I tried Drakensang but got bored early on and switched to The River of Time instead. It was released after Drakensang, but the story takes place before it, so skipping the first game wasn't a problem. I found the second game easier to get into, the story-telling did a better job of drawing me in right from the beginning.
I played The River of Time with unofficial German language and voiceovers patch applied to the Steam version. Since I haven't finished it so far (I took a long break near the end, still need to complete the expansion and the final quests), I haven't posted a review yet, but in case that helps, here are some (mostlly) unedited notes that I made for it (probably a few years ago):
PROs + Beautiful to look at, good soundtrack (
sample 1,
sample 2)
+ Good voice-acting (German version)
+ No tedious resting, mana and hp automatically regenerate outside of combat
+ Game let's you continue exactly where you left it, even without saving (apparantly it creates a "Continue" save when quitting)
NEUTRAL o Surprisingly rich in enjoyable and varied content (including puzzles and such), but at the same time often a bit average and flawed.
o Setting is standard DSA and the story is nothing outstanding, but I still liked it (maybe also because of that, as it's not an epic "save the world story" but on a smaller scale and a bit more down to "earth"), and in general I thought the game was fun to play.
CONs - Fast travel points don't prevent tedious walking and backtracking, since they're often placed at a certain distance from where you'd actually want to go, and you can only fast travel if you're in very specific areas
- Somewhat problematic mix of free roaming and restricted gameplay; you're confined to specific areas and can't freely explore the whole world, but even in those confined spaces you can suddenly run into encounters that are much too tough for your current level and that you will only be able to beat much later in the game when you return to these areas. An even bigger problem is that the game often allows you to accept scripted quests that lock you in with these encounters, without telling you how tough they are going to be and whether you're actually ready for them. If you don't save often, you might run into game-stopping situations there, because once you realize you shouldn't have tried to tackle the quest yet, there is no way back but reloading.
- So while you can tackle missions in any way you like, it seems counterproductive to do so; monsters that seem to hard to defeat at one level don't grant you any xp anymore if you return to them only 2-3 levels later, and it's easy to gain these during one of the main quests. Maybe you're supposed to take a break in the middle of a main quest to tackle the side quests, but in any case the window for solving these side quests seems pretty limited, if you want to get the most out of them. Fighting through monsters without getting any xp reward for defeating them is a bit demotivating. Also, tougher monsters share the same space with weaker monsters, so that you'll always be a little over- or underpowered.
- No highlighting of interactive objects and items in the environment, can lead to extreme pixel hunting, and you can easily miss important side quest items (even in areas that you won't be allowed to go back to, letting you fail the quest if you leave without spotting it).
- Sneaking seems almost useless; it's painfully slowly, worse than in NWN, and if you scout ahead with the skilled thief, the other characters will eventually follow instead of staying put where you left them.
- Hardly any AOE spells, makes combat with trash mobs slow and tedious.
- Tactical positioning is really difficult to achieve due to bad pathfinding ("not enough space to fight!"), PCs will constantly dance around the opponents and switch positions, because on the other hand, IIRC characters and opponents can often pass through each other as if they weren't solid obstacles. The battlefield will quickly turn into a chaotic mess, if you don't micromanage every step (combat is handled in real-time with pause button, btw).
- Hard to lure individual enemies away from the group; if one sees you, the others follow.
- Several areas are stuffed with the same type of unexciting opponents like crabs and bugs and wolves that will repeatedly hinder your progress but are not fun to fight and get repetitive pretty quickly.
