Looking at Drakengard, you would notice that there hasn't been much buzz about the game at all. Even during the release stage when the game first came out there haven't been much advertising or hype surrounding the game. This is kind of unusual from a Square Enix game. Most rpg fans probably still don't know much about Drakengard. The mainstream public definitely isn't aware of Drakengard. So with little buzz surrounding Drakengard, does this mean that this can be a sleeper hit rpg game? Not exactly and here are the reasons……
STORY
Let's Make A Pact.
A Love That Can Never Be
Where to begin? I guess I'll start off with a summary of the history behind the world of Drakengard. It goes like this….
"During ancient times, dragons still roam the world. Two great nations, the Union and the Empire, are at war with one another for control of the goddess who protects the harmony of the world. Hidden in three sacred places are the great seals. A fourth seal, which unite and protects the others, is embodied in the life of a goddess. If the seals are broken, the earth will be sow with the Seeds of Resurrection bringing forth salvation of all mankind. The Empire which is control by a cult known as the Watchers, wishes to bring forth the Seed of Resurrection so it can make the entire world its own have launched a full scale war against the Union to gain control of the goddess."
That's the history of the story behind Drakengard. You can only get this from reading the instruction book. No where in the game itself does the story even provide clues to the history of Drakengard and the war between the Union and the Empire. That should provide a glimpse as to what's wrong with the story in the game. If you don't read the instruction book then you're not going to know what's going on when you start to play this game. When watching a movie, the movie should provide all the needed information on what the movie is about. You shouldn't need to read a preview before watching the movie to know what the movie is going to be about. The same applies here. You shouldn't need to read the instruction book to find out what the story is about as the story should provide that information itself.
Now moving on, the game begins in the thick of battle. Caim and the Union armies are battling the Empire armies at a Union castle where the goddess is staying. With the fall of the castle near, Caim races to the castle to protect his sister, the goddess. As Caim reaches the castle, he finds a dying Red Dragon. Bleeding and surrounded by the Empire men, Caim and the Red Dragon made a pact for life with one another. When a human and a beast make a pact of exchanging hearts, they become pact partners, making them strong as an army. With a new union pact, Caim and the Red Dragon rescued the goddess and Caim's friend, Inuart. Things however didn't go as plan during their escape from the Empire as the goddess and Inuart were captured by the Empire in the end. With the Seeds of Resurrection nearing now that the Empire has the goddess, Caim must find and rescue the goddess from the empire before everything is too late. During his journey, he will meet up with allies from the Union such as Verdelet, and allies that share a common interest of hatred for the empire and a common bond, beings that are pact partners as well, such as the case with allies like Arioch, Leonard, and Seere. The clock ticks down as Caim races to stop the Empire in time before the Seed of Resurrection can begin.
From that brief descriptive summary, you can tell what the main story objective is, rescue the goddess and stop the Empire. Now here are the problems with the story.
Caim is a soldier in the Union and Verdelet is some religious figure in the Union. Other than that we don't see anyone else really in the Union. Who leads the Union? We don't know. Where is the Union during the battle of the armies? We don't see them at all. It's Caim against a thousand Empire men but no Union men in sight. That's too far fetch for us to believe. That's on the Union side. Now we are on the Empire side. The Empire itself is a body but a faceless body. Who leads the Empire? Well the Watchers do but who are the Watchers and what do they look like? We don't know. The story never explains who and what the Watchers are and what they want. There are no character representing the Empire in the story except for the thousands and thousands of army men. The Empire is bad because the story tell us the Empire is bad but it doesn't connect with gamers because the Empire is just a body. We need to have a face to hate the bad guy. Every single good rpg story at least have a bad guy for us to hate. There's no bad guy for us to hate here. There are victims being used by the empire but no one to hate as you can't hate victims. The closest face to a leader of the Empire is a child name Manah who had been brainwash by the Empire. What does the Empire want with Manah and why was Manah brainwashed by the Empire? We don't know. It's just confusing unexplained situations after another. The story doesn't explain anything about the Union or the Empire. Even the endings are left with a lot of confusing things. The story is just confusion among confusion. You know it's bad when after each different endings; you are left scratching your head asking someone to help explain what just happen. LOL. I plainly didn't really understand this story at all. The overall plot seems okay but having the plot work in the story is the problem. Anyone can come up with the plot to a story. As the plot is just an idea on what the story is about. It's the stuff that you have to fill around the plot to make it into a whole story is the hard part. That's the bottom line.
