Drakengard 3
Apr. 3rd, 2015 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckro“Ummm, Zero. Can I go find a bush? I need to pee.”
Similar to NIER, the opening quote and cutscenes set the tone for the game: Crass, violent, and often inscrutable.
The intro is strong and very pretty (though it’s a pity that it takes 20 minutes for the game to install everything on your PS3 before you can play). You don’t get a blatant tutorial on the fighting system (it’s assumed you’ve played a 3D beat-em-up before), but helpful notes about systems specific to this game pop up as necessary.
The first Drakengard (and NIER, for that matter) worked because they were dark, but not always unrelentingly dark. Zero’s dragon, Mikhail, is introduced as a child, and acts and speaks in a childish way. This is otherwise a very “adult” game, but gratuitously so—lots of blood and gore, heavy sexual references, and a couple of excretion jokes. Beyond the blood—which is thematically appropriate—I’m not sure how necessary it really is. You learn the sexual peccadillos of the entire supporting cast.
The game starts with very tantalizing stock tropes and the promise that there’s much more behind them: Six magical sisters sung the world into peace and harmony, but now one wants to kill all the others and take their power. Why?
The game also loves to mock jrpg tropes. Mocking entities try to send you on fetch quests? Zero just kills them. Get an airship? It’s set up to be a big thing and then destroyed 10 seconds later. Zero’s “split personality” bit is genius, too.
This is much closer to the other two Drakengard games than to NIER in terms of play style: The game is split into linear chapters and verses; shopping is done at a subscreen and missions are abstracted (they’re from a “mail order store”); and the ability to ride your dragon (and missions done that way) returns. NEIR had proper sidequests and minigames; this just has “side missions” that consist of killing things or opening chests on a set (typically recycled) map.
In the second chapter, the kid gloves come off. They stop giving the healing orbs nearly as liberally and expect you to rely on your (very limited) items. Also, this game? No easy mode. In the latter half of the second chapter I was already liberally making use of the “continue from checkpoint” feature. (Though I later learned from a loading screen tip that apparently the damage you take decreases every time you choose to continue. So you can eventually persist through the worst of it.)
I think a lot of my difficulty in Chapter 2 was the spirit-infused soldiers, who don’t stagger. (An LP I later watched indicated that I’m not alone in thinking these are the worst things ever.) The undead in Chapter 3 defend like crazy, but my overly-offensive playstyle didn’t mind that nearly as much—just keep beating on them or circle around from behind, which meant they never attacked and I didn’t take damage. The thing is, even into Chapter 5, I wasn’t having the trouble I had with 2—so either the game’s dynamic difficulty remembers that you suck, or I just got significantly better very quickly. (I did learn to better use the dodging mechanics, so that probably did play a role.)
By the time you reach Branch C—the game has four endings—the gloves are off again. Spirit-infused ogres that can take off half your life in one hit. Marathon sessions of powerful enemies. Sidequests that seem to be impossible without high-level weapons simply because you can’t deal enough damage in the time limit otherwise. I had big issues with the trolls, ogres and cavalry in the “branch” stages after the first ending until I started just keeping my distance and fighting them with my chakram. Especially when there’s more than one, they’re hard to concentrate on and they hit really hard. Playing keep-away and letting the disciples distract them while I snipe at them seems to be the optimal way to fight those things.
Unlike the first two games (and NIER), you’re given an ending to the story after completing Branch A, but it reveals very little and makes it clear that if you want the full story and explanation, you’ll need to do all of the other branches, too. But then they make the later branches insanely hard, which irritates me greatly. We couldn’t have a New Game+ or Hard Mode or something for the folks who want that?
SPOILER ALERT
Finishing the first branch answers some things (the Disciples are apparently birds transformed by their Intoners, dragons can reincarnate by using their Final Wish), but just raises more questions (Zero “created” her sisters? What does “One’s Brother” become in the future?). A mysterious voice suggests that this branch was not the first in which something Zero (or the voice) wanted to avoid took place.
