Drakengard 2
 

Anybody playing it? It's a little repetitive, yeah, but it's got an improve comboing system, a great story that ties into the original, and surprisingly strong voice acting. I'm hoping I'm not the only one playing the game.

I hope to get it very soon. It's out tomorrow i do believe. Well, that's the date on amazon for it. I'll probably wait for it to come down in price a bit because i've heard it isn't as good as the first one (even then, i bought the first one for £5...)

I've heard people complain that it's mediocre, but I've never heard anyone say the first is better. Everything was pretty much improved over the original (except for ground combat, which was redone).

Are you sure this game is even an RPG? I've been playing it for awhile, and it's totally an action/adventure game.

A Drakengard 2 thread is one of the first I wanted to make when the forum came back up. Here's a copy and paste reply I worked on in advance.

Well, Drakengard 2 has been out since last week, along with Grandia III. No doubt the game is immediately overshadowed by that RPG, but I’m here to tell you not to count it out completely. During GFF’s downtime, I’ve been thoroughly playing this game, and have been enjoying it quite a bit.

The first game had unremarkable gameplay, an unapologetic Dynasty Warriors clone, but it won me over with its utterly twisted, unforgiving story. Themes of incest, child murder, suicide, and revenge driven insanity made up the darkest game SE ever cooked up. Drakengard became one of those games where I looked past the gameplay in favor of aesthetics (other examples include Xenosaga and Silent Hill). Needless to say, I was excited at the announcement of a sequel.

The premise won me over from the start, continuing the twisted fantasy theme from the start. I honestly can’t recall any other RPG where There’s much more then that, but I’d hate to give it all away. If anyone stuck with the first game’s story, consider part 2 a reward. There’s a great deal of continuity and nods to the previous storyline, and practically all the characters either make a return appearance or at least referenced. Half the fun is seeing what everyone’s been doing the past 18 years. But given the source material, I won’t consider it a spoiler to tell you none of them have had a happy ending. I’m especially pleased the way they handled Manah is another personal favorite, given the unique premise of the character, along with a cool design and moves. Hearing her story told in full is also interesting, begging the question on whether she deserves the punishments she’s endured after the first game (Caim may have spared her life, but he made sure things wouldn’t be easy for her from then on either).

As for the main lead, Nowe, I’m sure he’ll end up being the focal point of much love/hate debates. He is indeed somewhat whiny. His Manah lusting in particular dredges up memories of Xenogears’ Fei. Regardless, I consider Nowe to be a breath of fresh air after Drakengard’s gloomy “heroes”. He’s hopelessly sentimental and naïve, but these traits are clearly shown as flaws for the character. The beginning FMV on which he rides with his dragon, arms stretched outward as he embraces the sky around him shows you just what kind of character he is, one full of hope and innocence; someone very out of place in a game like this.

Speaking of the dragon, Legna remains my favorite new character in the series. His voice is very cool and he’s full of neat quotes (“I shall give them a light roasting.”), but the real highlight is his relationship with Nowe. Raising Nowe since birth, Legna and him have one of the most touching relationships I’ve ever seen in a game, one that truly captures the love of Father and Son, and is on par with the similar parent/child relationship with MOMO and Ziggy. In particular,

Yes, Drakengard 2 is rated T, and things never get quite as insane as the first game (after acquiring the first game, I can confirm, at the moment, that this game remains “baby free”), but there’s still plenty of dark themes and moments present that push the rating pretty well. It even has an openly homosexual character that isn’t played for comic relief for a change. I do wish the enemy fights would have been gorier and featuring dismemberment on par with Berserk for PS2. It would’ve helped to lessen the tedium of the actual gameplay.

Yes, gameplay is still the same, slice and dice hundreds of enemies along with a few sky battles on your dragon. But it should be noted that some notable improvements have been made. Aside from the new attacks, switching characters has an actual purpose to it, as some characters are well equipped to handle certain enemies (Eris, for example, does major damage to undead enemies). The dragon has been given quite a bit of new moves as well, including more special attacks (the best being an attack that has Legna munching down on the enemies, gulps included). Boss fights are the most welcome addition, as they require actual strategy to them as well as being fun.

But make no mistake, it still plays about the same. There isn’t enough enemy variety, the camera still needs work, and things are still pretty repetitive in the end. But at least they’re improving, and there’s still some satisfaction in carving up thousands of bad guys at once during the more intense levels.