Score 6/10
CHARACTERS
We're A Team
The game has about four main story characters. They are Caim, Red Dragon, Inuart, and Verdelet. Caim doesn't talk for obvious reasons in the story so most of his talking is done by the Red Dragon. Besides the Red Dragon, Inuart and Verdelet are the only other story characters that really talk in the game. You do have three party members in the game. They are Leonard, Seere, and Arioch. Your party members don't really have much effect in terms of being involved in the story other than their initial introduction to the storyline. Other than that, you don't see much of your party members in the story other than the odd comments here and there. The only other time where your party members are a little bit more involved in the actual story is toward the end of Ending E. But being involved in one ending out of five isn't good enough. Now in terms of actual character development as in the history behind these characters, there's not much there. The story gave us glimpses but nothing more. It doesn't expand on what it reveals to us. Let me give you some examples. In the case of Caim, we are given glimpses that Caim parents were killed by a Dragon. Since that time he has been harboring hatred for Dragons. With his parents gone, Caim is left to look after his sister who became a goddess. Okay now here's the thing, the story itself doesn't really show us the pivotal event that change Caim's life in terms of his parents being killed by a Dragon and what occurs afterwards. The story also doesn't give much insight on Caim's relationship with his sister other than a few exchange words with her. How does Caim feel about his sister being a goddess? We don't know? Does Caim share any common interests with his sister? We don't know. We don't know anything between the two of them. The developments between those two characters are weak right there. Another example is the relationship with Inuart and Caim sister. It was mention that Inuart was once engage to marry Caim sister until she became the goddess, at which point the engagement was off due to her duties as a goddess. Now at this point in the story, we are shown that Inuart has this crazy love and desire feeling for goddess still. But how does the goddess feel? Does she still love Inuart? We don't know as the story doesn't dig deep into the relationship between Inuart and Caim sister. There's also a lack of development between the relationships that Seere has with his sister. The background and history of these characters are there but the story doesn't really want to go deeper besides just scratching the surface of who these characters are. The last downside is the pure fact that all of these characters aren't likeable characters for gamers out there to enjoy. We are looking at a mute hero that has no personality down to a psycho woman for characters on the good side. Not exactly the kind of characters that people want to look up to or play as in a game.
Score: 6/10
GRAPHICS
War Is Among Us
The first thing you would notice about the graphics is the enormous large amount of CGI cut scenes. When I say large amount, I do mean large amount. There are CGI cut scenes in almost every chapter and verse in the story. These CGI cut scenes look very nice. Are these CGI scenes better than any other Square Enix CGI scenes? No, but they are just as good and when you have a huge amount, it's always a plus. The down part is that the gameplay graphics doesn't match the beauty of the CGI. The problem of the gameplay graphics is that the world of Drakengard is design too simple. Out in the war battlefields, there aren't a lot of details to the surrounding areas. You have either large green grass fields that are in wide open space or large snowy fields in open space or a large desert area in open space. There's just not a lot of other stuff in these fields. The buildings or castle are once again lacking in details. You're basically looking at empty stone hallways with nothing else in the castles. No furnitures or anything else that would indicate that people actually live in the castles. Character designs on the story characters are okay but not great. The close up on their facial look could use some better details in the story cut scenes. Magic attacks are plain and uninteresting. The enemies in the game look okay for the most part but their designs seem to be repeating itself for each different type of enemies. For example: type A is in gray but type B looks almost the same as type A in terms of overall designs but in a different color. That doesn't cut it to me as I like to see more of an imagination when it comes to creating unique different enemies. Unfortunately you don't get that. Good looking CGI but gameplay graphics looks a little too plain and simple. This is not what you would call a rich looking world with beautiful colors. If the gameplay designs would look more appealing then just various different types of battlefields, I would give this an eight but a seven it is. Most of that seven is due to the CGI.
Score: 7/10
MUSIC
La, La, La, La, La
The musical themes are base on sadness, a pending doom, and the dark age of war. In terms of presentation of these kinds of themes, the game does that quite well. The main song in the game is an English song that is done and sung very well showcasing the sadness of these characters in the game. The battle music is good, matching the battle cry of war. There's also some pretty good Bethoven like musical themes during certain fights that tells the tale of a looming doomsday approaching and the urgency to destroy your enemies as quickly as possible. So the music fits the theme of the game. And now the bad part, the lack of varieties. This game need to have more different types of music in it. Off hand I would say that there are maybe 5 different tunes playing over and over again, five very good different tunes mind you. Of course the fact of the matter is, is that there are probably more than 5 different tunes but it only sound like there are 5 different tunes when playing this game. The sound effects in the game are pretty good, from running footsteps to sound of swords slashing to the cry of battle voices running in the background from the armies nearby. I really like the realism of the battle voices floating in the background. It gives the realism of being in a war battlefield. The voice acting isn't too bad either but it can be annoying having the character voices popping up randomly during certain stages in the battlefield. The last drawback is that the game doesn't support Dolby Surround. This is kind of unusual as most Square Enix games by now have Dolby Surround support. Good tunes but need more varieties.
Score: 8/10
GAMEPLAY
Burn, Baby, Burn
I'll Destroy All Of You
Game Information
Genre: Action Rpg
Publisher: Square Enix
Disc: 1 DVD Disc
Memory: 41 KB
Players: 1 Player Mode
Digital Control: Yes
Analogue Control: Yes
Vibration Function: Yes
Rating: Mature
Release: March 2004
Drakengard gameplay is unique and consists of three different battle modes for gamers to play in. The game is base on Chapters and Verses inside the Chapters. Each chapter has a certain number of verses. Once all verses are completed then you move onto the next chapter. There are three different types of verses, Story Scene Verses, Movie Verses, and Mission Event Verses. Story Scene Verses consist of a short story cut scene. Movie Verses consist of basically a CGI movie. Mission Event Verses is where the gameplay is at. Once you enter a Mission Event Verse, you are taken into a battlefield. From this point you have to complete the condition in the mission in order to complete the mission. Most of the conditions will require you to kill all the Targets in the battlefield to complete the mission while other times will require you to make your way across the battlefield to reach a certain area to complete a mission. Once a mission is complete then you move onto the next verse. At the end of each Chapter, Free Missions will open up for you to explore. See the Extras and Replay section for details on Free Missions. Let's look over the key features in the gameplay.
Melee Mode: In this battle mode, you are controlling Caim on the ground. Your basic goal is to hack, slash, chop and use magic to destroy your enemies to achieve the mission objective, very simple stuff. Aerial Combat: In this battle mode, Caim is riding the Red Dragon to destroy all Aerial enemies. Shoot them down with Dragon Fire or Dragon Magic. The drawback of this mode is the controls. It's not very good. Control is your biggest enemy here as you'll have a hard time directing your Dragon to go the way you want it to go. Strafe Attack: This is a combination of both Melee and Aerial. You can attack the enemies from the ground with Caim or from the air with your Dragon. This mode is pretty fun. You can ride your Dragon from the air and basically shoot and kill the armies down on the ground. It's very cool when you cast your Dragon Magic on the little armies on the ground. Control isn't a problem here as you aren't facing Air to Air combat with another flying enemy so it's easy to target the little guys who are basically sitting ducks on the ground. Weapons:There are a lot of different types of weapons for Caim to use, over 60 of them. Caim can equip on hand ten maximum weapons but he can only use one at a time. Each weapon comes with its own stats. Each weapon has its own magic as well. All weapon start at level one but can level up to a maximum of four levels. The requirement to level up a weapon is done through the amount of kills that a weapon has to achieve first in order to level up to the next level. Naturally all weapons have different set numbers of kills to be achieved before it can level up. The bad part is that even though there are over 60 weapons, all of them are hidden weapons in which you need to find in order to get them. This can be pretty hard if you don't have a walkthrough or strategy guide to help you. Magic:Your magic comes from your weapons. Each weapon has a different type of magic. In order to cast a magic spell, you need to fill up your magic gauge. This can be done by simply attacking and killing an enemy. As your weapon levels up so do your magic. For the most part, magic is pretty useless in this game. Except for Dragon Magic. Allies:Since this is an action rpg game, you're not going to have party members. However you can summon your allies to help you if the situation requires it. If Caim is low on HP during a battle, you can summon an ally to replace him during battle. The advantage of an ally is that they are super strong in magic that he or she can pretty much kill all enemies in the field with one shot. In essence, your ally is your summon magic for those of you familiar with rpgs. The disadvantage is that since your ally is so powerful in terms of casting magic, you can only use him or her for 1 minute before they disappear and Caim comes back to the battlefield. Your ally attacks aren't very strong as well but that's okay because when you are summoning your ally to battle, you are going to be using their magic attacks anyways. You can summon your ally for three times during each mission. Finishing Blows:Each time you hit an enemy you are setting off a chain attack. Each consecutive landing attack on an enemy, you are setting off a combo chain attack. Why is this important? Simple, each weapon has a finishing blow to it. In order to achieve a finishing blow, you need to perform a set number of combos before a weapon flashes to indicate that you can perform a finishing blow. The set number of combos require for a finishing blow various from weapon to weapon. Chain Bonuses:Chain Bonuses are very important to this game. There are two reasons for that. First reason is that since this is an rpg game, you need to get experience points in order to level your character up. Getting experience points is base on the number chain attacks you can do. The higher the chain attacks, the more experience points you get. So if you want to level your guy up then you better do a lot of chain attacks. The second reason is that by chaining together a certain number of attacks, spheres might be dropped on the ground. There are two kinds of spheres. One sphere is the destructive sphere that if you touch it, it will explode and everything around it that isn't you will get hit and probably die. This is good for you when you are surrounded by lots of enemies. The other sphere which is the most important sphere is the HP healing spheres. There are no healing items and no healing magic. The only two ways to heal is to find a HP healing sphere in a treasure chest or to get a healing sphere from chain attack. HP healing spheres in treasure chests aren't a sure thing so the only real option of healing is from getting a HP healing sphere drop from a Chain Bonus attack. That's why Chain Bonuses are so important in this game. Your only source for healing and experience points.
