There is also a plague afflicting the people of Pern. There is some discord among the riders as to how the next Weyrwoman should be selected, and this leads to treachery. D'Kor must help search for a replacement. When Dragonriders begins, the Weyrwoman of Fort Weyr has died.

Still, those who haven't read the books will likely feel lost at times. The game does a poor job of giving any contextual explanations for Pern's strange society, though there is a large library of information available for players who don't have the necessary background to understand what people are talking about. The Dragonriders have a sort of caste system, based on what color dragon you ride (they also have names like S'lon, F'ben, and V'hul, while nonriders tend to have names like Jim, Tom, and Kevan). You play as D'Kor, rider of a bronze dragon. The basic societal structure of Pern provides the background for Dragonriders but not the substance. You'll spend the majority of your time talking to the citizens and riders of Pern. And as in many other disappointing adventure games, you are supposed to be a great hero, but you do little more than perform menial tasks. It takes the primary elements of the Pern novels and uses them to fashion a run-of-the-mill adventure game that offers very little actual adventure and too many frustrating mechanical issues.

But Ubi Soft's Dragonriders: Chronicles of Pern is not a good game. The series spans a dozen books featuring warriors who ride dragons and fight against a terrifying parasite that falls from the sky. Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels would seem to be the perfect inspiration for a good game.

The dragon riders of pern