With a number of publishers now capitalizing from the potential for PlayStation 2 Classics titles, it really surprises me that Square Enix didn’t decide to boost attention for Drakengard 3 and niche gaming in general by doing a digital re-release of Drakengard 1/2, especially given that it was hardly a mainstream series to begin with and been near impossible to track down a copy of for years now. Fortunately it seems that this would have been more of a nifty convenience than a necessity as Drakengard 3 serves as a prequel to both previous games (and the Nier spin-off) rather than a chronological sequel that would more likely have required a deeper knowledge of the series than what would be presented in a Wikipedia entry. I say this as someone who never had the chance to play the first two games, and has been left relying on wiki’s to get an understanding of events that have taken place in 1/2.
The basis of Drakengard 3’s storyline is very dark, featuring the antihero Zero who sets out to violently kill her five sisters in order to acquire their powers and become the sole ‘Intoner’ of the world. While initially managing to successfully fight her way to her sisters, along with the assistance of her companion dragon ‘Michael’, she is successfully defeated by the quintet. After losing her arm and Michael being forced to reincarnate into the childish ‘Mikhail’, the pair are forced to spend a year in hiding in order to recover. After the year concludes, they once again set out to carry on Zero’s original mission – taking one sister out at a time. The storyline is initially simple, but later expands into something that may not be particularly memorable, but does a satisfying job nevertheless. While some may find themselves repelled by just how dark and sadistic she can get, the best component of Drakengard 3’s storyline is Zero herself, who is accurately portrayed by one of my personal favourite female voice actresses, Tara Platt.
Drakengard 3 features action RPG gameplay mechanics that are reminiscent to that of Dynasty Warriors. Each of the games chapters are broken up into smaller segments which are comprised of maps and boss fights. Most of the time you will be wandering around maps, taking down enemies with typical button mashing combinations and then occasionally taking to the sky in order to destroy an enemy with Mikhail. There is nothing ingenious about the battle system, and the only time it manages to truly shine is during the boss battles where there is at least some challenge. To their credit, at least the ability to recruit disciples from the former Intoners servants as battle support and the range of weapons available to Zero helped add some variety to what was otherwise a repetitive playthrough.
Despite being produced near the end of the 7th Generation of video game consoles, Drakengard 3 visually feels like an upscaled mid-6th Generation game with simple character designs, environments and an unacceptable amount of lag to go along with it. This is a shame as there were several occasions where you can see that Drakengard 3 could have been visually stunning, but instead suffered from too many other shortfalls in this category. Developer Access Games has already shown us that visuals are not everything in a game. Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut for example walked away with a B+ grade on The Otaku’s Study, and despite having some of the worst visuals I had seen on the PS3, was supported by one of the best storylines. But without a strong storyline or creative gameplay, there was very little oversight possible for flaws in the production quality. Music and voice acting was solid however at the very least.
As someone who has enjoyed multiple playthroughs of Nier and wanted to use my experience with this as a form of motivation to finally track down the first two games in the series, I am not going to deny that I was left disappointed with Drakengard 3. While DG3 is a competent game in some regards, with witty banter between characters and a fantastic soundtrack, it is let down by dull/repetitive gameplay and at times, noticeable frame-rate issues, that make it a hard sell (in my opinion) at its current retail price of $75.95 AUD as of writing.
A review copy of Drakengard 3 was provided by Australian publisher Bandai Namco Games Australia. Comments surrounding lag / frame rate issues were based on the PAL Digital edition of Drakengard 3, and may not represent the physical edition of the game.
