The Dark Eye / Das Schwarze Auge

[Philippe]

This posting is really for Jason Pratt's benefit, because if he isn't familiar with this, he should be.

Gamersgate has Daedalic's four Dark Eye games on sale for $15 for the next couple of days.  Two adventure games (Chains of Satinav and Memoria) and two RPG games (Blackguards and Blackguards 2).

When Chains of Satinav first came out I turned my nose up at it, even though I sometimes like adventure games.  A couple of years later I watched a playthrough on YouTube because I figured I wouldn't ever buy it, and the playthrough made me realize that the game was essentially the storyboard for a movie.  I ended up buying Chains and Memoria, and like all good novels, knowing how the main plot turns out (or could turn out) doesn't really matter.  The voice acting is very, very good, and the screens are gorgeous to look at.  Probably the best adventure games I've ever played.  They need to be played in order because it's really a two-part story, and a poignant one at that.

Blackguards and Blackguards 2 are RPG games, Daedalic's take on the Dark Eye RPG system that some of you may be familiar with from the Realms of Arkania games from the 90's. The TDE/DSA system is somewhat like D&D, only a lot smoother and with a lot more depth.   The Blackguards games are very good and very polished (I've played all of Blackguards and part of Blackguards 2) and will leave you wishing that the guys who made the Blade of Destiny remake had half of Daedalic's technical skill.  I'm very fond of Banner Saga, though I must admit that I never played the ending of that game because I got bored with the combat system. If you figure out how combat works in Blackguards you won't get bored, because every battle is hand-crafted. You have freedom of movement most of the time, but the game is not a sandbox.  A big part of the challenge is figuring out how character development works, because if you don't follow the game's logic you won't win many battles.  And a character from Chains of Satinav shows up in the first Blackguards just long enough for you to realize that Blackguards is taking place a few years after Chains.

Disclaimer: I'm a Dark Eye junkie.  I buy Dark Eye games, even when I know they're going to be awful.  Let''s not talk about Demonicon.  I still haven't forced myself to play more than a little bit of it, but I eventually will because it takes place in an geographical area I know nothing about.  Drakensang and River of Time, on the other hand are very good, despite a few annoying features. Very good, by the way, is shorthand for "they make the world of the Dark Eye come alive".  I loved the three Realms games from the nineties, and have been sweating through the Blade of Destiny remake (it's not as bad as it was when it first came out and is worth a visit if you're into the Dark Eye, but it still has a ways to go).

[bayonetbrant]

Is that based on the old German Schwarze Auge tabletop RPG from the 80s?  I've actually got a bunch of those here somewhere.

[Philippe]

Yes, the Blackguards games are derived from DSA 4th edition.  They aren't exactly the same as the 4th edition, but if you've played DSA/TDE they'll make perfect sense. There's a Wiki article that explains some of the differences between the different editions.  DSA/TDE has been continually evolving for something like 30 years.

Blackguards 2 is slightly different from Blackguards.  Blackguards was close enough to the DSA/TDE system that a lot of conventional computer gamers got confused (oh, the poor dears...sigh).  It also introduced a few minor kinks of its own, that left prisoners of their own assumptions even more at sea. So when they released Blackguards 2 they streamlined it a bit.  Some people complained that it had been dumbed down.  I've played about half of it, and it hasn't been dumbed down as much as streamlined, and it has to be streamlined because the focus is different:  Blackguards plays out a bit like a party of adventurers going on a quest, Blackguards 2 is a bit like Jagged Alliance in that you have to conquer a country and defend your holdings against counter-attacks.

Note that Drakensang isn't an exact replica of TDE/DSA either.  But they're both close enough to the original that if you've played Drakensang, the hardest parts of Blackguards to understand will make perfect sense to you.

One of the things that bothered Steam players a lot was that they were too literal-minded (or perhaps not literal-minded enough) and used to having everything spoon-fed to them.  One of the big bones of contention was that Blackguards would display a to hit chance that meant the probability of landing a blow in the immediate vicinity of a target (before adjusting for things like parries, dodging, and armor), and some people were upset that it didn't refer to the probability of drawing blood.  Yes, I have a  100% chance of hitting the frontal armor of a Tiger tank at ten paces with a pea-shooter, but the chance of actually penetrating that frontal armor is nil.  This was apparently too difficult a concept for most people to wrap their head around.

[JasonPratt]

This is one of the times that I wish our forum software had a Tag function enabled; I had no idea this thread was for my benefit!  :-[ (Or even why it's for my benefit.  :)) )

Thanks muchly Philippe. :) Though I haven't played it yet, I did in fact already own Chains of Satinav, and picked up Memoria on the sale. Haven't gotten the Blackguards games yet but have been eyeing them (ho ho) for a while. Part of me thinks I have Drakensang around somewhere...