{"id":4507,"date":"2009-07-21T08:22:46","date_gmt":"2009-07-21T00:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=4507"},"modified":"2010-01-14T09:00:37","modified_gmt":"2010-01-14T01:00:37","slug":"drakensang-%e2%80%93-early-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2009\/07\/21\/drakensang-%e2%80%93-early-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"Drakensang \u2013 Early Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote this entry for the school blog which I also run, so just copying + pasting + editing it here.:)<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

One trend I haven\u2019t especially liked in the last decade or so of video gaming has been the gradual dearth of role-playing games.<\/p>\n

And by this, I mean the \u2018traditional\u2019 ones and not the action-based hybrids and Diablo-clones of which we still see a semi-steady stream of, e.g. Titan\u2019s Quest<\/em> (which was a lot of fun), and the Sacred<\/em> games. The \u2018traditional\u2019 RPGs were always heavy on character development, story-telling, questing, decision-making as opposed to beating up an endless stream of mobs, acquiring the next piece of your God armor, and chalking up a few million gold pieces while at it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a couple of such RPGs over the years though not enough of them. There was the two Neverwinter Nights<\/em> games (of which a Major Project group I\u2019m supervising is making use of the NWN2<\/em> Electron Toolset engine), Knights of the Old Republic<\/em>, and what I felt was the best semi-recent RPG – The Witcher<\/em><\/a>, blogged here too.<\/p>\n

\"drakensang-01\"<\/p>\n

I was recently looking for another RPG to get my fix, and I found one \u2013 a not widely released and little known RPG translated from a German production, Drakensang<\/em>. The game isn\u2019t sold retail in Singapore but it\u2019s available on Steam<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I picked up the game, and have been giving it a go for the last evening or so. It\u2019s indeed everything I hope it was, and then some. It\u2019s very character stat based, a lot of character customization options, and a lot of quests though some are still of the medieval courier variety.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s a HUGE world. 80 hours of content. Just by taking a look at the walkthrough on Gamefaqs, you can see how long the game is. Graphically, it\u2019s stunning too and the camera zooms back far enough in third person view so that if you\u2019re prone to vertigo, this game\u2019s safe.<\/p>\n

\"drakensang-02\"<\/p>\n

Reviews for it have been a little mixed with reviewers knocking off points for its quirky combat system, variety of quests, and temperamental camera. However, the reviews at least all agree on the vastness of the game world and that there are so many options for character development – which are more important aspects for me in this sort of thing.<\/p>\n

I may write a proper review for it after I\u2019ve spent a bit more time in Drakensang \u2013 <\/em>assuming that Hannah doesn\u2019t fuss too much while I\u2019m carrying her while playing.:)<\/p>\n

(Pictures from Steam)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote this entry for the school blog which I also run, so just copying + pasting + editing it here.:) — One trend I haven\u2019t especially liked in the last decade or so of video gaming has been the<\/p>\n

Read More Drakensang \u2013 Early Notes<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-home","category-toys-technology","wpcat-6-id","wpcat-16-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}