Oh, the weather inside this circle is frightful.
GameSpy's Free Agent is your advance recon into the world of free-to-play games. His mission: jump into a free game every week and put in some hours to see how much fun can be had without spending a cent, then try out some paid items to see if they're worth the asking price. This week, he hacks and slashes his way through the Diablo-esque dungeons of Drakensang Online to find out how far he can get before his insatiable loot lust leaves him with an empty wallet.
No Money Down
After a quick, no-frills character creation process, Drakensang Online dropped me in the middle of some random forest. I'd never laid eyes on it before, yet somehow I felt right at home. The red and blue health orbs, the simple skill interface, the overwhelming, almost primal urge to click-click-click everything to death-death-death -- this apple didn't fall far from the Diablo tree. Small pop-ups offered brief tutorials, but I waved them away. Everything is in its proper Diablo-ish place, and my Spellweaver was flinging fireworks at a race of gremlins ostensibly made out of paiper mache in seconds.
The world is vast and open for exploration, giving me access to dingy swamps, brightly decorated settlements, and abyssal caverns.
My early adventures inspired confidence. Leveling felt brisk, though a total lack of skill trees meant that my elemental spell-based ability selection was about as exciting as a hibernating turtle race. The world, meanwhile, is vast and open for exploration, giving me access to dingy swamps, brightly decorated settlements, and abyssal caverns within the first few hours. Did Drakensang feel like a world-class contender for Diablo's epic throne of +7000000000 to Blizzard's bank account? No. But as far as simplistic, generic also-rans with a bit of MMO flair go, I've seen a whole lot worse. I could spend some happy, clicky time in here.As a hero, I get to do things like invade monsters' homes and take their things.
Or so I thought. After I hit level 15 in about three and a half hours, Drakensang's free facade started to chip away, and I began to notice the warts underneath. Things slowed down significantly -- part of this was due to the increasing demands of my XP meter for the next level (standard for an RPG) but the other contributing factor was far more insidious. See, like the Diablos of yore, Drakensang erects a series of tiny gates between the player and gratification.
So let's say a rare item -- replete with seductive blue text and a come-hither look that may as well fire lasers at self-control -- finds its way into my inventory. Well, I have to identify it before I can actually use it or even sell it at its full value. Or perhaps I want to exit a dungeon and head back to town without backtracking. In both cases, I need special items to accomplish my goals: crystals of truth and location-specific teleporter obelisks, respectively.
Diablo's equivalent scrolls, of course, are relatively easy to come by. Drakensang, by comparison, makes these rather essential items fairly scarce as drops, but widely available in shops for the buyable currency, Andermant. Somewhat brilliantly -- you know, in an evil-genius-perched-atop-a-tower-of-kitten-tears kind of way -- Drakensang starts new players off with a meager supply of 600 Andermant (roughly 70 cents worth) so that, when it runs dry, we instantly realize how essential these items are to enjoyment of the experience.
When they're on fire, goblins look kinda like chickens.
My near- nonexistent potion supply made itself painfully apparent when giant hordes of enemies went into murder-blender mode on my squishy Spellweaver.
Andermant can be earned through combat and questing as well, but it trickles in at such a slow rate as to be impractical. And it's not just crystals of truth and teleporters that require Andermant, either. Health potions, inventory expansions, weapons, armor, item upgrades -- all of it's tied to Andermant and Andermant alone. Drakensang's freely flowing gold currency, by comparison, is basically a joke. And so, after about five hours of free play, my experience became tediously backtrack-heavy -- especially when quest chains required me to enter the same dungeon multiple times. Difficulty, meanwhile, remained manageable by and large, but my near-nonexistent potion supply made itself painfully apparent when giant hordes of enemies went into murder-blender mode on my squishy Spellweaver. Grouping with other players definitely helped, but while soloing I felt like I was tightrope-walking without a safety net. Insert Coin
Drakensang's item selection is -- on an individual basis -- actually incredibly cheap. It does, however, add up, making it a nickel-and-dime scheme of a nearly literal sort. So a stack of 10 low-level health potions, for instance, ran me 350 Andermant, or about 40 cents. Playing intelligently, I tended to use up that many in an hour and a half or so. I also found that potions of insight -- which double experience gain -- made progression feel just about perfect. They run 600 Andermant a pop for a 30-minute duration. Fast-travel, meanwhile, usually land in the 40-Andermant range, so roughly four pennies. And crystals of truth are 450 Andermant for a bundle of 100, totaling out to about 50 cents. So a single hour-long play session ran somewhere in the area of $2.50. On its own? Chump change. But if I were to play that way all the time, it'd add up fast.
Yes, this swamp slime is "living," but is he truly alive?
Drakensang Online's like the old high school science class experiment with the frog and boiling water.
Moreover, potions go up in price as your level increases, and more crystals of truth are required to identify higher-level items. So level 20 health potions cost 500 Andermant, level 30 health potions require 650, and so on. Basically, it's like the old high school science class experiment with the frog and boiling water. Instead of tossing you in and turning your cash to ash upfront, Drakensang slowly cranks up the heat over time. Free or Flee?
Drakensang Online lures players in with promises of penny pinching, loot-hording Diablo-style action. A few hours won't cost you a single cent, but over time nickel-and-dime sales tactics on essential items like potions and identify crystals take their toll. The longer you stay, the more you pay. But here's the download link if you want to take your chances.