DRAKENGARD 3 | Full Game Walkthrough | No Commentary
85I have always heard that the Nier universe is magnificent and some consider Nier Automata to be the best game ever made. I own both Nier Automata and Nier Gestalt, but never played them. (Actually while writing this I am currently 4 hours into Nier Gestalt and LOVING it and I beat Automata only on the first ending, so still have a ways to go).
Recently I also read that the Nier games are considered a spinoff series of the Drakengard games and I managed to actually buy a new, sealed Drakengard 3 copy for the PlayStation 3. It seems to be a pretty rare game as Europe never got a physical release so I saw it as my duty as The Game Archivist once again to archive this game so that it won't be forgotten to time.
But boy....was I not ready for what lay in store for me. Drakengard 3 tells the story of Zero who is on a quest to take out her five sisters. She does this with the help of a young dragon while she cuts her way through thousands of enemy soldiers. Sounds like a winning formula, right? Well....the game is honestly all over the place. For every good thing there is a bad thing.
The style of the characters are great, but the enviroments are repetitive and bland. The music is amazing, but the game runs horribly with often dipping in FPS to the point where it almost freezes. The combat feels visceral with beautiful animations, but the writing of the characters is incredibly shallow and cringe.
It honestly is very surprising that this game comes from the minds that gave us Nier and later Nier Automata as none of that brilliance, emotion or philosophy is present here. Now that does not mean that the game is awful and the combat is pretty nice from time to time and I actually did laugh a couple of times on how absurd the dialogue is.
I am very glad I experienced the Yoko Taro universe in this order though, as the developers first had developed Nier before the release of this. Because in my opinion this game is a big step down from Nier, but since I am playing that game after beating Drakengard 3 it feels like a natural evolution. And I still have the best game that Taro made to look forward to when I revisit the world of Automata for the other endings.
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