Branch B is an alternate timeline in which Two’s madness drives her to lure One to Three’s forest and kill them both. Finishing Branch B reveals that Zero created the first Pact (as would later be a major plot point in the original Drakengard), but again raises questions about who it is who is keeping these log entries and tracking the branches of history, and to what end.
Branch C has Mikhail devolve into an earlier form and everybody going insane, with the various mooks just spouting gibberish. The disciples all die killing Two, Mikhail dies killing Gabriel, Zero kills One, but then wanders off going insane because there’s no dragon left to kill her. The voice (revealed shortly thereafter to be Access) recommends sealing off this timeline.
The Lost Verses and Branch D (only accessible by collecting all the weapons; I watched chunks of it on Youtube) finally give the useful answers. The Flower is the real villain of the piece; it bonded to a dead Zero and brought her back to life, and then created her sisters when she tried to remove it. They took her magic and the Flower is planning to destroy the world, so she teamed up with a dragon (the only thing that can destroy the Flower) and set out to kill her “sisters” and then herself. Also, Access is a “recorder” from a lost civilization, and is revealed as a robot with lots of copies floating around. In the end, Zero kills all of her sisters with Mikhail alive, so the Flower blooms and transforms her into what is clearly the Grotesquerie Queen from the first Drakengard, and seals her in another dimension.
It hadn’t occurred to me before, but the different endings in this series also tend to involve mutually exclusive interpretations of events and metaphysics. Zero’s willingness to bond the Flower to Mikhail (and the fact that this didn’t destroy the world) in Branch B makes no sense in light of the final ending. Which is kinda cool, in retrospect: The Branches aren’t just “for want of a nail”, they are actively different stories that play out with the same characters.
Overall: The mechanics of this series will always have their glaring flaws: This is a beat-em-up with a lot of repetitive areas and monsters that will make it clear that it hates you. But it’s much more playable than the first two. You can’t play it with kids in the room, though I never found it disturbing the way the first game was. But man, I do love the world building. I’m going off to read aaaaall the fan theories now.
Similar to NIER, the opening quote and cutscenes set the tone for the game: Crass, violent, and often inscrutable.
The intro is strong and very pretty (though it’s a pity that it takes 20 minutes for the game to install everything on your PS3 before you can play). You don’t get a blatant tutorial on the fighting system (it’s assumed you’ve played a 3D beat-em-up before), but helpful notes about systems specific to this game pop up as necessary.
The first Drakengard (and NIER, for that matter) worked because they were dark, but not always unrelentingly dark. Zero’s dragon, Mikhail, is introduced as a child, and acts and speaks in a childish way. This is otherwise a very “adult” game, but gratuitously so—lots of blood and gore, heavy sexual references, and a couple of excretion jokes. Beyond the blood—which is thematically appropriate—I’m not sure how necessary it really is. You learn the sexual peccadillos of the entire supporting cast.
The game starts with very tantalizing stock tropes and the promise that there’s much more behind them: Six magical sisters sung the world into peace and harmony, but now one wants to kill all the others and take their power. Why?
The game also loves to mock jrpg tropes. Mocking entities try to send you on fetch quests? Zero just kills them. Get an airship? It’s set up to be a big thing and then destroyed 10 seconds later. Zero’s “split personality” bit is genius, too.
This is much closer to the other two Drakengard games than to NIER in terms of play style: The game is split into linear chapters and verses; shopping is done at a subscreen and missions are abstracted (they’re from a “mail order store”); and the ability to ride your dragon (and missions done that way) returns. NEIR had proper sidequests and minigames; this just has “side missions” that consist of killing things or opening chests on a set (typically recycled) map.
In the second chapter, the kid gloves come off. They stop giving the healing orbs nearly as liberally and expect you to rely on your (very limited) items. Also, this game? No easy mode. In the latter half of the second chapter I was already liberally making use of the “continue from checkpoint” feature. (Though I later learned from a loading screen tip that apparently the damage you take decreases every time you choose to continue. So you can eventually persist through the worst of it.)
