When I first saw reviews of this game on YouTube and GameFAQ I was absolutely sold and bought this game earlier this year. One thing I failed to consider was if Drakan, a PS2 game, would work on my PS3. I didn't give it a thought because most PS2 games DO work on my PS3 without flaw. This game is no different, it plays exactly like it would on a PS2.
How does it play? Glitchy as can be, actually, and apparently the problems I experience with Drakan aren't isolated to myself and my PS3 because apparently people who own PS2 systems and this game experience the same issues. Some are simply minor annoyances such as the screen inverts colors and you occasionally might see odd shapes pop up. Some are more severe such as the game freezing on the pause screen, which means every time you try to save your game you run the risk of it freezing and you having to start from your last save, which means save as often as possible. This problem plagues me constantly and has made the game very repetitive for me.
Another problem I'm having is actually a real game breaker for me, I don't think all of my HUDs are showing up, some tutorial text has popped up missing which is also apparently not an isolated problem and at one point when I am trying to open a door to a mine in the first dungeon my character just stands there like a dunce with the key in the slot. I have no idea if the game is simply stuck or if I need to do something to make her move. Either way, I'm stuck and cannot even complete the dungeon to earn my dragon, which, I might add, was the thing that drew me to this game in the first place.
Now, the key issue, I'm not sure if that's an isolated problem, but I do know that other people have had their games freeze in loading screens, shops, even when loading their games, which sometimes causes corrupted data for any game but with it being as frequent with this one as it is, you might want to be careful.
Now, as far as the game itself goes, it's a standard RPG that, if I have to be perfectly honest about my opinion, is better suited for a PC than a PS2. I don't think this game should have really been made for the PS2 in the way that it was. For one thing, the control is annoying when you first start out. It's much like how one would control their character on Elder Scrolls, specifically Oblivion, except much, much tighter and it feels like your character just wants to swing her body everywhere, not to mention it's one of those games that might remind you more of an FPS than an RPG because of the camera, it's always behind you and it in fact determines where your character faces. This isn't so difficult to adapt to but it's definitely not what I expected. Other minor control issues I had were the jumping which felt iffy at best, not to mention the jump button was triangle and I'm used to it being X, but then again, I expected more of an adventure RPG for a console and not a PC port.
So, what does this game play like? My very first impression given the controls was a combat oriented RPG, and that's pretty much what it is. All of your controls are firmly set up for combat, which unfortunately means they're going to be utter crap for any attempt at platforming, which there is, again unfortunately, segments of in this game. Did I mention fall damage exists? That will be more apparent as you attempt to get past the fact the programmers were trying far too hard to make a realistic game with real physics of what the human body can and cannot do, which means you jump like crap, you CAN hang from ledges but it also takes your character an eternity to hoist herself up which is quite annoying when some enemies have projectiles and know how to aim upward and sometimes jumping from high places causes a delay where your character must pick herself back up because they just had to be realistic. Not to mention jumps are about as controllable as a dump truck that's going at top speed down a crowded street with no breaks. This is a big deal for me because most of the games I do play are jumping oriented games, but if you're someone who actually likes combat-oriented gameplay, you probably aren't going to care as much.
Speaking of combat, for what it is, it works, the controls are perfectly suited for fighting right down to every combo you can perform, but even this has a minor annoyance I never could get past. As most RPG fans might remember in Zelda games, when you press the button to bring up your inventory, the game will pause as if you brought up the pause menu and let you select your equipment, potions and other things, then when you exit the menu you'll already have taken whatever potion you chose and you'll have your new equipment. Drakan, for some unknown reason I can only speculate on, does not allow the luxury of pausing your game for you when you've pressed select to go into your inventory menu which means if you have a potion of life and enemies are kicking your can into next month, you can't just pause the game and take that potion to heal yourself because while you're in your inventory menu selecting it those enemies will continue to batter you while you actually continue to take damage. Is this a glitch? No, but it's annoying and makes the game more work than I care to put out for a video game. It means the game is heavily dependent on your ability to have a strategy and be well prepared.
Because my character apparently doesn't know how to twist her wrist to make a key in a hole unlock the door so I can at least try to achieve something in this game, this is all the information I have thus far, so in short, if you like really hard RPG strategy games and have a decent PC, just pick this game up for PC, don't even bother with the PS2 version since the game is apparently too much for the console and the disc it's stored on. But if you're a person like me who just wants to play an adventure game with dragons and fantasy that plays more like Zelda I recommend just skipping this game all together. It has a neat concept, being the ability to ride a dragon wherever, whenever, but the ridiculous restrictions and difficulty level of this game make it very hard to enjoy.Get more detail about Drakan: Ancients Gates.
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