It must be weird to see an “impressions” post for a PS3 game, huh? Well, it’s never too late to turn back the clock and pick up an old game, especially if you’re a new fan of Yoko Taro. Game director Yoko Taro poked into the mainstream with Nier: Automata, sequel to the smaller cult classic, Nier. What’s lesser known in the mainstream is that the Nier saga is a part of the larger Drakengard franchise, an unusual blend of hack-and-slash and dragon flying action. While Nier was originally envisioned as Drakengard 3, a formal sequel was released soon after Nier that’s more faithful to the formula of the original games.

Drakengard 3 takes place in a world ruled by Intoners, a group of sisters that brought peace to the world through the power of song. You play as a traitorous Intoner, Zero, who really loves to kill and really wants to kill her sisters to consolidate power for herself. Her initial assassination plot is foiled in the prologue and after recovering with Mikhail, a reborn version of her dragon ally, she sets out to try again.

The game has the interesting sense of style and bizarre humor that crops up amidst an otherwise serious setting, much like the Nier games. Like, the first thing that happens after the prologue is Zero yelling at Mikhail for rolling around in the mud; which scares him enough that he pisses himself. Enemy soldiers banter about deserting and thinking that Zero is hot as she chops right through them during her combat.

Her allies also lend sillier conversations during the slaughter, with ally Dito being insufferably horny and Mikhail promising to try his best to help while putting up with his psychopathic teammates. Really, the game needs this humor to balance out the fact that you’re playing as a mass murderer trying to kill her seemingly sympathetic sisters.

You play through the game in a mission structure, with side quests available in between missions. Combat sends you slicing through the armies of the Intoners, which seems kinda easy, for the most part; unless you’re being targeted by multiple archers (who are scarily accurate), dealing with bombs or dealing with a midboss, Zero just kinda slices through these guys like butter. Each weapon has a combo, with the list being expanded as you upgrade the weapon and it’s kinda fun to play around with? I’m scared of the basic gameplay getting repetitive, though at the very least, it is more engaging than the original Nier‘s combat.

I feel more mixed on the segments where you ride around on Mikhail, though, there haven’t been enough of these for me to form a definitive opinion. Not gonna lie, while the first boss led to one of the best post-boss cutscenes ever, I’m not a fan of the first boss being a Mikhail segment when you’ve had very little time to get used to using him.

I mentioned upgrading weapons and sidequests earlier, so let’s talk about that. A shopkeeper gives Zero tasks that can net her money and upgrade materials; aside from these sidequests, you have to find these materials in treasure chests around levels. Also, i should mention that I definitely do not recommend googling said shopkeeper, since there is a huge spoiler in the description of the first result.

The sidequests have you doing basic tasks, but they also have arbitrary rules stuck onto them that makes me scared that they will escalate to the point of being unreasonable. Besides the fear of fake difficulty, I can definitely see these missions getting tedious, especially if you’re committed to fully upgrading weapons.

The game also has a bunch of problems on the technical side. I’ve seen some notable framerate drops during gameplay and experienced some hitbox weirdness, especially when I was dealing with bombs. Your AI teammates also aren’t very good, like, for a guy that loves to kill; Dito is pretty bad at killing people. Also, part of why the Mikhail segments don’t gel with me is that they don’t feel as fully realized as the normal combat segments, but again, I haven’t played enough to form a good picture of them.

Dito sucks at committing murder pic.twitter.com/cvT8t46Ss7

— Dari (@scitydreamer) September 13, 2019

Drakengard 3 has flaws and I can see some more flaws over the horizon, but it’s an interesting time. The story’s got an engaging mix of bizarre and self-aware humor mixed with outright sociopathy and as somebody that’s played the Nier games and is familiar with some of the stuff in the first Drakengard, I’m prepared to see what odd twists the game has for me.

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