Where it all falls down, as so often happens in Drakengard 3, is when Zero hops on Mikhail's combat and engages in a bit of aerial combat ala Panzer Dragoon. And in a nice touch, each weapon gets a makeover as it levels up, making it look steadily meaner as it gets more powerful. However, there are plenty of weapons to purchase and upgrade as the game goes on. The RPG elements are slim-to-nil-don't go looking for a talent tree or any other advanced customization in Drakengard 3-and there's no exploration to speak of due to the story being broken down into discreet missions and sidequests. The actual combat does a nice job of straddling the line between accessibility and depth, with each weapon offering a few aerial and ground combos to choose from. Each has a role to play, whether in breaking armor or building up combo damage, and I found myself using all four with regularity. The crux of the battle system is four weapons that can be accessed at any time-a sword, spear, chakra, or Tekken-style fisticuffs. Not exactly what one would call challenging, but engaging enough in its own way. In my mind, Drakengard 3's best fights are the Dynasty Warrior moments when I'm wading through a couple dozen soldiers, none of them able to even touch me as I cut them to shreds. I don't want to oversell it or anything, not the least because it's hampered by one very janky camera, but it does a fairly good job of making the action feel interesting and impactful. It goes on like this for eight chapters and change and to be honest, the only things keeping me from completely losing my mind aside from the ability to skip cutscenes was the semi-decent battle system. Their repartee consists of petty insults, innuendo, and tittering urine and sex jokes, most of it there to break up the moments when Zero is stabbing people. Each of the sisters have paper thin personalities and rely on a single dominant trait to animate their personalities, generally a variant on "sex-crazed." That goes double for Zero, who is characterized in large part by her apparent love of killing and her aggressive bitchiness toward her companion dragon Mikhail, who follows her like a lost puppy. Putting aside the tone, the characterization is about par for the course for a magical girl anime. At one point, the dragon Mikhail makes a wistful comment about all the good times he's had with the protagonist Zero, and all I could think of was the trail of skulls that they had left in their wake. But all of this is presented against a backdrop of ultra-violence as soldiers gets chopped in half and scream for their mothers. A lot of the time, it's presented as sort of a light-hearted adventure, with Saturday morning cartoon-like dialogue and an aggressive amount of bathroom humor. The blood also tends to clash with the tone in a way that's off-putting. When it's just kind of smeared around, as it is in Drakengard 3, it's just nauseating. Think of any of Kill Bill's best scenes, or even a Fatality in Mortal Kombat. My issue with it is that I've always thought blood should be reserved to heighten the impact of a big moment. It's kind of gross, though I don't see that as the main problem. One of Drakengard 3's key features is blood splatter on the main character as a mission progresses, she becomes steadily more covered in it until she's practically red from head-to-toe (though not in cutscenes). Drakengard 3 positively revels in the stuff, splattering characters whenever a convenient moment presents itself. Sailor Scouts in a world gone mad.Īnd I'm not exaggerating when I say "buckets of blood," either. Imagine a Sailor Scout suffering a psychotic break and killing her sisters one by one amid buckets of blood, and you've pretty much got the gist of Drakengard 3, absent some rather random multiverse elements. At the outset, it plays a bit like an anime-inspired ripoff of Kill Bill Vol. It gasps for breath for a while, wheezes, then just collapses under the weight of it all.ĭeveloped by refugees from Cavia (Nier, Bullet Witch), Drakengard 3 is an action RPG that functions as a prequel of sorts to 2002's Drakengard. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.ĭrakengard 3 is what happens when a perfectly good action RPG gets crushed by questionable taste, a poorly optimized graphics engine, and awful writing. This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247.
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