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Drakan - Order of the Flame

Game Name: Drakan - Order of the Flame
Platform: PC using Win9x
Developer: Surreal Software
Year: 1999
Genre: 3D action-adventure game
Rated: Mature - Contain animated violence, blood and gore

Requirements:MinimumRecommended
Processor:Pentium 166Pentium II 233
RAM:32MB32MB
Graphic Card:4MB Direct3D Compatible8MB Direct 3D Compatible
Sound Card:Direct Sound CompatibleDirect Sound Compatible (A3D or EAX)
CD Rom drive:4x8x
Hard Drive:320MB (Space)400MB (space)
Controllers:keyboard and mouseForce Feedback Joystick
Direct X:6.16.1 and above
Multi-Player support:IPX, TCP/IP - 8 players

Dragon Contents:
This rating only indicates the dragon contents and importance they play in the movie/game/episodes reviewed.

R a t i n g :
This rating indicates how good or how bad was the movie/game/episodes reviewed. A rating of 5 stars on 10 is considered as the average which mean it is not good but not bad either.

Reviewed by Tempest
No alternate review available


"...and from the ashes of the Old World, another breed of man will be born.
A man born in peace and not war. And to his kin, the teachings of the
Order will be as a myth.

The sacred pact 'twixt Dragon and Rider forgotten,
dormant in time.

Yet fear not, for when the darkness is once again made flesh,
The Order will ride again, delivering righteous fire from the sky..."
- from the Sayings of Rimril, Fourth Archmage of the Order

Drakan - Order of the Flame is a 3D action-adventure game created for the personal computer (PC) market. One aspect that clearly distinguish this game from the rest is the inclusion of entirely different game styles and concepts instead of specializing in a single one. Drakan is not just a typical adventure game where the player fights off enemies with various medieval weapons, it is also a third-person view platforming game with puzzles to solves and a game with draconic flight and aerial combat. This makes the game quite interesting as these different concepts are all blended together quite seamlessly and it doesn't make you feel that you are doing the same thing over and over again.

The main character is a human called Rynn and she is obviously much weaker than her bounded dragon companion Arokh. With this obvious difference of strength between these two characters, the game must provide a valid reason for Rynn to be around and not just let the dragon does all the work. This is carefully balanced with the fact that the enemies are aware of the existence of the dragon and they try will to block his path and prevent him from reaching different sections of their base of operation. For example, they can set primitive barricades, heavy portcullis and magical forcefields but at the same time their soldiers and workers need to be able to move around, thus allowing Rynn to get past these obstacles and find a way for the both of them to move forward.

While Rynn is a warrior who is lithe and athletic and does battle, she isn't a brawler. She needs to fight using her skills, speed and agility since many of her foes are much stronger than her and will harm her badly if they are allowed to hit her. So the game encourages the player to outmaneuver enemies, sneak up on them (Rynn inflicts double damage to enemies when they are unaware of her presence, such as when they are sleeping or resting), and to use her bow and magical items wisely. Note that there is no need to hoard items, but fighting a giant with arrows at a distance is definitely easier than fighting it at close range (and facing a near certain death). The game also doesn't require Rynn to kill every single enemies she encounter, for example when Rynn is on foot in the second part of the Islands level, many crow dragons (actually, they are part-avian, part reptilian creatures and not real dragons according to the manual) will simply fly-by in the sky without noticing her.

Regarding Arokh, he won't tear away enemies using his claws and bite; his attacks are limited to his breath weapon. He begins the game with the fire breath weapon, but can acquire new ones such as poison gas, ice, electric and magma by defeating bosses. Each breath weapon has a primary and alternate firing mode. For example, the fire breath weapon shoots relatively weak but fast and long ranged fireballs while the flame stream is extremely strong but has a very short range. The magma breath weapon is very powerful but drains Arokh's breath gauge much faster than his flame breath. That gauge is self-regenerating but once depleted it can significantly reduce Arokh's firing rate (especially with the more potent breath weapons). When Rynn is on the ground, Arokh will also defend himself and protect Rynn against enemies within range so it's not one of those games where you need to leave another character in a safe place and make sure there is no enemies nearby otherwise you may return and realize that this character had been killed by a handful of goblins. Arokh is a dragon, he doesn't need protection so you can dismount anytime when you need to continue on foot without worrying about it. Arokh will also try to rejoin Rynn the moment there is a path for him to do so.

