Drakkhen — stories left

In the "Cross Review" feature of the magazine Famitsu,the game scored a total of 28 out of 40. In the "Game Report Card" reader poll run by Family Computer Magazine,it scored 20.59 out of 30, as shown below.

This score placed it 157th among all Super Famicom titles (323 titles in total, as of 1993).

Super Gamer reviewed the SNES Version and gave an overall score of 84% writing: "The perspective is unusual for an RPG; a fast-scrolling 3-D landscape heavily populated with well-drawn monsters.

It was a very early game in the North American SNES library, and as such, received almost universal coverage in previews of the then-upcoming SNES in gaming magazines of 1990 and early 1991.

It was translated for North American release in 1990 by Draconian, a label from Data East.

In the August 1990 edition of Dragon (Issue #160), Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser admired the Amiga versions's "amazing graphics, enthralling music, and incredible game environment", but admitted that it was "one of the toughest fantasy adventure games for a novice to survive that we've yet encountered.

Jim Trunzo reviewed Drakkhen in White Wolf #24 (Dec./Jan., 1990), rating it a 4 out of 5 and stated that "Data East has given much thought and preparation to Drakkhen and it shows.

Besides that, separately from Dragon View, a sequel called Drakkhen II was planned and in development (the ending of this game even contained an expression that seemed to foreshadow it), but development was cancelled.

Its selling points were that it achieved multi-color display (48 colors), overcoming the severe hardware-derived limit on the number of colors by switching palettes during vertical scanning, and that it had been quick to support several languages, beginning with Japanese, English, and French.

Predating both Ultima Underworld (1992) and Eye of the Beholder (1991), Drakkhen was among the first action RPGs to utilize a permanent, real-time, text-adventure log window, demonstrating large influence from MUD games.

The originals were criticized for lacking a compass, which the SNES developers took to heart when they made changes to the new version.

Drakkhen was originally released in 1989 by Infogrames two years after being presented at gaming expos.

In the August 1990 edition of Dragon (Issue #160), Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser admired the Amiga versions's "amazing graphics, enthralling music, and incredible game environment", but admitted that it was "one of the toughest fantasy adventure games for a novice to survive that we've yet encountered.