Drakkhen

SNES

Kemco - 1991

To get a good idea of how this game works, let me sum up my first half hour or so of playing for you:

Wow! that dragon is using lightning bolts to tell me some plot. Yeah, four elements, dragons, whatever.

Make Characters? I guess. You are dumb and strong. You are a fighter. Have some physique. You are a Mage. Be intelligent! I command it.

I am facing a dungeon. Um . . . I guess I go in, then? Maybe?

Now I am walking! Dude, that lizard looks pissed. AAAAH! FIGHTING! What is going on? what is happ- it’s over.

lalala. Hey – that guy just told me dinner’s not ready. Oh well – hey! Is this another battle?!! Oh no! what do I DO?! You in the poncho! fight him! Or something!! What in the world are you all doing? It looks like some ridiculous dance . . . are you gonna, y’know, fight any time soon?

Beyond the hopelessly comical battle system, Drakkhen is a boring RPG that has been poorly phrased and looks funny.

Plotwise, it’s really hard to figure out what’s going on in the game. You have a rough idea that you have to save the world, but beyond that . . . The explanations given are poorly worded and don’t always make sense. At least, and I mean at very least, you are clear on what it is you have to do next.

The least attractive element of Drakkhen is the graphics. While the Dungeon/Castles look decent enough, The world map can be trying – it’s 3-D, but All the objects in it, with the exception of lakes and . . . um . . . large black blobs, are 2-D sprites. So when you turn around, the trees, rocks and houses are always “facing” you. It’s a bit disorienting.

Worst of all, there’s precious little originality. The classes and stats are mostly Dungeons and Dragons ripoffs, the plot is nothing at all new and the characters are cardboard cutouts (and don’t forget adrogenous and lacking in facial features. It’s creepy!). Sigh. Poor plot and graphics can almost be forgiven if the rest of the game is interesting enough, but Drakkhen just doesn’t have much going for it. Maybe the game gets more interesting, but I got so frustrated and confused that I just quit.

All of this having been said, it almost would’ve been fun if I didn’t die every third or fourth fight.

When I think about it, Drakkhen is a game that belongs much more on the NES than the SNES. It’s an old school RPG with simplistic graphics and story – The only thing that remotely indicates that it was made for a 16 bit system is the vaguely 3-D world map. It’s really hard to believe that this game is in the same Genre and on the same system as Final Fantasy 3/6.

What liked: Prince Horkden does a dance. Dance, Horkden, dance!

What disliked: Graphics, plot, unoriginality, barfing sounds that most of the monsters seem to make, randomly appearing guy who gives weird advice, strange and enigmatic battle magic system.

What to expect: A typical RPG in many many ways. A cautious and unsuccessful foray into “3-D” graphics.

What not to expect: An RPG you haven’t seen before.

What's so different from this and other games of it's genre: Go you same tired four heroes! Save the world . . . from some dragons . . . or something. Yeah, practically nothing’s different.

Ratings on:

Control: 4 (It’s hard to understand and difficult to accomplish what you want to accomplish.)

Graphics: 2 (Really hard to stomach as well as being bland and only slightly interesting.)

Sound: 8 (Very much Early 90’s RPG MIDI style, but if you leave it just running by itself at “night”, it’s so mellow that it could put you to sleep. Soothing. Aaaaah. Goodnight, Drakkhen.)

Style: 2 (My kingdom for an idea I haven’t seen or heard before. A point for trying to use 3-D this early.)

Difficulty: 7 (pretty hard game. Lots of dying, and the only places you can get your characters resurrected are a pain to get to.)

1st hour: 5 (The opening sucked goat balls. Hairy ones. But I’m wandering around in a dungeon and it’s actually kind of cool, so the goat ball part is sort of forgiven.)

2nd hour: 4 (Ack! What’s with this worldmap? Is this supposed to be 3-D? It kind of looks like the guys who did Star Fox started it then got bored and decided to cut and paste some pictures of trees.)

3rd hour: 3 (What? I’m confused? Why can’t I cross this crazy flashing road? HEY!! Two of my characters just died!)

4th hour: 2 (So I can only resurrect them here and here? Man, that’s halfway across the map! I’m starting over!)

5th hour: 1 (Ok – going through the first dugeon again, blah blah blah . . . Actually, nevermind. I quit. I’d rather play “Carve my own flesh with a butter knife” than trudge through this again. Goat balls are sucked after all. Hairy ones.)

#1 reason why I hate this game: Getting in a fight near water. If you’re not careful, one of your characters will just sort of mosey on into a lake and drown his or her androgenous self. It’s a bad sign when your main characters would rather drown than continue to save the world.

by Freeohio, Prince Horkden’s interim dance instructor.