5/21/2023 0 Comments Drakengard 3 endings explainedIt’s in these brief moments where Zero is invincible that Drakengard 3 really shines. The scream, thrilling music, and accompanying camera spin as she transforms is impressively dramatic. The most exciting combat feature is the Intoner Mode, a special overdrive that makes Zero nearly impervious to damage in battle. I loved being able to dispatch an entire phalanx of enemies with a few quick swipes of a sword, and changing weapons on the fly kept the pace of combat fast and furious. If you really want the full story, you’ll have to go through all four endings (with the last ending only accessible by collecting every weapon).ĭrakengard 3 has one bright spot: Zero’s combat abilities. Again, that’s something that can be done well if the mystery is properly built up, but here it left me feeling directionless. Even Zero’s motivation for her quest to kill her sisters isn’t fully explained until quite late in the tale. It doesn’t help that Zero and her disciples are poorly written, and no amount of rifling through Drakengard’s database or attempts to engage Zero’s Disciples in conversation reveals much about them. The series’ Rubik’s-cube approach to storytelling doesn’t really work here – Drakengard 3 is too slow to reveal its secrets, and relies heavily on fans remembering what happened in the original Drakengard (which came out 10 years ago) in order to understand what’s going on. “ An entertaining story and interesting characters could’ve made all of that worth suffering through, but Drakengard 3 is devoid of both. Linearity can be a great experience if it’s done well, but outside of the way developer Access Games differentiates each location with a special feature (a dark, creepy forest maze, a desert with drastic weather fluctuations that affect your characters’ health, etc.), any attempts at innovation are ruined by the constant backtracking and limited variety of enemies encountered along the way. It’s all a terrible strain on the eyes.ĭrakengard 3 is an extremely linear game, and areas have very little to see and explore. (Yes, I know, every game in the Drakengard series has suffered from these issues, but repeating a mistake doesn’t make it less of a mistake.) There are jagged edges everywhere, the framerate plummets whenever there’s a lot of activity on the screen, the color palette for the world is bland and uninspired, and textures are so undetailed and boring they look like they belong in the PlayStation 2 era. ![]() Just exploring the dark fantasy universe that Yoko Taro made and experiencing the character stories within would be enjoyable, and fans couldn’t ask for much more than that.In the first of the 40 hours I spent with Drakengard 3, I noticed the subpar graphics and framerate. Different characters or parts of the medieval Europe-inspired world could receive focus chapters, and with modern gameplay sensibilities they would play quite differently. Elements from Drakengard 2 could be present earlier on, with dragons planning to overthrow the gods earlier in the timeline. The Watchers, serving as the series’ overarching villains, could return, manipulating their cults from the shadows so that they may enter the world and destroy the imperfect humanity. ![]() The Drakengard universe has a tendency to suffer from world-ending events often. An entirely new Drakengard game could finally continue the story of the world, regardless of whether it takes the form of a prequel, sequel, interquel, or alternate history version of the original. However, now that more people are “in” to the NieR/ Drakengard multiverse, it is prime time for Yoko Taro to revisit Drakengard. Remakes of the older Drakengard’s would be excellent, and older fans would be very pleased with them finally losing much of what made them difficult to play. The dragon gameplay would once again need to be remade, and, of course, Drakengard 3’s infamously poor framerate would finally be improved. A lot of this would be kept in a remake, but it would need another revision to truly push it to the greatness it was aspiring towards. The protagonist Zero being able to switch weapons on the fly and occasionally access a hyper mode that lets her move extremely fast certainly helped. An effort was made to make Drakengard 3 play like a faster version of the first NieR. However, the gameplay could use some extra work. ![]() The third Drakengard was released after the first NieR, so the voicework and translation aren’t as much of an issue. The first two games would also benefit from tightened scripts and revised voice acting. Having what is supposed to be like an aerial combat simulator routinely compared to a rhythm game probably means something is going wrong. A remake could make large-scale battles feel suitably epic, and could give the dragon gameplay a much-needed overhaul to remove its many frustrating elements.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |