The Dark Eye Demonicon Review

Over the last ten years, RPG elements have invaded every facet of video gaming; from the more refined, focused examples of fantasy and sci-fi RPG’s, to just throwing rampant progression into first-person shooters. This idea of playing and improving your characters based on your own choices, to your own specification has always been popular, and is a direct evolution from the tabletop role-playing games of Lore. Whilst in English-speaking regions the main market leader of such games has always been Dungeons and Dragons, in other countries there are big competitors.

The Dark Eye: Demonicon is based on the rule set and in game world of the original ‘The Dark Eye’ series, a German role playing game that was released in English under the title Realms of Arkania.

“An action RPG published by Kalypso Media”In Germany, this more popular alternative is The Dark Eye, and just like D&D the game has spawned a variety of digital spin-offs. Demonicon is the latest title in said franchise, an action RPG published by Kalypso Media. Can it stand strong against similar titles spawned by the advent of the Digital RPG?You start the game as Cairon, a young man travelling with his father and sister as they flee from the demonic Borbaradians. Following a relatively long intro cinematic, you’re thrown into a dark cave on a mission to retrieve your sister, on the run from an arranged marriage.

“Relatively long intro cinematic”Whilst the intro sequence is nicely crafted, it isn’t exactly easy to understand for newbies to The Dark Eye. As someone who knew nothing of the lore beforehand, I gathered that many years before, someone (the Borbaradians) sacrificed a load of babies in order to summon demons and undead hordes, which then proceeded to rage across the land causing death and destruction.Now, whilst this admittedly generic fantasy setting develops throughout the experience, it would have been useful to really understand the initial setting. Understanding seems to be assumed. However, taking it on face value is relatively easy, and so it doesn’t suffer too much for it.Like in most RP systems, actual gameplay shuffles between two key aspects; talking and fighting. Conversation is done through an all-too-familiar wheel interface, in which you select topics and responses. This seems to borrow heavily from Bioware’s successful series’, Mass Effect and Dragon Age, in terms of its execution.

Whilst mechanically sound, its suffers due to its scripting, which pales in comparison to the formerly described, and the conversations, whilst voiced nicely, mostly seem to go back to a single path regardless of which “choices” you make. Personally I’d prefer to either have actual choices, or linearity, rather than having the illusion of choice. “The illusion of choice.”However, when choice is more than just an illusion, it’s surprisingly well done. Rather than the black and white choices found in most similar titles, things are refreshingly a much more smudged shade of grey.The second aspect, the combat, is arguably average. With a standard hack and slash system and a few spells thrown into the mix, it feels clunky at times and is nothing to really be shouted about. There are a couple of different weapon types, but these are mainly arbitrary.

Fast rmx gamekult. On the bright side, hits feel pretty considerable and satisfying, but despite having decent enemy variety it never gives you that strong feeling of power.With The Dark Eye’s license comes its Roleplaying system, and what a system it is. You progress through earning levels and AP points, which are distributed throughout a variety of different stats, talents and abilities, from your strength and HP to your ability to disarm and spot traps.

Now, the problem with this is that it’s difficult to decide how to allocate them. Like anyone who has ever visited a gastro-pub could testify, too much choice can be a massive burden, especially when each choice is so crucial. There never seems to be enough points in this respect, and when this is combined with a variety of intractable objects requiring the evolution of certain, less useful skills, it can sometimes feel a little frustrating, especially earlier on.

The consequences of not levelling things like your trap finding ability can often feel harsh, and in a cheap way, but this is potentially down to the actually RP system rather than Demonicon itself. “Too much choice can be a massive burden”The aesthetic design of the game is similar to that of a host of other Fantasy experience. It feels a little raw, yet not wholly unattractive, with some good visual elements to boot. Enemy design is particularly impressive, especially in battles with the larger creatures. A few issues also stem from character design choices which are obviously linked to story arcs later in the plot, including a lovely, over sexualised pair not really befitting one’s sister.All in all, The Dark Eye: Demonicon isn’t bad, but neither is it particularly good.

Whilst it has a lot of promise, it falls flat in comparison to the slew of other dark fantasy experiences. When there are so many great games to play, including Dragon Age, The Witcher, the many Dungeons and Dragons games and so many more it’s incredibly difficult to recommend Demonicon at all. It does everything decently enough, but nothing well enough to stand out, and that’s what makes it average, pure and simple.Disclaimer: All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.

