This is a game that is most interested in telling a story, and, just as with Nier before it, Drakengard 3 has a plot that is nothing short of a masterpiece. It's the kind of game that is going to inevitably be under-appreciated by people who can't be bothered trying to understand it. Judging from some of the other critical responses to the game that have already been published, we're already seeing that happen.
While the repetitive combat and atrocious performance issues make Drakengard 3 very difficult to recommend, its characters and story, along with a fantastic OST, makes me feel that there may very well be an audience for this wonderful mess of a game, myself included.
I have no idea what people don't like about this game. I'm aware that this is purely a personal taste, and that many people disagree, but to me, Drakengard 3 has been a very special game thus far, and every second has been joyful. I've never been so elated to play a video game. Please, if you're a fan of Yoko Taro, or you're interested in becoming one, pick up this game, especially if you like crude humor and thematic depth.
Edit: After beating it, Drakengard 3 is my favorite game of all time.
Drakengard 3's weirdness is its greatest asset. The narrative is intriguing, and the combat is fun enough, but it's the game's unapologetically unusual atmosphere that made me end up liking it.
Drakengard 3 is sort of an enigma. You should either avoid it like the plague or, if your curiosity has been piqued by this review, you should give it a try.
Sure, there are graphical issues, slowdown, and the game is rather easy in areas where it should provide more challenge. However, the story is goofy enough for some laughs, the ability to switch between 4 weapons in battle is fun, and despite its repetitive nature, the combat does enough to keep you interested.
Some of its lazy touches recall a PS2 relic that was better off being pretty on older hardware. If it does interest you for some reason, I’d advise you to wait for a sale price at least, because I can’t see this flying off of store shelves.
It’s obviously been made on the cheap, but that’s no excuse for the legion of technical problems and the embarrassingly unsophisticated script of this obnoxious action game.
Tipical Yoko game, but unfortunattly, the bad optimisation affects to the game experience, but in general, the games is good, nice music, characters, bosses, try it if you have the opprtunity
The worst best game on my all-time favorites list. I'd rather stay laconic this time:
Story: 9/10 (Dialogues are hilarious, characters are controversial yet likable for those of free spirits, story is complex and masterfully wrapped)
Music: 10/10 (Well, it's Taro-sama's game after all)
Gameplay: 4/10 (Well, it's Taro-sama's game after all)
Technical condition: 4/10 (Looks like unpolished **** and provides the average frame rate of 23 with drops to 9 on ps3)
Enjoyment: 6/10 (God damn it it's so annoying to play because Drakengard punishes you for not investigating the boring ass additional content)
Why is this one of my favorite games then? Well, plot and score music are the defining factors over there, so... Yeah.
Don't play it if you're unfamiliar with Yoko Taro or don't have enough nerves to tear through this game
Drakengard 3 carries on it's predecessors legacy completely. And if you liked the first Drakengard game you will probably enjoy this quite a bit. Despite everything that I am going to say.
there are a couple of things that I like about this game. The soundtrack is great, the character designs are fairly well done. and of course the character controls are awesome. The game has an insane number of weapons. And they function differently from one another.
But for how good the character controls and weapons are. that is all counterbalanced completely by the enemies that you use them to fight.
All the big enemies feel pretty much the same to fight. With lengthy wind-up times they should be alot easier to dodge then they are. But with the Haphazard hit boxes. and the fact that all of them spin around like ballerinas during that time. You are basically stuck dodging backwards 2 or 3 times, or timing one dodge perfectly.
I chose the former, finding it to be a lot more reliable.
And all the little enemies are either pointless, or annoying. With the main character literally complaining about the games poor design choices on a regular basis.
Well sorry but pointing out that your game is poorly designed doesn't make it any less poorly designed. The levels are lengthy, and have very little variety. While most of them having only a few standout sections. If any.
The boss battles are typically pretty cool. If a little frustrating. The set scene and well themed bosses manages to make them actually very interesting. Easily making the boss fights, complete with epic music. By far the best part of the game.
Lastly the story is horrible. While I have heard that it improves quite a bit after the first play through. I should not have to literally beat the game once before things get interesting. Before the first ending (and more or less up until the last second of it) the story can be easily summed up as "Zero wants to kill her sisters because she's a **** With only vague hints in the last couple scenes that there may be more. All the while you get to hear the character you collect along the way tasteless talk about sex. It is tasteless, stupid, pointless and not even funny in the slightest.
I managed to get the first ending. But I could not even bring myself to start on the second play through.
Quite honestly could never recommend this game to anyone, especially in its current state. For starters the game feels like its a decade old, no scratch that, there are games that actually are a decade old that appear more advanced than this game. I'm an old school gamer, so rarely do I concern myself with graphics too much, but my god this game is UGLY, the prime example is the leading leading, Zero herself; Somehow a woman wearing completely white, with white hair can still look dirty, courtesy of the obviously low budget this game was working on. As for combat, the game is a basic hack and slash. While it does a mostly ok job at this, the game takes any and every opportunity to glitch and show its atrocious frame rate making the game virtually unplayable during the later levels where there are lots of enemies as well as big ones. One of the selling points of this game was being able to fly on a dragon, yay!...Unfortunately the dragon steers abysmally, this coming from someone who's steered the helicopters in GTA V, that's saying something. By far one of the worst things about this game though are the characters, 1 dimensional tools who apparently can't go a single sentence without some depraved sexual statement, one of which is overly eager to share his desire for masochistic punishment. I'm not even kidding, everything that comes out of their mouth is crude filth, and while I enjoy that sort of thing usually, constantly hearing it just makes the characters hollow and really puts a dampener on the whole game. The voices don't really help, it's a Japanese game and while it hasn't got the worst cast in the history of American dubbed games, you're likely to hear rare classics like Yuri Lowenthal whose whiny voice makes already hated characters that much more hated. Usually I wouldn't comment on such a thing, when a game has a Japanese Audio feature, but being a lucky schmuck from Europe Square released this tripe and didn't fix the damn Japanese dub, leaving us with no choice but to listen to the American cast. Among one of the most amateur mistakes this game makes however is the bad AI; There is no excuse for that kind of AI, not these days, AI are frequently running into walls, and sometimes your companions don't notice the hundreds of enemies surrounding them and will just stand there taking hits, it's bad, unforgivably bad. The only really good things I can say about this game is the sound track is very reminiscent of Nier, I loved Nier and the I adore the soundtrack of Drakengard 3 all the same. The story is also pretty good, sometimes the game can't seem to make up its min whether it wants to be funny or serious, but overall it's ok, it's at least more original than the story of some games these days.
Unfortunately, even with those good points, I don't consider them enough to warrant buying the game, it's just not good enough. Save your pennies.
SummaryA prequel to the original game, Drakengard 3 transports players to a medieval world where 6 sisters tout special magical abilities as the Intoners. These sisters have brought peace to the earth with their power to manipulate magic through song. Harmony is disrupted, however, when the eldest sister, Zero, attempts to kill her younger sist...