Overall I thought the game was pretty fun to play. It's cool to be hacking a whole bunch of guys and seeing them flying off with their blood being spilled out. It's also cool to be riding a Dragon and wiping out an army on the ground. The flaw in this game is that the controls for the Aerial combat aren't very good and the camera angle could be better. It would be even cooler since this is an army versus army game to have your Union comrades fighting along side you against the Empire men instead of just seeing you (Caim) going up against an entire Army by yourself. But that's nick picking. For a hack and slash action rpg gameplay, Drakengard doesn't disappoint. If you're into a hack and slash rpg game then you might want to look at the gameplay of Drakengard, barring the fact that the story might turn you off.
Score: 8/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
Who Needs A Dragon?
Side quests or extras are done through missions called Free Missions. Each chapter will have a few Free Missions available for you to do. Theses Free Missions have nothing to do with the actual story mission but are used as a great way to gain levels, hidden weapons, and more added gameplay hours. There are a lot of Free Missions so this is good for you. The other hidden quests are completing and finding all the hidden weapons available for Caim to use in the game. And let me repeat that there a lot of hidden weapons to be found. So in a sense, there are side quests for you do to in the game, it's just that they are called Free Missions. The game could use more hidden secrets though. Replay is done through different endings.
There are five different endings available to you. You won't be able to access the best ending right away. Each ending is listed from A to E. The best ending will require you to go all the way to Chapter 13 of the story. The initial ending when playing the game first time around finishes at Chapter 8. Once you finish the game the first time at Chapter 8, you can then save and reload your game again. This time around you can access other chapters and verses to open up more story branches and the different endings. Repeat the process again each time you complete an ending. The good part is that even though in a sense you are replaying the game again after finishing a game, you don't really have to replay the game from the beginning, just at the point where the story branch split up to take you to a particular ending. This way you can take the other story branch right away. You can call it a replay but it's not a real replay because you are playing a part of the story that you haven't played before.
Score: 8/10
Drakengard reminds me of Sega's Panzer Dragoon RPG. It's a better version than Panzer. However even though it's a better version there are still flaws in the game. While Panzer Dragoon RPG is limited to just Aerial Dragon Battle Mode, Drakengard features Battle Modes from Aerial to Ground to a combination of both. The weakness of Drakengard is its story and the cast of characters in the story. Gameplay is good as I had a good time hacking, slashing, and chopping the bad guys. The controls of the Aerial mode could be better. Especially in air to air battles but for the most part, I enjoyed playing the game. The problem was that the story was so confusing and lackluster that I was bored of the game from time to time simply because I didn't care too much about the story to want to continue playing onward. In RPGs, the story is the driving force behind gamers wanting to continue onward. It's the main reason as to why we want to turn to the next page, to find out what happens next. Good gameplay is just gravy after the story. And it doesn't help that all the endings where either bad or plain confusing, leaving gamers with an incomplete feeling when they finish the game. The feeling you would have when finishing an ending to the game was like, "That's it?" Unfortunately those two words best describe this game. With a little bit of fine tuning here and there, Drakengard can be a special rpg. Will there be a chance of fine tuning Drakengard in a sequel? Who knows? But I would like to see a sequel simply because I do enjoy the gameplay.
Final Score: 7.3/10
Time to complete: 45 hours (all five endings)
Difficulty: Medium to Hard
Favorite story character: Seere
Best Weapon: Hymir's Finger
Most useful spell: None
Voice Acting: Above Average
Best music theme: Main Song
Best Battle Mode: Aerial + Ground
Best advice: Find All Hidden Weapons
Best Ally: Arioch
Also try: Panzer Dragoon Rpg
Up next: Final Fantasy XI Online