On the map of Ethra, Aventuria is above the equator. Although expansive enough that its environments range from tropical forest to perpetually frozen tundra, it's one of the world's smaller continents.

Occupying much of the northern half, the largest domain is the Holy New Empire of the Griffin Throne and Gareth. Not surprisingly, this name is seldom employed outside of official matters; people most often call it the Middenrealm. The head of state, Empress Rohaja, presides over a territory made up of various kingdoms, duchies, enclaves and colonies.

Shrouded in mystery, the evil, perilous Black Lands lie to the east.In, you'll visit both of these locations and more within the popular pen and paper property. In Silver Style's upcoming RPG, your loving foster father is a murderer. Or so you've been told. As you set out to discover the truth, you also step into a tangled web of circumstances and events far greater in magnitude than you could ever have imagined.

Your actions and decisions will have the potential to affect all of Aventuria, and whether you succeed on your quest may even determine its ultimate fate. Is your destiny to choose wisely or poorly? Includes three exclusive 1280x1024 screenshots.

Setting Graphical Style Hello and welcome to the first developer diary for. In this series, The Games Company TGC) and Silver Style Entertainment will regularly inform you about the current development status of our epic role-playing game project, and provide you with important news. We also combine our complex occlusion lighting with a so-called two zone lighting system by using a special shader. This yields a soft, realistic look, while still retaining a sharp contrast between light and dark.

Is the name of the new German role-playing game we are making in Dark Eye universe. Development is still in a rather early stage, but of course, we can already tell you just what we want to achieve with this project: It is going to be an epic role-playing game with special emphasis on action-oriented combat. You can also expect to see multiplayer support and a highly detailed character generation process (the quick option to select one of many pre-generated archetypes will be available too).

The extensive main storyline with many side quests will take your character through the darkest and most dangerous regions of Aventuria. These tasks will provide for a lot of variety.

Far from the old 'kill this and fetch that' formula. In addition, many of them will have multiple solutions. I will tell you about a lot of these things in the course of this diary series, but at this point, I mainly want to give you a general impression of what you can expect from. By the way, my name is Stefan Hoffmann, and I will be primarily responsible for managing the project at TGC's internal development department, Silver Style Entertainment. Like many others on our team, I have known and have been playing The Dark Eye since my early youth. And I took part in creating the role-playing game The Fall: Last Days of Gaia, among other titles. In the first segment of this series, I would like to tell you about the project's initial phase.

At the beginning of every major game development process, there is an extensive pre-production phase in which all central aspects of the design are resolved so that surprised exclamations such as 'Oops! That doesn't work.' Won't be heard later on.

Finding a style is a fundamental part of this stage. Finding a style Finding a style means having to decide on a consistent look for the game as a whole. This is far more complex than it sounds; the job is not done just by defining somewhere that all elves have pointy ears, for example. So, we had to find a graphics style for Demonicon that fuses characters, setting and story into one consistent whole. What is special about this project is that there are requirements of the licensor we have to meet and, of course, the existence of the huge The Dark Eye fan base.

Roman empire game. As far as I can tell so far the only reason to spend cash is to speed things up.

Its members have a clear image in their heads, formed over many years, of how a wyvern has to look in Aventuria - just copying a picture of it is obviously not enough, however. As a result, we already had a number of basic specifications that we had to keep in mind.

To have some freedom in designing the game's graphics, we chose a style combining realism and artistic aspiration. The following paragraphs will tell you exactly what this means.

Characters The characters are the most important point of finding a style; for them, the pen and paper source material already had made the most detailed specifications to which we had to adhere. This automatically resulted in the necessity of the characters having absolutely realistic proportions and being as highly detailed as possible, as opposed to the style of other titles like World of Warcraft. For them to blend optimally into the overall picture of the graphics - attention, graphics experts! - normal and specular maps are used, as well as alpha blending and bloom effects.

All of this makes for a realistic component in the style of the figures, and for real state of the art visuals in The Dark Eye: Demonicon. (At a later time, I will tell you more about the graphics engine, which is a real heavyweight and sets new standards for role-playing games.) The distinctive feature of the general look, though, is the soft style of the characters' contours, which accentuates movements. We also combine our complex occlusion lighting with a so-called two zone lighting system by using a special shader. This yields a soft, realistic look, while still retaining a sharp contrast between light and dark.