Drakan II : The Ancient Gates

The game still wows me in the graphics department and from what I read it should be a fun game to play

RPG elements rolled into an action Adventure game

there are some movies at IGN and all are obvioulsy part of the very early portion of the game hence all the training modes, but they\'re worth a watch if you want to see another PS2 game that sparkles in the graphics department or if you are curious to knwo what Drakan II is all about


http://ps2.ign.com/previews/14424.html

Unlike Onimusha and Soul Reaver, the two other prominent adventure games already in the market place, Drakan: The Ancients\' Gates take a little bit of its adventuring from Tomb Raider, a wee bit from of its character from classic Western myth and legend, and provides an ample aerial engine unlike anything we have seen before. The result is a game that didn\'t impress me over the first few minutes of watching it, but grew on me over the period of an hour while I played it, and eventually sucked me into its wild, organic countrysides, old English taverns, and roaming hills, caves, and deserts.

Taking control of Ren, the game\'s heroine, players should instantly realize that while she is a foxy English woman warrior, cast from the same mold as Lara Croft, Ren delivers far better dialog, has reasonable sized...um...female parts (and yet still sexy, mind you), fights with much more fluidity and nimbleness than Ms. Croft could ever dream of. In fact, as soon as you get your hands on the game, the similarities disappear in a cloud of smoke. Which, in my opinion, is a good thing. A VERY good thing.

As Ren, players take control of her from a tight third-person perspective, with a camera that is rigidly fixed on her backside, but that is flexible enough to see through her when it comes in close, and never gets in the way. Ren moves around freely while adventuring, but when enemies come along, players can lock on by tapping R2 (like the Z-targeting first introduced by Zelda 64), and by hitting Square, they can attack with single hits, followed by double taps and triple taps for extra combos. Standard moves complemented by Dpad taps create different attacks, and enable Ren to combat enemies from the all sides, too.

Fighting with Arokh is very similar in terms of combat, only it\'s almost mandatory to lock on to a flying opponent in order to hit them with a fireball. Ren rides on Arokh\'s back, and players view them both from a third-person perspective, but the dragon moves beautifully smooth. Players can strafe and ascend or descend at will, in addition to flying in forward, backward, etc.

Ren isn\'t just a warrior type, thankfully. She can grow quite powerful as a magic user, too, and can embalm her weapons with magic to increase their power. She has health (displayed by the left orb on the screen) and the all-universal magic power, mana (displayed by the right orb on the screen). The game is roughly split into 20% hand-to-hand combat and aerial battles, and approximately 70% is entirely based on Ren\'s exploration.

So far what I like about Drakan is the well-done voice acting, thick English accents, and some rather chirpy, funny, and amusing dialog. These characters all display charm and wit, or highly visible dislikeable personalities, to the extent that you love to like them, or love to hate them. For instance, when Ren visits the smith is looking for weapons to buy, he says something along the lines of, "It\'s a wonderful day for slaughtering some bad guys..." Naturally, he says something funnier, but my hangover is preventing me from remembering. Just trust me, the game is fun to listen to.

Drakan isn\'t just a little tiny game, mind you. Players get the chance to venture through 15 levels, which are loaded with side-quests, across deserts, high mountains, and through caves and castles. Ren can collect up to 50 weapons, and can collect or buy up to 30 spells, 24 different kinds of bows and arrows, and will face up to 30 different kinds of monsters.

Well my only compliant about the game is I think I noticed some serious frame stutters in the demo code IGN ogt through the movies. Seemed to happen when she was turning

ddaryl, you don\'t like this game.

its this double d thing
He likes Draken and Dropship

The graphics don\'t compare to games like ICO, but at least they\'re better than The Summoner\'s.  I am also interested in this game.  Hopefully it will have great gameplay.

Originally posted by IronFist
The graphics don\'t compare to games like ICO, but at least they\'re better than The Summoner\'s.  I am also interested in this game.  Hopefully it will have great gameplay.

