Tag: drakengard

Drakengard 3 dev. Access Games (2014)

I’ll be honest here, I wasn’t sure I’d check out any new fiction in August. July really burned me out. But I was going along, riding out the summer heat by listening to podcasts in my air conditioned car, and the topic of Nier: Automata came up. It sounds like an interesting game and I intend to play it, but I found out it’s connected to the Drakengard series, for which I’d written walkthroughs of the first two games. I skipped the first Nier as well as the third Drakengard game and couldn’t bear the possibility of skipping those two stories before the latest (regardless of how loosely connected they seem to be), so I decided to complete my Drakengard journey and the Nier games will be next.

Have you heard of this Yoko Taro guy? He’s a nihilist and he wears masks. Drakengard and Nier mostly come from his mind, with the exception of Drakengard 2 which seems to have been directed by someone else. But that’s the outlier among the bleak and twisted games that comprise the series. The development teams have varied but it’s usually been Yoko Taro at the helm. As a result, there’s a throughline of subverting expectation and condemning humanity throughout. In his words:

“To be honest, I think I am making normal games targeted towards normal people,” he says. “But ultimately when I release those normal games, weird people find them to be weird games and enjoy them. Which probably means there’s something wrong with me.”

Drakengard 3 is painfully boring and repetitive to just observe in a playthrough on YouTube. Its art design looks rough, for starters, like a PS2 game ported past its prime. Combat is a little more engaging in action although some degree of tolerance for repetitive actions may be required. I got through most of it by spamming jump, down strike with a strong spear, dodge, and repeat. It only occurred to me near the end of the game that this highly effective combat tactic may not be the most interesting to watch, but it worked to get through tough enemies. What kills me about combat is the animation delays that leave the player character wide open to attack. It makes ground combat a huge pain in later chapters. I had to get by with that repetitive tactic built around down strikes with spears and dodging ad nauseam. I rarely stayed on the ground, which is a shame. I remember that being a fun part of the earlier games, in which a player could mow down scores of enemies without much difficulty as they unlocked stronger weapons.

And in general it just feels… stilted? I’ve seen people bemoaning combat like this after games like DMC or Bayonetta have kind of shown the way. While I think this is a different type of game from those, it feels slow and outdated by comparison. Then the developers punctuate their game focused on melee combat by featuring a final battle that is completely unrelated to anything you did before that point, and feels like a cruel and unnecessary punch in the face. Life is unfair and so is this game.

The protagonists are not likable people, just as the characters in the original Drakengard aren’t likable. They’re mostly flat and sex-crazed. But they have a certain charm, like many stories featuring horrible murderers as protagonists. And as self-aware as the writer(s) of this game seem to be, I gotta figure that’s by design. You’re not supposed to be feel good about watching these people make their terrible choices and commit their atrocities. You’re probably supposed to ask meaningful questions about society but the game stumbles a bit too often to achieve that. At best, it’s a bloody take on themes from shows such as Seinfeld and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: look at the devastation these idiots have wrought.

Drakengard 3 dev. Access Games (2014)

I’ll be honest here, I wasn’t sure I’d check out any new fiction in August. July really burned me out. But I was going along, riding out the summer heat by listening to podcasts in my air conditioned car, and the topic of Nier: Automata came up. It sounds like an interesting game and I intend to play it, but I found out it’s connected to the Drakengard series, for which I’d written walkthroughs of the first two games. I skipped the first Nier as well as the third Drakengard game and couldn’t bear the possibility of skipping those two stories before the latest (regardless of how loosely connected they seem to be), so I decided to complete my Drakengard journey and the Nier games will be next.

Have you heard of this Yoko Taro guy? He’s a nihilist and he wears masks. Drakengard and Nier mostly come from his mind, with the exception of Drakengard 2 which seems to have been directed by someone else. But that’s the outlier among the bleak and twisted games that comprise the series. The development teams have varied but it’s usually been Yoko Taro at the helm. As a result, there’s a throughline of subverting expectation and condemning humanity throughout. In his words:

“To be honest, I think I am making normal games targeted towards normal people,” he says. “But ultimately when I release those normal games, weird people find them to be weird games and enjoy them. Which probably means there’s something wrong with me.”

Drakengard 3 is painfully boring and repetitive to just observe in a playthrough on YouTube. Its art design looks rough, for starters, like a PS2 game ported past its prime. Combat is a little more engaging in action although some degree of tolerance for repetitive actions may be required. I got through most of it by spamming jump, down strike with a strong spear, dodge, and repeat. It only occurred to me near the end of the game that this highly effective combat tactic may not be the most interesting to watch, but it worked to get through tough enemies. What kills me about combat is the animation delays that leave the player character wide open to attack. It makes ground combat a huge pain in later chapters. I had to get by with that repetitive tactic built around down strikes with spears and dodging ad nauseam. I rarely stayed on the ground, which is a shame. I remember that being a fun part of the earlier games, in which a player could mow down scores of enemies without much difficulty as they unlocked stronger weapons.

And in general it just feels… stilted? I’ve seen people bemoaning combat like this after games like DMC or Bayonetta have kind of shown the way. While I think this is a different type of game from those, it feels slow and outdated by comparison. Then the developers punctuate their game focused on melee combat by featuring a final battle that is completely unrelated to anything you did before that point, and feels like a cruel and unnecessary punch in the face. Life is unfair and so is this game.

The protagonists are not likable people, just as the characters in the original Drakengard aren’t likable. They’re mostly flat and sex-crazed. But they have a certain charm, like many stories featuring horrible murderers as protagonists. And as self-aware as the writer(s) of this game seem to be, I gotta figure that’s by design. You’re not supposed to be feel good about watching these people make their terrible choices and commit their atrocities. You’re probably supposed to ask meaningful questions about society but the game stumbles a bit too often to achieve that. At best, it’s a bloody take on themes from shows such as Seinfeld and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Look at the devastation these idiots have wrought.