Voice Acting is quite good, and seem to be from the same group that dubbed Dragon Quest VIII (I’m almost certain that Yaha is played by Ishmari), and returning characters are all played by the VA’s in the first game (though it’s pretty amusing how one in particular now has a british accent), with the exception of Manah. I was really hoping Sherry Lynn would reprise the role, since she’s been known to do adult voices as well, but the new VA is decent enough. The best returning voice goes to

Music is much more coherent here too, although I was a big fan of the techniques used in the first game’s soundtrack. They took existing pieces of famous orchestras and looped it around to create a chaotic effect. It worked really well with the general insanity of the story. The second game still has some great works of music though, especially the opening theme and the later boss battles. I especially loved the rearrangements of Growing Wings, taking the same English lyrics from the last game. I’m very bummed that the new song isn’t available in the soundtrack, and I’m requesting that someone does a gamerip pronto.

So in the end, it’s still a meh game, but the story is still awesome stuff, to the point that I wish Drakengard was an anime or manga series instead (there simply aren’t enough dark anime stories out there). I’m a sucker for dark fantasy stories that pull no punches, so I continue to enjoy Drakengard’s narrative, even though the in-game cutscenes still need much work, as they either contain still pictures, or feature no mouth movements in the ones that do move. Regardless, I enjoyed the hell out of this game, and I really hope it does well enough to make a Drakengard 3. By the third game, they might just be able to craft a game that’s fun to play as well as a dark story.

I have the first one and I liked that, I want to get drakengard 2 but it's 39$ now and can't find it cheap on ebay either, I might have to wait a while for me to be able to find it for arround 20$ on ebay and then I'll get it.

Everything you said, I second.

Drakengard 2 is a great sequel.
I still hold Drakengard 1 in higher regard, however. This is why:

-Menu selection of any verse (level / FMV / in-game story scene) in any chapter.
-Much darker storyline.
-5 endings instead of just 3.
-Soundtrack one of the most brilliantly insane I've ever heard from a game.

So, ultimately, I feel that:
D1 is a 10/10
D2 is a 9/10

I second your second. Or uh, third your second. Point is, I aggree with your points on Drakengard 1. It bugged me that you couldn't replay missions or watch all the cutscenes. I still haven't seen the other 2 endings, so I don't know if they're extensions of the first ending, or alternate apocalyptic insanity like in the first game.

Like I said, the story sarcrifices a bit of the darker themes for coherence, but I consider it a good alternative, sort of an optimist's view of the events of the first game and its characters. I do hope that if future sequels occur, they'll always remain a certain dark level. This is about as close to a Silent Hill RPG (not really an RPG though) as we'll get.

Oh, and it should be noted that loading up a completed game and starting over in Hard Mode (though so far it's much easier, as my high level characters kill early enemies in a single blow) will add new cutscenes inbetween the existing ones. One in particular is already talked about, in which Eris recalls herself and Nowe in younger times, in which she tells him how she "became a woman". :eyebrow:

Hey, good to see there are some people who talk about it.

I have to disagree about the soundtrack though, as I thought was superior to the original's. Drakengard has some pretty unusual stuff, but it really boiled down to being an unnerving clash of various instruments. Drakengard 2 trades off the clash for flow while remaining relatively unique for video game music. Breakthrough, for example-- we don't see enough super-fast tempo violin stuff in video games.

I also believe that the characters and plot have benefitted from the lack of morbidness. Characters are still very tragic (such as Urick or Caim), but it's not in an insane way where you feel bad for them yet still think "ooookay there, buddy". You genuinely feel bad and/or pity some of the characters for their struggles, and at least can comprehend their strife.

That didn't happen for me in the original. I could not, for example, feel bad for Leonard, a person who was extremely tragic, when he was blinded and pestered by a psychotic pixie. That just freaked me out.

Anyway, I'm definitely a big fan of Urick after playing through this. They did a fair amount with his character in the few chapters he was in.

Do the other playable character's in the game have dragons?

No, and that's actually one of my gripes with the game.

If you're fighting as someone else and you want to hop on the dragon, you have to switch back to Nowe to do so. It's a minor inconvenience, but still an inconvenience.

Well it makes sense, as Legna made it very clear that Nowe is the only human he cares to be around.

I don't think you were ever supposed to symphasize with Drakengard 1's cast (Caim may have had a traumatic childhood, but he was still an unlikable asshole. Which, consequently, is why I liked him), but rather understand the circumstances of their torment. It's a terrible period to live in, so guys like Caim are actually the norm.

