Drakensang: The River of Time

Drakensang: The River of Time is a prequel to Drakensang, released a year (in Germany) or two (North America) after the first game. As far as I could tell, the subtitle doesn't refer to anything specific (even though the locations are by a river): it's merely something characters say when speaking of the passing of time. The main story is less of a world-saving epic in this one; for the majority of the game I didn't even know what exactly the main quest was even going to be about.

More Drakensang

For the first game's players, there will be a lot of familiar faces as companions and non-playable characters. Your companions include Ardo (murdered at the start of Drakensang), Forgrimm (like in the first game), and Cano, who became the thieves' guild master and whose daughter is one of the first game's companions. Your character is on their way to the city of Nadoret to complete their training and on the journey gets tied to the mentioned three characters and their clandestine mission.

Before actually becoming available as a companion, and as if foreshadowing his later demise, Ardo is stabbed and poisoned by something that needs a special cure. You'd think such a quest required urgency but, as is tradition, you have all the time in the world. And you might want to use that time to do as much questing as possible because the very end of the Healing for Ardo quest features an optionally-extremely-difficult boss fight against a demon.

The fourth companion of the game is an exclusive choice of either Jaakon the Mage or Fayris the Half-elf. I think three companions total would have been better so that you wouldn't need to leave one to wait back on the river boat. Ardo and Forgrimm occupy by same archetype, too, both being warriors. But I guess four is better than the extensive ten or so of the first game.

(On my post about Drakensang, I wrote that I didn't recall there being dwarves and elves in The Dark Eye setting. I have now reread my posts about the Blackguards games and there actually was a dwarf in my party. I had indeed forgotten about that.)

With Jaakon you can have a mage early so it's not as optimal to be one yourself this time. But I still made one, a metamage, to have Fayris as an archer. As my choice of weapon, I chose to specialize in spears. Unfortunately the best spear turned out to be the best only in the hands of an elf. At least I could then use the unique 'inspiration' material on the best bow for Fayris instead. Having an archer is a must for the difficult demon boss, too.

The same systems

The River of Time plays pretty much exactly like its predecessor. There are slight improvements such as few appearance options at character creation (not that it matters with gear soon covering you from head to toe) and being able to customize special traits -- the increased astral energy regeneration one is very good for casters. Thieves and dwarves can have special abilities, too. And you can drag party member portraits to switch their order unlike previously.

This time there's a difficulty setting. I played on modest Normal and rarely found an encounter I couldn't beat on the first attempt. I did take care to do fights properly, though. Things start going downhill so quickly if one of your party members is knocked out. One fight I had to return back to at a higher level, was again against a rat boss. At least this time the rat was easily accessible in a cellar, instead of being at the end of a tedious cave dive. The River of Time is more condensed than Drakensang and has far fewer repeating fights against the same enemies.

It is not entirely free of them, however. For instance, the Temple of Efferd has an unnecessarily long descent featuring in turns super easy snails and quite dangerous giant crabs. And if you have the Phileasson's Secret DLC, its Halls of Oblivion are ridiculous in its size and repetitive nature. The DLC is probably meant to be played in parts alongside the main game as you progress the story but I did pretty much the whole thing just before the final stretch. They say the DLC is more challenging than the base game but I couldn't tell with my pretty much max level party. At level 13, no enemy grants experience anymore but I suppose thanks to additional quests of the DLC, I hit level 14 by the end of the game.

I was able to beat the aforementioned demon, Zant, on first try with 0/5 seals used thanks to having read a strategy guide and coming prepared with loads of fire arrows, oneberry juice, healing potions, whetstones, and weapon balms. Even with just one seal used, the fight would be considerably easier but then you lose on the ultimate reward of a magical ring. It is debatable if it's worth it but at least on Normal the fight isn't impossible as long as you don't lose control. The ring is not unique -- there's another later into the game -- but having two means your both possible casters get one.

Possible technical issues

Some people have reported having trouble getting The River of Time to run at all. For me it didn't like fullscreen but with the -windowed launch parameter, I was able to start and play it without issues. I did play it on my laptop, though, because I suspected it being on the same engine as the first, it would refuse to run on my desktop PC due to the fix I installed to get the EA App working few years back. That beta update did something to the encoding Windows uses and some rare games (namely Drakensang and Rage) now have trouble accessing the user documents folders thanks to that.

The non-technical issue of the Drakensang games is that, while not terrible, they're not great in any aspect either, a hard okay at best. The heavy manual control requiring combat with positioning problems gets tiresome and the Dark Eye system doesn't seem to provide enough build variety or particularly great spellcasting. The stories and characters aren't memorable and actual roleplaying aspects are lacking. The River of Time didn't turn enough of a profit and the developer and publisher faced bankruptcy. Drakensang lives on as some sort of an MMORPG IP, detached from The Dark Eye.