shattering isn't all that easy to pull off, though, and you can't deal with massive numbers that easily.



It's all the crippling/pinning/killing shots that make the difference. An archer just shooting is weak, but a fully ramped archer with all those trick shots is pretty lethal. Archers only really get into trouble if the opposition can get to them, as they shoot fast enough to disrupt spell casting, too.



I think Drakensang is actually better than NWN2 for one simple reason: I truly loathe being put on railroad tracks. The amount of ability you have to wander off and do stuff just for of the heck of it is almost non-existent. Throw in the fact that the designers still had not worked out that D&D is a system optimised for a party of six (A thing which they understood as far back as Baldur's Gate! Go figure the logic...) just makes it even more frustrating.

That said, I like Storm Of Zehir a great deal, and would consider that more equal to Drakensang.

Needless to say, I think DA is vastly superior to both, but opinions and all that

I can think of quite a few RPGs that have nothing to do with D&D: Fallout 1/2, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines/Redemption, Arcanum: of steamworks & magick obscura, Wizardry, Might & Magic...

Without D&D there would BE no other RPGs. It was the first of its kind

White Wolf's Vampire RPG owes more to Call Of Cthulhu in terms of system, but ultimately...

After D&D set the ball rolling, those that followed first and fast were (IIRC) Traveller (The prototype space age RPG), Call Of Cthulhu (The prototype horror RPG), Runequest (Like D&D but with a % system), Tunnels & Trolls (Fighting Fantasy probably owes everything to the T&T single player game books). I just wish I could remember the first post-apocalyptic one... Annoying to me that I cannot, though I didn't play it very much. Top Secret/SI was the prototype spy game, for lovers of Alpha Protocol, BTW

However - D&D invented the RPG. That's why they all ultimately derive from it. No genre, no games

Sorry, if I sound harsh, but with THAT kind/way of argumentation, you call ANY game "yet another boring D&D clone" - even the Ultima series.

With THESE kinds of arguments, it is imo just too easy to divide gamex between "oh those [boring9 D&D clones" and "D&D gams". I mean with this, that this implicitely implies that everything that is just D&D is ORIGINAL, and calling a game "just a clone" negates the work and the energy put into it.

Bsically, you can call EVERYTHING, ALL role-playing games OF THE WHOLE WORLD as "D&D clones". Because D&D was he FIRST - and hat *implies* that EVERYTHING after that is nothing but "just a clone".

Birthright.


As long as people continue to acually compare EVERYTHING with the almighy Über-father of all role-playing games, two or three things will happen :

- all others AUTOMATICALLY lose - t least from the point of view of those who now all of the (A)D&D rule systems and setting too well, so that that can't erase their minds from that anymore - comparing everything against D&D becomes kind of natural

- people will have then their minds set so that they can't be open anymore for new and unique settingsor rule sets - because EVERYTHING is just nothing but derived from the almighty Über-father f all RPGs

- talk about prejudices : people will become so much used to what they know best that they just can't see clear anymore. It's like someone just loves backed potatos ( ) and doesn't want to eat anything else anymore - plus he always compares the taste of his beloved baked potatos with ANY kind of food - be it carrots, apples, lasagne, pizza, ice-cream, whtever.


Which basically means that I'm against THAT way of comparing everything against the almighty Über-father of all RPGs. This just doesbn't pay tribute at all to all of the work and the energy someone puts into a new setting, and into new rule systems.

It's like as if you would say that my own fantasy short stories taking place in my own fantasy universe are basically nothing but a rip-off of (A)D&D and its settings.

This would be just an inult to me, because I'm influenced, yes, but I also have my OWN ideas. It would be negating, neglecting them.

Same with any developing studio that just develops its own ideas (Albion, anyone ?).

Alrik...



I did not use the word 'boring' I'm curious, though - why 'even' Ultima?



Not really. If you look at the D&D computer games, they're a very mixed bag, aren't they? Some of them are very good, others are completely dreadful. Same as all other types of CRPGs.



Well, they ARE aren't they? All RPGs live in the shadow of D&D just as all modern Fantasy novels live in the shadow of Tolkien. Doesn't mean the clones can't be good in their own right.

I think you are confusing 'original' with 'worthy'. Look at novels. There are plenty of really great Fantasy novels, yet very few are in any way original.

Original is not always an indication of great quality, either. Did you ever see the original D&D campaign world, The World Of Greyhawk? Pretty much every world TSR subsequently developed was vastly better. Clones? Sure. But better than the original.




I think this is the part where I point out that most tabletop gamers will have played a fair number of systems other than D&D and chances are will have rulebooks for even more. I know that I have.

