What Makes Drakan the Best Fantasy Game Series Ever Made?

What do you think of when people talk about the "best" fantasy games? I'm sure you're probably going to immediately think of names like EverQuest, World of WarCraft, Lord of the Rings: Online or any of the other highly successful, commercial fantasy series. For those who have a particularly good taste in games, you'll hear the Elder Scrolls series come up - and rusty old video game dogs like myself will tell you about the original Arena. But these titles are less successful based on their quality as they are on the simple amount of corporate money that could be thrown out to make WarCraft a household name.

Any WarCraft fan is bound to quip, "But WarCraft has sold over 9 million copies!" or whatever inflated number is brought up next. I concede to that point, as previously stated, Blizzard are masters of marketing and have intelligently made sure that one thinks of online fantasy gaming as synonymous with the WarCraft title, regardless of how poorly constructed its plots are, how inadequately designed its models are, and how overly fluffed with "easter eggs" (which were supposed to be special, not plague every turn of the camera) it is.

But do you want to know what the best fantasy game ever made was? It's part of a two part series that to this day commands a respectable following. Unlike most games that were flash cult hits that failed to amount to much, it maintains dozens of fan oriented websites devoted to keeping its story up to date and current for anyone that may come across this masterpiece of a game in the bargain bin. It was released on two platforms: the original game, Drakan: Order of the Flame was released on PC, followed up by the sleeper-cult hit, Drakan: The Ancients' Gates.

The story for the two can be summed in in Eragon, which seems to have stolen the entire lay out and adapted it. In days old past, there was an order of Dragon Riders, who were basically linked with their mounts. Following a cataclysmic betrayal, a devastating war tore apart the world and plunged it into the dark ages. Dragons degenerated into feral beasts and the magnificent dragons of old all but died off with their riders. Enter Rynn, a woman walking along one day when her entire village is plagued with orcs, an adaptation of the typical goblinoid beast in most fantasy games.

She follows a series of incredible adventures that leave the player with all the facets of a great fantasy game, fighting in deep dungeons with (for the time) excellently rendered graphics with an arsenal of weaponry. In the next game, she picks up where she left off. With her village gone and the world in a dark age, there is no civilization to speak of, people congregate together in small villages. With her life shattered, Rynn finds a mysterious summons to the last standing piece of "civilization" in a small castle.

Oh did I mention you fly a dragon? We're not talking one of those wimpy games where occasionally a dragon comes out, yaps, and flies away, you get full dynamic control over a beautifully rendered dragon, with all the attacks one could hope for, ranging from incinerating hapless orcs to getting into aerial fighters with other, savage dragons.

Tragically I admit I'd have never gotten into the game myself if not for a friend who said, "Hey Chadd, you should try this game, you fly around on a dragon and kill things." Much like the game Mercenaries, I approached the idea warily. If the entire selling point was flying around and shooting dragons, it sounded like little more than 3D duck hunt. Boy was I wrong.

I was immersed in a fantastic story with layers of interesting and appropriate characters. Although I am not much of a fan of high fantasy, much preferring the low fantasy of R.E. Howard's Conan, the game handles it brilliantly, and manages to give each of the monsters the correct personalities to make them memorable. Often times the orcs will have laid overly intricate ambushes that they are convinced cannot fail - only to find that their clever plan was not tailored correctly. For example, one orc planned to lure you, while another stood atop a hill with a large rock. When you approached, the rock guarding orc dropped the stone - only to see it smash his friend.

That doesn't stop the sadistic little orc from laughing his black heart out at his friend's calamity, who doesn't realize that the rock has since rolled up another steep slope, and is coming back at him at remarkable speeds. Before he knows it, he just shared in his own friend's fate.

Or the giants who, frustrated at their inability to reach you, grab their nearest ally and fling them at you.

Truthfully, there is nothing in the game play that should've stopped the game from being a runaway success. For the time it was released, it had incredible, beautiful art work - the PS 2 version still challenges much that has been released in recent times. It lacks the vertex shading and depth of modern games such as Halo 3, which I personally find to be cumbersome and a strain on the eyes. But how one can stand up for World of Warcraft's graphics that appear as though they are trying to teach me my ABC's and not enjoy Drakan's is absolutely beyond me.

The only thing that could have killed this game was the absence of marketing, because it tried to survive on the back of a wonderful game at the dawn of corporate dominance of the industry.

And thus, the greatest fantasy game on the market was dwarfed by a game where you fly blimps piloted by Hin Denburg.