It's the latest installment of the "Das Schwarze Auge" series of videogames, based on the most successful german P&P RPG books. And I think the original german release wasn't considered budget, it came with the 4th Edition Rulebook in paper format. So it's just every other country getting screwed by the publishers. My first impression was that character generation got a LOT easier (Shadows over Riva anyone?) and you only generate one character. But it was still engaging, and i tampered around for quite a while. The game itself runs very poorly on my stone-age computer, but it runs! So a plus in itself, for getting it work on a Radeon 9600XT
I gotta get a new computer sometime, and play through this sucker. The only thing i was wondering why they changed the english title from 'Realms of Arkania' to 'The Dark Eye'. It is more accurate, I know, but from the old title most people would have known it is akin with Riva and Star Trail.