Drakengard 3

this game is terrible

Ive seen a couple of reviews, and they've been far from complementary, which is a shame. Nier was an intriguing - if deeply flawed - experience, and I'd hoped for that with a little more polish, rather than moving steps backwards.

Now im really curious....
once i get enough space cleared out i have to see this for my self
Of course people are comparing it to DW quite a bit so...

It is just like Drakengard 1 and in some ways worse. The combat is less tedious and time consuming, but it's still shallow as hell and boring. No enemies in the game have semblance of complex thought behind them beyond "Fodder", "Larger Fodder", "Big Enemy", and "Big Enemies with stupid amounts of health." Your Disciples are worthless as their AI is absolutely stupid, they barely do anything.

The flying sections are worse than they were in Drakengard 1, I don't know how I'm saying this but they are. Flying is a hell of a lot more sterile, you need to keep hammering the X button if you want to stay afloat and most of the flying where you control Mikhail happens in closed spaces, so it's quite easy to have the camera fuck you. Other flying sections are similar to Star Fox although nowhere near as fun because the enemies you fight are easy as hell to figure out and kill.

Boss fights are terrible for the most part too, none of them have any actual real thought behind them, they are bottom of the barrel hack n' slash bosses. Even the Sisters which are the closest things to fun fights basically just are a model swap since the moves they use Zero can use too with the weapons she has, aside from like one special move maybe. The game also has awful level design.

But wait there's more! The game is also fucking broken from an actual game perspective and not just game design. On top of such lovely things as screen tearing happening by just turning the camera, the game will also dip under 10FPS on certain stages and under 20FPS on most others. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? I've had it drop fighting two spear enemies before, I am not kidding. There is a desert stage in the game where it moved 1 frame at a time, who the fuck thought any of this was a good idea? The game looks ugly as hell too, it likes a mid-2000s PS2 game, although certain PS2 games look better than this. I can see the fucking jagged edges of the pixels as I move across the landscape.

Everything I can say that is good about the game is from an aesthetic perspective. Story is boring, but serviceable. Characters are fun, I don't really care for Zero, but her sisters, the disciples, and oh my god, Mikhail is just the best. I love Mikhail so much I can't tell you how hard it would've been to play this game if he wasn't so great. The music is super good, when you go into Intoner mode the music will change to have more percussion and singing, it's really nice. When the sisters sing their songs it will lead into the actual boss theme and it's really cool. The voice acting is also super good, Cindy Robinson sells every line perfectly, Liam O' Brien is wonderful as Cent, and even Cam Clarke rears his head to play a character you don't see very often from him or anyone else, really.

I really want to like this game, but it's just so bad on the level of a video game that no one should buy it. Square should've let this series die, but they decided to let Yoko Taro have his vanity project probably because Nier was so well received and he did not deserve it. Him and most of the team that worked on Drakengard 1 worked on this game and it shows, there's just so much spite for anyone who wants to derive actual enjoyment out of this game.

Spoiler:

So uh basically play the game for the dragon and music right?
But avoid for everything else hrmm....

It figures after I made that post I finished the final section.

Whatever, my points still stand.

I seriously doubt Square consider Nier a success, shame about this game though.

I don't mean a success, I mean the game was received well, not sold well.

God knows Square will still fund someone for what they think will get them money from its cult status.

I've seen some horrible glitch videos of this game where there's just massive amounts of black obscuring the screen. Glad I had no interest in this. One of the cheekier things I heard they've done is peoplpe paid for japanese voices but that doesn't even apply to the DLC.