Drakengard / Dragon Dragoon - Characters, Endings, Secrets, Storyline

Final Fantasy Rebirth » Drakengard » Review

To put it in short, Drakengard is Square Enix’s answer to KOEI’s Dynasty Warriors. Despite the fact that Square Enix announced the game would be an Action RPG, it actually has very few traits of RPG and is pretty much an all out hack and slash game. This isn’t to say that Drakengard is a bad game, as it has many points that make it a fairly decent game. One of Drakengard’s selling points is its storyline, the game has a rich storyline that surpasses the stories of any other game in the hack and slash market, however it’s not quite up to the quality of a Final Fantasy storyline.

Drakengard takes place in ancient times, when two great powers – the Union and the Empire wage a fierce war for control of the goddess who protects the harmony of the world. Throughout the mystical world of Drakengard lie four seals, three of which are scattered throughout the world and one which is embodied inside a woman – the Goddess, the cause of the war. It’s said that if these four seals are broken then the god’s will sow the Seeds of Resurrection upon the earth and bring mankind salvation.

It’s this war that introduces us to Drakengard’s main character, Caim. During an intense battle Caim gets fatally wounded, and as he struggles for his life he comes across a dragon that’s been help captive by the Empire. With little choice in the matter, Caim and the dragon are forced to make a pact with one another, prolonging Caim’s life in exchange for his voice. It’s at this point that you gain control of Caim and become indulged in Drakengard’s deep and engaging storyline.

As I said earlier in this review, whilst playing as Caim the game play is pretty much the same as that of KOEI’s Dynasty Warriors. Though this isn’t necessarily a bad thing as the game definitely has a strong fan base, so who’d blame Square Enix for moving into that genre? Whilst riding the dragon, the game play is essentially the same as that of Panzer Dragoon – so have Square Enix done anything unique with the battle system? Not really, but if you’re looking for a good hack and slash title; this one’s definitely for you.

Completing a level in Drakengard is fairly straight forward, as all you have to do is kill targets then move towards a certain point – that isn’t exactly hard in Drakengard as you’ll pretty much find yourself annihilating everything that gets in your way anyway. The battle system may not be that good, but at least you can say one thing about it – it looks pretty damn good. Drakengard doesn’t have the best graphics the PlayStation 2’s ever seen, but they are still pretty good with some state of the art pre-rendered cut scenes.

In a nutshell, Drakengard might be from the makers of Final Fantasy; but it really doesn’t feel like it. This title probably isn’t worth anything more than a rent, even if it does have a great storyline – the repetitiveness of the game play will make you want to take it straight back to the shop you bought it from.

Rating: 6/10

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