Drakan

Meet Rynn and Arokh

Drakan is a series of Action Adventure games developed by Surreal Software before they brought us The Suffering. It consists of two titles to date, Drakan: Order of the Flame and Drakan: The Ancients' Gates, but appears to be an Orphaned Series by now. The first game was released for PC in 1999, and the second, for PlayStation 2 in 2002.

In the first game, we are introduced to the main character Rynn, the resident Action Girl with a talent to use any weapon that falls into her hands. However, when Rynn's brother Delon gets kidnapped by the Big Bad Navaros' Legions of Hell, she realizes the need for More Dakka and seeks out the ancient petrified dragon Arokh, who already fought Navaros centuries ago. In fact, Arokh was part of the Order of the Flame, a fraternity of dragon-riding knights, which dissolved after Navaros was (seemingly) defeated. Hearing the latest news, Arokh (reluctantly) agrees to perform a Bond with Rynn, allowing her to ride him and thus resurrecting the Order. From there on, they proceed to kick much ass all over the world, defeating Navaros' minions to fight their way to him and Delon.

Gameplay-wise, Drakan consists of Wide Open Sandbox-like exploration, though you are limited to a particular (fairly huge) stage of the game before you can advance to the next one. Each such stage is a large outdoors landscape, which can only be reasonably traversed on Arokh's back. The area, however, is dotted with ruins and dungeon entrances, which Rynn is often compelled to explore on her own because the entrance is too narrow for Arokh. Needless to say, the dungeons crawl with enemies. Rynn is aided against them by a vast assortment of weaponry, most of which breaks all too quickly, so you are forced to adopt new ones. Some enemies are found in the air, as well, particularly the enemy dragons who chose to serve Navaros. These have to be defeated in High Altitude Battles, and Arokh acquires their fancy breath weapons afterwards (one dragon, for example, breathes lighting).

The sequel starts a new storyline (that of Delon's possession by Navaros apparently being Left Hanging): Rynn and Arokh arrive to the southern city of Surdana, which is currently under attack by an evil race of Desert Lords. It is revealed that although Arokh is now the Last of His Kind, there are more dragons hibernating in Another Dimension and only an ancient dragon like himself can open the eponymous Ancients' Gates to access it. He and Rynn are sent on a quest to find said Gates, awaken the dragons, truly resurrect the Order of the Flame, and fight back the Desert Lords.

Tropes used in Drakan include:

• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: While it is much more subtle than examples in other games, you still have to wonder why Jade, the sorceress in Surdana who summoned Rynn and Arokh to save them in the first place, charges Rynn so much to teach her magic. This is much more apparent with the purchase of higher spell levels.
• Action Adventure
• Action Girl: Rynn.
• Another Dimension: Where the Mala-Shae and her minions hibernate.
• Annoying Arrows: You can snipe enemies with nearly polygon-perfect accuracy in the sequel (and your arrows even remain visible exactly where they hit), but this certainly doesn't impair your enemies' fighting ability any.
• Anticlimax Boss: In the second game, we have the battle with Zola Dane. It's relatively late in the game, and you'd probably expect a pretty hard boss by now, but no. He actually turns out to be pretty weak compared to most of the other bosses in the game.
• Bag of Spilling: The second game starts Rynn off with naught but the clothes on her back, her humble dagger, and Arokh.
• Big Bad: Navaros in the first game, Jasaad in the second.
• Bigger on the Inside: Averted; buildings are as big on the outside as their interiors make them appear, although the long corridors that lead to the inside of Surdana's houses and shops might feel out of place.
• Bittersweet Ending: The ending to the first game revels in this. Delon, Rynn's younger brother that you are trying to save the whole time ends up being possessed by the spirit of Navaros, and she has to fight him in order to snap him out of it. She succeeds, but he falls off the edge of the area, and into the abyss of the Rift, screaming his sister's name. What we see after that is Rynn, who is laying on the ground and looking over the edge, muttering about how sorry she was for failing to save him. It is then that we get the actual final boss fight with Navaros in his true form. After he is defeated, we get the final cutscene with Rynn and Arokh trying to find Delon. We never know his fate until the second game, though, where he is revealed to be dead....Excuse me for a moment, I think I need a tissue...
• Bond Creatures: The two protagonists.
• Bottomless Pits: Lots of them.
  • The second game generally replaces these with mile-high drops.
• Breakable Weapons: All weapons and armor have a durability after which they are rendered useless, so you will be forced to start using the various weapons you collect. Not to mention your limited inventory space....
  • The second game allows you to repair weapons and armor at the blacksmith's, although this costs the weapon 10% of its original durability in the process, so after two or three repairs you're probably better off replacing it altogether. Reloading a bow's arrows counts as repairing too. (Maybe there's some restringing involved?)
  • The three subversions in the first game are Atimar's Blade, your first weapon (though very short ranged and weak in terms of damage inflicted); the Mournbringer, which is not just indestructible, but also vampiric (i.e. charges your health when it lands a hit); and the Runeblade, which is so story-relevant, they made it indestructible, so you wouldn't break it before facing the Big Bad.
• Breath Weapon: Arokh starts off with the classic fire breathing and goes on to acquire ice breathing, acid breathing, lightning breathing, and so on, and so on.
• Bridge Logic: In Arokh's "tomb".
  • Later in the Spider-infested mines as well.
• Can't Live Without You: Once the Bond is established, if the dragon dies so does the rider, but not vice-versa. In fact, Arokh has already outlived at least one rider (Heron).
  • To clarify, if the rider dies, the dragon turns to stone (Arokh escaped that fate with Heron's death because the latter was in a dimensional rift when he died, but then later Arokh went to stone-sleep voluntarily after Heron's burial), whereas if the dragon dies, the rider becomes a Soul Shadow who wanders for eternity. Both cases can be remedied by finding the dragon's Soul Crystal.
    • The second game seems to show this as "if one dies, so does the other".
• Corridor Cubbyhole Run: One section of the ruins where Rynn must find an amulet has a corridor with a spinning blade moving back and forth along it, and a section where she can duck in to avoid it (and she must be crouched while there, because that section also has spikes that pop out at waist level).
• Deadpan Snarker: Both Rynn and Arokh takes turns at this, although Arokh is probably more so.

Arokh: (after a boss battle) Ah, there you are.
Rynn: Barely. You should have seen the giant I just had to fight.
Arokh: Yes, I'm sure it was... horrible.
Rynn: No, really, it was HUGE!
Arokh: Yes, of course it was.