From what I see in these screens and movies there better then Ico
The main reason being is there are alot of enemies and NPC\'s to get involved with

ICo had great enviroments but they weren\'t nearly as open as Drakan is

Were getting the game. You can take a breather now.

After seeing some of the movies, I can now say that pictures really don\'t do this game justice.  The graphics are very good (They really remind me of Project Ego).  The draw distances are amazing.  And the whole environment looks fun to explore.  The voice acting is also above average.

But there are some bad things.  

• The environments, while big, are very empty.  There are lots of rolling hills and stuff, and there are even trees all around, but it still feels very empty.  (Maybe this is due to the bland ground textures)
• The controls don\'t look very good.  As you can see in movie 4, it takes way too long to turn around 180 degrees (A problem that plagues most games with the Resident Evil control setup).  And also in that movie, did you notice how much work went into just searching for and picking up a potion?  I really hope the controls don\'t ruin this game.
• IGN says there are about 15 levels.  Will this game be long enough?  I really can\'t say before I know how big the levels are, but 15 levels really doesn\'t make it sound like it will be that long of a game.  I wish they would tell us how many hours long the game is instead of how many levels there are.

I\'m still not sure if I\'m getting it, but I am getting interested.

I downloaded some of the videos, and I really must say it looks great. Thats not usually my type of game but for the graphics sake I will try it.

this gmae looks really nice , it has really big areas to rome i think.. from the looks of it.

There was a video of this game in the Summer Jampack and the truth is it looked plain awful. The environments were plain, and very sparsely populated, there were some draw in issues, and the texturing is one of the best arguments against the PS2 being able to do decent textures. I don\'t know how much the game has improved since then, but judging by the screenshots ddaryl posted, it seems like very little has changed.

Ya, in the jampack it was really unimpressive.

There was a video of this game in the Summer Jampack and the truth is it looked plain awful. The environments were plain, and very sparsely populated, there were some draw in issues, and the texturing is one of the best arguments against the PS2 being able to do decent textures. I don\'t know how much the game has improved since then, but judging by the screenshots ddaryl posted, it seems like very little has changed

I really don\'t know what some of you are seeing, I love the enviroments and don\'t find them plain at all, but there are tons of other enviroments besides the open mountain terrains. The winter jampack video I found to be very excellent and still play that movie occasinally in anticiaption for the game. Texturing being one of its strong points do to its procedural texturing technique the game uses.

I think Drakan is easily one of the best looking PS2 games in its genre. Unlike BG: DA which is a room to room fixed camera over the head view which allows the developer to concentrate more polygons and textures in a an area because of the camera angle ability to hide the horizon, Drakan still does and amazing job of making pleasing enviroments while allowing complete camera control.

and I thought the video on the sumer jampack was awesome for code that was 70% done

and as for taking a breather, I can never find anyone willing to really discuss ther game on any board so I keep trying here

but I guess its better to discuss VF4 a million times or wipeout but Drakan well we disussed it once so thats enough

The environments, while big, are very empty. There are lots of rolling hills and stuff, and there are even trees all around, but it still feels very empty. (Maybe this is due to the bland ground textures)

Completely disagree. I love the rolling hills on the main areas, but there are swamps forest and dungeon areas as well, and we haven\'t seen alot of those yet, but screens I\'ve seen of those areas look prety damn good

The controls don\'t look very good. As you can see in movie 4, it takes way too long to turn around 180 degrees (A problem that plagues most games with the Resident Evil control setup). And also in that movie, did you notice how much work went into just searching for and picking up a potion? I really hope the controls don\'t ruin this game.

Well the game is still a few months away so that may be worked out, or maybe there are better ways to turn around in combat when using the targeting system

IGN says there are about 15 levels. Will this game be long enough? I really can\'t say before I know how big the levels are, but 15 levels really doesn\'t make it sound like it will be that long of a game. I wish they would tell us how many hours long the game is instead of how many levels there are.

The game is reported to have 25-35 hours when you do most of the sidequest and exploring so hell yes