Although I'm spending the majority of my gaming time with Dragon Age: Origins at the moment, I just couldn't resist buying Radon Labs old school RPG Drakensang when I found a cheap digital download deal online. I was immediately impressed by the complex character creation system and the impressive range of starting archetypes to choose from, and I'm really looking forward to digging deep into all these stats and figure out how everything works.

From the hour or two I've spent with the game so far I get serious Baldur's Gate 1 vibes - which in my case is a good thing, since I liked that game much better than its ponderous sequel (and most other RPGs of the last decade or so, for that matter). For one thing, the sunny, cheerful fairytale world is a welcome change from both Dragon Age's forced grittiness and Oblivion's decidedly humorless take on the high fantasy concept. The gameplay mechanics are at their core very similar to Dragon Age - right down to the little details such as penalties for injuries and the usefulness of herbalism - but interestingly enough there seems to be a lot more non-combat skills in Drakensang (including social ones like Seduce and Fast Talk). (less info)