Drakengard 3 - PlayStation 3

I am playing this game, and have been for a while. It is awesome, and I love the hilarious moments between Zero and company, along with Zero and her Intoner Sisters. Mikhail is hilarious, and the graphics and story for the time are astonishing. It is a prequel to the first Drakengard, which is also a precursor to both NieR: Replicant and NieR: Automata. The story also breaks off in the DLCs (which are separate and found in the PS3 store), as you follow the Intoner Sisters and their separate journeys, which is awesome as well. The final boss is quite the kicker as you switch from the fighting mechanics you're used to in exchange for rhythms and going with the flow of the music. Hence why Branch D's final verse ends with "Final Song". It's so good to see such a good game on an almost archaic system as the PS3. And it is a recommend for all the DrakenNier fans out there!

Like many gamers, I recently became a massive fan of Yoko Taro over the last few years thanks to the release of NieR: Automata. I jumped on Nier (PS3) pretty quickly before it occurred to me that I was still missing one of Yoko Taro's games from the PS3/4 library: Drakengard 3. The game has its fair share of criticism, and I'll admit, some of it is justified. The frame rate drops horrendously in ways that could be game-breaking depending on how deep in the level you are. The combat is far simpler than its successors. The side quests are repetitive to the point of redundancy. But despite its flaws, I still give it a 5/5 review for one simple reason: the things I loved the most about Nier and NieR:A are accomplished in spades here. The things I was hoping to see from an earlier Yoko Taro game appear and far surpassed my expectations. It has the same brand of weird, nihilistic black comedy that newbies to his work have come to know and love, as well as a delightfully creepy amount of blatant sex talk. It is convoluted and disturbing for all the right reasons. It makes you question almost immediately if you're the hero or the villain, and those lines don't really become any clearer as you progress through the story. The maps are linear and the combat progression is exceedingly simple, and as someone that's played more than his fair share of convoluted RPGs, this was an almost refreshing change of pace. Each strike on an enemy creates a PS2-esque spray of blood and by the time you've made it through each level, you're drenched in blood. The music is just as gorgeous as you would expect if you were spoiled on entry like I was. In a nutshell, this game has its flaws, but it's easily established itself as one of my absolute favorite PS3 games, and if you know what you liked about the Nier games, you can decide from my review if this game is for you.

If you’re a fan of Nier Automata/Replicant and you’re looking for more games like that, you’ve probably discovered that there’s not many that can give you such a unique experience. While this isn’t on the level of Nier Automata, it’s still recommended that you should try it out. This exists in that same Drakenguard/Nier universe, albeit at a very different place in the historical timeline. Obviously, with this being on the PS3, the performance is not always stellar, but it’s perfectly playable and you would need a powerful PC to emulate the game and get better results than the native version. It’s unfortunate that there is no PS3 backwards compatibility on PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5. So many unique titles like this are not accessible on current gen hardware. There is no PC version either, sadly. But at least it can still be acquired for a reasonable price.

