Drakengard II Review (no fat)

Game Description

18 virtual years have passed since the events in Drakengard. It was only a few months after the release of Drakengard when Square Enix announced there was going to be a Drakengard II. On paper, everything seemed nice, but let's see how things are in reality.

Drakengard II Storyline

Wings

Just like in the first part of the Drakengard epic, the storyline plays a very important role. The central part of the story is Nowe, a young man with a strange childhood. Nowe was raised by Legna, a daring red dragon, and later found by a general of the Knights of the Seal. The Knights of the Seal are an elite squadron. Their job is to protect five magic seals, five artifacts that, unsealed, would bring destruction to the world.

Nowe joins the Knights of the Seal, but young and rebellious as he is, he often finds out that the Knights are not as good as they sound. In fact, in his quest for the actual face of the order, he will find that the Knights are actually the oppressors of the land, and that their knighthood actually hides much treachery and many dirty ambitions. Nowe rebels against the order, and becomes one of their most powerful foes.

What follows is a hack'n'slash action to which we were certainly used from the first part, but with some good tweaks along the way. Just like in the first part, the unfolding story plays an important role in the game, making it a veritable epic (at least in the story department).

Drakengard II Gameplay

Run for the hills

The gameplay itself involves a lot of running. You will run through the fields, hills, mountains and whatever else for about 30 hours. The single player campaign is structured in 12 chapters, each containing several verses, just like in the first part. The producers did try to add a little bit of realism or variety by introducing the actual concept of mission, but most missions don't really have any other objective except for "get to point X". The rest is hack'n'slash and dragon dogfights.

The action literally has two sides: the one on ground and the one in air. The two parts are seamlessly bound together, so there are few missions which you truly only solve on air or ground.

The fighting on ground is quite interesting. The action is pretty much the same we were used to in Part I; hack, slash, hack etc., but there are some twists compared to the original. The one you will immediately notice is that there are three other characters except Nowe, but, unlike what you were used to, each of them has their weaknesses and strong points. For example, Nowe is a brave knight, but his strength does show its limits against ogres. Urlick can easily send an ogre to a virtual hell, but quick and small enemies are dangerous for him. The characters are not just involved in improving the overall team performance. There are some character-specific puzzles in the game, and some other puzzles which are not character-specific but are easier to solve with one of them.

There is also a part of the game that takes place in air. You can play as Legna the dragon at times, and bring a (very) hot summer's day on your enemies. Some ground enemies are immune to the dragon’s hot breath, but the real action takes place against air enemies. You will encounter balloons, blocks, and a very interesting kind of rudimentary airplanes. The latter are a pretty interesting addition, and, despite looking like coming from the Flintstones, they're fun to look at and challenging to play against. It's good news to find out that the control problems from the first part have mostly been resolved, so playing as a dragon now involves a fight against your enemies, not against the damn controller.

The developers also added a new whole bunch of weapons. There are over 50 weapons in the game, and every one of them can be upgraded (although only three times each, but with the number of monsters, that won't be a problem). The RPG elements in the first part are still present, too, in the way that the characters gain experience and level-up. However, you don't really have any control over their evolution, so the only way you know this happens is that there's a nice reminder that you leveled up.

What you want and what you get

The problem that spoils Enix' plans is that, although the developers have struggled to make the gameplay more interesting, they sort of missed the point. They did quite a significant job at stashing up "things" in the game (more characters, more weapons, more levels) but didn't solve the fundamental problem of repetitive gameplay. Of course, there were many gamers who didn't really mind that, but many of them were a bit annoyed to see that the game is really not much more than a Gauntlet with 3D graphics and cut-scenes. After a while, Drakengard II feels just like the first part: repetitive and rather boring, but with a twist. Unfortunately, the twist is really only a lot of bloat. You'll hardly remember more than a dozen weapons, let alone use of all fifty.

Drakengard II Graphics and Sound

Some problems of the first part are also unsolved. The camera, for example, is not improved at all. It's just as annoying and still feels like it's intentionally made to take the most twisted positions you could imagine from a camera. The fade textures and the generic-looking enemies are not solved either, so you'll often feel like you're fighting in the Clone War.

It was also quite unfortunate to see that the team gave up the interesting soundtrack in the first part. Both that and this one were repetitive and not too bright, but the first one was at least a bit of an entertainment for musicians. Atonal jazz and dissonant music have their fans in the end, despite the jokes associating them with Marxism.

Drakengard II Virdict

Drakengard II is a perfect case describing how math just doesn't apply in video games. If you take up all the parts and sum them up, you'll get considerably less than what the game truly is worth. Having said that, there are quite a few things around that will annoy picky players, play it only if you liked the original and won’t mind repetition, or if you are new to the series and love hack-slash gameplay.

Drakengard II Price

Drakengard II currently retails at 19.99$