Drakengard 2 by UBI Soft

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Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
Fun: I picked up Drakengard 2 for $20 since I was wanting something of a medieval vein and RPG-like without the classic RPG combat interface that is about as menu-heavy as doing your taxes. At first, Drakengard filled this niche. Most of the other reviews have covered the general pros and cons of the game. It has full voiceover, which is typically nicely done, though the British accents are a little hammy. For sword-swinging mindless fun, it's pretty good at first. It does get pretty repetitive, though. The real problem starts when you discover that there are 3 different endings. You must play the game through on Hard mode to get the second ending, and Extreme mode for the final and supposedly best ending. For the casual gamer, Normal mode will prove slightly challenging, but not really frustratingly so. Hard mode will step things up a bit, mostly in the form of enemies having more hit points and doing significantly more damage to your characters. In Extreme mode, the difficulty steps up exponentially. Bosses can kill you in 1 hit no matter how high your levelled up. Your strongest swords will do fair damage to enemies, but you'll still be bashing each one 3, 4, or 5 times to take them down. Throw a couple hundred enemies into the fray, and that's a LOT of button mashing. As a result, you have to go through the game 3 times with increasingly frustrating difficulty levels. If you're one of those folks that likes to get all characters maxed out, and see having "1337" gaming skills as a major life accomplishment, you'll have no problem. If you are just a casual gamer, however, you'll start to question if the repeated playthrough and aggravation are worth seeing a varied ending and slightly different end level. The real headache comes in the form of the final boss on Extreme mode. This boss is harder than anything else you will encounter in the game. I grappled with this same level for 3 hours straight for 3 days before deciding to invest the time in levelling up my character to max. At present, I can't tell you if that will have helped significantly. I still haven't beaten the game. If you're a casual gamer that likes to swing a sword for an hour or so in the evening and not worry about maxing out a character just to have a sporting chance, this game is probably not for you. If you're willing to have a go at Normal mode and not worry about the endings for Hard and Extreme modes, you'll probably be okay. But if you're the type (like me) that figures you paid for the game, you might as well see what there is to see, stay away. The drive to see the final ending versus the frustration of the final boss is about like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer for fun. Oh, I should mention there are NO CHEATS out there like health or god mode that can help you tackle the parts where you feel the difficulty factor outweighs the fun factor. I personally hate it when developers don't make such concessions to those of us that don't spend every waking moment playing video games. I gave the game 3 stars for fun, because it is a fairly decent game at first. But I gave it a 1 overall because the frustration factor far overshadows anything out there. I might also mention the music is pretty grating. I shut it off and used the soundtrack to "King Arthur" and the Lord of the Rings soundtracks to provide ambience. The problem is the cutscenes' volume is controlled by the music volume, so you have to make sure to leave it on at least 1 so you can turn the TV up to hear the cutscenes. Comment | Permalink | function showYesNoCommunityResponse(uId,result,value) { var msgLayer = getElement("thanks" + uId); if ( result == "SUCCESS" ) { msgLayer.innerHTML = "Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided to other Amazon.com readers and reviewers. Your vote will be counted and will appear on the product page within 24 hours."; } else { showVoteErrorResponse(msgLayer,result,value); } } (Report this)