As badly as I want to give this game 5 stars, I can't. It'd be disingenuous. Do I recommend you get or play this game? Absolutely, with the understanding that you will 100% experience certain issues while playing it. Let's get the bad stuff out of the way first. This game absolutely does not look like it came out in 2013. I don't care much about amazing graphics, but some people do, so I figured I'd go ahead and get that out there. The real issue lies in the game's performance. It's... not good. At all. I'd like to preface this by saying I am NOT a snob when it comes to frame rate. I don't care if it doesn't run at 60fps, or even 30fps, as long as it's mostly consistent. I say this so you understand that a game has to have REALLY BAD frame drops in order for me to notice or even care, much less warn people in a review about it. The frame rate definitely will drop below 10, and it will do it often, usually at a time when you really don't want to be having frame drops. This can and will result in you taking damage that you should have been able to avoid had the game not turned into a slide show. The frame rate drops at times where it doesn't even make sense for it to drop. Lots of enemies and magic and explosions going off? Sure, okay, whatever, I expect that. But at times, it'll randomly drop when you're just fighting a few knights, when it's normally fine. I can muscle through it because I love the game, but I know something like this can be a deal breaker for someone else. A couple issues I found during gameplay is the camera. You're gonna need to slow the horizontal camera speed down. There's also no real auto-target feature, where your character automatically faces the nearest enemy to them to attack. So this ends up with you missing enemies that are right next to you just because you're not faced right at them. Locking on kind of helps mitigate this, but it's not perfect. It might sound like I'm harping on the gameplay a lot, but the combat, when it works, is actually a lot of fun! You have 4 types of weapons (swords, spears, gauntlets, and chakrams) that you can switch between on the fly to make new combos. Swords are balanced in strength and speed. Spears are heavy hitters and guard breakers, but are slower to use. Gauntlets do slightly less damage, but hit very fast. Chakrams are good for crowd control and range. There is also Intoner Mode, which is a gauge you build up through combat, like a limit break or Devil Trigger. You get a big damage boost, and become invulnerable for a short period. It also adds vocals to whatever background track is playing, which is a wonderful touch. It's fun, despite the performance issues, and definitely miles ahead of past Drakengard games. The story is easily my favorite part of this game. It's dark, and funny, but also emotionally impactful. It has multiple endings, a staple for any game made by this creator. You find yourself in a world called Midgard, a land which was until recently, torn apart by war and strife. One day, a group of five sisters who could wield magic through the power of song came to Midgard, and together they were able to put an end to the age of war and usher in a new era of peace. Each sister rules over their own domain, and together they help maintain balance and order. Until one day, their sixth sister makes an attempt on their lives. She says she wants to be the only Intoner, and labors to steal her sisters' powers by killing them. She is also the protagonist and the character you will be controlling. Zero is an interesting protagonist, a far cry from the typical JRPG protagonist. She's brash, has a terrible temper, foul-mouthed, murderous, and uninhibited around men. You control Zero on her journey to destroy her sisters, with the aid of her dragon, Mikhail, who is clearly her foil. A sweet, innocent baby dragon who just wants peace, and tries to dissuade Zero from ending her sisters. As you make your way through Midgard to challenge Zero's sisters (each named One, Two, Three, Four, and Five), you recruit new companions to your cause, each with their own distinct personality. The game is dark, and has an... interesting sense of humor. There's a lot of fourth wall breaking, and a LOT of sexual humor. But when the game decides to take itself seriously, it pulls out all the stops. It's gut-wrenching at times. The art direction is actually not bad, and the soundtrack is by the same composer as NieR and NieR: Automata, so you know you're in for some beautiful music. My only complaint is that the soundtrack could be... larger? Some songs repeat a bit too often, but it's good music. All in all, as I said, I recommend this game, but understand that the frame drops are going to be your biggest opponent while playing. I really hope they one day remaster this game and fix the performance issues. It deserves it!

This game is so bad it's good. Maybe saying it's bad isn't quite right. For a Square Enix game it does feel a bit unpolished, but the game is still a lot of fun. Overall it is like playing a Quentin Tarantino movie with its revenge-ish kill everyone on the list plot, dark humor, and over the top blood spraying. The game play is almost the exact same as the previous two Drakengard games. The one big change is that you can't ride your dragon on command in the ground levels, but this comes with the trade off of more unique levels that wrap around the landscapes of various areas in the game, unlike the last two games that have a lot big open battle fields for ground levels. This game has a lot more dark humor throughout the game where the last two were just kind of dark. I really like all the things the enemies are yelling at each other as you mow them down with your sword and/or dragon.

