Finished playing OOTF for the first time

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Barguest
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Joined: Tue Nov 10, 2015 12:54 am

Finished playing OOTF for the first time

Post by Barguest »

Soooooo, I finally lost my Order of the Flame virginity. Oh sure, being a long time fan of Drakan The Ancient's Gates, I've given it up to Arokh before, but OOTF is a bit of a different beast. And yeah, it was a little awkward at first, playing on a Windows 8.1 laptop required some manuevering. There was some shifting of positions, grunting, swearing, etc. But with a little work, we came together. A rub of the touchpad, stroke of the key, caress of the left and right buttons, it was very special. So, I'm here to share my thoughts, just as one Drakan fan to a community of other fans. Yes, I'm going to kiss and tell.

***Spoiled Spoilery Spoilt Spoilers***
***spoiled milk, spoiled picnic, spoiled bread, spoiled your good time, spoiled brat, spoiled chicken, spoiled the punchline of my Japanese golfer joke, spoiled sushi, spoiled dog, spoiled that one song forever, spoiled eggs, spoiled our weekend, spoiled wartok, spoiled someone else's children, spoiled pumpkin pie, spoiled boiled potatoes, spoiled rotten, spoiled plans, totally spoiled that movie for her, spoiled my throw, spoiled dead body, spoiled TV reception, spoiled leftover Chinese food***

I was excited to finally play OOTF, and had a lot of fun with it. It was interesting to see TAG's origins, the stuff that had come before.

One thing I found interesting was how the graphics were simultaniously both better and worse than TAG's. In some ways they where sharper, crisper, more detailed, but they also seemed inferior, not as "fleshed out", a bit more awkward looking in places. Especially the weird static faces.

The voice acting. Wow. Like Oh em gee, that has to be some of the worst voice acting I've ever seen in a game. Sure, TAG may not have the best voice acting ever, but it's certainly a vast improvement over that of OOTF.

Gibs are fun. Hack your enemies into pieces, then play soccer with their severed body parts. Fun activities: Kick gibs into other enemies to intimidate them ("look what I did to your pal here, you're next buster!"). See how far you can kick a gib (like that old childhood pasttime of "kick the can", only with monster flesh instead.). Try kicking gibs up hillsides, or try to score goals (using Arokh's legs as goal posts is pretty fun). Kill a group of enemies, then seperate their body parts into groups and arrange them in neat little piles (feet here, faces here, etc.). Hack up some wartoks and have Arokh BBQ the sliced bits, then set of a stand to sell the cuts of freshly cooked meat ("Shoulder of wartok mister? Free range, all organic, no hormones, preservitives, or dyes. Only 5 gold a pound!").
Who knew severed body parts could be so much fun? I also like the way Rynn 'splodes into gibs. Too bad you can't go back to the site of your death and play with your own gibs. Oh dear, that sounded dirty. LOL

There were a lot of fun weapons, though being used to TAG, I was bummed when I found out I couldn't repair them. Especially hated coming across something cool and finding out it only had a little bit of durability left. On the other hand, there seemed to be lots of weapons around, so I never ran out of weapons to use. I did love that the Mournbringer sword was indestructable in OOTF, so as soon as I got it, I could toss all my other swords away and use it with inpunity. In TAG, the Mournbringer has 500 durability, and while this is a lot, you can't go totally nuts with it. In fact, I think it was my second play through TAG, and the first time I acquired the Mournbringer (I didn't know about the Mournbringer, or getting the four elemental swords my first time through), I started using the Mournbringer right after I got it, not thinking I'd need much else at that point. It ended up breaking on me in the Flesh Mage's palace. That sucked. I also liked the black nimbus the OOTF Mournbringer had around it, and the agonized screams whenever it was swung, like the sword came straight from the steaming pits of hell. Pretty cool weapon.

Those knights. Grrrrr! Those were some tough enemies, and they're all over the place. Man, I don't know how many times those twerps killed Rynn, but it was a lot. It doesn't help that I suck at gaming with a keyboard & mouse either.

