Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager

[Admiral jimbob]

Currently playing Shattered Lands, and as you do, I'm getting pretty attached to my party and having an absolute blast with the game. However, opinions on the sequel seem decidedly mixed, and I couldn't really find much information on it at all. Where exactly does it go so wrong? Is it really that bad? Well worth playing, or something to pick up when you've run the rest dry?

Discuss!!!

 

[Stabwound]

For some reason I don't think I finished Wake of the Ravager, but I found it just as fun as the first game. It's basically more of the same if you've played the first one. It's been such a long time since I played it (6-7 years?) that I really can't remember much, though.

Actually, I think this may call for a Dark Sun 1+2 playthrough.

 

[Sceptic]

Ravager has more bugs, uglier graphics, less open-endedness, more emphasis on combat, and from what I could tell after some tweakings prompted by VOD it doesn't play nicely with DOSBox. So... yeah, it's inferior to SL in ever way. Even the plot is less interesting: instead of uniting the villages and then fighting off the elite of the Draj army you pick up the artifacts of (come on, all together now) AirEarthFireWater and then go and beat the big boss. It's still a good game mind you, just... disappointing.

 

[Fowyr]

It's worthy game, but not great like first part. Still it more lengthy and have many good moments. Camera angle was changed for worse, magic scrolls now come in two types - for learning and casting only. Also almost everyone now have metal armor. This is stupid and very unDSy. Max level for magic users now 15, I think. And you gain it in the first half of the game. In the end you must kill that thing what Cleve talking about.

 

[Elwro]

I'm pretty sure opponents are beefed up if you import your party from the first game.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

It's worth a play (particularly if you finished SL, importing parties to another game is always nice) but definitely not on par with the first one. My main beef : no desert. Cities, underground caves, fucking jungles, but no desert. Is this Dark Sun or what ?

Camera angle was changed for worse

Indeed. You go from this clean view :

to this ugly mess :

I'm pretty sure opponents are beefed up if you import your party from the first game.

Yes they are. And they should too since you're high level and half your equipment came through.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

I'm pretty sure opponents are beefed up if you import your party from the first game.

Does that mean the game's... actually challenging?
Anyway, sounds worth a download even if not quite up to scratch, I'll give it a try before I plunge into the Pool of Radiance era.

EDIT:

what the fuck

 

[Elwro]

By "beefed up" I meant that I couldn't survive the first fight in DS 2 with any party I imported from DS 1; and I finished DS 1 a few times.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Oh, that could be bad. I'll be sad if my cheesy web/mass domination tactics don't see me through.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

By "beefed up" I meant that I couldn't survive the first fight in DS 2 with any party I imported from DS 1; and I finished DS 1 a few times.

Really ? Weird, I don't remember it being that hard. The first fight is just before the screenshot I posted, right when you start the game. I remember the gards/thugs being quite hard and having many attacks/round but nothing impossible.

 

[Elwro]

Well, maybe I didn't try hard enough, I don't remember now... I'll be sure to try again after my next DS 1 playthrough.

 

[Sceptic]

what the fuck

Yes, it's that ugly. And that much of a complete mess. I don't know if the viewing area is actually smaller, but I always had more trouble seeing where I'm going in Ravager than I ever did in SL.

I'm pretty sure opponents are beefed up if you import your party from the first game.

IIRC it only defaults the difficulty to "hideous" (instead of normal) but you can still change it back to something more reasonable. In any case I don't think the difficulty does anything other than giving enemies more hit points.

 

[Excommunicator]

It's worth a play (particularly if you finished SL, importing parties to another game is always nice) but definitely not on par with the first one. My main beef : no desert. Cities, underground caves, fucking jungles, but no desert. Is this Dark Sun or what ?

Camera angle was changed for worse

Indeed. You go from this clean view :

to this ugly mess :

I'm pretty sure opponents are beefed up if you import your party from the first game.

Yes they are. And they should too since you're high level and half your equipment came through.

I fail to see any significant differences in the graphical quality or camera of DSun2 from that of DSun1, although there are some pretty significant differences in the mechanical/story design, although I think it has probably been about 10 years since I have played either game so I am probably a bit fuzzy

Dark Sun 2 is in many ways what you might expect a more "consolised" or "mainstream" version of Dark Sun 1 to be; its much more linear, has a much smaller world (although I can't remember if the overall play time is much different?) the graphics try to look better by going brighter and "larger" but end up becoming less practical and rather irritating as a result, there's a whole lot more voice acting (of questionable quality) in DSun2 and a much more contrived and cliche plot.

