I played Drakengard after so many years and wow... it diffidently was something.
And also: I know the title of this entry is bad, like really bad, sounds like a bad video title nowadays, but I could also not think of anything else describing it. This entry is to vague and off topic to make a direct title like the others.
I love the games Yoko Taro and his team (Keiichi Okabe, Akihiko Yoshida and all the other brilliant artists behind these works of art) created. All of it. I played Nier, NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139..., Nier Automata, watched the Anime, read the Nier Automata Manga and played and loved Drakengard 3 the most (Best game in the Drakengard/Nier game series!). I also played all three of the Voice of Cards games. The only thing I have not played is the Nier Reincarnation because, I may be a fan of their games but I am not stupid, and well... Drakengard.
The synopsis online is it is bad, samey, makes you go mad or even "Just watch the cutsceness bro" as if that is a valid excuse not to look at the game. Next time I read the Blu-ray cover and consider the movie watched or what? After many years of knowing about it I decided to invest the time again to play it. Yes I tried already in the past, twice but the first time was way to long ago and I did, like most, instantly turn it off, the second time I was feeling not well and it was a bad idea playing a game like this at the time. The way I look at games, shows, movies and art in general has changed and so I finally wanted to see what this game is about. I do these sorts of "experiments" relatively often (currently not so much because my hole life is work, real-life and game-dev all the time, nearly no time for gaming) like playing obscure old games, playing classic or hidden gems I missed when I was younger, play way to many indie game one after the other or a hole series back to back. This is also how I ended up actually playing the Serial experiments game for the PS1 (The JS fan remake).
I never have seen a game that executed its vision so strict and without any regard for fun. The game is about war and it must drive the player mad it seems like was their mission. Well done I guess. The music on its own is... something, but mixed in the game it fits and works so SO well and dose things to break the 4th wall indie games only started doing a little while a go.
The story is Yoko Taro through and through. Heavy topic, sometimes handheld well, other times less well, goes off the rails so much you would think you are in north America because no rail is in sight anywhere (Sorry, bad joke).
The main character controls like a brick and so many aspects are never explain, stuff like that you can control the camera on the pause screen, the flames of the dragon are controllable while doing a strong attack, there are like 7 different type of attack and all are executed with square or triangle, every weapon has its own spell or even that you can summon partners.
ALL characters in this game with no exception are flawed and completely unlikable, intentionally. Most topics are very on the nose or so in the background you miss them entirely, except if you search for them by playing levels way longer then sensible and triggering combat dialog's.
Is it a good game? NO! Is it good art? Well, it is special in every way. It is neither rushed nor is it lazy. It is competently made and with intention. To quote "ConstantlyCaden", "Can Games be Bad on Purpose"? That is what I thought playing this. So much seemed strange to be done like it was but everything has its reason. I will probably never understand what drives a group of developers to push their vision through like this but they created exactly what they envisioned. Sadly it is a time waster when played vanilla and, cheated, it can only be played if you know what you are about to play.
Would I recommend it? No. It is hard, way to long (somehow not stretched except for the side quest to the end. Kill, short cutscenes, kill and so on with not real level design nor need for the cutscenes) and has topics not everyone can handle. Also: I cheated with double exp, played in easy mode, especially later used Fast forward 200% in repeating sequences, sometimes 400%, never died because I made SaveStates like every 10 minutes and cheated all weapons at the end to get to the 100% joke Ending. I did not even use any other weapon then the starter one. If you play the game normally it is way to hard, unforgiving, timewastey, you MUST grind especially to the end like crazy (we are talking at least 30 hours here in free expedition mode, which I also never touched) to even be able to fight, ask "Logan Welchman", they can tell you how bad it is to do a vanilla (or near vanilla) playthrough of this game, to quote someone again "... I Genuinely regret doing it ...". I, on the other hand, had fun with all the cheats listed and knew what I had coming.
I used many cheats, and often the websites a badly archived or not achievable because of bot protection. So I will list cheat codes here with their sources.
Below I list the flow on how I played. The game dose a surprisingly good job in telling in the Verses descriptions what to do where and next but I could not find any flow path online so I will do one. Your playthrough most likely will differ a little if you somehow are able to meet requirements the first time in a level (Like I did a 20 minutes requirement for one Verse by accident LOL). It will then unlock both possible paths directly. If the later path is actually beatable this early idk.
This is everything. I know, very different to usual entrys, but I wanted to document this. This game is just a work of art to strange and unique to not mention it.