Drakensang Online

Drakensang Online is a free-to-play action based role-playing game based on the popular Drakensang tabletop license rivaling Dungeons & Dragons in popularity in its native Germany.

True to the source, this game also features dragons, this time in a freshly Germanic fantasy world. The environments and designs remind me of Guild Wars, but this game feels a little more rough around the edges and a bit on the darker side when it comes to world-building. The visuals are gorgeous, the colors are bright, and the performance is not half bad. Drakensang Online runs fast enough on an average modern PC to provide a smooth and comfortable playing experience. Effects do not disappoint either - battles sometimes feel like extreme club nights. The only thing lacking is variety of enemy models, but that's a flaw I can live with.

The interface is clean, well laid out and doesn't get in the way of combat, which is dynamic, fast paced and allows for an element of tactical thinking. Available player skills are distributed among three playable classes: melee focused dragonknight, ranged spellweaver or a hybrid class of ranger. Gearing up and arming up your skills, you can then engage the enemy, all close and personal, with actual need to click and be creative with your attacks instead of the boring auto-attacking routine so common in modern MMO games. Along with the standard action bar that you can place your skills onto, you can set three attacks onto the mouse buttons. Left click always casts the same attack whilst pressing tab alternates what spell you have bound to the right button, which makes combat both exciting and open to inventive thinking. All skills have their uses, and nothing feels boring or tacked on for numbers.

Quests in the game are pretty standard fetch-kill-find routine, but that's not that tragic given how good the combat is. There's a pretty basic crafting system people may enjoy. Social elements like chat, groups and guilds are all present.

Overall, Drakensang Online is a fun entertaining game with pretty graphics and fun combat. It's a bit short and doesn't reinvent the genre, but still manages to entertain quite a bit.