On that note, I was always confused by this one cutscene in the first game where Arioch is doing "something" to the corpse of a dead child, but you never see what it is, and the shocked reactions of the other characters don't help confirm things. So I read that the japanese version spelled it out clearer; she was eating the corpse. :eek:

I also heard that Leonard is actually a pedophile, which is why he secluded himself in the woods, but that sounds a bit far-fetched. He showed feelings for Seere, but that was most likely because he reminded him of his dead brother.

Wait a minute...I've been kinda been in a cave when it comes to Drakengard 2, and I've played Drakengard 1, so I have to ask...is Manah in this??!!!

Yes she is.

I thought that was pretty clear in the US version. Didn't she constantly talk about her "hunger" or whatever?

I'm assuming her obsession was heightened due to her giving up her womb as a pact sacrifice. It's probably symbolic that she wanted a child in her, one way or another.

Plus, it's especially relevant/ironic in one of the extra endings:


Drakengard brought an awesome philosophical scenario to the table in the idea of pact-sacrifices. In Drakengard 2, I was always on the look-out to find out who gave up what and how it related to their personality. Unfortunately, the pact-partnerships in D2 aren't as cool as in D1.

Yeah she did, but it was still hard to tell what she was exactly doing in that scene (she could've killed a surviving child, or among other things). A fetus devouring cutscene like in Silent Hill 3 would've been a freakishly welcome addition.


I thought the sacrifices that the lieutenants gave up were pretty cool. The only one whose sacrifice wasn't revealed was

I like how only Verdelet got the easy end in the pact; he sacrificed his hair. ><

Wow, other Drakengard fans.

I love both games, but I do have to agree that the first was better. If only because it was so much darker. Sure Babygeddon was really creepy, and odd but the other endings were excellent. It's refreshing to play a game that doesn't turn out perfect in the end. Life usually doesn't work like that.

Can't say I'm a fan of Nowe either. He whined a bit too much for me, and he was far too quick to just betray the knights. Seemed strange for someone who had trained all that time and been raised by the former leader of the knights to so quickly turn on them.

Anyway, have a couple questions here. I'll put them in spoilers.


That's all for now^^'

Really? That's news to me. You have that image anywhere? It would make sense if those two were his parents, except that

Here ya go.

The image is called "Birth and Awakening."
IMAGE LINK, SPOILERS

Very interesting. Maybe this will be revealed in the other two endings.

This only raises further questions though, what happened to them after the first game? I would've thought they implemented the scene from ending 3.

Awesome Drakengard 1 artwork here -> http://www.oritsuru.com/games/DoD/artwork.php

and here (you have to register for this one, though)
http://www.kawaiidream.net/categorie...8ad0&l=english

I know it follows ending A, I was just saying that they could've taken that one scene from ending C and add it to normal continuity.

Also,

And I appreciate the D1 artwork, but I'm dying to find some scans from the D2artbook.

But the thing is,

I guess it's all just speculation. Unless they make a Drakengard 3 anyway. :)

In my opinion, Drakengard 2 is a heavily underrated game. Sure, the graphics are not that great and one could say that Drakengard 2 is more like a Drakengard 1.5, but overall, there's a lot of action, a nice story and a great soundtrack. I had the possibility to play it at a friend of mine and was quite pleased, until I got home just to see that almost all videogame review sites gave it quite weak scores =/

I wanted to add one more thing about the dragon-pact debate that I just recalled.

I've beat Drakengard and I soon hope to get Drakengard 2.

Drakengard 2
 

Pardon my attempt to dig up any interest on the DoD line around here, as I seem to be the only vocal supporter at GFF. I'm currently working on my third time through the game in it's hardest difficulty setting, have logged in nearly 90 hours, and I'm still loving most everything about this game. After going back and comparing this title with the first one, the fluidity of battle along with most other gameplay aspects are clearly improved upon to a degree that almost makes DoD1 unbearable to play again.

How the story would turn out left me a bit nervous in the first few hours. In DoD1, much like a game in the same ilk as Xenogears, the story and it's world was the reason to put up with the gameplay itself. But my fears were alleviated more and more as I progressed. There is a wonderful blending with the old and the new, and while I wouldn't go as far to say that there's complexity behind many events and motivations, there is some rich subtext sprinkled about.

