Drakan: Order of the Flame

I've always had a fondness for games with flight mechanics in them. Not flight simulators, I don't have enough time to learn how to actually fly a jet - I'm talking about arcadey flight experiences. Crimson Skies, Pilotwings, those sorts of things. I've also had a great fondness for Dragons: I've watched Reign of Fire a lot more than I care to admit and I think it's one of the reasons I fell in love with the Panzer Dragoon series. It was what got me to Drakan: Order of the Flame and while I enjoyed my time with Drakan, I can't help but feel it wasn't all it could've been.

Drakan: Order of the Flame is a third-person hack-and-slash adventure game (by Surreal Software) where you ride a dragon and wreak fiery havoc of the forces of evil. You explore the darkest corners of the earth, solve puzzles and encounter deadly enemies on a long quest. It offers up an enjoyable adventure for the player, easy to pick up and get into without a whole bunch of stuff going on but despite it's simplicity, you can't help but feel there was so much more they could have done with it all.

You play as a woman named Rynn, a leather clad heroine who lives in a small isolated village with her brother, Delon. The plot of Drakan starts out how most fantasy stories/games begin - evil has taken over. More specifically, they've captured your brother and burnt your village to the ground; finding your brother becomes Rynn's sole objective. She enlists the help of an ancient dragon called Arokh, who was frozen in stone after a long war centuries ago and so they begin their adventure to find Rynn's brother, and attempt to stop the dark forces of Navaros.

It isn't exactly the most original story but the places you go during the course of the story are visually distinct and interesting - an underground mine, a lost island city, snowy mountains and the depths of the underworld to name a few. There is no shop, no town and the number of friendly NPC's could be counted on a single hand: indeed, the one thing Drakan succeeds at is the sense of abandonment. There is no one to help you, the world is teeming with evil and humanity is almost extinct. Arokh and Rynn start out not liking each other but across the course of the adventure, they end up forming a bond. Their dialogue can actually be quite funny at times and they often quip to each other about the circumstances at hand. Rynn is often sarcastic about anything she sees, which helps lighten the tone of the game and most characters have distinct personalities.

Gameplay wise, it's a third-person hack-and-slash kind of game, with controls reminiscent of games like Tomb Raider. Rynn can jump, roll, shimmy along ledges, backflip - she's quite quick on her feet. She controls much better than Lara Croft ever did though, moving much quicker and nowhere near as sluggish. Combat can be quick and bloody, with enemies swarming you and surrounding you but they still attack one at a time. Limbs go flying, blood shoots in geysers and you can even decapitate people if you're quick enough. But while combat can be violent and fast, there's very little skill involved in it all - your best strategy is circle strafing and slashing as fast as you can.

The game is broken up into these sort of hub areas - a long canyon, an island archipelago, etc - and you can explore these areas at your leisure with no time limit. It's linear however, so once you move on from the canyon to the islands, there's no going back. You'll be exploring dungeons and caves, ancient ruins and cities but you'll also be riding the dragon Arokh. When you hop aboard Arokh, the game gets a whole lot better. Enemies on the ground that took you ages to kill? A single blast from Arokh's fire breath and they're gone. There's a real sense of power as you go soaring through valleys, unleashing fire from above. The larger areas really shine in this regard as they let you take Arokh for a ride without the invisible walls constraining you as much and it makes you wish they'd made a lot more of the hub areas more open. Arokh can also equip new types of Dragon Breath - usually obtained by fighting another dragon. These can be things like lightning, poison, magma and more.

You have an inventory but it's not exactly a place you'll be storing a lot of stuff. It's divided into a grid: things like potions, gems and keys will take up a single square while larger things like swords, bows and arrow quivers will take up maybe a whole two rows. When you access the inventory, the game doesn't pause - instead Rynn turns to face the camera and the inventory appears at the bottom of the screen. All weapons in the game have limited durability (well, two or three are indestructible, that's another matter) so you'll be constantly changing your weapons for new ones and swapping them out on the go. It forces you to try new weapons and you'll have to save weapons for later encounters. It's not particularly strategic, but it's another layer of stuff to think about.

Visually speaking it's quite clean and sharp, with no muddy texture work or blurred edges. Everything looks very crisp and particle effects in particular look great. There's lot of amazingly moody lighting in the caves and mines you explore - the green light of the grimstone makes the enemies strobe in and out in a really creepy way. Some of the models and animations are a little blocky but that's sort of a given for the time period the game was made in and you can still tell what it all means. Draw distance is quite good in most areas but there is still a certain amount of fog, both outdoors and in dungeons. When flying on Arokh, this is often used to surprise you and let enemies get a jump on you. It's not as bad as something like Turok or Redguard, but it is quite noticeable at times.

There's also a multiplayer mode (which used to support Gamespy I believe?) with modes like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and other. I'll admit, I'm quite hazy on what that multiplayer used to play like as I was never able to properly find a match back in the day. I don't know how you'd go trying to find a match now but I believe it supports LAN play.

But while the premise may be interesting and the core gameplay strong, you can't quite shake the feeling of missed potential throughout the whole thing. The whole thing feels sorta unpolished at times, with certain things feel underutilized or poorly thought out. Riding Arokh can be lots of fun but he'll often get caught on things and the camera can be an absolutely pain to deal with. Sometimes you'll have won't have a clear sense of where it is you're supposed to go. There's also very few enemies in the game where using the bow really works - you'll often be up close, clicking as fast as you can. It's a shame because some of the arrows and bows you can find really are quite useful but you'll never really be pressed to use them.

There's just this sense, this pervading feeling that the developers weren't quite sure what the hook of the game was and so while all the elements work and are quite solid, they don't often play well with each other. You often want for the game to step it up a notch, to introduce something big or bold or for the game to try and shock you but the Drakan never does it. It plays it pretty much the same from start to end and when the end does come, it left me with a profound feeling of 'eh'?'. And given the world and the sold mechanics, you think they'd at least try to amp it up towards the end (admittedly there are some cool fights towards the end, but the middle can really drag out for some players)

Drakan is the equivalent of finding some B-grade adventure movie at the video store - it's not big budget, it hasn't got big actors but it's got this weird kinda charm that'll make you want to stick with it. It's got a solid gameplay core, decent characters and it's got an interesting world to explore. But just like a B-grade move, you'll be left with the feeling that it just isn't doing enough at times.