Drakengard Review

Since the days of Panzer Dragoon Orta and Dragon Spirit, games that use the ambition and fortitude of the human coupled with the otherworldly might of the dragon have fueled our imagination. Now a new chapter in that old tale has emerged, one that again brings the unlikely duo of man and dragon together, this time in a game by our good friends at Square-Enix. Drakengard is very simply a mixture of an arcade style 3-D fighter and an aerial combat simulator. The first thing you should notice if you plan on purchasing this game is its rating. This game has been rated M, which for you non-US people means that it is for mature adults over the age of 18. (I think it's for people over the age of 17. - 2Lions) Now I know we don't normally mention this in the review since sometimes the ratings can be nonsensical. This isn't one of those times though. Drakengard contains some disturbing themes and the gratuitous use of blood (which will come up again, read on) please, stay away from this one if you are not of legal age to buy it. Square-Enix has pulled many fanciful storylines together to create a fantastical world of nightmare, intrigue, and most of all, angst. Normally, these elements work very well together and mesh nicely into a great game. This game isn't normal, and to be honest, it wasn't very great either, and though it wasn't the worst thing I've ever played, it fell short of greatness, on one aspect in particular, more on that later.

Sure as hell beats flying in a jumbo jet!

Still trying to find out what's going on here.

The epic tale opens to a field of fire and blood. Two nations, the peaceful Union and the power mad Empire have been at war for a long time. You play the role of Caim, a Union warrior and general whose world has just turned upside-down. You are a protector of your country's main asset, the goddess Furiae, a keeper of an ancient seal that keeps powerful evil from creeping into the world. Naturally, the Empire wish to relieve Furiae of the seal and unleash the evil into the world. The action begins as you are abruptly dumped into the middle of a war zone, your first objective, make your way to the castle (which has just been invaded by the army of the Empire) and take out a few commanders on the way. Sounds easy right? Wrong, wrong, wrong. You see between you and that castle are about 200 enemy soldiers waiting to cut you into ribbons. Solution: retreat, regroup, gather forces and make a more sane entry to the environs? Hell no. You, alone, as in singular, dive headfirst into the throng of waiting baddies and hack your way to the castle. Thankfully, you control a juggernaut of a hero that is several times stronger, and better armed than the common foot soldier of the Empire, plus you also have a magic sword that casts fireballs. Not to say that the aforementioned shred cutting can't occur, it can in fact, so learn quickly. Once you reach the castle, amid much slaughter, you find that the bad guys have chained and bound a dragon in the castle's courtyard and written a deadly message in the beast's blood. Once you defeat the dragon's protectors (only 50 or so of them) you decide that in order to be more effective you need to make a pact with the dragon. Now, if you need to know what precisely this pact is, I refer you to the movie Dragonheart, starring Sean Connery as a badass dragon. In the movie the dragon binds his life to that of an evil king. Basically, your pact is the same. All that is important to know about the pact is that now Caim and the dragon are linked in life, if she dies, you die and vice versa. Now, here's where I found my first bone of contention regarding the game. The plot was so poorly written (though the actual dialogue wasn't bad) and was so derivative and needlessly somber that it became annoying quickly.

Drakengard centers around epic combat, which in layman's terms simply means it's you and the dragon against entire armies of enemy soldiers. Forget any similarity to RTS games though; there is no backup or help from friendly forces. The game has three modes of play, the ground assault, the aerial combat, and the mixed mode, where you can take on the baddies on the ground or mount the dragon and take out ground forces from the air. As you fight not single heavy or hero characters, success in this game means you rack up tons of kills. Drakengard is built around the defeat of hundreds of enemies in a single map of play. Most of the enemy forces travel in small groups and are defined to a geographic area, so don't worry too much about all the enemies converging on you. Take your time and cut them down pack by pack, but beware that many packs have overlapping sentry areas, so if you rush in you may find yourself in hot water. The ground mode is easily the most fun of all as you get to dish out gratuitous amounts of death (just make sure you have the blood effects on). The strafe mode is kinda fun and dealing out fiery destruction from above does contain a certain appeal. The aerial combat mode sucks though and even though the 3-D nature of it seems like it should be a lot of fun I just felt like there was too much going on at once. The game is also very linear, though every time you defeat an area you can go back and do a "Free Expedition", which is a similar mission using the same map as the one you just defeated. Be prepared to do many Free Expeditions, because the game moves faster than you do and you will eventually need to do these missions (which you can repeat indefinitely) in order to gain levels.

The game also allows you to summon help in the form of allies who can swap to your place. However, since the allies can only be summoned in the place of your main character it still remains a one-player game. This can actually be useful because you are allowed to swap out when your HP gets low, the only issue is that the relief only stays in for a certain amount of time, then you (and your low HP) go back to main duty. This part doesn't begin however until you are well into the game. There are also new weapons you can pick up. When you gain a new weapon, you can add it to the "weapon wheel" which are all the weapons you have instantly available in ground mode. Weapons themselves can level up allowing for more powerful magic, better attack power and so on, but in order to level up weapons you have to use them and rack up kills. Most weapons take about 150 kills to move to level two, 300 more for level three and so on. But there are many weapons in the game, each with increasingly cool magic. One way this game also differs is that you can wipe the floor with your opponents with such frequency that the game will count your successive hit rate. My current highest is 109 hits, but I get the impression that much, much higher counts can be achieved. Drakengard is a fairly fast moving game but you will need to do some leveling up at times and even with high levels it can be extremely tough at times. The game does allow for a selection of difficulty level, (Easy and Normal) but I found that Normal was pretty hard.