This isn't to say that Arokh will just let Rynn go ahead the moment there is a cave or an underground (something that happens rather frequently in the sequel Drakan - The Ancients' Gates where Arokh would clearly be able to follow Rynn but will hit an invisible/artificial "forcefield" preventing him from doing so). Arokh in this game will be able to walk in narrow tunnels as long as the passage is large enough for him to fit but small doors and ruins designed for human-sized creatures will clearly be situations where Rynn will be on her own.

Rynn can wield different weapons, from the simplest short sword that is quick but deals little damage and has a short range to great swords and maces that are heavier, slower but have a greater reach and deal much more damage. Some of these weapons are armor piercing (AP) and will be significantly more efficient at damaging armored wartocks as well as Ebony and Crimson knights. Rynn can also use a bow with different type of arrows and some found along the way that will be magical (i.e. enemy-seeking), poisonous, exploding or able to freeze enemies. Each weapon has a durability that indicates how many hits the weapon can perform before breaking. Once a weapon is destroyed, it simply disappears from Rynn's inventory. So using valuable weapons to break barrels is not making the best use of them. However, you should note that you can take weapons from some (but not all) enemies and throughout the games, Rynn will find plenty of different weapons that have various characteristics with some even having a limited number of magical charges.

Rynn can also find fire, ice and lightning crystals that will release magical effects as well as potions that will heal her, turn her invisible and even invincible (there are to my knowledge only three of those potions in the entire game and they are non-stackable in her inventory). There is also three indestructible special weapon in the game: the Atimar blade, Mourn Bringer and the Runeblade. The Atimar blade is your basic starting weapon, it is weak and doesn't do anything special but it is indestructible likely because the game doesn't want the player to become stuck with no weapons and no way to fight enemies.

Rynn can also wear different armors over her leather clothing that reduce the damage she takes from hits, from the simplest chainmail to the unique dragon armor. Note that some enemies also wield AP weapons. Armors, like weapon, will be destroyed after taking a number of hits. While armors are much less frequent in the game than weapons, there is still enough laying around to not worry too much about them. But it's not because you just found something that it must be in perfect condition; an armor like the rusty chainmail found early in the game is already partially damaged (low durability) and the same can also happen with weapons.

In general, the game progress is rather simple and straightforward, you have a map of the level with important notes indicating what was accomplished and what is left to do. Surreal has done a great job to avoid making the game repetitive by requiring the player to often disembark from your dragon to explore caves and tunnels and perform different task before joining back with Arokh.

With all this said, the game is original and really enjoyable and fun to play. It is the kind of game that truly deserves a remake so that it can benefit to be played on more modern hardware.


Storyline:

Rynn is a swordswoman living in a small medieval village. One night when accompanying her younger brother Delon and heading back to her village, they are attacked by a horde of wartoks (a bulky and brutal race of raiders with a boar-like appearance) and orcs (their smaller and weaker cousins that were later renamed "grulls" in Drakan - The Ancients' Gates). Clearly outnumbered, Rynn does her best to defend her brother and herself but she is knocked unconscious and her brother is taken prisoner. At the same time, raiders attack and burn down Rynn's village, killing most of its inhabitant and taking the few survivors as slaves.

Later in the night, Rynn manages to limp back to her home, only to witness the aftermath of the attack. She notices that Atimar, the revered priest and scribe of the village, is lying against the wall of a house with a part of a spear embedded in his shoulder. Near dead, he manages to tell Rynn that only the Order of the Flame can confront this evil and that she will need to find a sacred book, enter the chapel and get Arokh's soul crystal.

