DTP Entertainment Drakensang: The Dark Eye review

Drakensang is a third-person RPG that’s firmly rooted in a world of dice rolls and statistics, which isn’t surprising as it’s based on a popular German pen-and-paper game.

However, unlike recent role-playing hits, such as Fallout 3, it makes few concessions to action gamers.

Character creation is limited to 20 templates and you can’t freely combine races and classes. As you accumulate experience points, you can spend them on any skill you’ve learnt in the game. Other characters will join you as you progress. You can have up to three members in a party at any time, while extra characters can wait at your house.

You begin the game on a simple journey to visit an old friend, but events soon lead you to become the legendary dragon quest. This game is big, both in scale and length. The game’s massive size has its problems, though. We had to play for several hours before the story got moving, and it wasn’t until long after we’d solved a series of grizzly murders that we began to feel invested in the plot. At times, we felt that we were being carried along on rails, with no real influence over the course of events. There are no quick travel options, so we spent a lot of time traipsing from one end of a large location to another.

We weren’t convinced by the graphics. The scenery is fine, and there are some nice textures and light effects, but character animation looks stiff and marionette-like. The turn-based combat gives the impression of real-time action, but it can be hard to manage your party’s attacks in tight spaces.

Drakensang is well implemented, but not inspired. However, we liked the balance of character interaction, exploration and combat. If you’re a role-player looking for a stats-oriented game that’s about more than constant action, then Drakensang should keep you occupied for a long time.