Drakengard – A terribly strange series. Strange enough so that it could not be neglected just like that. Critics are customary to treat her with wariness, and perhaps she deserves this: as a game any Drakengard does not so much entertains and exhausts. She does not value your time, your nerves and your reason. To love Drakengard, you must be able to overcome the entire mountain of shit before which she will put you.
But if you deal with this, you will encounter a striking, crashing in memory with stories that are few. And the rest against this background seems to stop worrying.
Drakengard from the very first appearance in public balances on the verge between mediocrity and genius. At first glance, these are games about dragons and the chaos of the battle, but in fact everything is much, much more sophisticated. Therefore, we decided to tell you a little about the Drakengard series and associated with it Nier – not about everything at once, namely about the side of them, where mediocrity begins to retreat.
And yes, we tried not to abuse spoilers. We will touch only the main thing, without delving into the details – we are sure that you will be much more interesting to get acquainted with everything yourself.
Everything is very bad
The first thing that determines Drakengard , – These are the characters. They are always arranged much more complicated than they seem to. If you read our review on Drakengard 3, you already know that the main character there, despite the angelic appearance, embodies cold -blooded bloodthirstiness and debauchery. You know about the problems of other characters. But even that kunstkamera is nothing in comparison with the yellow house of the first part.
► Surprises Nier After Drakengard – and not surprises at all. Here Kaine is a local sex symbol, a girl in BDSM hugs. In fact, she is hermaphrodite, and there is nothing special in that.
The first Drakengard is an amazingly dark, desperate story. In it, the world has reached a critical point where there is nowhere below the bottom, and the heroes are here to match the common heart -icing insanity. Here, for example, Kaim – looks like a typical cute Japanese hero. At the very beginning of Drakengard, he loses his tongue, but he is not enough to hide his bitterness, unhealthy love of dissected (and here we are not about sadistic inclinations, but pure concentrated sadism) and a clear sexual attraction to his own sister. Moreover, mutual. In the English version, the thickness of the hints was established, but the evidence is still screaming about incest.
A little more lucky is a big man Leonard. Actually, he is a positive hero-polite, courteous and is very repented in his pedophilia, so in the English version the hints of the sad past of Leonard smeared with lousy diligence. There is also an Arioch – an elven housewife, in front of whom a husband and son was killed. Now she is in the eternal Satanic delirium, carries a nonsense and eats children because they are delicious. She is clearly dangerous for everyone, but Kaim takes her into the team, because … why not! One feature, all the others are even worse.
► Drakengard to young children clearly applies to the symbol. Our main enemy appears in the guise of an obsessed ten -year -old girl, and the universal evil is identified with the army of ugly babies led by the almost Maupassan mother of the freaks.
An alternative to reality
Drakengard is cynical, but competently operates the topic of parallel realities. In each of the games of the series there are several endings, and Tarot Yoko , The ideologist of the series uses them to show those aspects of the characters that cannot be shown in other circumstances.
Alternative branches open only when you pass all the previous ones, and in each of them the story appears in a new light. If the first branch of Drakengard 3 is a crazy absurd comedy, then in the second event they abruptly refuse to follow a familiar scenario. You seem to know everything that will be next, but in fact you do not know anything. The situations that you easily managed in the first branch get out of control, and becomes a little uneasy. Drakengard 3 ceases to be a parody and turns into a phantasmagoric thriller, which is sensitively playing with your perception.
► In one of the branches of Drakengard 3, the people of the sister Zero loses their goddess, and with her loses his mind at once. Before that, the opponents were afraid, and now they come into a frightening frenzy.
It is impossible to distinguish among the endings the only canonical. For one simple reason: they are all canonical. Even the very most last ending from the first Drakengard, to which only the most stubborn.
A huge figure of sand, outlines reminiscent of a hairless woman, crumbles on the streets of modern Tokyo. The majestic dragon exclaims: “It happened! Finally!", Catches two rockets and, limp, falls down. There are two fighters in the sky. “Bravo-1 says. The unidentified goal is eliminated. End of communication ". Titras are coming.
This ending was supposed as comic – approximately as the endings with aliens and dog from Silent Hill. Tarot Yoko did not show it to anyone until the development lasted. They say that one of his teams this trick even made a rage. However, seven years later came out Nier – And she already seriously talked about what happened to almost extinct ground about one and a half thousand years after the incident.
A game that did not work out
The line of the third ending of Drakengard – the one in which the dragon legions were filled with the planet – had to continue the game called Cry on. They did it Cavia , where Taro Yoko and his team worked before Drakengard 3, and Mistwalker – Studio founded by the Creator Final Fantasy Hironobo Sakaguti. It was assumed that the game would be Xbox-exclusive.
But Cavia was closed, and the development of Cry On is bent with it. No one understood what it was.
► When developing Drakengard, Taro Yoko insisted that the sky resemble the present as little as possible. This strengthened the appearance of the crazy irreality of what is happening.
An alternative to an alternative to reality
But let's plunge deeper. Look at a fragment of the world map from the third part.
► Card from Drakengard 3.
If you have not noticed, this is Western Europe. Only mirrored along both axes. Purely technically Drakengard tells the alternative history of the Earth: somewhere in the ninth century on https://samiland-casino.co.uk/ the Iberian peninsula there was a cataclysm, as a result of which the world got acquainted with dragons, freaks (this, it seems, is the most accurate translation of the term Grotesquerie) and the flower that wears Zero from Drakengard 3. In a matter of months, the dragons baptized the sacred Roman empire with the Earth, all the civilizations that existed at that time fell, and the Earth ceased to be land and became Midgard.
Drakengard has a lot of information about the world, but it almost never lies on the surface. You can spit on the pumping of weapons and miss a lot of interesting stories going with it. You can ignore the notes from Nier and not find out about the epidemic that turned Tokyo prosperous into salt wastelands.
Those who are ready to spend time studying the local cosmogony, Drakengard sooner or later encourages amazing finds. Which, however, does not prevent her from driving you by the nose and laugh at your voice in my words. Because she can.
► Nier in spirit is very different from Drakengard, but Taro Yoko considers it a full part of the series. It is all the more interesting to watch how the creator of one of the crazy game universes tells a beautiful story without obvious chernukha.
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One question remains: is it worth playing all this or is it better to look at YouTube?
For simplicity, we will assume that you agree to come to terms with a primitive gameplay and a mediocre technical part and play for history.
In this case, find the first thing Nier. It is very different from the rest of Drakengard: this is not a straightforward action movie, but an adventure with an open world. Of all the games of the series, it is the least annoying, and its story is beautiful in a good way, without reservation like “But there is a toilet humor in every dialogue”.
Then play in Drakengard 3 – She is excellent, despite all the shortcomings noted in the review.
Do the first two parts are needed? If this question arises at all, the second can be shifted without regrets – Taro Yoko had nothing to do with its development, and the surge of the first part in Drakengard 2 He lost his snotty boring.
And the first Drakengard… the first Drakengard is a pitch arthouse. It is very difficult to play in it today, but you will not find anything like this anywhere else. She was very daring in her statements and nothing is shy, and this is mysteriously attracted.
If you are brave enough, dare.