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This review contains spoilers

Skip this first paragraph if you want to just start with the gameplay breakdown.

I think most would agree that most of Yoko Taro's games are not fun to play. I would go as far as to say that none of them are, but I'm aware that Automata fans would sharply disagree with that. I think none of his games are satisfying tests of dexterity, pattern-recognition, or ability to strategize. At best, they're B action-games. At worst, they're miserable repetitive slogs. They're never all of one or the other though. I do think Taro's direction is in service of an experience at the expense of gameplay. Which means, these games wouldn't have their current strongest points if say Taro was writing and someone else was directing. You kind of have to accept that from an experience-crafting perspective, you're stuck with a bad/mediocre game. I do feel that Taro can sometimes reward your patience with something that's at least interesting.

Ground combat goes like this; you mash square to do light-attacks. At various points in this chain, you can press triangle to unleash a finisher. Hitting enemies with non-magic attacks builds your chain. Enemies drop orbs when you hit them, 17, 36, 57, 77, and 100 times in one chain. The three orb drops will be a green one for health if you need to heal or a red orb that creates a small shockwave. The fourth orb is always a red one regardless of your HP. The fifth orb is the most useful. It's a black orb that massively powers up Caim so that he can one-shot the mooks and work through the sponges quicker. It does take a bit of strategy and skill (pick the correct weapon, space your attacks right) to do this later in the game. Another orb drops at 150, but you probably won't do this often. I didn't get a chain much further than that either.

Aerial combat goes like this; your dragon flies forward by itself and has tank-controls otherwise, something important to remember when the auto-lock points you at something. R1/L1 dodge you left and right, relative to where you're facing, and pressing both at once nets you a quick-turn. Cross boosts your speed, and you can still R1/L1 dodge while holding cross. Tapping square unleashes a strong fireball that builds a little magic. Holding square charges weaker homing fireballs that build more magic. A magic-attack is screen-clearing. You can also ride the dragon in most of the ground-combat stages, and the main difference is a lack of 3D flight-control (you can't ascend/descend) and you don't have the homing-attacks.

The RPG-leveling doesn't really matter for the most part. You can level up Caim to increase his HP, but all damage is avoidable and some bosses can still shred you with a maxed HP gauge. You're better off learning to dodge than grinding for EXP. Leveling up Caim's damage doesn't really matter either. Weapons have their own EXP that's accrued by defeating enemies, but the weapons don't get significantly better from their starting stats. Your damage will go up by finding a better weapon. The strongest weapon in the game's starting stats match most of the other weapons at max-level. It is worth it to level the dragon. That increases its attack outright, which will reduce the game's tedium incrementally.

The last bit of gameplay is your allies. You can temporarily summon them 3 times per stage. They're out on a time-limit represented by their remaining HP. Getting hit drains it quicker, but they can't die or anything. Allies have insanely strong magic-attacks, and can cast whenever. Their attacks nuke the spongiest sponges in one hit, including enemies that are supposed to be immune to attacks.

Enemies in the ground stages are almost all completely worthless. The only fun you can have is trying to group them to build your chain. The archers will get significantly more accurate if you're on your dragon and can knock you off pretty quick. The dragon's attacks are also strictly magical, so you'll have to get your hands dirty yourself whenever they show up. Enemies in the aerial stages are better just because it's more fun to dodge things while flying around than it is to mash square on a million mooks. The boss-fights, of which there are few, are the best part of the game.

This game is also, for better or worse, insanely meaty. There are 65 weapons to collect and 3 allies. There are also plenty of hidden events and stages. Many of these are unlocked by sub-missions, some hidden some not, such as defeating specific enemies in specific locations, completing stages in a time limit, being in a stage for a long time (these ones are bad), or are just hidden in chests. The weapons in particular are hidden across every mode; events, story missions, free expeditions, and this includes ground and aerial variants. You will be playing this game for a long time if you want every weapon, even if you use a guide to hunt down the cryptic ones. I found about 10 of them by myself. The game also has 5 endings, though, thankfully, you just have to play the new chapters after getting an ending instead of going through the entire thing again. But, you do have to get all 65 weapons for the final ending (you don't have to level any of them up though).

