So after playing the first of these DLCs, I had my expectations appropriately lowered as to what kind of experiences I was in for. The "lore" I got from Five's Prologue was that Five chose her domain of The Land of Seas because she thought the ocean was pretty. Neat. Drakengard 3: Four's Prologue pleasantly surprised me by having some actual recontextualization for its titular sister.
Four's Prologue was the first time in Drakengard 3 that I felt I was playing anything at all resembling the original Drakengard. We hop on a dragon and do some ol' fashioned senseless genocide - while the dragon says how terrible we are for telling her to do the thing that she is not at all resisting doing. And you know, that works for me a lot better when the murderous psychopath enjoying the bloodbath is a wannabe animu waifu rather than a self-serious Western-styled strong and silent protagonist type. Because there's no depth to be had in shaming the player for engaging with a game in the only way the game's mechanics will let them progress. Trying to dress up that mean-spirited nonsense is a waste of time - I much prefer the game being in on the absurdity with me.
I almost caught myself writing about the plot, but it doesn't matter. What does matter is that more than Five's Prologue, Four's Prologe has coherence to the range of flavors that are in the base game of Drakengard 3. While Five's Prologue was hampered by having the most one note character to work with, Four's Prologue has just enough subversion to convey the same feeling, the same theming as the first game. Four pretends to be a good person because she likes the veneer of the moral high ground. She espouses valuing chastity only as a means of controlling her subordinate, who has developed a humiliation kink to compensate for the fact that, (and this is canon in the main game), he sucks at fucking and is insecure about it.
In the main game, the protagonist, Zero, makes fun of Four for being a virgin, as if that defines her personality. It's played for a joke because Zero is being insensitive and cruel, when Four seems like an earnest person who wants to avoid conflict. This DLC flips that on its head to prove that Zero was right, actually! Four's professed values are nonsense, and her getting flustered at Zero's prodding are not because she is shy, but because she doesn't want the facade to drop. A bit she's so comitted to she dies for it, a twist in contextual understanding that is so dumb and petty as to wrap around into being amazing.
But as DLC, as a real thing I had to pay money for, like, in no way, shape, or form was this worth it. (Her unlockable weapon for Zero sucks!) If a couple of the levels had been in the game proper, like, maybe that would have been neat! But for how much context there is to be stretched over four levels, with character dynamics so shallow they can't sustain more than one or two conversation patterns ... ugh.
Next!
Four's Prologue was the first time in Drakengard 3 that I felt I was playing anything at all resembling the original Drakengard. We hop on a dragon and do some ol' fashioned senseless genocide - while the dragon says how terrible we are for telling her to do the thing that she is not at all resisting doing. And you know, that works for me a lot better when the murderous psychopath enjoying the bloodbath is a wannabe animu waifu rather than a self-serious Western-styled strong and silent protagonist type. Because there's no depth to be had in shaming the player for engaging with a game in the only way the game's mechanics will let them progress. Trying to dress up that mean-spirited nonsense is a waste of time - I much prefer the game being in on the absurdity with me.
I almost caught myself writing about the plot, but it doesn't matter. What does matter is that more than Five's Prologue, Four's Prologe has coherence to the range of flavors that are in the base game of Drakengard 3. While Five's Prologue was hampered by having the most one note character to work with, Four's Prologue has just enough subversion to convey the same feeling, the same theming as the first game. Four pretends to be a good person because she likes the veneer of the moral high ground. She espouses valuing chastity only as a means of controlling her subordinate, who has developed a humiliation kink to compensate for the fact that, (and this is canon in the main game), he sucks at fucking and is insecure about it.
In the main game, the protagonist, Zero, makes fun of Four for being a virgin, as if that defines her personality. It's played for a joke because Zero is being insensitive and cruel, when Four seems like an earnest person who wants to avoid conflict. This DLC flips that on its head to prove that Zero was right, actually! Four's professed values are nonsense, and her getting flustered at Zero's prodding are not because she is shy, but because she doesn't want the facade to drop. A bit she's so comitted to she dies for it, a twist in contextual understanding that is so dumb and petty as to wrap around into being amazing.
But as DLC, as a real thing I had to pay money for, like, in no way, shape, or form was this worth it. (Her unlockable weapon for Zero sucks!) If a couple of the levels had been in the game proper, like, maybe that would have been neat! But for how much context there is to be stretched over four levels, with character dynamics so shallow they can't sustain more than one or two conversation patterns ... ugh.
Next!