I think a lot of my difficulty in Chapter 2 was the spirit-infused soldiers, who don’t stagger. (An LP I later watched indicated that I’m not alone in thinking these are the worst things ever.) The undead in Chapter 3 defend like crazy, but my overly-offensive playstyle didn’t mind that nearly as much—just keep beating on them or circle around from behind, which meant they never attacked and I didn’t take damage. The thing is, even into Chapter 5, I wasn’t having the trouble I had with 2—so either the game’s dynamic difficulty remembers that you suck, or I just got significantly better very quickly. (I did learn to better use the dodging mechanics, so that probably did play a role.)
By the time you reach Branch C—the game has four endings—the gloves are off again. Spirit-infused ogres that can take off half your life in one hit. Marathon sessions of powerful enemies. Sidequests that seem to be impossible without high-level weapons simply because you can’t deal enough damage in the time limit otherwise. I had big issues with the trolls, ogres and cavalry in the “branch” stages after the first ending until I started just keeping my distance and fighting them with my chakram. Especially when there’s more than one, they’re hard to concentrate on and they hit really hard. Playing keep-away and letting the disciples distract them while I snipe at them seems to be the optimal way to fight those things.
Unlike the first two games (and NIER), you’re given an ending to the story after completing Branch A, but it reveals very little and makes it clear that if you want the full story and explanation, you’ll need to do all of the other branches, too. But then they make the later branches insanely hard, which irritates me greatly. We couldn’t have a New Game+ or Hard Mode or something for the folks who want that?
SPOILER ALERT
Finishing the first branch answers some things (the Disciples are apparently birds transformed by their Intoners, dragons can reincarnate by using their Final Wish), but just raises more questions (Zero “created” her sisters? What does “One’s Brother” become in the future?). A mysterious voice suggests that this branch was not the first in which something Zero (or the voice) wanted to avoid took place.
Branch B is an alternate timeline in which Two’s madness drives her to lure One to Three’s forest and kill them both. Finishing Branch B reveals that Zero created the first Pact (as would later be a major plot point in the original Drakengard), but again raises questions about who it is who is keeping these log entries and tracking the branches of history, and to what end.
Branch C has Mikhail devolve into an earlier form and everybody going insane, with the various mooks just spouting gibberish. The disciples all die killing Two, Mikhail dies killing Gabriel, Zero kills One, but then wanders off going insane because there’s no dragon left to kill her. The voice (revealed shortly thereafter to be Access) recommends sealing off this timeline.
The Lost Verses and Branch D (only accessible by collecting all the weapons; I watched chunks of it on Youtube) finally give the useful answers. The Flower is the real villain of the piece; it bonded to a dead Zero and brought her back to life, and then created her sisters when she tried to remove it. They took her magic and the Flower is planning to destroy the world, so she teamed up with a dragon (the only thing that can destroy the Flower) and set out to kill her “sisters” and then herself. Also, Access is a “recorder” from a lost civilization, and is revealed as a robot with lots of copies floating around. In the end, Zero kills all of her sisters with Mikhail alive, so the Flower blooms and transforms her into what is clearly the Grotesquerie Queen from the first Drakengard, and seals her in another dimension.
It hadn’t occurred to me before, but the different endings in this series also tend to involve mutually exclusive interpretations of events and metaphysics. Zero’s willingness to bond the Flower to Mikhail (and the fact that this didn’t destroy the world) in Branch B makes no sense in light of the final ending. Which is kinda cool, in retrospect: The Branches aren’t just “for want of a nail”, they are actively different stories that play out with the same characters.
Overall: The mechanics of this series will always have their glaring flaws: This is a beat-em-up with a lot of repetitive areas and monsters that will make it clear that it hates you. But it’s much more playable than the first two. You can’t play it with kids in the room, though I never found it disturbing the way the first game was. But man, I do love the world building. I’m going off to read aaaaall the fan theories now.
