It is a trilogy, but parts 2 & 3 are more closely connected top one another - you can especially see it when you use the game's pre-defined characters/heros and them in the cut-scenes.
Hardcore TDE fans don't like the games and the novels at all, saying they are non "canon", especially Shadows Over Riva, because of several points ( I don't remember which ones, sorry. I think it might have been something with Borbarad.)
These fans also say that ONLY the pen & paper materials (adventures and rule books /compnion books / background books) stay true to the world.
I must agree that some novels are too much "spun-off", so to say, because they contain things that wouldn't be possible within Aventuria, and some are outright bad, but i don't condemn the novels as a whole. In some recent discussions, hardcore fans say that EVERYTHING within Aventuria should be according to the rules. Everything, including protagonists, antagonists, beasts, monsters, NPCs ...
This is a form of view on the game that I call the "simulationist's view". There are several implicite kind of "factions" of players/GMs, all of them called by their preference of pen & paper role playing (refer to roleplaying theory to that). Me, I belong to the "storyteller" group, as stats don't matter much to me.
TDE 4th edition had had a *huge* boost towards world simulation. In the official forums, I have often the feeling as if people are mostly posting there who hve been attracted by this playing style, but I could be wrong, too. At least their group isn't small, carefully put.
3rd Edition and before were rather oriented towards "board game like playing" as i put it. There were extensive rules, but not this "simulation" chracter of them. The rules (especially the extended ones) could be complex, too, but they weren't made to make a "world simulation" out of TDE, at least that was my very personal impression.
A different topic : On Viva Pinata : It is COLOURFUL ! Oh yes, it is ! It is even SO colourful that I think the label "childish" is easy to apply to it.
The game is apparently aimed at youngsters. I couldn't do too much because it was late, but hat I did was fun !
Unfortunately the game relates its language to the one of the installed system (I read about ising the LOCALE variable, but where I read it the xbox variant of it could have been meant, too).
Which means that I must play it in English, since my "gaming PC" is in English, too.
It even fully ignores any localization settings I made within the control panel. And MUI just isn't available for Winxp, it seems to me.
It has an indirect form of DRM : The online connection. To "windows live". Because ou just can't save the game without being connected to their severs ! - Or so I understood it.
I don't like it. So I played it yesterday evening without saving.
I don't get it. People accuse disc cheks of being "virii", - and they don't care even the tiniest bit if they have to be constantly connected to some obscure online servers ... Even if microsoft is a rather well-known company, it is also well-known for "what have I do to with what I said yesterday ?" ("Was kümmert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern ?") kind of attitude. They might be cutting these severs off any time in the future.
Maybe I'll reactivvate my ancient windows live account again, which I only vagiuely remember, and I don't even remember anymore why I hasd made it in the first place ... Could have been something to do with their VB Express Edition ...