No, it isn't good, and it's almost just as bad as you've heard.

Yes, you should give it a shot.

Look, yes, it's essentially a buggy, unfinished Max Payne clone. It's also one of the funniest games out there -- entirely accidentally.

It's also a bizarre game brimming with potential waiting for any opportunity to escape through the many cracks in its VERY flawed exterior, and it's hard to explain exactly how this is the case.

In fact, it probably won't click with you for a good ten levels, when you get a fair amount of your basic powerset and a basic competency for the core mechanics.

But when it clicks, there's something oddly satisfying about purposefully engaging with a bad game... and finding yourself having FUN.

Maybe there's a case to be made about bringing back old games that weren't any good, that have a history of being just awful; maybe archival should only be considered for "good" games.

I say, we find the good in the bad. I'm grateful for the opportunity to play this game in the modern era, to play a game that had a bunch of great ideas -- none of which quite manage to come through. It's awful, has a bunch of potentially game-breaking bugs, and there are some boss fights that seem nigh-unwinnable without exploits... And yet, there's something beautiful about catching a glimpse of what this game wants to be, and how good it could be, given the opportunity, and when you catch that high, it's a frustratingly hard game to put down.

It's also frustratingly hard.

Cuz of all the bugs.

A full history / review of the game can be found on the Bad Game Hall of Fame: https://www.badgamehalloffame.com/blog/drake-of-the-99-dragons/

Drake of the 99 Dragons has gotten a bum rap for the better part of fifteen years, and I am genuinely happy to see made available on Steam. Even if it is just a repackaging of the 2004 PC release, it's nice to finally have it in an easily-accessible format.

Many of the most notorious issues associated with the game (janky auto-aiming, path-finding and scripting issues, et cetera) are present only in the Xbox version of the game, leaving you with a more or less fully-functional product on PC. Don't get me wrong: There are still a fair share of remaining flaws that are just inherent to the game's design, but most of them fall under the category of being "charmingly bad." If you can look past the rough edges, there's a genuine bit of fun to be had with Drake, and a satisfaction that comes with mastering the controls / learning how to clear the game as quickly and efficiently as possible.

In terms of "dollars-to-playtime," a [first-time] playthrough will probably take you roughly three to four hours. That being said, there honestly deserves to be something like a speedrunning community surrounding this game, and folk who are so inclined to play games for speed will hopefully find additional value in it. So, if the price seems right to you, I seriously recommend giving Drake a chance.

Drake of the 99 Dragons achieved infamy on the Xbox for its unintentionally hilarious story, low production values and a busted auto-aim that caused its titular protagonist to flail his arms around in every direction. As I think it’s unlikely that many people considering a purchase are unaware of this, the question is less whether the game is a classic and more whether it’s playable enough to satisfy as a curiosity. With the added precision of mouse and keyboard controls doing away with the console version’s most severe gameplay flaw, I’d say the answer is yes, absolutely.

Taking obvious inspiration from The Matrix and John Woo’s Hong Kong action films, Drake can leap about with a gun in each hand (which are fired independently with the left and right mouse buttons) and never bothers to reload during a shootout (instead pulling out a new gun from the apparently bottomless pockets of his trench coat). The first mission after the tutorial doesn’t provide any opportunities to regain health, giving the impression the game is a lot trickier than it really is. Then Drake learns to use fallen enemies’ souls to restore health and slow down time. This sets up a straightforward and satisfying gameplay loop. You’re never searching for medkits and rarely taking cover, as the solution to almost all of Drake’s problems is to shoot more bad guys. The action isn’t a tenth as spectacular as the likes of Max Payne and Stranglehold, but if your appreciation for slow-motion bullet ballet extends to less refined examples of the genre (such as Enter the Matrix and the PS2-era Dead to Rights games), you may find more to like about Drake and the 99 Dragons than its abysmal reputation would suggest.

That’s not to say the game isn’t plagued with rough edges and baffling design decisions. The most inexplicable of these is probably the Serene Garden, an unskippable ten-second penalty box where the gods berate Drake every time he dies. This makes sense in-universe, but it can become tiresome when the difficulty spikes. And though the controls are a vast improvement over the Xbox version, some of them are poorly explained. For instance, Drake eventually gains the power to attract souls towards him, an ability that can be used actively (by holding E) or passively (by pressing E and Right Shift together at the start of a level). The passive version is much more useful, but the game seemingly forgets to mention that it’s even an option. Then there’s the last power Drake receives, a ghostly dragon that emanates from his chest to attack enemies directly in front of him. It’s rendered almost completely useless by the need to have an excess of health points to activate it (an absurd requirement for a melee special attack when most enemies have ranged weapons). Platforming sequences are also inconsistent; some are sources of frustration that will send you back to the very beginning of the level if you miss a jump, while others will respawn you almost exactly where you left off (the platforming-heavy missions that lead up to the finale are fortunately quite forgiving). Another oddity are the time limits placed on each level. The game is fast-paced by nature, so outside of a few instances where you might accidently miss an objective and not have enough time to backtrack, the ticking clock rarely presents a threat. It feels pointless.