Drakengard 3 is a perfect example of writing a story based entirely off TV-tropes or perhaps letting a 9-year old write an ‘adult’ game; to be frank I have not played a game with this disastrous of a story and characters in over ten years. Everything good about the series has been ripped away, while all the bad points remain untouched, leaving a game even fanboys would be hard pressed to defend. I have never hated a main character so bad in my life, she represents literally everything wrong with modern attempts at writing a ‘tough’ female lead; the tropes she embodies and attempts to invert are so ham-fisted and pathetic you can only shake your head at the stupidity you are enduring. I was a fan of the series, while they certainly possessed their fair share of faults, the intriguing story was so refreshing the simplistic gameplay could be over-looked, further the premise of riding a dragon was actually utilized in a game titled after dragons. That doesn’t happen here. Let’s take a childish plot, slap in lots of blood and swearing, and be content that it is suddenly ‘adult’ or ‘good’: This game has a lot of problem, most of them related to the non-existent story, and the paper-thin characters that not only lack anything to them, are so repetitive in their lines you hate them fairly rapidly after meeting them and this never changes. Before I touch on its major two failings, the entire atmosphere of the game has been switched from serious/dark to this childish cartoon that employs the most base levels of ‘humor’ in an unclear purpose. We switch from watching people cut in half to watching characters have the Wile-E-Coyote off the edge of a cliff moment before falling, I am not even joking about this level of juxtaposition, its disturbing, and not because someone just got cut in half. First, there is an aberrant about of toilet humor in this game, and its not even funny. Literally the first line you hear in the game is someone whiny about ‘they have to go pee’. Not cute, not funny, and only serves to underline the repetition this game represents. This is a significant departure from Drakengard 2 for example where this type of humor was never used, and for good reason – its childish. Very rarely is it ever funny, and when you are trying to have a serious ADULT game – which is the entire premise of this game – it only contributes to the general bipolar feeling the game has. Someone gets killed or lost, then the next scene is someone else groaning…are they in pain? Oh, nope, just going to the bathroom, and everyone says how bad it stinks, so funny! Not. In addition to this, the random slapstick humor is woefully out of place. There are multiple times the ground gives away, and it literally does the cartoon thing of them standing in the air, looking down, realizing they should be falling, then proceed to ‘woooahhh!!!’ and fall down. The hole of a story and the characters summed up in one line: What I noted up above sets a bad atmosphere, but it is a small crime related to the horrendous writing of the story and characters. First the story, this will be shorter, and the story is short so there is little to cover. You are ‘Zero’ the toughest girl around, and you are on a mission to kill all your sisters, Five through One. Ok, sounds like it could be cool, after all that’s why I bought the game. The problem is…this is ALL the story is. You all killing everyone in your path, and when asked about it she answers ‘I want to kill them all’, this is the only motivation you are offered the entire game. This is not an exaggeration. You are never told why you are amassing this huge body counts other than you want to be the only one. There wasn’t even a Highlander-like premise of ‘There can be only one!’ that the game would have been improved by. Sometimes these vague plots work, when there is SOMETHING to grasp on to, some hint that the world is not what it seems, that the main character knows something others don’t. None of that. All we see is the rest of the world in love with characters we are killing, and everyone saying how psycho and pointless the main character’s mission is. The entire purpose is to kill your sisters, and you learn NOTHING about them, I was surprised when the first sister was killed, because I was expecting exposition at some point, nope, cut in half and moving on to new chapter. This ties into the 2nd major problem with this game is the characters. Ok, so the actual story is non-existent, sometimes these games can still be good if the characters are classic. Sadly, they are even worse. For a game whose premise is killing your sisters, this is a great opportunity to show some serious character development, are your sisters evil, did they pick on you, how do they change in behavior as you come closer to killing them, what’s their motivation etc? You know, things that conventionally define characters. Instead we are given such shallow tropes for characters its actually somewhat humorous in how one-dimensional they are. Take for example the sisters, we have the slut, the virgin, the tired one, the drugged one and the leader. Play the game and tell me you know more about them then what these stereotypes would suggest. In fact the stereotypes suggest MORE depth then even they had. Though I suppose when a character is given two lines total before they did there can’t be much development. Ok, how about your party? They talk a lot, but there lines are the exact same combinations of the same theme. You get four people, 1 who is violent, 2 is masochist, 3 is horny, 4 is a playboy. Almost every interaction is someone pulling a line of out their trope 1:’woah that guy got smashed!’ 2 then groans in some weird sexual way and so on. I think 2 actually groans in pleasure more than he utters lines. Zero- my most hated character ever: I have a high tolerance for bad characters, as RPGs tend to produce some pretty bad ones, but never has one grated on me as bad as Zero. She is completely ham fisted in her entire presentation. We are told she is badass and repeatedly told this fact. Her two lines consist of ‘I’m going to kill you because I can’ or ‘stupid dragon’. You are playing an evil character, because you have nothing that ever contradicts this fact, and the whole game people are running from you in fear, trying to be saved by the sisters you are killing. There is no hint that they are mind controlled, you are actually good, etc, you are just on the blood thirsty rampage, because you are just so tough. The game forces us to accept just how cool she is. Your party endlessly dotes on her, despite her criticizing them repeatedly. She swears completely unnaturally. Now I am completely in favor of swearing in video games, as it is realistic, however this game shows how wrong it can be. She routinely lashes out in childish insults that are actually bleeped out and the subtitles show ‘you ****er!!!’ The average player can only take some much ‘run because I am going to kill you all!’ announcements because you have zero reason to feel anything but revulsion for this character. She is as if you take any ‘cool’ character, Dante, Kratos, Duke Nukem and kick it up even more, those characters I listed are not exercises in subtly, and her even worse falls so flat on its face you cannot even respect the doggedness they proceed with this ‘characterization’ with. Here’s a perfect example, you meet the virgin sister, and the entire dialogue is essentially ‘Zero I love you why are you doing this?’ and she answers ‘Because I want to kill you.’ Woah, cool man… This is not even including the obvious flower stuck in her eye, it was a dumb character choice, a worse plot element, and just adds to the annoyance of her character because it is just another piece of evidence of how bad character writing went on here. I guess this is what passes for ‘original’ anymore. It is tough to describe just how bad she is, imagine the most non-existent story you can, the most 1-dimensional character you can, and imagine the game trying to convince you she is the coolest character you have ever seen despite you hating her, because that is kind of what this game is like. She would be infinitely improved if she never talked. Really this whole game would have been improved if no one ever talked, it’d be mysterious and a whole lot better than the same lines regurgitated ad nauseam. Gameplay – They even made the bad gameplay worse: To be fair, some of the boss fights were actually cool, it had good music and felt sufficiently epic, but even the fairly simplistic gameplay has been ruined. Consider Drakengard 2, the average level was a big open field or castle, everything was there in front of you, you could go wherever you want, explore around, and RIDE YOUR DRAGON. “Legna!” And you were hovering around the battle field laying waste. It was great, it was cool, the game itself was woefully simple but at least it made atmospheric sense and pulled you into the game. In this game you run forward for a majority of the levels. The 1-2 that are not pure running forward are notable because they remind you of what you once had. There is no exploring, no sieging out a big castle, no trying to flank here or there, and NO RIDING YOUR DRAGON. There are a few special ‘arena’ areas that you go hit a button and suddenly your dragon gives you a bit of air support and flies away. Colossally stupid. Or they give you a token riding the dragon area which is a on-rails affair not inspiring, they give you 2 short areas you ride your dragon and its not on rails, but they are very short and serve only to remind you of the better way D2 did it. In this game you are running forward through canyons nearly the entire time. You come across enemies in small packs, and you move on. There is nothing epic feeling about any of this. Another really weird thing, is in general you can beat the game just mashing your attack button over and over and rarely take damage beyond bosses. However, sometimes you will be essentially perma-bashed by regular units. They will hit you, give you tremendous knockback or knockdown, run up to you, and right as you are getting up hit you again. Again, it is weird when it happens, but it happened a few times, where a single guy with his AI timing essentially completely stun locks and kills you where a unit of guys just stands there and gets slaughtered. They even messed up the weapon system. D2 had a cool system that as you used a weapon it improved, and you got a pretty cool ‘weapon story’ along with it, I still remember a few of them. D2 gave you interesting decisions, like whether to level up the Nobuyoshi which was very weak but became one of the best weapons if you stuck with it, or to stick with a decent weapon that wont get much better. This game, you get gold which then can be used to improve any weapon, regardless if you use it. You never need to touch a weapon and can make it to the highest level, and for some reason you have to exit the game just to read the weapon stories. Conclusion: The game is absolutely impossible to recommend, and this is coming from a former fan. The gameplay is simple, and the story and characters are ruined. The writing is completely childish, the humor is shallow and out of place, the characters grating, and Zero is the worst main I have ever seen. Even silent NES protagonists are more complicated then this pathetic try-hard, I am so glad I beat this game because I never have to touch it again. I was a fan of the others, non-existent story and bad characters ruin a mediocre game

