HunterZ: I feel that I'm not likely to fare better than the computer at building and growing my party due to my lack of knowledge of Das Schwarze Auge game system.
People (including myself) generally advise playing in Advanced mode, simply because that way you can focus (e.g. the computer might spread your weapon skills, where a human player would focus on one kind of weaponry) and you can adjust the party to the way you like to play (some want to be more stealthy, others want to fight it out, some prefer to have their opponents flee, others want to kill everybody to turn up on the battlefield,...).
I fully understand how the underlying system is overly complex for a computer based roleplaying game, though I think that you can figure out a good deal of it as time passes by and while a lot of people (including myself again) are going to warn you that, measured on today's standards, the game is rather 'harsh' and tricky at times, it does still grant you room for 'non optimised' parties, so you can easily invest some on not so useful talents or spells and still successfully survive all your adventures.
HunterZ: My main impression of this game so far is that they started by building a generic game engine around Das Schwarze Auge game rules and then created the Blade of Destiny scenario over the top of it.
I've got nothing to back this up, but I think that the game was initially planned for the German market next to exclusively, because of the fear that it might not sell well in other countries and I'd wager that 90% of the Germans who bought the game had at least some idea on the system. That said, there are plenty of flawed design decisions (from today's point of view) and several suboptimal GUI strategies. In the games (and its creators defence) I'd like to point out that GUI design was rather new and 'experimental' back then.
Oslin007: Have anybody played the drakensang game
I bought both parts (during the Summer Camp Steam sale ;)), but plan on replaying Realms of Arcania first. And I delay playing Realms of Arcania until I finished my little RoA editor. And I delay finishing my editor, because I'm a horribly lazy person. *sighs*
Heretic777: I have more time and plan on beating it over the next few months.
I wish you good luck and hope that you're going to enjoy this game!
Heretic777: I will buy Drakensang when it drops to $9.99 with free ship on Amazon or I might just wait for GOG.
Considering the financial (and thus resulting jurisdictional) status of the developers and their IP, I have a feeling that you might wait a long time before GOG get access to the games. IF you consider Steam a valid alternative, it's kind of a pity, as you missed an opportunity. The game was available for 3.39€ (~5 USD) and I'm sure you'd have found some GOGer to gift you a copy in exchange for some GOG title.