Drakengard Review

With all of that stuff happening I did find some time to admire the technical achievement of Drakengard. The game engine is fairly well written, conforming to the technical limitations of the PS2 with some skill. Recently a new way to deal with the PS2's constant need for additional time to process additional information has come to use, short game rest cycles without interrupting play with a spinup break. Drakengard makes good use of this by spacing out enemy packs and using that limitation of space thing I mentioned before. The graphics engine is fairly well made but makes way too liberal use of the 'fog of war' mentality.

Things are about to get nasty.

Spring-cleaning the backyard.

Objects even within reasonable distance will disappear into the fog forcing you to run after them. As for the backgrounds, well, you would think the sun never shone in the Drakengard world, because, well, it doesn't, ever. The game controls are fairly good though, and you can see the hit points of all enemy units, which was a plus. The units don't look bad though, and different types of enemy units are easily recognizable from their counterparts. The FMV sequences, though graphic, are fairly well made and live up to the level we have come to expect from Square-Enix. There is a proviso to that though, again, read on.

However, for as poor as the game is to play, it doesn't hold a candle to the background music. To put it simply, Drakengard's music sucks. And coming from a company like Square-Enix, (a company who has inspired me to buy albums of in-game music) that was the most disappointing thing about the game to me. The music was so bland, repetitive, and annoying that I simply had to mute the volume to continue. Every new theme was worse then the last, the menu music, the backgrounds, the FMV music, everything. The English voicing wasn't bad though and the sound effects, though not spectacular, easily made par.

So, to sum up, not the finest effort made by this company, especially recently when they have come out with some real gems. The good things about this game were only so-so, and the low points could almost redefine low. For all the effort I put into playing this game, in the end I was left very unsatisfied. The game modes are too repetitive, and the action gets slow and fast too quickly. (Trust me it can happen.) The game just gets boring because you do the same three things over and over. Even looking for secrets doesn't help. And to even make the game palatable you have to put on a CD and mute the TV. I hate to disappoint Square fans all over but this one just isn't worth the effort. I take some satisfaction that though it is a Square-Enix title, this game was actually developed by a third party developer (Cavia).