Despite that she believe that the Order was just a myth, Rynn is determined to save her little brother from the grasp of the wartoks and with no other lead she embarks on a quest to recover these objects and find Arokh. When placing the sacred book on the altar of the chapel, a hidden stairway is revealed leading to a secret room with a book telling the historyof the Order of the Flame that is narrated in the game by an old woman's voice:
(Note that the full background story of the Order can be found in the game User Manual and can be read here but it is not something you need to know to play or to enjoy the game).

There are legends from time long past of an age without kings when the world was united by an alliance between the race of dragons and men. These are the legends of the Order of the Flame, a brotherhood of roaming protectors bound together through holy magic so that the soul of each man was joined with that of a single dragon. By their strength and wisdom, the world was lead and peace reigned for centuries.

But as with all times, there were those whose heart held only hatred and darkness. In secrecy, they gathered to plot and scheme and in time the Dark Union was born. Sworn to overthrow the Order, the Dark Union slowly spread its web throughout the world, working from the shadows to sow dissention and unrest. At last through bloody decision, control was seized by the warmage Navaros and his ancient dragon Kaeros. Together they betrayed and murdered an assembly of the Order's greatest minds leading the Dark Union at last into open revolt. The first blow had been struck and the Dark Wars had begun.

Through black sorcery and unholy alliances, the Dark Union had amassed a nightmare army which swarmed forth from the dark places beneath the earth. Magic of unimaginable destruction was unleashed upon the world; seas boiled away to deserts, mountains lay shattered. In battles after battles, the Order was driven back and their great cities grounded to dust. No longer content to share the reigns of power, Navaros betrayed the dragon Kaeros. In a perversion of the ancient bounding ritual, he devoured the dragon's soul, melting his body into his own. Now grown monstrous and nearly invisible, Navaros prepared to lead his armies against the last remnants of the Order of the Flame.

With one desperate hope, the surviving agents of the Order invested their power in a single weapon: the Runeblade. Surrounded and outnumbered, the Order only chance laid in this sword born by the warrior Heron and the dragon Arokh. As the armies clashed, Navaros entered a mystic trance drawing power for a one final devastating spell. With the words of destruction on his lips, the betrayer was struck through the heart with the Runeblade and the tremendous forces gathered within him were unleashed upon the field. When at last the smoke cleared, both armies lay decimated. Where Navaros had stood, a jagged rift has been torn in the very fabric of space. In the smoldering crater below, Heron laid dead, the Runeblade broken in two at his side. In that blackened pit, only the dragon Arokh still clung to life. The Order was no more but the Dark Union dreams of conquest has been shattered. With the fall of Navaros, the Dark Union hold on its monstrous armies collapse, chaos spread across the land, mankind banded once more into many tribes and kingdoms and the great achievements of the Order of the Flame were forgotten. The dragons weary at last of the world of men, withdrew into timeless slumber, never again to return. The Age without king had ended and that brief golden era, only the legends remain.


With this knowledge, Rynn begins her quest to awaken the dragon Arokh in order to rescue her little brother Delon from the remnants of the Dark Union hordes...

Spoilers:
(select the text with your mouse to read it)
Rynn is really focused on saving her little brother but sometimes it feels like everything else is playing second fiddle to that. This is somewhat unrealistic as people are dying all around Rynn and while the life of her brother is certainly very important to her, it diminishes the dire situation where Navaros is trying to return to the world of Drakan and it also makes her disregard the fact that there are still a lot of people from her village that were turned into slaves which should be of some concerns to her.

The ending is also disappointing because Rynn failed to achieve the thing she worked so hard to accomplish and also because it only lasts about 10 seconds; Delon is seen falling forever into the void as seen through a magic mirror and an unseen figure is heard laughing. This sets the stage for a sequel but it is unclear if this person is Navaros (this seems a bit unlikely as anyone who has just been defeated would probably be licking his wounds rather than having the leisure to laugh at such scene) or if this is another villain who was either waiting for Navaros to stumble so he can take his place or if that person has an evil plan to raise the Dark Union from the ashes of Navaros's defeat.

Lastly, at the end of the game one can only wonder who actually is left to save since excepting the old man in the Wartock Canyons, everyone Rynn has encountered during her adventure is either dead, dying or about to be killed.