Though in my opinion the sequel does have its strengths; namely entertaining sound effects (I love the death screams), much more varied and rather unusual landscapes (there are some very interesting places you get to visit with a definite bizarre and refreshingly different feel to many of the places), and that is all I can really think of :/

Compared to the first it is most certainly more glitchy and buggy and more artificial in the way it forces combat on you constantly, and it definitely falls far short of its predecessor as an RPG but I enjoyed my time with it for what it was. Even if it is not the classical Dark Sun setting, it seriously beats the generic fantasy of most every other "RPG" these days

I would still recommend anyone trying it if they liked the first, even if just to be sure they won't enjoy it. There's so few decent RPG releases that it is kinda hard to be picky about it any more anyway



And RPG codex really ought to add the acronym "RPG" to its dictionary so it doesn't underline it in spellcheck it as if it is some unfamiliar term

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Okay, how do I work the character transfer utility? I get as far as picking the save to transfer, but it's either not picking up on my Dark Sun 2 directory or I'm doing something terribly wrong.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

You have to use the "chartran.exe" in your Dark Sun 2 folder. Just make sure that the paths to both games folders are valid and do the transfer. You should get a "confirmation" screen, like this :

Then in game, go to "create characters", choose "add", pick up your imported party members and voilà. It worked for me.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Ahh, they're all there under "add", cheers. I wasn't getting the confirmation screen, the chartran.exe application just disappeared after I picked the save file to transfer regardless of what directory I chose for Wake of the Ravager... so I figured it hadn't worked when I had a poke around and could only (I thought) create new characters. Thanks!

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Cool. Prepare to feel some measure of disappointment after the first (your mileage may vary) but it's still a good game. Way above today's shit anyway. Have fun !

 

[Daemongar]

DS2 seemed like a buggier, less interesting version of DS1. They added voice to the game, and I remember my game constantly crashing after the "You are needed by the Vieled Alliance. Auaahaahahaggghhhhh" at the beginning. Over and over.

If you have a jones for DS1, you might want to consider giving DS2 a pass and tryign Al Qadim: The Genies Curse. I think it used the same engine as DS1, but was based in Mexico (turbans, deserts, genies, all that stuff.)

 

[visions]

Mexico?

It's set in Al Qadim, an Arabian themed d&d setting. It's not a real rpg though, arpg with quite light rpg elements. Not a bad game though, but very very light on the rpg aspect (even lighter than the likes of Witcher or Diablo).

 

[Sceptic]

Ahh, they're all there under "add", cheers. I wasn't getting the confirmation screen, the chartran.exe application just disappeared after I picked the save file to transfer regardless of what directory I chose for Wake of the Ravager... so I figured it hadn't worked when I had a poke around and could only (I thought) create new characters. Thanks!

I hope you get this warning in time: DON'T touch the money bags (that replace the imported items) when importing your characters until play starts in Tyr, otherwise you'll lose that money. I don't know if this still happens in 1.1, or if it was specific to the floppy version (the one I had) but better safe than sorry.

Cool. Prepare to feel some measure of disappointment after the first (your mileage may vary) but it's still a good game.

Yeah this. Beware the bugs though, even in patched version.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Sweet Jesus this is actually even uglier and more visually confusing than it looked in screens

 

[kmonster]

Sweet Jesus this is actually even uglier and more visually confusing than it looked in screens

I had the same impression too.

But when you get used to it it's not that confusing any more. I transferred my characters too but because of the buggy item transfer and the imported characters being too powerful compared to freshly created characters I decided to start with a new party.

The big city in combination with the small area you see is confusing at the beginning, but you can get used to it.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I was lucky to play Wake of Ravager first, before Shattered Lands so I never had to encounter that little shock :D

 

[Waterd103]

Darksun 1 story is well told and it feels natural how things are placed.
More impotant Darksun 1, unlike most CRPG to be honest, do not fail prey of "artificially" making the game longer.

There almost no "meaningless or uselss fights". most fights have a plot intention. Its so that you rarely fight the same creater more than 2 or 3 times in the game!, there is a huge variety of creatures and little repetitve pointless meaningless fights. Every fight has a point and a reason, and are generally huge fights, not just "oh, 2 slimes to kill", so its more about less , bigger fights.
That has been imo the strongest point in Darksun that almost no PC CRPG replicate.
The writing is funny, and you can enjoy the dialogue, instead of just skipping over it.

Darksun 2, forgot all this and failed prey at throwing you random pointless meaningless battles all the time, long "dungeons" fighting the same monster again and again, and unlike darksun 1 , where you care why you are fighting you just dont un darksun 2.
Darksun 2 is uglier, buggier, laggier, and more horrible in general.

With worse atmosphere, graphics , movements, and terrible story, its a lot worse than darksun 1.

About the difficult issue, the point is that darksun balance is a mess, it has some very unbalanced stuff, half giants, dual wielding (there seems to be no penalty on dual wielding), and the cheapest multiclass ever.
Some spells are beyond broken (mass domination, hold person).
If you dont Max stats , actually roll stats, and dont use all those spells and dont use half giants, the game is challenging and interesting. But if you do use those thats, its pretty brainless point, click, and never die.

Darksun 2 seems to acknowledge the broken stuff, and is balanced properly, now unless you abuse all that stuff, the game seems near impossible.

So is that even a party that goes trhough darksun 1 relativly easy , may have serious probelms to go through darksun 2.

Ultimately I think all that makes imo darksun 1, on my top 10 best RPGS, are absent from darksun 2, making it just a mediocre RPG, at best.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

So uh. Finally got around to playing this, it's worked fine up to the end of the pyramid stage... and now two out of my four characters have computer control locked on. I don't know why. When I click the box, it just says "computer control is locked on". Why is it doing this? Manual says nothing, and Google shows no results.

EDIT: happens even if I "create" a party at the title screen and add those two characters to it. Huh.