Game Impressions: Drakengard

These are my impressions on the 2004 game Drakengard for the PS2 (originally called called Drag-On Dragoon in Japan). Man this is gonna be tough.

 It's a story where I can't tell you what's going on, but it takes place in a medieval Europe setting. You are a man who's parents were killed by dragons and in order to save your life you make a pact with a dying dragon. You and your dragon are on a quest to protect...your side as well as your frail sister of somewhat high importance. I wish I could explain it better.

I can't put this off any longer. This was originally going to be my first entry for this series, but then I moved onto other games like Bayonetta (...which was supposed to get one of these too), Portal 1 and 2, replaying Jak and Daxter and a bit of Jak 2, again replaying Shadow Of The Colossus, and now Assassin's Creed 2. But then it a thought came to me. This means something.


Usually when I play a game I'm often wrapped up into it for several hours until I finally 100% it (or at least beat the story). When I leave a game in the beginning/middle, it's something not in a game's favour. Sure I left Jak and Daxter a while as well as Sly Cooper (time trials), but I was more than happy to return since upon leaving I remembered many of the things I liked about the game. Drakengard...isn't one of those situations. Usually when I talk about Drakengard these days, it's rather bitter. Weeks ago I found myself bitching to a friend about what I experienced.

I was recommended Drakengard by a few friends, many of them fans of Square Enix. We have a few similar tastes, I've enjoyed many of SE's games (though I eventually found out that the game was only PUBLISHED by Square Enix and developed by a smaller team within Enix called Cavia) and I LOVE dragons, so I asked for Drakengard for Christmas. It took me a few months to actually play it (after all I also had Psychonauts and two Ratchet and Clanks to worship), but I was genuinely interested none the less. Even a few people on my collection updates recommended it.

The first time I tried it was in April or May. Here is a rough diary of everything that happened in order (as well as updates). This is rather...long.

• First thing right off the bat that disturbed me was how the game used huge blocks of text to tell the story. To roughly quote Extra Credits, "film has 'show, don't tell' and video games have 'do, don't show'". I'm not expecting some huge breakthrough in storytelling, but I would rather not read blocks of text, ESPECIALLY right at the beginning of the game. It felt really dry. It was a lot of crap to read and in the end nothing really sank in. Either let me experience it or make a pretty cutscene. I thought a team within a company KNOWN for spamming cutscenes would've jumped at the chance.
• Text didn't stop there I'm afraid x___x
• Ok, FMVs look really pretty, I'll admit that. Still not getting into the story. Caim (the protagonist) also looks somewhat pretty despite being an unlikable asswipe. According to the manual he'll become silent, so I guess that'll show him.
• What happened to my pretty FMV-quality animation in the gameplay? It doesn't look AWFUL but I can't help but look at a massive list of games made several years earlier that looked better than this. And for those thinking "graphics don't make a game", it's not just that. The pop-up and draw distance is bad (no, I will not buy the whole "fog" thing. Silent Hill could get away with it. You can't. It doesn't add anything) and what seems like a clear path ahead is actually full of baddies once you step within a few metres. Not too fond of the brown everywhere too, but maybe later we'll see more variety.
• Nope, not much else in the variety department. Gets rather dark too *adjusts brightness*. 
• Maybe I'm somewhat spoiled, but not keen on the "spam square to fight" sort of thing. Single-button mashing combat I guess isn't horrible in itself but there are just so many enemies and Caim handles like a shopping cart (why does the guy even have a jump button when it's so bad? Come on, did Caim skip gym?).
• Oh, so there is a magic button for combat. Sweetness, not bad for sweeping away enemies. However, I don't like how unresponsive it is to perform a finisher combo. What glow? I see no glow! Oh, you mean that? I can hardly see it! And when I do see it there is a very small window of opportunity to use it. Oh well, at least the magic is doing a decent job even if I am off the mark.
• Ok, so some enemies are not only resistant to magic but will also spew an attack against you if you're anywhere near them. So you better not fuck-up with that combo there!
• Well that was hopeless. More than half the time I try to do the finisher the game interprets it as magic. If you do a misstep in a combo, it shouldn't cost you  that much. Memorizing the rhythm to allow for a finisher is hardly enriching, especially if they don't always work.

Gameplay from the first mission. Image from Giantbomb.com

• I can easily say with a straight face that I'm missing the Japanese Spyro camera.
• Ok, game, it's been a few hours and I think you need a reality check. Even in 2004 (hell, even the 90s) many 3rd person games were gifted in a fully-movable camera. If you have a pair of analog sticks, USE THEM! Left moves the character, right moves the camera ALL AROUND. That way I can rotate the camera whenever I need to check out my surroundings so some baddie doesn't rape me.
  