The trolls. LOL. Clearly the early ancesters of the trogs in TAG, but more primitive, with itty bitty wee tiny brains. I mean, really, it almost felt wrong to kill them. And the noises they make. Again, felt like they should have been in the school for special trolls, not playing with dangerous weapons. The were probably promised a candy bar or something in exchange for killing Rynn. And I did kind of miss having the wartoks talk to me like in TAG. Especially loved being able to kill a wartok when it was in the midst of gloating, or right after it said "Haha, weak human!" or "You die now!" *Stab* "Ugh" *gurgle* "Actually my good man, YOU die now! Wahahahaha!"

The succubi, I knew they were gonna be trouble when I first met them. They would have been a nice addition to TAG. Loved the way they swoop around making those cooing noises. You hear "flap flap flap...Ooooooh, ooohm" "You okay there ma'am?" Or like the boy from Surdana in TAG, "Whatcha doin?" Yeah, just what ARE you doing up there, making those noises? That's quite indecent, this is a public place! Shame on you! *zap* "Arrgh!"

Queen shilla. I like her. Us big gals gotta stick together. Loved the battle with her too. It's not every day that a boss battle involves the boss trying to kill you...by farting on your head. Really I should have just stood still and let her hit me with her fart attack, just to watch Rynn's death scene. The death scenes in Drakan are often hilarious, but that would have been among the funniest.

The ice element. Ugh, sucks in OOTF, in my opinion. I love weapons with the ice element in TAG, how the enemy freezes solid, then can be shattered with the next hit. It felt nerfed in OOTF, since none of the ice weapons are capable of killing anything, you have to whip out a different weapon to do it, and I kept having the enemy thaw out by the time I'd tapped the key to change weapons and take a swing. Same with Arokh's ice breath. This led to me not bothering to use ice elemental weapons or Arokh's ice breath in OOTF. Bummer.

Arokh's lava breath was really cool, I felt it rivaled the dark breath from TAG actually. The dark breath is nice and everything, but not quite as useful at the point of the game you normally get it, given it's slow rate of fire, slow travel and the fact that successful hits don't automatically heal you. You have to catch those pink tendrils of returning health, which is not always feasible in an air battle with dark dragons or gryphons. I find avoiding their attacks involves so much moving around that I end up missing most of the health returns.

The war giants. Holy crap nuggets! Imagine those in TAG, being trapped in a cave with one...on foot without Arokh. Perhaps with just a steel short sword and a wooden long bow.

The end battle with Navaros as a four headed dragon. Pretty cool! A bit like fighting two Mezzidrels at once. I kind of found the end to be a little disappointing though, just like TAG's ending really. It felt like they should have made a game involving a continuing quest to rescue her brother, as it didn't seem like he was actually really dead there. Perhaps they did plan on it, but weren't able to. Such a shame. :(

All in all, I had fun playing this gem. I've downloaded some of the user created levels to play too. It's such a shame TAG couldn't be modded too. Being able to play user created levels in TAG would have been a blast. Oh well. OOTF is going to stay on my computer where I can continue to enjoy it, just like TAG continues to entertain me after all these years. I know you guys in the Drakan community understand the joy of playing and replaying these games. Long live Drakan!

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Arokhs Twin
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Re: Finished playing OOTF for the first time

Post by Arokhs Twin »

I played through the game again recently & got to the islands but then realised it's very dated and quit. I may go back and finish it some day. Point taken on the voice acting - it's not great but Arokh was the best voice in the game. There were some really cheesy lines in the game.

Drakan: TAG is a technically superior game and as for the graphics the PS2 game has a much higher polygon count but lower resolution textures which were a limitation of the PS2 hardware. If the game was made for the PC I bet it would have looked better. I prefer Arokh's look in OOTF - he looks a bit childish and too orange in TAG. His overall appearance was vastly different to OOTF.

Can't say which one I preferred but the endings of both games were the worst part. TAG was better than OOTF; I mean at least it concluded the story but yet left it open for a sequel which I imagine Surreal had planned to do but then it never happened. A third game on the PS3 or even PS4 would have been awesome.
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