The plot and character development is helped along by the very solid voice acting. Any cringeworthy lines or deliveries are few and far between. It's not exactly a masterpiece of translation, nor does it have the unique distorted sanity of the first title, but it never gets in the way (as long as you don't mind everyone being British).

Overshadowing the capable voice acting in the sound department, though, is one of my personal favorite game OSTs of all time. The first installment featured it's own brand of originality, sacrificing the traditional pleasure of standard melody for a sound that infused the game with madness. It fit the game perfectly and I was a fan of it, but was certainly an acquired taste. Gone is the short looping bursts of powerful orchestration replaced by a more traditional sound, but the quality here is top notch, the work is just sublime. And again, it suits the game and even serves as a compliment to the previous title, turning darker as plot elements that tie into Caim's story are introduced later in the game.

Not everything comes off as an improvement, though. The auto save feature is gone, as is the ability to play any previously completed story mission at any time. There are no more branching paths. There are multiple endings, but to few them the game forces you to play through from the beginning to the end in a new game+ with increased difficulty. It hardly seems worth at as the endings are short and there are minimal changes otherwise. But if you like the series like I do, you'll probably invest the time.

I wholeheartedly recommend this game to any sort of gamer who loves a strong story, lots and lotsa hack and slash action, and who can forgive a certain amount of flaws. Anyone else have any opinions on the game?

To avoid confusion, this above comment was merged into this thread.

Whoops, sorry about that. Didn't think to look in the rpg forum seeing how the game's a Sony exclusive and hardly an action rpg. Anyways,

If you enter one of the towns shortly after Manah joins you, you get the explanation for it.

I think he was asking if there was anything more to it than just an odd coincidence. Usually, things like that happen for a reason in video games.

Might be the same reason as in the Kenshin OAVs. Where they say a cut gotten from someone who really hates you never truly heals. Might be showing how much Nowe was disliked due to the being called a savior and all. A long shot I know, but thought I'd take a stab at it.

Yes, they went out of the way to bring attention to it as an oddity.

ROFL. Yeah, those things creeped my shit right out.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...k/P1010384.jpg

WHAT THE FUCK. You know, I actually had a real nightmare with those babies in it. Damn, that sucked.

I'm a huge fan of the original DoD, especially the incredible soundtrack (one of my favorites), and I seriously considered buying DoD2 when I saw it at circuit city, but I decided to buy a pair of headphones instead. Oh well, I'll just have to get it next time I'm up there. I know the soundtrack is great, and I had no problems with the original's gameplay (leveling up the weapons made it much more fun, especially nice ones like Hymir's Finger or Kingsblood), so I should be fine with the second game's as well. There's nothing quite as fun as dropping 40 or 50 enemies all at once with an large area of effect attack such as the spells for Fheng's Glaive or Reaper's Scythe.

Personally, while playing the first game, I always felt very sorry for Manah. Knowing her past, how could you really be angry with her?

Anyway, I really just can't wait to get this game. I just have to wait for my new check card to arrive in the mail.

Hated those babies. What freaked me out the most was that they had full sets of teeth. Those things were hard to kill too. Though it was worth it just to see Arioch's reaction.

Well if you liked the weapon leveling up system from part 1, then you're gonna LOVE it here. I recently got a weapon for Nowe called the Nobayashi(SP?), at level 1 it had 80 attack power which was very high at the time. It was leveling up VERY fast too. Needed about 200 exp for second level then 300 for third. Once it hit the third level though, it needed about 20k exp, and the attack power dropped to 5. I knew something was up so I stuck with it, and now it's my godliest weapon. At level 4 the attack gets INSANELY high. It was IMO the best magic ability in the game too. (Sonic Burst) Also as you level up weapons, you get new combos to use, and it takes exp instead of number of kills to level them up now. Defenitly a step up from part 1 in many ways!

Since the thread is bumped, I'd like to mention that I was wrong before when I said the game was rated T. Turns out it has an M rating, which isn't too surprising. It's not as graphic as the first game, but there is a fair amount of blood whenever you hack up the hundreds of enemies.

Well I just beat it my first time. Got the credits rolling now actually. Very interesting last fight. Just one small thing to nitpick at:

Yes? It was rated T in the official trailer. Oh well, it's still a bit brutal with all the blood and such

Well, the ad in my EGM has it listed as M (some great artwork is featured as well), so I dunno.