Let's see... Over the years, I've played Runequest, Traveller, Tunnels & Trolls, Star Wars, Champions, Marvel Superheroes, Top Secret/SI, Palladium, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Call Of Cthulhu, Twilight 2000, Earthdawn, plus a few I've forgotten the names of. I've got rule books for half a dozen more that I meant to play with but never got around to, including James Bond, Judge Dredd, Mage & Vampire (The White Wolf games) and possibly others.

So just speaking for myself here, I don't feel I'm really all that closed minded when it comes to trying new systems. Do you?

Fantasy stories are more likely to draw comparison with Tolkien, BTW, and as a writer of Fantasy stories myself I would completely expect that and not be even remotely offended by it.

(And don't worry - you don't sound harsh )

Uh : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10543100.stm

There are definitively pro's and con's for this ...

I regard this as "a foreseeable reaction of bLizzard against crackers and pirates who hide behind nondescript fantasy names", as I already wrote on RPGWatch.

I consider it a case of spooky prescience by The Noob:

The Noob suggest real name only log ins for members

And on Blizzard copying the idea.

Of course, the difference is that The Noob is supposed to be a satire on MMORPGs...

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20100707

Another comic about the same subject(look at the blog entry below the cartoon too, the author gives his elaborate opinion).

Snippet about the jRPG called "Dubloon", Source : http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=15318

That sounds absolutely brilliant! "Arrr! More rum, ye scurvy dogs! I need to cast me a spell!" Genius!

Disciples III seems to be simply ... broken ?
A review on RPGWatch : http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article?articleid=156&ref=0&id=82

A direct quote of a new thread I just opened at RPGWatch :


Hello,

today I have learned a few new words.

Which are interesting for any RPG discussions, I think, because of their general applicability.

I begin with : "Continuity porn" :
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ContinuityPorn

Second : "Pandering to the base" :
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PanderingToTheBase

Third : "Running the Asylum" :
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RunningTheAsylum

Huh, had I known these terms earlier, I would have used them in several discussions.

TDE is - to my purely subjective point of view - currently a case of "continuity porn", plus a case of "pandering the base".

Oh, my.

Alrik

Ouch! that's a pretty harsh thing to say, Alrik! I thought you liked TDE?

***

As for Disciples 3: Strategy Informer agrees

Well, I don't know.
Today I was reading through a long, long, long discussion of which kind of gameplay the TDE rules system supports.

The majority was saying : It supports simulationism. The rules are partly *extremelöy* detailed, but in other parts they are not. In this discussion Harnmaster was mentioned a few times as an exaple for a system that is even *more* complex regarding the rules ...

To me, one of the greatest problems of TDE is, that although a part of its players do see that the pack of rules has become far too complex nowadays, another part of players explicitely wants it so. I mean the complexity.

There have been several attempts to develop a much less complex rules system, but these attempts have never been fruited much, so to say.

A recent example is to use the John Sinclair rules system with TDE. I don't know, how good this works, but some people thought it to bee really good.

Right now, TDE seems to be sold or/and developed rather for the fans than for new beginners. Which might become abn obstacle for the future.

Everyone wonders why there aren't that many new beginners to the 4th edition, but no-one really asks why, meaning : critically examins posible reasons.
The fans are content, some are actually more than content with the possibility to "crunch numbers", and some have actually a lot of fun with playing so complex combat rules (you don't see anything of that complexity in the PC games).

Everyone says that everything's just modular, but no-one seems to really be willing to actually help newcomers with the complex rules. Some people play these complex rules, but they just say "skip them" instead of really helping them with these complex rules. To me, this i nothing but pushing th problem of the complex rules into the future of these newcomers.

Okay, I admit it, this is quite harsh.

I admit it: I'm biased. It's because there is a certain style of play in common which I don't like. Which I cannot comply with.

I belong to a group of TDE players which are kind of a dying race. Much more "old school", so to say.
And no complexity at all.

I see what you mean, Alrik. The kind of players who want to have rules for absolutely everything were always anathema to me, too. Role playing should NEVER be about what's written in the rule books. Rules are just the framework, after all - they are not the game.

A fast and loose system allows for creativity and improvisation (Which is why I definitely preferred it as both player and GM) but to the true Rules Lawyer and the Number Cruncher, the idea of not having a calculation or a rule to hand for everything is unthinkable. Mainly, I suspect, because they are NOT creative thinkers and cannot make stuff up as they need it.

If those types win the argument for any game, it's truly a sad day for role players generally

There needs to BE a system, sure. It's the framework the story is hung on. But if the framework is in danger of becoming the story then it's gone far too far. Any system that is so complex it actively impedes the story is even worse, of course...

Exactly this looks to be the problem with the current TDE rules set, as I see it.
But please note that the way I see it still remains subjective.

Noted