Drakan: The Ancients' Gates is the PlayStation 2 sequel to the PC action-adventure game that Psygnosis released several years ago. In it, you play as Rynn, a female warrior who shares a magical bond with an ancient dragon named Arokh. Dark forces have begun to gather in your realm, and the two of you must open four magical gates to bring Arokh's dragon brethren back into the world to drive out the evil.

The original Drakan was referred to by many as "Tomb Raider with a sword" because of its svelte female protagonist and the time it was released, but it had little in common with that series and is even less Tomb Raider-like now. As in the first game, you engage in hand-to-hand combat against foes on the ground when playing on foot as Rynn and in aerial combat against flying enemies when you're in the sky on Arokh's back. Besides being handy with a sword, you can also shoot arrows and cast spells. As you gain experience, you increase your skills in these three areas, which let you use special items (more powerful swords, bows, and spells, respectively). Throughout the course of the game, you gain enough experience to excel in one area and have basic proficiency in another--or you can balance your skills and end up fairly adequate in all three areas. The inventory system that you use to view your armor, weapons, and items is very similar to Diablo's in that larger items take up more physical space than smaller ones. Also as in Diablo, you must repair armor and weapons after extensive use, and you'll find that they aren't as strong as they were originally.

In Drakan: The Ancient's Gates, you travel to different lands and carry out a number of quests and side quests. The main quests are made up of feats you must accomplish to progress to the next land, like gathering up several rare artifacts for a wizard so that he can use them to break a powerful magical seal. You find each artifact in a different area--ashes of a warrior in a tomb, blood from a pagan altar in a goblin camp, and so on--all guarded by different kinds of monsters. These might sound like tedious "fetch quests," but the variety of creatures you face, environments in which you travel, and goals you must complete keep them entertaining. Besides the main quests, several side quests are available in each land, and there are additional enemy camps and dungeons that you can explore or ignore at your leisure. In most cases, there's usually a special item or treasure on hand to make it worth your while (though you should note that killing goblins is its own reward). For example, in one area, you find a cave--strewn with body parts and smeared with blood--in which resides a giant monster rooster guarding a golden egg. These extra areas and side quests add a lot to the game and make it well worth hopping on your dragon and exploring every nook and cranny in the world, rather than just heading off to finish the next main quest.

You can either engage enemies freely or lock onto to them by using a method similar to the Z-targeting from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (or, in the sky, in Konami's Zone of Enders). You spend most of the game on or under the ground but also a fair amount up in the sky on Arokh's back. Aerial combat can be somewhat dull at first, but it ramps up considerably as you gain access to additional dragon breath attacks. Lightning breath, for instance, is great at a distance and so becomes an excellent foil against foes with up-close powerful attacks. The final breath attack shoots tendrils of black smoke at opponents, which drains energy from them and sends it to you in the form of white tendrils. This lets you replenish your strength while hurting your opponents if you're skillful enough to intercept the white tendrils while avoiding enemy attack.