• Ooo, dragon. Wait...so Mona Marshall really DID do the dragon? That's...interesting. I don't mean to put her in the same character constantly, but Mona Marshall's voice sounds better for young girls/women/boys than a fearsome dragon. I just can't see it. I love her and her work, but she's trying to use a voice that she doesn't have. It kind of reminds me of how she did Lucemon Fallen Mode in Digimon Frontier. Small nitpick, but I could do without that style of horn.
• On that note, the voice acting isn't bad for a dub outside of the dragon. Some of it is on the extremes of either weak or over-the-top, but the English accents are charming.
• OH GOD THAT LAUGH! THAT VOICE! GET THAT CRAZY LADY AWAY FROM ME!
• Air combat doesn't look to bad. Could use some polish but isn't bad (GAH, INVERT). I have a feeling I'm going to need to get used to this...*near dead*...fast. More square spamming, but it isn't bad.
• You would think a fight from dragon-back would be more exciting than this.
• Just because Caim doesn't speak doesn't mean dialogue is cut in any way. Oh no no no. He shuts up and everyone talks in numerous speech bubbles and monologues that are scattered throughout the game. Perhaps I would like the fact that you hear of Caim's character through what others say more if it wasn't reminding me that Caim was a dick every few seconds. Or that the dragon pities humans and finds them to be murdering, greedy gits. THAT'S MY JOB, SISTER!
• And of course when you die you get the pleasure to hear it all again.
• All this "Furiously killing the baddies makes you bad" talk everyone goes on about is rather frustrating in a video game in this genre. When everyone wants to have me on a spit, that gives me the damn right to kill them to defend you, Princess Sunshine, and whoever is apparently on the team. Perhaps I would buy it more if Caim's in-game swordplay was more over-the-top identifiable with his character. You can tell what kind of people Kratos, Dante, and Bayonetta are from their style of combat. Caim...kind of reminds me of a Wander that can combo. That's not a good thing for someone who is aggressively out for revenge and will slaughter anyone in his way.
• Map, you're not helpful in getting through this maze. Actually map, if it wasn't for the fact that most environments are open spaces you wouldn't be much help at all.
• Just throwing it out there, but can we have a level objective different from "kill these guys, then kill these guys, and then those guys over there, and then stand over there for whatever reason"? Hack-and-slash can have more variety than this. I know it.
• I found out that my entire time playing the ground missions it is a pattern of button pushes. Square, square, square, TRIANGLE! Move, square, square, square, TRIANGLE! RUN LIKE HELL BECAUSE THE GAME INTERPRETED IT AS MAGIC AND NOT FINISHER. Repeat for about 20-30 minutes. That isn't a good thing either. In fact, it's kind of degrading. Kingdom Hearts had more variety than this and it's attack button is in the perfect position for spamming...and it felt better too.
• 2 hours in and I still don't know what the fuck is going on.
• 6 hours in and still know next to nothing. Who are these people? Why are they doing this? Why should I care? Are they party members? Can they help me fight? The game never told me. When did this dude suddenly join us? EXPLAIN PLEASE!
• Did some reading and apparently the English release is snipped a bit, with many things like pedophilia and incest removed. That...kinda sucks. Ok, I think I have a hunch about who the pedo(s) is/are, but that doesn't explain why I'm THIS confused. And I'm not even halfway through.
• Apparently Drakengard has a fairly big fanbase, many of them considering it to be a cult classic based on the taboo and all-around strange nature of the plot. I don't mind a wtf factor and it's obvious I'm nowhere near the juicy carnivorous flying babies (er, spoiler?) but this is a GAME after all. Good gameplay should encourage me to experience more of the story, not the other way around. This is part of the reason why so many Square Enix games are so polarizing in reception (like FF13)