Umm yeah okay my bad the official trailer shows an M, too. M is 17+, right? Well I think I mixed it up then...

Just beat the game for the third and final time today, clocking in at I don't know how many hours, the clock stops counting at 99:59:59.

hi guys

im currently up to chapter 7 in drakengard 2 but it dont seem like im gonne get to finish it...abit busy with work etc. Now i havent played the 1st one and i know that the 2nd one is closely connected with it.

Can anyone please summarise what happened in drakengard 1 and 2? Im really drawn in by the story and would love to know what happened to caim,nowe etc.

thanks

The story is quite complicated, so the summary is kind of long. (Or maybe its just because I'm bad at summarizing things.) The summary does not include too many details or the story parts detailing the allies. This summary is only of the events leading up to ending one, which is the official ending from which Drakengard 2 is spawned.









This is a really boiled down version of the story, and doesn't really reflect the complex tragedy. If you have time, read the script that I put on GameFAQs for the full story. http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/f...d_script_a.txt

I know I'm a little late on this whole discussion, but I want to say something.

*Drakengard 2 spoilers*

I picked this up a week ago, so far i'm up to chapter 6 and I have to say the game is pretty kickass. I've played the first and find it neat as to how they tie the two games together. Urick is also the greatest character imo so far in the game as well as a major badass when fighting.

That.....is a pretty good question, actually. I really don't know how to answer it. About the only thing I can think of is...

Yeah, I must say that the game is extremely easy if you play as him. I didn't even use the other two characters, he could even deal well with those stupid witches.

Has anyone of you ever managed to get 1,000 hits in a row? Will you automatically win the game then?

I got over a 2,000 combo at the level outside of a tower where there's just group upon group of soldiers. The key is using a weapon that does barely any damage (such as the Nobuyoshi on level 3), and to use your magic attack (it counts as a combo point even if you don't hit anything) if you're not going to make it in time to the next group.

At each 1,000 points, a bunch of money splashes out.

It's easy to get in the thousand's with Urick. I'm on my second playthrough and the enemies do seem to get a little bit harder. I've gotten a 4000 combo with Urick, but a 5000 combo with Nowe, attempting to level up the Silver Butterfly, Nobuyoshi, and SealKnife. Of course it does get a good bit repetitive, but yeah, the additions to the story on the second playthrough enforce the will to keep on playing, especially for the additional ending. I remember when playing the first game, I got all the endings except for the last one, which required me to get about 97% of all the weapons. Of course, I didn't want to waste my life getting all those weapons and leveling them up to 4, just to fulfill the completion, but yeah, it got overly monotonous in the first game. The second game is a great paint job over the scratches of the first, and calls for much more than the first game. Of course, the first game had OODLES of soldiers to kill compared to the second game, but hey, it's in the challenge no?

Anyone know who did voices for all the characters? A few (Legna, mostly) sound familiar, but I've googled it and I can't find anything.

I checked the manual and the end game credits, but it didn't say.
It only says the name of the voice casting company, Side UK.
I found their website, http://www.sideuk.com/games
But even that has no mention of Drakengard 2...
Sorry, I was not much help.

No problem, Zuare. Thanks anyway. I wish they'd credit their damn VO guys, though. Kinda fun to keep track of who voices whom.

Legna sounded a lot like Vincent Price to me. Except he died 13 years ago. Still, listening to Theatre of Tragedy's "And When He Falleth" and playing Drakengard 2 immediately thereafter is fun.

I kinda wish they'd kept Caim or a character like him as the main character. It was nice NOT having a nervous-hero character like Nowe as the lead for once. Don't know if I like where they're going with his "discovery" and outrage about the Keys. More fun to play as a bloodthirsty bastard.

Legna's cool, though.

ok So I just got to the last boss on the 3rd playthrough and am getting my ass whooped...how the hell do you beat him? Am I too low a level? I am at 76 I think and getting owned. I almost beat him 3 times but got nailed by fire at the last second. Please help and save a disc from being thrown out the window.

I have my own theory about this.

This is my first Drakengard and as i see it, it is my last. I didn't leave this game like i did to many bad games, because playing it, even if it was repeatitive, was better then a lot of games. But regarding the storyline, i found it very slow and repeatitive and i got to the point where [spolier] they go after the red dragon into this castle[/spoiler] and i just stopped playing it because i had exams at the time and now i don't feel like continuing it. This game is decent, not bad, not great, just decent.