Posted on: June 4, 2025

BadMojo215

Games: 85 Reviews: 2

Not as good as I remembered

I played Drakkhen as a kid on my 80286 DOS computer and remember it being brutal in the beginning, but once I understood how the game wanted me to play, it got significantly easier. After purchasing on GOG and giving it another go, I can honestly say that this game probably won't hold the interest of modern OR classic RPG fans. First of all, the text is almost unreadable. Back when it was played on CRT screens, I think the fuzziness helped with the readability of the fonts. I've tried various filters but nothing seems to improve it. I had also forgotten that the combat is automated. You can instruct your party to cast spells, but it's really a pain in the butt. You basically live or die by your stats, so good luck rolling during character creation when you can't even read the numbers because of the crappy font. While I have gone back and enjoyed a lot of classic RPGS like the Ultima, Wizardry and Might & Magic series, a game like this no longer resonates with me. Back in the day, I most likely finished it because I spent 50 bucks on it and was determined to get my money's worth. Nowadays, there are so many options that I really can't recommend this expect to the most hardcore DOS RPG gamers. If you are determined to give this game a try, be sure to thoroughly read the manual PDF. Otherwise, you will be completely lost. One other thing: I was eventually able to get the game to work with Roland MT-32 emulation, which significantly improves the music, but it took a lot of fiddling around. The AdLib/Soundblaster music honestly just sounds terrible and I would rather play in silence than listen to it.

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Posted on: June 27, 2018

TheGrimLord

Games: 1464 Reviews: 26

Warning: Everything Wants You Dead!

In Drakkhen, the humans must prove themselves worthy of the dragons challenge, and what a challenge it is. Everything in this game wants to kill you. But you can literally walk out with nearly an entire room full of junk in the castle levels. Make sure to stuff every shield, candlestick and millions of pounds of useless arrows and spears onto your person, just because you can. :) You are absolutely not safe at night, the freaking constellations will literally come down and try to battle you. What's more, is you'll spend most of the journey wandering around in circles if you choose not to follow the roads. When there are roads, that is! The map helps, though not much. I may as well mention that you can't swim either, and every time you go too far into water, your party does their best Monty Python impression of human beings being utterly overcome by knee-high lakes and rivers. I love how the battle system works here though, you don't do much of anything. You just hope that your party has the best armor and weapons available and watch as all four of them more or less beat a lizardman or some other sort of monster to death. Unless they get taken out, which can be almost instantly with some monsters. If it looks really powerful, run if you know what's good for you! The music is quite awesome though, at least in the Super Nintendo version which is what I owned. The mixture of adventure game elements with first-person walking was also quite unique. The Castle levels offer a completely different style of gameplay and make for an intriguing adventure. You'll just have to watch your characters fight for hours at a time, while wandering around the map like an idiot. Where did that dragon tell me to go? It doesn't matter, because my characters are already drowning to death in knee-high water. If any of this sounds like fun to you, then pick this one up.

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Posted on: September 8, 2020

RagingChaos

Verified owner

Games: 967 Reviews: 16

Flawed but fun classic cRPG Experience

Drakkhen on the PC has arguably the best translation of the 3 version(Amiga, DOS, SNES), That being said, I highly recommend reading the story provided in the manual before playing the game because it provides much needed context to starting the game. Drakkhen has a lot of highly innovative ideas for it's time but being the first of it's kind makes it feel VERY rough on the edges when viewed in 2020 The game itself has you create a party of 4 characters; Fighter, Scout, Cleric, and Magician. Figher, Cleric, and Magician are similar to what you might expect out of an older RPG, but Scout is kind of a hybrid between the previously mentioned 3 with a couple spells of Cleric and Magician with almost as much combat capability as a Fighter. Once you create a party you are thrust into the game's world. When you are outside, you take a first person perspective and the world is psuedo 3D. When a random encounter occurs the game stops letting you move around and your party members walk out onto the screen from the bottom. Navigating around the world is pretty difficult. Notable land marks are far and few inbetween. There is NO map and no compass. This makes it frustrating as hell sometimes. I spent over and hour just trying to find a castle once before I broke down and made my own map(in the forums if you need it) When you enter a castle/dungeon your characters are always on screen, but they can be moved independently to explore by themselves. The same rules for creature encounters apply indoors as outdoors. The combat is mostly auto attacks with occasional spells. The player really doesn't have too much control on it. The story is actually fairly interesting with a lot of bits of lore left around for the players to find. It's not cliche at all and the world is quite immersive for it's time; 1989. If you like old school RPGs from the late 80s to early 90s, I'd recommend giving Drakkhen a try. Otherwise I'd recommend staying away!

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Posted on: June 21, 2025

Calabrin

Verified owner

Games: 35 Reviews: 3

Fever dream of early RPGs

Drakkhen is a nearly incomprehensuble, French-made RPG from 1989. Good aspects of the game include: one of the earliest games to have a real-time day/night cycle. Surprisingly deep loot table. Impressive mob variety. Minimalist, but effectively moody musical score. Bad aspects of the game include: -nearly imprehensible plot -illogical story progression that sometimes doesn't tell, or even hint at what you're supposed to do next -no discernable structure to character leveling (seems to occur at random) -Party members situated in 2nd and 3rd position tend to gain vastly more xp than charcters in 1st and 4th positions -spells and potions have no in game descriptions, and use a series of symbols which must be cross-referenced with game manual -no in game map or compass = you have to guess your way around -combat is fully automated which reduces gameplay to traversing the map and equipping gear Despite these myriad problems, Drakkhen is a fascinating footnote in the annals of RPG history. While most early RPG developers zigged in the direction of Chunsoft's "Dragon Warrior" (1986), Infogrames dared to zag in their own direction, creating an early 3D map that is traversed in 1st person view, instead of the gridded 2D maps of other RPGs of the era. It is equal parts utterly baffling and genuinely intriguing game design that make Drakkhen worth checking out. The sheer number of different mobs in the game will absolutely blow your mind. As will most of the rest of the game.

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Posted on: October 15, 2025

cameron398

Verified owner

Games: 83 Reviews: 5

PC Version Not SNES

I played and liked the SNES version and oringally this was an SNES version. I have been trying to figure out the controls in the PC version. Would have thought the PC version was better.

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