Aerial combat. Image from Swankworld.com

• I know this is supposed to be a hack-and-slash, but one of the points with huge numbers of enemies is that you can rip through them easy enough and get a giddy pleasure. When it takes me several minutes with a decent weapon to slice through a small group of grunts then something is wrong. Just because I'm on normal difficulty doesn't mean health is jacked up a million times and dangles the easy option with a free sippy-cup. That's being tedious, not difficult, and so many games do this. It's a much later game, but Bayonetta's style of more aggressive AI as opposed to monster health is much more rewarding to compliment the size of my metaphorical gaming balls.
• I feel like I should also comment on the weapon leveling being unbalanced. You get so many weapons yet your unupgraded ones feel so useless. Odds are the ones I've already upgraded are getting weaker too because I'm finding it harder to upgrade the stronger ones.
• Also, the enemy health bars seem to be vanishing from time to time. Is that the game's fault or mine? I would like it back please!
• *looks at screenshot* CHRIST THAT'S A CRAPLOAD OF ENEMIES! AND THAT'S THE FIRST LEVEL!
•  So something I learned quite quickly is that having no checkpoints sucks donkeys. The chapters have several smaller segments usually either regular stages or aerial. If you die, you go to the start of the chapter's segment. With health only appearing in the odd chest and dropped during large combos, the game seems to be toying with me. Some of these levels can be over half an hour long even if you're not grinding. It's hard to tell the length of the missions too since enemies tend to respawn with new targets and giving you only the context of the script to indicate progress. No, I will not take that sippy-cup, good sir! If I could get through Jak 2 with my sanity intact with rare checkpoints, low health, and millions of flanking guards, I could get through YOU. Then again, Jak 2 was made a nearly year before and had less technical issues and felt more fun.
• Something else to note is that when you turn off the game even if it does save you where if you died you would return to the last stage you were on, restarting the console would actually put you BEFORE it where you have to experience every cutscene and pointless text that you already know.
• Lemme also rant on those short, pointless sections in Drakengard (and many other RPGs) where you lead Caim through a corridor to meet up with someone at the end to get a little more story. May I ask what the point of it is? See, this is part of the reason why I'm not going to play Final Fantasy 13. I want to have an impact on a game's progression instead of holding the protagonist's hand to get to the other side of the room. Actually, a lot of games associated with Square Enix seem to do that (see a much better game, The World Ends With You)
• To break up all the negativity, cheers for allowing me to skip cutscenes. If this turned out like that last Riku fight in Kingdom Hearts then I would've put down the game sooner.
• Things aren't going very well. Got dragged down a few hours because of getting stuck on a few stages (mostly aerial missions). I think that's the reason why I'm feeling the need to point out every bloody thing I find wrong in the game 0-0.
• All this talk about allies made me  notice there is an allies screen, though I can't seem to reach it. Will I get some back-up? I could really use it. If I wasn't so frustrated then I would double check the manual or the internet to see if I missed anything.
• Congrats! Caim, for 1 cutscene you made me like you. And dragon looks better too. Hey, now we're talking!
• Spent 40 minutes on a mission, killing over 1000 enemies, only to die when another set of targets was revealed. Camera wouldn't rotate to show a group of archers that just recently popped-up out after only a fraction of a second of looking at them, and then they stuck up Caim and his last bits of health. No checkpoint, no saving of experience, all progress in the level is lost. Dropped the controller, threw my arms in the air, and yelled "OK, I'M DONE!"

And then I just rage quitted right there and haven't touched the game for months. I played for a total of maybe 6-8 hours (not just spent on story. I also did some of the extra missions to grind) and I'm less than halfway through.

Perhaps the recollection of my experiences with Drakengard is a bitchfest, but this is what it felt in all honesty. The fact that I haven't returned to it the last several months has to be a hint at it's quality. I feel like I would enjoy the story more than I did if the technical and design issues weren't so irritating (and several decent sized bits of story and history using text would be a good thing to eliminate). They killed immersion and instead felt like I'm just doing square-square-square-TRIANGLE *move, repeat*. It's like the game invited me in for a jaunt of riding dragons, cutting up ghoulies and roasting them like bacon. Instead it seems like I'm there to impress it. Game, I will not simply pass by your many faults and just gut it out unless you come part way and give me a reason to (carnivorous flying babies doesn't count. You need more than that)


I know people say the sequel fixes many of the issues I'm having, but you need to have a foundation to make me want it. Assassin's Creed ended up with me feeling a whole lot of "MEH" but at the same time it did so many things well and at least made be intrigued by the sequel (which murders it in quality in pretty much every way *just beat it*). Sadly, at this time Drakengard isn't cutting it for me.

Even in many of the reviews I read and watched they described Drakengard as a "love/hate" sort of game. You see many reviews give it praise as well as a loyal cult following. At the same time, you also see my lot that considers it unpolished and repetitive. I for one am pretty close to the "hate" side. Not quite there yet seeing as I'm still toying with the idea of possibly giving it another chance, but I'm not going to any of it's parties that's for sure.