The Dark Eye : Book of Heroes Reviews

I enjoy plating this game in spite of its many flaws, but recommend buying on sale. My frustration centers on the weak single player mode combined with no other players available for co-op mode. Many bugs with spells, items and abilities that don't work properly, with no patches for 2 years, and a frustrating upgrade system where often I don't know what I'm "buying". In spite of this non of the problem prevent the missions from being fun and the varied plot lines encourage replay.

Holy moly what a bad game. If you are a fan of The Black Eye this is not for you because they don't care about the lore. If you are a fan of procedually generated dungeon crawlers this is not for you because the tilesets are boring and badly stiched together If you are a fan of a fun gaming experience this is not for you because it is just boring. Not worth your time even if it was free.

I love this small game - there is advanced background/class/race character creation which gives you background and personal quests to pursue - that is a feature I was missing in many RPGs for roleplayers, then it generates numerical stats itself based upon that -again something I'm OK with as I play not a perfectly min maxed character, but a character based on a chosen background. Then I love the group of adventurers - simle party (for solo play, for coop it is replaced). I don't control them, so it looks a bit funny how they wonder around on their own, but it could be annoying in more tense combat. I do like the system of choosing skill cards at the end of dungeons, which will become permanent if you choose to, and simple potion/accessories crafting. I like those random events in dungeons where I can use my other than combat skills. I like the music and overal feel of inn full of adventurers setting off to their own goals. Also point and click movement/interactions feel smooth. I'm OK with simple narrator/non voiced dialogues. EDIT after playing longer: Pursuing my own personal quest does sound interesting, but sadly the game isn't finished and instead there is cheesy complete 10 dungeons to unlock something, which is the most hated online feature and I believe that was a mistake made because of the coop implementation decision. I wish they would focus on singleplayer aspect instead and flesh out the group of adventures, implement better progression and instead of number of dungeons to complete, make story dungeons unique and others could be just random dungeons on the way. I believe it does have low score because of Dark Eye fans and those MMO repetitive mechanics, because the new dungeons reuses the assets and the game is not strategic enough to make something that much better/different the next time, but you get random cards as rewards, so the next time you are stronger, and you meet different encounters, but they don't repeat as they should have and they seem to be unfinished/too few. I wish some of those encounters would become permanent - like hiring new kind of adventurers and level them up. So I hope for more singleplayer focused sequel, but it doesn't have to be named Dark Eye, because it doesn't use anything from the setting anyway.

A Watered down edition of DARK EYE. less Roleplay statistics, less strategy, less treasure, Magic, Fun, strategy etc... Don't get it.

Love this game! It's a very unique experience that is stained by unfortunate bugs. The way the system works is you choose an origin story on character creation which will give you a series of objectives. As you complete quests from the bounty board, you will be able to access and complete parts of your origin story. Completing runs gives you cards that will allow you to upgrade many different skills and stats. Completing your origin story allows your character to access a unique quest area in the bounty board and unlock more origin stories. There are a total of 8 origin stories. The amount of stats and skills is incredibly overwhelming first time you play and will create a learning curve until you get familiar with the way the systems work. The combat is tactical and slow paced, so you cannot simply run into a room like a madman as you will risk getting party wiped, but this works great and to the advantage of the game. Plenty of puzzles and randomization is core to the gameplay as the cards you get are randomized, and so are the dungeons. The illustrations are definetly the highlight of the game for me as they really reflect the style and concept the devs are going for and they are absolutely gorgeous! Any of them could be a painting at my house anytime! Overall it's an incredibly unique game and it's a shame it released with so many bugs, although the devs have been very quick to address most of them and already have plans to fix even more! I will update this review once this is the case but even now, if you want a very unique and new cRPG experience, grab this. Even with the bugs and steep learning curve, it's still an extremely fun game, made even more fun with friends or other players. Itemization is rare and you have to take risks and higher difficulty dungeons to get better gear, but it feels great when you get that rare sword or platemail! My coop partner was frustrated with the start of the game as many people reviewing negatively also are, but as we went along we fell in love with it. After finishing our first 2 origin stories, we're now rolling 2 more characters with new origin stories and doing it all, all over again!

