Drakengard review

Drakengard sets out to draw you into its world. “Love. Crimson Blood. Revenge…” the list goes on and on as the title screen whispers insidiously at you. It wants you to believe that what it says is important. And the music, when it starts, swells with mad passion, as if it really thinks it should be the music from an old Dino DeLaurentis fantasy movie. But it loops way too often to convince you of that.

Drakengard’s story, and it does want to tell you a story, is an apocalyptic one. It even goes a little way to explaining why the standard enemies are so stupid and why the main character does nothing but kill people most of the time. There is a battle to stop impending chaos, but it seems to involve creating more chaos on the way. The thrill of riding a dragon and torching hordes of enemies, then laying into the survivors with your sword, that’s what Drakengard is mostly about. A lot of the dialogue that you get to hear while killing people will be about killing people, keeping everything in theme.

The smooth and impressive cinematic sequences that lead into the game are slightly too clean and sterile in places to match up to the best work on offer these days, but they still work with a doll-like quality. The same applies for the in-game animations, which are even more simple and streamlined. Although the frame rate stays high most of the time, the movements are slightly too stiff looking. The overall impression is that of well-painted toy soldiers. Nice to look at, but not very articulated in play.

One Button Man

The gameplay itself takes two main forms. The first and main part of the game takes place on foot, where you kill dozens of soldiers, mostly in large groups, occasionally checking a map to progress. Most of the enemies in any given level look the same; none of them use any tactics and they display hardly any intelligence. Caim, the game’s anti-hero, walks through them with his stiff gait and hacks away methodically, almost like chopping wood. The same motions repeat, as do the same sounds. Chop. Chop. Chop. Thud. Why would you like Drakengard? Especially when compared to other similar games on the market? You might like it because of that sound, because of the exact amount (or lack thereof) of resistance when your weapons slice into a group of guards. Drakengard may not stand up as an amazing game among its peers, but its peers have gotten by doing the exact same thing for the last three (or four) games in most cases. In these situations, it really is the little things that matter.

The main source of variety here is the choice of weapons. As you complete levels under certain conditions you are awarded different weapons, which you can switch between during play. Their speed and effects vary slightly and the more kills you make with each one, the more its powers increase. The key factor here is that you have to enjoy killing hundreds and hundreds of people with each weapon in order to advance them. Which is both the appeal and the failing of Drakengard’s gameplay.

Suffice it to say that the gameplay is satisfying, but limited. If you persist, you can uncover a wide range of weapons. But here comes the second major thrill, which is also another snag.

Take to the skies

Early on in the game you bond with a dragon. This allows you to call on it in some levels, to scorch the same people you were hacking away at just a minute ago. It also forces you to play through some levels confined to the dragon, where you attack ground and air targets while struggling with a cantankerous camera system. The controls don’t seem to cooperate at first, with your only means of accelerating coming in short, sudden lurches. The same applies for sideways movement, and it seems as if you’re struggling for control of the dragon, as the crosshair slips around a bit too fast at times. But then of course, it almost makes sense, and could have been what the designers intended - for it to seem like the dragon really is fighting you. What doesn’t make sense is the poor, minimal camera control, which means that during crucial boss battles you often can’t look in the same direction that you’re facing.

These dragon sections add more variety to some of the levels, but overcomplicate others. The simple gameplay of the rest of the game might’ve benefited more from a simple, on-rails shooting element instead of the convoluted dragon flight.

But still, the game is determined. Because it isn’t meant to be about a simple relaxed experience, the game wants to draw you into its world, for better or for worse. Maybe the controls have something to do with the fact that the main character hates the dragon. But that might be assuming too much of a simple game.

Cast of thousands

Although the narrative labours throughout the whole piece, there is actually a significant amount of plot. You can tell from the characters’ gestures that this is meant to be a grand affair. Drakengard makes a great effort to seem epic and majestic in turns, but only goes half the way. The music, as mentioned before, swells, but the choral samples sound a bit too sampled. And though we don’t expect Shakespeare, the narrators end up sounding a bit more like Eric Idle, when it would have been nice if they sounded like William Hurt.

But persevere and the story remains interesting, even to the point of its five different endings. And this sustains you through the game. If you manage to at least enjoy killing hundreds of people in Drakengard’s world, you can enjoy killing thousands to make it to its end.