The main story presented from the start is a bit underwhelming. The actual game elements of Drakengard 3 just feels like a shell the developers used to hold the story and characters. Visually, it seems the least amount of effort needed was put into the graphics, although character models used in the cutscenes are impressive when stacked up against the rest of the game. Technically the game is a disaster with consistent frame rate issues that sometimes grind the game to a halt. There’s no attempt to add any interesting mechanics and the game doesn’t play well enough to be impressive for its action alone. The overall gameplay experience just feels woefully average. The on rails shooting sections with the dragon fair much better and are a nice distraction from slicing up countless foes. What should be an empowering experience always feels like a liability. Piloting the dragon has its moments, but most of the time you feel like you’re stumbling around an arena with awkward controls and camera angles. Death is rarely an issue outside of carelessness, so it’s just a matter of choosing which tool is most efficient for slaying enemies.Ĭertain instances and boss fights have the player mounting a dragon that can breathe fire, fly around and butt stomp to the ground. The player has the ability to carry one of each type of weapon with them, so they can swap between them mid-combat.
There are four weapon types swords, knuckles, spears and discs with each weapon having three different varieties with small, medium and large sizes.Ī large number of these weapons have different movesets which can be expanded through upgrading them using gold and materials. However, over a couple of hours the player’s options are expanded. It’s a repetitive structure that is thankfully still somewhat enjoyable because of the game’s variety of weapons.Įarly on the player has a limited arsenal of weapons and basic movesets, which makes the game seem frustratingly simple. Stronger enemies and mini-bosses shift the focus to evasion, but theses foes are relentlessly recycled. The difficulty slowly climbs, but rarely are there that many challenging situations. Most of the foes you encounter do little beyond occasionally attacking, so they essentially just act as fodder. Each level is mission based and incredibly linear with narrow corridors and small rooms usually filled with waves of enemies. So you can throw out most of those expectations.ĭrakengard 3 focuses almost entirely on hack and slash gameplay. Part of me wanted Drakengard 3 to recapture what NIER was. The story had an amazing localization that perfectly portrayed loveable characters with playful and often foul-mouthed dialog despite being in the middle of devastatingly depressing world. Some of the most striking examples were the bullet hell-style boss battles and the text adventure sequences. NIER had standard hack and slash gameplay, but the title constantly experimented by mixing in elements from other genres. While NIER was far from a AAA polished experience, what made it stand out was how unique it was. I’ve never played a main entry in the Drakengard series, but I fell in love with the spin-off title NIER.
I’m not really sure what I expected coming into Drakengard 3.