Graphics:
The world of Drakan is very well done and the graphics provide a well-detailed 3D environment for a game released in 1999 and took about 28 months do create on a 2.5 millions budget. The transitions from one level to another is quite seamless; there are obvious but relatively short "loading" textboxes between them but othrwise, the story and events of the game flow continuous and isn't broken into artificial and self-contained "levels". However, the game doesn't have the same level of details and realism as one would expect today: the various characters have rather low polygon count and the textures are rather simple. Also, the game engine doesn't have the ability to make the lips of the characters move which can be a bit odd at first but it is not something unusual considering the technology available back then. Despite these shortcomings, the movements of the characters are natural and the Arokh anatomy is very credible (i.e. not those dragons with a large abdomen and tiny wings)

It is possible to play the game using any of the resolutions supported by Windows. However, the game appears designed to be played in a 4:3 aspect ratio and in 800x600 since the text, the health gauge, the inventory and weapon/item icons all have a fixed size and will not stretch depending on the resolution used which is unfortunate. Moreover, using a wide screen resolution will crop the height of the screen (bringing back a debate at the time regarding if using a widescreen resolution should extend the width of the field of view or crop its height). Practically, the health gauge and inventory menu become tiny when playing the game in HD. However, playing it in 800x600 will clearly show a lack of details and the jagged edges around objects will be quite apparent. Considering this, an acceptable compromise is to play the game at 1024x768 even if the benefits of a higher resolution are self-evident.

One problem with the game's Riot engine is that it does not support anti-aliasing, or more accurately, it does but only for specific graphic cards that no longer exist today. If your card is not listed in the game code, the game engine will simply assume that your card is simply too old to support that feature (the option will be greyed out). Using the video card drivers to force anti-aliasing is possible but this induces some glitches and artifacts in the text and the result was a bit underwhelming so the images in the Screenshots section were taken without AA enabled.

Another option in the game engine is called "Bump Mapping". Enabling this option will make the water appears much closer to actual water rather than something with a simple pattern repeated over its surface. On the other hand, Arokh's underbelly and light colored parts will appear like if he is emitting light. I used this setting in Wartoks Canyons level in the Screenshots section but ended up turning it off since Arokh looked too bright and Drakan - Order of the Flame has many levels that are quite dark either because you are underground or because it is night and Arokh was just standing out a bit too much. It would have been nice to have something in the middle or for this effect to apply only to water.

Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the attention the developers paid to details. Many enemies such as the smaller orcs/grulls will usually try to move away from Rynn when near dead. Considering that Rynn is slashing and hacking enemies with swords, axes and maces, there is one option to set the "Gore Level" found in the game. When setting it to excessive, it is possible to cut off limbs of enemies, or legs of spider and blood will visibly squirt out and the enemy will eventually bleed to death. If they lose the arm holding their weapon, they try to desperately punch you instead. So losing limbs seems something to be expected when using this setting but one thing I didn't was to see Rynn slashed off the face and part of the head of a wartok. It's not really the gore aspect that was disturbing, because the game is nowhere near photo-realistic, but it was very surprising to see that enemy tries to continue to fight while being blinded and bleeding around with his brain exposed and realizing that someone took the time to code that possibility in the game.


Sound & Music:
In terms of voice acting, the different characters act in a believable manner, with Arokh having a more deeper voice well-suited for a creature much bigger than a human. However, the game contains some cheesy one-liners that doesn't really serve much purpose and the acting may sound a bit odd sometimes, like if the voice actor wasn't exactly sure who was the characters they were trying to portray.

In term of music, there is nothing exceptionally good but the music is enjoyable. The most important point here is for the different tracks to be able to play in the background for hours without sounding or feeling repetitive and in that aspect, the music is successful at that task.


R a t i n g
Graphics:(8.0/10) - Very Good
Sound & Music:(7.0/10) - Good
Storyline:(6.5/10) - Average
Play Control:(8.5/10) - Very Good
Innovation:(7.0/10) - Good
Overall:(8.0/10) - Very Good
Note: the overall is not an average, but more a general appreciation of the game as a whole.
A rating of 5/10 should be considered as something not good but not bad either (# bad points = # good points).