A green valley, among high mountains, with a path that leads to an ancient fortified castle. Trees, flowers, a quiet lake, a magnificent waterfall, and winged dragons flying in the sky. It’s the place in which Drakan: The Ancients’ Gates begins.

Freedom is probably the key word to understand the most innovative games developed in the latest years. Freedom can be given to the player at different levels in a videogame. In Metal Gear Solid 2 we have an example of freedom within a very defined game structure - the game is strongly story-driven, and you have to follow a precise path, but the possibility to interact with the environments, the excellent A.I., the complex yet intuitive control system grant the player an experience that is sometimes close to reality. In Grand Theft Auto 3 we have an example of freedom given with an open game structure; basically, you don’t have a well defined path to follow, and in any moment of the game you have the possibility to choose among more than a mission or to simply roam in the streets of Liberty City.

Drakan: The Ancients’Gates, developed by Surreal Software and published by SCEA, shares the kind of freedom that’s behind Grand Theft Auto 3, but unlike Rockstar’s game, it narrates a strong, beautiful fantasy story, it gives you the possibility to interact with non playable characters, and while it’s a 3d adventure game, it has all the elements that gives RPGs their depth.

The Story
After a long period of bloody wars that destroyed the Order of the Flame, symbol of the alliance between dragons and humans, the world of Drakan is in chaos. Monsters, feral dragons, and a mysterious tribe of sorcerers, the Desert Lords, are a curse for all the humans.

In the first Drakan (released a few years ago on PC) the warrior Rynn revived a sleeping dragon named Arokh. Her soul became one with Arokh’s, and she became a Knight of the Order Of The Flame, a new hope for the world of Drakan.

But the menace of the Desert Lords is becoming more and more serious. As Rynn and Arokh, you have to free the Spirit Dragons, the only creatures able to defeat the Desert Lords.

Drakan is a 3D adventure game, enriched by RPG elements that give the player control over the character’s development. What really makes Drakan different from other adventure games, is the peculiar structure of its gameplay.

In the game you control both Rynn and the dragon Arokh. Their souls and their lives are bound. If Arokh dies, Rynn dies too. Rynn is a warrior, she can explore dungeons and valleys on feet, she can use different weapons and armours, she has the ability to cast magic spells. After the first hours of the game, in which you can control only Rynn, you finally have the possibility to mount Arokh and explore with him the world. When Rynn is riding Arokh, you have directly the control of the dragon. Arokh is a powerful creature, and his attacks are extraordinarily powerful. But first of all, Arokh gives you the possibility to fly from one place to another, thus giving you access to all the places in the world of the game.

Surreal Software’s greatest success is the rare sensation that this game conveys: you feel you are really exploring a vast, ancient world, in an epic journey that is something more than the usual “travel, find the bad guy, kill the bad guy” thing, that’s behind nearly every RPG and adventure game. And this is achieved thanks to an organic - not mechanic - construction of the game. Every dungeon, valley, building seems to be natural, as it should be in reality (or in fantasy, if you prefer), something more than a “level” in a video game. In Drakan, you can’t just “follow the path” designed by the developers, you have to actually explore caves and tunnels, find your way in dark underground worlds, survive in a forest cursed by an eternal storm, follow the course of a river in search of eggs of a dragon, and you have to travel, flying from cold lands to hot deserts.

In Drakan you have one main quest – free the Spirit Dragons and defeat the Dark Warlords - divided in many sub-primary quests, and a vast choice of secondary quests that are not necessary to complete the game, but that give you the possibility to explore fascinating places, defeat imaginative enemies, discover more secrets about the history of the world of Drakan. In the first place you’ll explore, Surdana, you’ll immediately find the possibility to embark in many secondary quests. For example, one peasant will ask you to kill all of the giant spiders who have invaded his house. Or you could decide to free the town from the menace of an evil creature, called the Inquisitor, that kidnaps the villagers during the night and that lives in the tunnels underneath Surdana. The numerous secondary quests are also a good way to make some extra money or to get special items and weapons. You can always take a look at the list of the available secondary and primary quests in Rynn’s Journal.

The control system is intuitive, yet complex enough to grant fun to the players used to 3D adventure games. Rynn can perform all the basic moves you would like to find in a game of this genre, like jumping, sidestepping, rolling, kneeling plus a few others that become extremely useful during battles; for example you can dodge a blow performing a backflip or a side flip. While the controls are most of the times responsive and well balanced, there is a small bug that occasionally causes your character to remain stuck in a wall. Fortunately, it’s sufficient to press randomly the buttons of the Dual Shock 2 to start moving again.

The combat system is reminiscent of the one of the Zelda series. By pressing the R2 button you lock onto an enemy ; you remain locked onto the enemy until he falls or you press again the button; by pressing L2 buttons you can cycle through enemies. The target lock also gives you useful information on the status of the enemy; when it’s yellow, the targeted enemy is undamaged, when it turns red, he is close to death. Rynn can perform basic attacks simply by pressing the square button, she can thrust a weapon in a specific direction by pressing the directional button and the square button, and she has a few combo attacks that are powerful, but relatively useless. Most of the times, a good use of the attack button alternated with the block button (circle) is sufficient to get rid of the average enemy.

The combat system is enriched by typical RPG elements. Proceeding in the adventure, you’ll gain experience points and skill points. Skill points can be distributed among melee skills, archery skills and magic skills, thus increasing Rynn’s strength in the respective field. In order to use certain swords, for example, you’ll need an elevated value in melee skills, while if you want to use a powerful arc you need a high value in archery skills. Rynn can also cast magic spells, that can be bought during the game. As with weapons, many spells can be used only if you have a certain Magic skills value. Strangely enough, in Drakan you can’t cast spells while holding a weapon. If you want to attack an enemy with a magic spell, you have to unequip your weapon and press the directional buttons in a certain order while holding the circle button. It’s neither easy nor intuitive, and it makes casting magic spells on close enemies difficult and sometimes frustrating. Most of the weapons, armours, shields can be bought in the many shops present in the game, while others can be found only completing certain side quests; on a note, Rynn will actually wear the objects you buy.

Most of the times, the camera does a nice work. It stays fixed on the back of the character, and the right stick can be used to pan the view to take a look at the surroundings. When you are with your back to the wall, the camera doesn’t have enough space to frame you from the back; instead of moving the camera on the side of the character in this situation, the developers preferred to make your character disappear; in other words, you can still attack the enemies, but you just can’t see Rynn on the screen until you move away from the wall. It's something we have seen in other adventure games, but unfortunately it's always a bit confusing, especially when you are fighting more than one enemy at once.

Arokh’s controls are similar to Rynn’s ones, but he is faster and much stronger than his knight. His primary attack is his fiery breath, but Arokh can also find new attacks during the adventure and bite enemies while on the ground, and that’s pure bloody fun. Air battles are just addictive. I’ve enjoyed the air battles against feral dragons in Drakan just like the space battles in Star Wars: Starfighter; Arokh shows all his power while in the sky. After Rynn has mounted on Arokh, the triangle and X buttons are used to increase and decrease in altitude, while the left analog stick move Arokh forward and backward. Once locked onto an enemy, Arokh circles the target and can fire his deadly blows.

Overall, Surreal Software has created a game that’s a nearly perfect balance of different genres, that grants a varied, yet coherent, gameplay. Exploring the world of Drakan is a compelling, unique adventure, that every player should experience.