Drakengard

Drakengard is a very unique game which borrows elements from flight simulators, RPGs and Hack and Slash games. You play the role of Caim, a very angry young man whose keep is attacked by The Empire at the beginning of the story. Caim tries to repel the Empire’s attack, but he’s wounded and as he sees an enemy soldier burn his keep’s flag, he rushes back to the castle where he finds a mortally injured dragon that he makes a pact with in order to stay alive. A pact is basically a spell that binds their lives so if any of them dies, so does the other (making them drastically stronger and restoring their health in the process, it seems). They then embark on a journey to protect Caim’s sister, Furiae, “the goddess” from the Empire. I’ll start talking about the gameplay right away and continue talking about the story on a different entry to avoid spoilers for those interested in playing this game.
Gameplay: As I already mentioned, the game borrows elements from more than one genre and there are 3 types of missions.

-Ground Missions:

You control Caim in these missions and make your way through hordes of enemies mostly by yourself. You may also mount your Dragon by pressing the SELECT button if there are no obstacles impeding you from riding it (such as being inside a building, thick forests which hinder maneuvering, etc). You may bring up eight different weapons to each mission plus one ally. The victory conditions vary from reaching a certain point in the map or slaying targets.
These missions play out much like your regular Hack and Slash games (think of Dynasty Warriors, only the combat is a lot simpler). You may roll to the left (L1) or right (R1), block (L2) or change your equipped weapon (R2). One of the biggest faults of this mode is that the AI is a letdown, even on normal mode. The battles are usually fairly easy (but this is coming from someone who has played over 10 games from Koei’s warrior series) and the combat probably gets repetitive quite quickly for today’s standards. Button mashing will get you nowhere, though, so don’t think this is some mindless button masher. Some might not like the way it’s always Caim and the dragon versus the world, but there were sometimes justifications for this on some missions. The developers should have probably focused a lot more on the combat system and interaction with the backgrounds to enrich the experience, but I don’t know about the team’s budget.

-Air missions:

My favorite missions! You take control of the Dragon and beat these missions by exterminating everything at sight or flying to a certain place. The controls are simple. Dashes are made with the L1(left dash) and R1(right dash) buttons. Pressing both buttons will make the dragon turn 180 degrees. You lock on a target with the R2 button. I liked these missions so much that it made me buy Ace Combat 4…which wasn’t quite what I expected, but I’m still looking for other flight simulators just for fun.

Misc. Mechanics/Oddbits


Allies:

After unlocking allies, you may summon them up to 3 times per ground mission. Their HP bar is gradually depleted and they have infite MP so repeatedly using their magic attacks is usually the best strategy for them. Arioch is the strongest of the three as her magic attacks can easily slay a couple of squads per use. I wish they could have made it so your allies could summon their pact beasts to the battlefield with the SELECT button like Caim, but that is not the case. Still a nice feature to quickly get rid of magic resilient enemies since their “magic” attacks don’t trigger the fireball counters.

Magic:

Each weapon has a unique magic spell which can be used once you fill your magic gauges be it by smacking enemies around or finding magic orbs. These spells are quite useful and since you can carry 8 weapons per mission, it allows for the player to switch them around in order to adapt to many diverse situations. Just to name a few, there’s a speed up, invisibility, damaging aura and fireball spell.

Magic resilient enemies:

After a few hours, the game will introduce red versions of regular units which have an automatic magic counter to all of Caim’s spells. These units also shoot the dragon on sight and make for a great way to prevent abusing the dragon’s power in some levels. They can be damaged by magic, but the damage is nothing compared to their counter magic blast.

Finishing blows:

These are basically combo finishers. Each weapon gets extra hits as it levels up. So let’s say you have a lvl 2 weapon that can attack 6 times. There will be moments during combos when a flash will shine and pressing the triangle button at these times will unleash a finishing blow which is different for every weapon.

Dragon on Ground missions:

You can ride your dragon on most ground missions. It clears crowds a lot faster than Caim, but the anti magic enemies will shoot it down at sight so it’s not like you can just beat the game by exploiting this.
As a sidenote, as weapons level up they change their size and shape. The player also unlocks fragments of the weapon’s story/legend as it gets stronger.
D’s comments:
Many reviewers complain about the camera but not once did I struggle with it. Odd. Oh yeah, and although the game is labeled as an RPG, the only grinding one can do is replaying missions to increase Caim’s strength a bit plus leveling up your weapons to their 4th stage.

Oh yeah! And all the images were taken from Blue Laguna, RPGFan and Gamespot. I just directly uploaded them from my saved images because direct linking could hurt their traffic or something. Please don’t sue me.