My friends have played Square Enix games forever (Final Fantasy). I have tried and it is hard for me to get into the fighting system. I have a particular genre of game that I prefer and it is like the game creators pulled this game from my head and put it in my system. First, it is a gorgeous game to look at with very little mistakes that I have found. Second, it is a very fun story with with and black satire. Third, lots of swords and dragons (how can you go wrong). Now the warnings, this game is rated M. The humor is very adult and very sexual in nature. There is graphic violence including abuse. All of this said - it is my favorite game and brings me hours of enjoyment.

Loved this game back in the day. It's still pretty rough game play wise, but it's okay. Is argue it's worse than Gestalt, but it's okay. The story, though, is amazing. Not quite Automata or Replicant/Gestalt, but don't overlook this game if you like the DrakeNieR series. You won't be disappointed if you can get past the weak combat. And it has dragons!

Va a 10 fps; è più legnoso di Nier Gestalt. Ma Dio solo sa se non lo rigiocherei giorno e notte. Zero è il best chara ever (dopo Nagito e Kumagawa, s'intende), Mikhail è il best dragon ever (dopo Khellendros). A parte le fanboyate, non è un gioco per tutti. E' un musou che, veramente, gira in modo talmente pessimo da far male agli occhi; ma se si prescinde da questo, e se si è fan di Taro (e per fan di Taro non intendo "Oooh, ho giocato Nier Automata, sono un fan di Taro"), probabilmente nemmeno leggerete questa recensione perché hey, lo avrete già; ma nel caso siate state dubbiosi fino ad adesso... bè, compratelo.

I am rediscovering Japan games once more and decided to catch up with all those gems I missed previously. Seriously guys I lost all hope for western medium - big budgets games after Blizcon. I think only Japan is still genuinely passionate about games and not only about money. Fun to play? Sure is! Gorgeous looking psychopath sweet girl with sword and blood everywhere. It is awesome!

Juegazo!! Lo recomiendo 100 x100.

Drakengard 3 is a masterpiece it is the last game of the Drakengard Trilogy and the beginning of everything that startet the lor of the Nier games

Bom jogo, um historia marcante, trilha sonora incrível.