Reviews for Drakengard

Drakengard

Strengths: Nice graphics, two types of gameplay, good action, good story

Weakness: Horrible music, stupid enemy AI, bit repetitive

Drakengard has two types of gameplay, on foot hack-and-slash and on dragonback.

The on foot hack-and-slash is close to the games like Dynasty Warriors and Kingdom Under Fire, where there's a single solider against armies of enemies. Longer combos start to generate power-ups and more weapons, as working through the missions on foot. The dragon helps out in the hack-and-slash missions, though isn't around all the time, only when summoned. The dragonback missions are rail-shooter type, such as in Panzer Dragoon Orta.

The graphics look very good, though the music in the game is completely horrible. The enemy AI is brain-dead stupid, and doesn't leave much to be desired in fighting. The game is a bit repetitive in the different levels, though it's enjoyable and long enough that this is a minor issue.

Fans of either of the above names games should give it a look.

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drakengard

Strengths: great hack n' slash action

Weakness: can get repetitive

Drakengard is one of the many hack and slash games available for the Play Station 2. This game is basically a combination of panzer dragoon and the Dynasty warrior series, because it combines the aerial combat where you're riding atop on your Dragon , along with the hand-to-hand weapons combat when you are on foot. The story is basically that you are a one-man army who decides to fight against your myriad enemies using both your many bladed weapons, combat magic, and your trusty Dragon. There is a small element of role-playing in this game in that you earn experience points for a number of your kills and the more points you earn, the more powerful your combat abilities become. You are either on foot where you run along the ground, slaughtering your many enemies with powerful combos and magic. In other stages , you'll be riding your flying dragon , which rains death from above by spewing deadly fire after enemies. There are many different weapons that could wield but they are well hidden in the game and you must first find them before being able to use them. But you will see that there is little variety between these weapons so some people might not even want to bother looking for them. After a while, the action can become very repetitive since you are fighting against hundreds of enemies, just like in Dynasty warriors. You basically slaughter wave after wave of enemies until you reach the end of the level and then repeat the same strategy for the next level. I still enjoy this game greatly because of simple nature and thus recommend getting this game.

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Drakengard

Strengths: Different ways to fight, upgradeable weapons, several endings

Weakness: Sound, very VERY repetitive gameplay

If you were ever looking for a game that only needed one button to play it, this is as close as it gets. The point of the game? Annihilate everything! If you see something, start pushing "X" like there's no tomorrow.
But seriously, the purpose of the game is to kill everything in your path. You get some variation which helps a little. The first form of variation is your choices of weapons and their eventual upgrades. Different weapons have different offensive uses and advantages. The other bit of variation is the fact that you get to fly around on a dragon and use the dragon to kill things.
The gameplay definitely gets repetitive after the first level or 2. And unfortunately, the music does not help. As you can tell, I did not enjoy this game very much. However, I would probably recommend this game to those people who do enjoy hack and slash types of games.

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Worth a Buy

Strengths: Fun

Weakness: Short

Drakengard is a fun Hack N' Slash style game, if a little short. The graphics aren't amazing but they aren't THAT bad. The game gets repetitive after a while, but for $8 I say what the heck, buy it!

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Dynasty Warriors Meets Panzer Dragoon

Strengths: Good combination of gameplay elements, different endings, 50+ weapons,

Weakness: Can be rather repetitive, bad AI

Drakengard is an interesting idea for a game as it's 2 parts Dynasty Warriors with 1 part Panzer Dragoon. Most of the game will be spent fighting bad guys in which you will be basically killing everyone in your path in order to advance though levels.


In Drakengard you power up as you go though the game as you can level up along with your weapons & dragon that also level up. It makes it rather interesting as you can use different spells also depending on what weapon you are using and your spells will also get stronger as your weapons level up.


You will play though two different types of levels some of which will be shooting levels in which you will ride on dragoon back shooting bads guys much like Panzer Dragoon and some in which you will be on foot fighting enemies with melee attacks and spells. When melee fighting it can get rather repetitive much like the Dynasty Warrior games can get. The AI can be pretty bad as alot of time you will find that the weaker guys react slowly so that it's basically like they are just standing there clumped up just waiting for you to knock them down as if they are bowling pins. You can also hop on your dragon while melee fighting (strafe mode) and take out enemies but you or your weapons won't power up, only your dragon will while in strafe mode so you don't want to melee fight all the time or be in strafe mode too much as to keep your character balanced for later on in the game when you may only be able to use one or the other.


I would recommend Drakengard as a rental to most as while it is rather solid at what it does but the melee fighting is very one sided as it is it may not be for everyone. Fans of the Dynasty Warrior games will probably feel right at home with the action and probably enjoy the RPG elements thrown into the game though.

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Death from above, boredom from below

Strengths: Awesome air battles

Weakness: Bland ground battles

Drakengard attempted something very bold--to combine the high flying adventure of games like Crimson Skies or Draken: The Ancients' Gate with the ground battles of Dynasty Warriors. The final product ended being a very unique mix. The aerial battles are awesome, full of explosions, tons of cool monsters, awesome air raides (riding a giant, fire breathing dragon and then terrorizing ground troops is fun no matter how you look at it)--it's a really cool and unique experience. However, the ground battles are just plain bad; you basically just mash the attack button over and over again to wade through the hundreds of generic badguys in the bland, boring locales. It's a lopsided game, but great fun for an afternoon.

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Drakengard

Strengths: Aerial and ground missions, weapon levelling.

Weakness: Incoherent way of telling an otherwise good story

This game is a series of air missions and ground missions. In the ground missions, you run around with a weapon and take out hoards of enemies a la dynasty warriors. The sky missions are reminiscient of panzer dragoon but not on rails. The best part of the game is collecting all the weapons and levelling them up. Great game overall.

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Drakengard

Strengths: 3 gameplay styles, nice graphics and cut scenes

Weakness: gameplay can get repetitive despite various styles, low replayability

This was a good effort in the action arena for Square, but it falls short. The gameplay gets old after a while and isn't implemented all that great. The graphics and cutscenes are pretty impressive (no suprise there) but the title is just lacking something. Once you've played this, there is no reason to go back to it. This game can be found fairly cheap though so maybe you'll find more redeeming qualities in in than me.

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Drakengard

Strengths: Easy controls, fighting on dragonback is cool!

Weakness: Combat is too simple at times, the environments are very flat.

This game does a fairly good job of combining 3rd person fighting on the ground with dragon flying action. The controls are easy to pick up, but they are also too simple as combat is really about button mashing and requires very little skill. The game does provide lots of well detailed enemies and Kain's charage attack is pretty cool. but the backgrounds are too plain and the enemy AI is not very effective. The game also suffer from some slow-down but it should not affect how well you do in combat due to its simplicity. Being a Square game, the cut scenes and music are both very well done, and I really like the character design, being a bit less flamboyant compared to other Square titles. The story is OK and the voice acting is good as well.

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Drakengard

Drakengard receives an overall TopTenREVIEWS rating of 2.66 out of 4.00. It is ranked the #4,378 game of all time and #880 PlayStation 2 game of all time. The rating and ranking is based on an average of 92 critic scores, awards and other criteria. To see a breakdown of the game ranking, read individual critic reviews, or see how other games ranked, click on the link below.

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