• • There's also the moment listed on the CMOF page. Upon encountering yet another old enemy of Arokh's that has been brought back to life and is looking for revenge, Rynn asks "Didn't you have any friends?"
• Doomed Hometown: Rynn's village in the first game.
• Dragon Rider
• Dungeon Crawling
• Durable Deathtrap: Lots of them in the dungeons.
• Everything Fades: Averted in the sequel. Anything you kill will remain where it fell throughout the entire game.
• Friendly Fireproof: Rynn is impervious to Arokh's firebreath, even though Arokh generally won't use it if there's a risk of hitting her anyway. On the other hand, spells and projectile weapons are not friendly-fireproof: You can get caught in the blast radius of your own spells if you're not careful, but you can also position yourself so that tha arrows or spells from one enemy will strike an enemy in front of you.
• High Altitude Battle: And between dragons.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: During the final boss in the second game:
  • After Jasaad is knocked off the hand of the Pain Golem (his main weapon) by Rynn and Arokh's attacks, he is too weak to get away on time when he hits the ground, and it falls on him, crushing him.
• Hot Chick with a Sword: Rynn, especially at the later stages where BFSs become the only effective means to advance the plot.
• Infinity+1 Sword: The Runeblade, which belonged to Arokh's original rider Heron, in the original game; and the Mournbringer in the sequel.
• Instant Expert: Rynn is immediately proficient with all weapons she finds, from daggers, through maces, to claymores.
  • Averted in the second game: In order to equip more powerful weapons and armor, you have to posess the matching Melee or Archery skill (which you gain from Level Grinding).
• Inventory Management Puzzle: Of the Grid Inventory variety, with weapons and armor requiring the most space to hold.
• Invisible Wall: The second game, although one is technically visible . . . even though it's supposed to be over after a certain point. The storms over the Andrellian Isles.
  • The first game limits Arokh's flying abilities in two ways: an altitude ceiling so he can't just fly over very high mountains to go past them (and interestingly, it prevents him from flying out of a volcano crater), and at one level, a wall of wind that blows hard enough to counter his forward flight so he can't proceed.
• Kaizo Trap: Stand too close when landing the finishing blow against a giant opponent and you will die from its corpse falling on top of you. Ouch.
• Last of His Kind: Arokh is apparently the only remaining Dragon of the Elder Breed in the world. The sequel puts emphasis on "in this world", as the plot revolves around trying to reawaken the Dragon Mother and her children, the rest of the Elder Breed. There's also a pair of dragon antagonists who are traitors to the Order (who only stick around for one fight).
• Left Hanging: What happened to Delon after the end of the first game?
• Lethal Joke Item: The Chicken in The Ancients' Gates.
• Level Up Fill Up: In the second game, Rynn returns to full health when she gains a skill level.
• Mega Manning: Arokh acquires the breath weapons of the dragons he shot down.
• More Dakka: Arokh is able to reduce even the toughest non-aerial enemies to ash in mere seconds... provided, of course, you can lure them into his breathing range.
• Obviously Evil: The Desert Lords appear to have detached heads with three faces, one of them being a skull.
• Oh Crap: We get a pretty good one from Jasaad in the second game before the Pain Golem falls on him.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Some enemies... really take their time to die.
  • Though this does not stop you from, say, hacking an arm off an enemy in the first game, which causes them to bleed to death even if you do nothing else.
• Order Reborn: The eponymous Order of the Flame.
• Orphaned Series: No new releases or, indeed, news since 2002.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The dragons of the Order are sapient, intelligent, and capable of speech. Modern-day dragons are just feral beasts to be slain, and come in a few varieties: Blackwing dragons have feathers and Bone dragons are animated skeletons.
• Primal Fear: The spiders for some players.
• Ruins for Ruins Sake
• Sapient Steed: Arokh.
• Shout-Out: There's a pure black sword called Mournbringer in the first game, which howls with distant screams of many, and it gives you health back every time you hurt something with it. Stormbringer + Mournblade = Mournbringer? Man, I love that weapon.
  • There is a way to get a weapon with the same name in the second game, though if you miss picking up even one of the Swords of the Order of the Flame, Brekk will not have it in stock. Oh, and there are a few more vampiric blades as well . . . if you know where to look.
• Synchronization: The Bond between Rynn and Arokh.
• Third-Person Seductress: Rynn. Bonus points for being modeled after a hot girl in Real Life (she appeared later on the promotional posters for the first game, google them).
• The Dragon: ...But not in a literal sense. In the second game:
  • Zola Dane, Myschala's royal seer, is revealed to be one for the Big Bad Jasaad Duthane.
• The Other Darrin: Rynn and Arokh get a change of voice actors for the second game.
• The Time of Myths: Back when the original Order of the Flame existed.
• Title Drop: Both games' subtitles appear as Backstory elements in the respective installments. The word "Drakan" apparently is the name of the world where the games take place.
• Twenty Bear Asses: Be prepared to go on a few of these: A hermit in the Shadowmire asks you to retrieve four bags of black powder from his mine to build a bomb with, and Sevoth in the Andrellian Aisles asks you to get, oh, "about twenty" crystal shards from a nearby crystal mine (fortunately, in the latter case, the mine is very large and you can collect over one hundred shards).
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: The original game is very gory, with things like dismemberment, decapitation, and reducing the humanoid monsters into halves being very common.
  • In the second game you can slaughter chickens or other animals with Rynn's weapons, magic, or of course Arokh's breath. Though there is one character who deserves to have her livestock slaughtered. Hint: she's in the first town.
• Virtual Paper Doll: Rynn can be dressed several different types of armor to help shield her from enemy attacks. But like most weapons, they get damaged from hits and eventually break, so searching for new ones along the way is a good idea. And unlike weapons, if the armor actually breaks then it's gone, it cannot be repaired.
• Weapon of Choice: Quite a few to select from. On an interesting note, there are no shields in the first game at all.
• What the Hell, Player?: If you hit Arokh in the second game with one of your weapons, he'll fly into the air and yell, "watch where you stick that!"
• Wide Open Sandbox
• Wizards Live Longer: This is implied to be true by the wizard, Zeggoro in Ravenshold.(second game)

Zeggoro: The Half-Men are wretched creatures, and I like them less with each century.