It's like NWN2 only better!
+ Great atmosphere, gameworld and characters
+ Fun and challenging gameplay
+ Memorable encounters
- Long and boring dialogue
- Wierd leveling system
- Your own character is pretty boring
In long:
Based on the most popular German pen-and-paper RPG it's not suprising that Drakensang is very similar to Neverwinter Nights 2 and it's modules. However it comes off as superior in almost every aspect, offering a long and fun RPG experience.
Graphics-wise Drakensang not only looks better than NWN2, most importantly it runs perfectly smooth on the average system. The game clearly differs from the "realistic" visuals of the recent "Lord of the Rings" or "Neverwinter" games, opting for a more "cartoony" presentation by combining exaggerated characters and clothing with colorbook-like settings.
The whole game world itself is beautifully done with varied settings, from pleasant countrysides over dark forests to the lively capitol (And of course no RPG would be complete without dungeon-crawls). The areas are huge which on the one hand put the 3-5 second loading times far apart, on the otherhand you'll often find yourself walking great distances. The only exception is the main city, Ferdok, itself. Doing quests in the city will have you wandering around and encountering, due to the city being divided into half a dozen "loading areas", the loading screen several times. There's also the overland map when travelling large distances.
A big plus goes to the great and memorable "boss" encounters. From fighting a living tree to descending deep underground into a rats nest to find a giant mother rat. The encounters are all very satifying and challenging enough to punish a forgotten quicksave .
There are however some shortcomings. First of all there is practically no character customisation. You get to choose your name, gender and class. The races (and some genders) are connected to your class. Even skill point distribution is limited. This coupled with the fact that there are also very limited choices in quests and dialogue (good-evil paths) makes your character very shallow and boring. Much in contrast to your very sympathetic companions.
Secondly, there is simply too much boring and needless dialogue. It doesn't help either that only the first dialogue screen is voiced. So unless you want to read a game instead of play it, you'll often just click through dozens of dialogues, maybe even missing a vital piece of information. But after posting this on the forums this may or may not be a negative aspect and it all depends on if the user welcomes loads of pages of unimportant (to the main plot) information that detail the backstory.
I don't want to go into the voice-acting and silly dialogue since I'm playing the German version, but I can go on to say that the soundtrack does it's job. In fact I think it's excellent because it's mediocre and varied. Therefore there are no moments of silence and you don't have a certain tune in your head after playing for several hours in a row.
Third, the game has a really wierd leveling system. Basically, there are 3 ways to spend your XP. A. increase an attribute (costing alot of XP) B. increase a skill (costing little XP) or C. learn an ability (needing a trainer and costing moderate XP and gold). This takes some time to get used to.
The gameplay itself offers an interesting main quest with enough side quests to keep you busy for hundreds of hours. Combat is pretty much like in Neverwinter Nights 2, in that it's party-base with the ability to pause now and then. For special abilities your character and companions use mana or energy pretty much like in WoW.
Bottom line: If possible I'd give this game an 8.75. It's better than 8.5 but doesn't have that extra *umpf* for my seldomly given 9.0. It's good enough to recommend to any player and a must have for RPG players.