This is not a 1.0+ version....this feels like it should be an EA. I had to double check that it wasnt. Its def not worth the full price. I'd still have a tough time defending a $9.99 price point for this in its current state. I wouldnt have buyers remorse if I knew this was an EA title. The one plus....character creation is entertaining with choosing cards for classes/backgrounds/missions. The lore seems cool. Nothing much past that, the AI is awful, using abilities such as disarm trap is clunky. Running around the map feels clunky, the AI will just take off on its own....just all feels boring. I'm hoping the Devs release some sort of statement about the current release, and why we should continue to play and look forward to something.

The game makes a decent first impression but the experience is marred by the actual gameplay which fails to properly recreate the pen and paper experience. It feels too hands off for veterans and almost certainly too obtuse for non initiates. The introduction of emergent storytelling elements is an incredibly nice feature but it can't make up for the lack of control over the party (as a solo player) and the severe lack of possibilities when it comes to building up your character (other Das Schwarze Auge videogames are more faithful to the ruleset when it comes to that).

I cannot recommend this game to anyone, in it's current state. Watching the trailer made me think this game was trying to stay close to pnp source material, however, the truth turned out to be the exact opposite. Everything is dumbed down and oversimplified, while character advancement solely relies on randomly rewarded cards! CARDS!!! That's right-you lvl up your character by pulling a card out of deck, as a reward for completing dungeons! You earn AP, which you use to cash-in earlier mentioned card. And you get to pick one card out of three random ones. So having any build or any character advancement depth is out of question. In it's current state, the game belongs more to mobile market, rather than PC.

This game would have been... "okayish" back in 2010. We're in 2020 and I can't believe someone actually decided that this game was decent enough to be released. - It's ugly. It's seriously ugly. There was some good art during character creation but that's about all. Once you stop building your character with the cards and customize its appearance, it's a massive disappointement. Textures are ugly, characters are ugly, some of them aren't even properly displayed (one of my henchmen did not have a torso ?) and the art direction is poor. - The gameplay is boring and unfun. You just run, click on a mob, wait until it's your turn to hit... It's not fast-paced at all, which would be fine if the game was turn-based, but no, it's real time. Enemies will frequently leave melee once they are outnumbered, get a ranged weapon, shoot you, then come back in melee, then rince and repeat. You have... "puzzles" ? Put statues on pressure plates that are located within the same room and in plain sight to open doors. - The UI is terrible. I did not find a way to change key bindings in the options. Maybe there is not, maybe there is ? The fact that you can't find it tells a lot. It means if you have a non-qwerty Keyboard, or just want to change some bindings because you're used to them... Well you won't. You need to maintain a key to display your map as well. Why ? There may be a key to display it at all time but since I didn't find a keybindings menu, I can't tell you. Awesome. - For a game with such poor graphics and no physics whatsoever, you could imagine it runs smoothly. Well it does not. Alt-tabbing means either a crash, or various softwares like Discord or even your Steam Library will need to be killed in Task Manager so you can restart them. This game is definitely not worth 25$ and it's not worth 5$ either. The base idea was awesome: I was looking forward to grind dungeon with friends or strangers, in different environments, while gaining new abilities or powers based on what my character would accomplish. The execution is terrible. This needs to be either reworked from scratch, or will need years of fixing and I doubt this will compensate the very poor state the game is in right now. Do not waste your money on this.

I'm a little shocked by how primitive this game is. You can't control your companions so basically you just walk around the map, into combat and hope for the best. Not sure if I'm just too early in the game but there is literally nothing to do but watch as everyone poke whatever they please. No formation, no targeting, nothing. There is also no difficulty settings which I guess is irrelevant when the encounters are this pointless. So far there is no story other than completing mission objectives. There are games a hundred times more developed at this price point. Am I asking for too much?? Think I'm too late for a refund and I might be desperate enough to keep playing. But man it's not gonna be fun.