The weakest parts of Drake of the 99 Dragons are easily its boss fights. There’s no indication of how much health bosses have remaining, and while some of the early battles incorporate puzzle-like elements, many of the later ones just involve continuously circle-strafing around bullet sponges. The final boss fight demands some strategy but is particularly unbalanced. The player has to blast away at a mass of bones before the three-headed boss can be damaged. The monster’s heads are incredibly difficult to avoid and can bat Drake around like a toy; it’s easy to get caught in a position where death is guaranteed. The safest place in the room seems to be right next to the mass of bones, which is outside the reach of two of the three heads. Once you’ve dealt with the head that can strike you, the other two are at your mercy and the fight goes from being stupidly hard to effortlessly easy.

But even those low points don’t cancel out the simple pleasures of battling common grunts and laughing at the campy scriptwriting. For all the game’s serious issues, there’s enough charm here to make for a surprisingly fun experience. Drake of the 99 Dragons might very well be one of the best games to ever be universally panned as one of the worst games of all time.

your character kills himself in the story within 20 minutes which is really the best way to sum up the game

Up front, I bought this purely for it's reputation as one of the worst games of all time. Read everything that follows with that in mind.

This is a bad game, but there are far worse ways to spend your time.

On the positive side, for the most part the gameplay actually works. The mouse aiming works far better than the original XBox version and by using your ability to slow down time you can feel pretty like a powerful undead assassin. The balance of blasting enemies and catching enemy souls before they float up to heaven is entertaining enough.

It's far from perfect, but it works.

On the bad side, the balance is all sorts of bat**** crazy, I opened the first door in the first stage and was dead in under 2 seconds. I struggled for 15 minutes of painful learning only to reach level two and get rewarded with time slowdown, regeneration, and a fraction of the enemies in the first stage. 15 levels later, I still haven't felt the challenge of that opening stage (This is a good thing)

But an even bigger problem is the complete lack of feedback. Bosses in particular can be a pain because some require puzzles to defeat while others are straight up gunfights... but lord knows how to tell which it is. As far as I can tell there is no way to tell when an robot enemy is taking damage.

But this same issue plagues alot of the game. There are guidance arrows that tell you to jump down... but if you follow it you die from the fall. There are numberous chase stages where you are supposed to follow an impossibly fast character but they neglect to tell you that if you shoot them you get a blood trail to follow. The game does a poor job of communicating with the player.

Despite the negative tone here, I am enjoying the game and I'm glad I picked it up. It's just not something that I can recommend to anyone except those morbidly curious about the worst-game-ever stories. Even then, I'd say wait for a half off sale.

Yep, it's as bad as everybody says.

this game is ass

This is by far the worst third person shooter I've ever played. I'm not exaggerating. This game started off as this 'haha funny' bad game, but it slowly gets way more frustrating and broken as you continue. This game has gotten me more mad then any other game I've played.

The movement system is horrendously bad. In games like Max Payne, moving the camera also moves the character. This means the camera and character are always facing the forward. However in this game, the camera moves independently of Drake's actions, causing tons of issues, including that many times the bullets literally DON'T go to where you are aiming since Drake's arms are all over the place. Jumping is also 50/50 where sometimes he will jump and double jump find, and other times where he feels stuck to the ground. Also Drake will literally wall run on anything. A beam? Yup he'll run around it. A boss? Yup, wall run on that too. Tires? Yup, nothing stops him from wall running. Since you can't activate or cancel the wall running, you're just left helpless as you are stuck in the animation. There is so much more wrong with the controls than I can say here, so you really have to play the game to understand why they are so bad...

Gunplay sucks. The pistols are really the only good weapons for regular enemies as any SMGs are wildly inaccurate at like any ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ range. Plus there is no reload button. Want to reload your gun? You have to dump the remaining mag. Get this: In the demo of the game, which comes with the Steam version, they had a reload button and removed it in the final game. WHY!?!

Story? Yea, forget it. Voice acting is bad, and the story just happens with no reason at all. I didn't understand the story until after seeing reviews on this game. That's how incoherent it is.

Environments also are terrible. Many are way too small to make proper use of wall running. Plus they provide like no good cover from enemies.

I swear the enemies who shoot have like 99% accurate. They will hit you CONSTANTLY, and since you lose a lot of health per shot, you can die just entering in a room. Enemies that go for melee hits will gang up causing you to be take cheap hits and it flings you around the room like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ragdoll. Also the health only heals 10 points. Good luck trying to survive when you are constantly at 30 health and lower because you literally can't heal enough.

Also for a comic book style game, it hasn't aged particular well graphically. I think of examples like Cel Damage that still look good to this day, yet this game just looks so bland. Doesn't help that the PC version of this game is missing widescreen support that was on the Xbox version, ugh.

The only redeeming thing about this game is that its original soundtrack is really good. Though, it ruined by have the same songs being play multiple times on different levels... couldn't even get that right...

One last thing before I have my closing words on this game, those pictures you see on the store front? Yea, those locations don't even show up in the final game. You can tell they are old alpha/beta screenshots due to the older HUD used.

If you hate yourself, pick this game up. If you don't hate yourself, I recommend playing the first two Max Payne games, El Matador, and The Punisher (2005) game, which are much, much better than this...

If you want to see me go through 25 minutes of playing this torture simulator, I have a link to my video down below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDBadhIzV_k
♥♥♥♥ this game.

Drake and the 99 dragons will make you really feel like drake himself, your mostly in a comatose state without the understanding of what you're doing, why and how to proceed. After betting this game i can now say that i have become, Drake the 99th dragon.

Yes the game is pretty bad, but first of all, it is much better than the Xbox-version and there are only benefits to games being available (no matter their quality).