Nearly every mission requires Zero to run down a straight line, kill enemies, and repeat. Every aspect of Drakengard 3 is permeated with a sense of needless repetition, to the point where characters break the fourth wall and openly mock the game for it (an idea that, while funny, does not excuse the developer’s conscious decision to implement such irritating sequences). The grind-heavy nature of the game extends beyond combat itself. It’s an ugly game, but it has ugly thematic material, so I suppose there’s some amusing irony at play. I might be more forgiving if Drakengard 3 looked good, but it doesn’t outside of the main character models, everything screams “low-budget,” with muddy textures and a murky color palette. The game jerks and stutters constantly, during both actual gameplay and in cutscenes. It’s outrageously tedious stuff that is made almost unbearable by a laughably shaky framerate and an uncooperative camera. Four weapon types are at the player’s disposal - swords, spears, chakrams, and gauntlets - and although some weapons have unique attacks, combat amounts to little more than mashing buttons and frantically dodging. Enemy groups are severely lacking in variety Zero cuts swaths through identical hordes of faceless soldiers and boring fantasy creatures. Zero proceeds from stage to stage in a linear fashion, each one a roughly fifteen-minute affair full of requisite hacking and slashing. Where Drakengard 3 stumbles, falls, and eats a copious amount of dirt is in the gameplay department. There is DLC that makes each of them playable in a prologue of sorts, although only one of these stories was available at press time. A couple of Zero’s Intoner sisters receive a disappointingly small amount of screen time, which surprised me after getting to know them via the novella chapters available on the game’s official website. The banter between these characters is strange and often hilarious, although some characters are more one-note than others. Zero is a foul-mouthed butcher who travels around with four sex-crazed “Disciples” and a gigantic dragon with the voice of a toddler. This ever-present sense of mystery is what makes the game so fascinating. Little is explained about why Zero has such a thirst for blood until very late in the story even after obtaining the first of the game’s four largely bleak endings, virtually nothing about the true nature of Drakengard 3’s plot is revealed to the player. The narrative begins in medias res, with the Intoner Zero about to murder her five sisters, all of whom rule over different parts of the world with the power of song magic. If I were to reveal anything of the game’s story beyond what has been featured in promotional material, I would be taking away most of its allure. It’s a strange experience that isn’t actually all that fun to play, but something about its unique brand of narrative insanity was enough to push me forward whenever I approached my breaking point. The murderous Zero’s tale of sororicide is far more complex than it appears on the surface, although it takes serious commitment to see through to its conclusion, thanks to maddeningly repetitive combat, boring mission objectives, and a frustrating lack of technical polish. Drakengard 3 continues this trend by melding stale, Dynasty Warriors-style combat with one of the most unusually compelling RPG stories in recent years. Okay, that last bit might be a stretch, unless we’re talking about Drakengard, a series with a reputation for two things: mediocre gameplay and unflinchingly bizarre, often unsettling subject matter. After playing RPGs for the majority of my life, I’m used to tropes: swords and sorcery, knights and ogres, parasitic eye flowers and baby-voiced dragons obsessed with talking about pee… you know, typical genre conventions.
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