#7: Drakkhen

Drakkhen was the first RPG put out in North America for the SNES and it has some very interesting design decisions. You have a party of 4 characters and you only control one of them in combat. The other three wander around the screen and try to swing at the enemy. I made a wizard but he didn't seem to have any useful spells and mostly just tried to beat down with his staff.

Bung's clothes broke... Nice undies!

You start off by randomly generating four characters. You have to make a fighter, a scout, a priest, and a wizard. You get three rolls for your stats. I think I saw only a single 18 but I had one person roll four 17s. Of course, I had no idea what the stats did or which stats a given class really wanted but I made my best of it.

Physique = Fortitude = Vitality = Constitution?

The basic storyline is there were dragons and they were awesome. They disappeared for some reason and left behind a half-dragon race called the Drakkhen which have been suppressing humanity. There are 8 Drakkhen royalty (a male and a female of each element) and you need to wander around the world dealing with those 8 Drakkhen in an attempt to save humanity.

The fate of humanity is in Bung's capable hands!

The overworld map is an interesting pseudo-3D system. You have a map with compass that shows you where all the castles and stuff are. I remember the game having an interesting enough story and 12 year old me was more than capable of figuring out where to go next. I remember it being hard but fair...

RIP

Having now played a wide variety of RPGs I can say Drakkhen has some very serious flaws. Not being able to control your party is frustrating. The sound effects are actually terrible. Experience doesn't seem to be split between members of your party so the guy I was controlling (and was therefore getting in range to attack fastest) kept getting all the kills. He hit level 3 and everyone else was still level 1. Gear breaks after taking a few hits and naked people seemed to be guaranteed to die in one hit.

I played a bit, saved, and thought I'd go back to it another day. I have since decided I really have no desire to keep playing. I did rent it several times as a kid and distinctly remember beating it at some point so it's not unplayable trash or anything like that. It's just got a lot of warts that I don't want to deal with for the hours it would take to really make progress.

Rating: C