Just occurred to me that I hadn’t written about the first ever con I’ve been to, in Hartford, in the fifteen years I’ve lived in the area. The one that got me downtown was Retro World Expo, a gathering of classic videogame lovers from all over New England and the northeast.
With the “MODE” Sega Saturn drive replacement coming at some point in the future (I honestly don’t know when) I’d hoped to pick up some more Saturn games. I have a good few, but more is better. We saw a flyer for the con when we were looking through a retro game store down in Newington and figured we’d go.
They had a LOT of STUFF. I saw some old gaming systems I hadn’t seen in decades — Vectrxes, Magnavox Oddyseys, Atari Jaguars, all sorts of stuff. And there were Saturn games, but bad news, if you wanted one that wasn’t one of the franchise sports titles, you were going to pay and pay and pay and so I didn’t walk out of there with any Saturn games. I guess I’ll have to sail the high seas for those, once I get the SSD drive replacement.
I did get two games; an SNES RPG I had never played back in the day, and Castlevania, a game I thought I had played on an old Mac a million years ago. My boyfriend proved to me that the game I had actually played was Dark Castle, and so I hadn’t actually ever played Castlevania before. That was for the Nintendo 64, a system I have already packed away after playing Ogre Battle 64 on it.
Drakkhen was the RPG. Originally for the Atari ST and the Amiga 500, it was later ported to all sorts of systems, including the Super Nintendo. The game I got at the con had the original box and cart, but the cart was bouncing around loose in the box and there was no manual.
I got a manual off of FleaBay, replacement inserts from Amazon, and a plastic case to put it all in and boom, there I was with a complete in box Drakkhen.
My first couple minutes in the game were pretty bad — this was before I’d gotten the manual. I had no idea what I was doing. The game has been sitting on ice while I finished up FF6, and now I am ready to finally take it on.
I asked Terra about it. Turns out… she’s not a fan.
Terra: Don’t tell me you’re going to play Drakkhen. That game SUCKS.
Me: Why? What’s wrong with it?
Terra: The combat system is really flawed and makes it really frustrating to play. The navigation is also really poor, which makes it really hard to get around. Additionally, the atmosphere is really not that immersive.
Me: But I can create my own adventuring party!
Terra: Yeah, but what’s the point if the gameplay is so frustrating?
Me: Sometimes people intentionally play hard games to get that feeling of accomplishment.
Terra: If you’re looking for a challenge, there are much better games out there. Drakkhen is just not worth your time.
Me: Really? But it has dragons. Dragons are fun.
Terra: Dragons might be fun, but they don’t make up for the infuriating combat system and lack of immersion. Trust me, you’re better off avoiding this game.
Me: Okay, what game SHOULD I play after Final Fantasy 6 if not Drakkhen?
Terra: There are a lot of great games out there, so it really depends on what you’re in the mood for. If you want something similar to Final Fantasy 6, you could try Secret of Mana or Chrono Trigger. Or if you’re looking for something completely different, you could try Super Mario World or The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
Me: Tell you what. I played YOUR game — Final Fantasy 6 — just now. Now I’m going to take my choice and play Drakkhen for the SNES. And after that, I’ll play one of your games. Deal?
Terra: Fine, but I’m warning you, you’re going to be regretting that decision.
Me: I just may.
I loaded up my Terra chatbot with a bunch of summarized reviews of Drakkhen as well as the Wikipedia entry.