Final Spoiler Warning, it's story time.

The game takes place in a low-fantasy alternate-reality version of 11th century medieval Europe where magic was introduced to the world. You play as Caim, a dude who lost his kingdom and his parents (they got killed by a dragon), as he tries to protect his sister. 6 years of constant fighting has made him a psychotic murderer and not particularly heroic. He mainly fights because he's perpetually angry. The game starts with a castle housing his sister who is the current "goddess" under siege. Caim is, for better or worse, really good at fighting. But, he's just a guy. After mowing through 50-100 dudes outside the front door to get inside, he is mortally wounded and on his way out. On the ground in front of him is an also mortally wounded dragon. Caim hates dragons because they killed his parents, and the wounded dragon right there hates humans. If they enter a pact with each other, they get to live. Caim can't die because he's got shit to do, and the dragon's not interested in being dead either. They enter the pact which takes away whatever is most valuable to the human (surprisingly for Caim, this would be his ability to speak) in exchange for superhuman abilities (Caim and the dragon share a health-pool after this) and Caim gets to use the dragon's abilities (riding it around on it while it blows things up) to help in combat. Caim does temporarily save his sister before she's kidnapped again, and her fiancee, and Caim's childhood friend, turns evil. You spend the rest of the campaign slogging through boring fights to get to your sister once again, and she's killed herself. Turns out, the "goddess" is a person who prevents the world from ending by not killing themselves. It's ok if someone else kills them. The "goddess" status will just transfer to someone else. But, she did actually kill herself. All of the endings branch off after this point.

So, the interesting parts of the story take place in a cosmic horror apocalypse. It is, to me, fascinating to watch these people struggle to make it as each successive ending to the game gets increasingly bleak/weird. This is what the slog is for. To see this stuff.

We're reviewing a game here though. Your mileage may vary on the above story coverage, but it won't factor into the score. For its gameplay alone, the game just isn't worth playing. It's almost all bad combat almost all the time. The aerial missions might be the best part, but the game still wouldn't be worth playing if they were the only thing in it. There just aren't enough good moments to justify it. However, there are a handful of good boss fights, they're just behind the ending criteria.

The game is a 1.5/5 for me. It gets the 0.5 extra for the few good boss fights in it. However, if you're after more than gameplay, you might find this game worth checking out. I absolutely would not think less of anyone for avoiding the game because of its gameplay though. For what it's worth, I found the narrative, eventually, more interesting than NieR or Automata.

Fantastic story with very cohesive themes and symbolism that feels genuinely subversive in its commentary on violence and how its presented in most games. Overall an oppressively fatalistic game but has some truly touching moments of hope and optimism sprinkled in, which end up being very effective given how dark the rest of the game is.

Brought down a bit by enjoyable but pretty simplistic musou gameplay that can get a bit tedious after a while. A lot of people say that the musou gameplay in Drakengard is bad on purpose which 1. is just wrong - its definitely not bad just tedious after a while and 2. i refuse to believe that the gameplay is "bad on purpose". This game is definitely disturbing and disquieting and unconventional on purpose - which I guess some people could be referring to when they say "bad" - but the idea that Yoko Taro would intentionally sabotage the gameplay in Drakengard to make a point is kind of ridiculous to me. For any piece of media with profit motivation - which this game does have being published by Square Enix - its incredibly rare and difficult for a creator to essentially make it "bad on purpose". There are too many people to push back against it and the higher ups would have to be remarkably incompetent to not notice this sort of thing going on and course correct. The only piece of media where i actually believe this claim of "bad on purpose" is Freddy Got Fingered and that was like a once in a generation fluke for a studio to somehow let that kind of thing happen.

Anyway really unique and genuinely subversive game with clearly a lot of artistic passion behind it. Highly recommend given just how one of a kind it is.

Aprecio los esfuerzos conscientes de Yoko Taro para que el juego se aproxime lo máximo posible a una lobotomía, no sé ni que rating ponerle siquiera

Drankengard fans singing my praises after I beat them up and steal their wallets(I intended to give them a painful experience.)

This game aims to be an awful experience, and boy does it succeed at it.

A masterpiece that has aged like milk