The day when Dynasty Warriors and magical flying dragons crossed paths, I swore to myself that I would eat my hat.  I believe that day has now arrived. Square Enix’s newest action game not only promises a Dynasty Warriors type style of play and the ability to ride dragons in mid battle, it also promises a storyline being worthy to the notorious developer’s name.  Drakengard itself, is indeed something, if not anything.  I mean if it’s made by Square Enix it’s good?  Right?  

You see, Drakengard places you in the shoes of a warrior for the Union named Caim.  His goals at first are to protect his sister, Furiae, who is a goddess that has sealed the planet from evil.  The opposing army, the Empire, is trying to break the seals for a reason not clear to you at first.  During the first mission, you see your sister’s entire castle being besieged by the Empire.  After the battle, you see that a dragon, the same species that has killed your parents, is tied down to the ground and near death.  Seeing that you are both in fatal conditions, you make a pact, combining both of your souls together in order to live.  The dragon is now your ally and you may use it for your goal to protect Furiae from the empire army and stop them from breaking the holy seals.  

First off, Drakengard has an extremely sweet concept.  It pits you against the usual thousands of enemies that the Dynasty Warriors series usually throws you up against.  In Dynasty Warriors, whether or not you kill the entire army is all up to you.  But it becomes boring after awhile, just hacking and slashing through meaningless souls, until you completed some unclear objective you had no idea you needed to complete.  But Drakengard changes all of this monotony.  It breaks up the nonstop combat by giving you the ability to call a red dragon to help you.  Now, this might sound cool but in fact, it is actually pretty tedious.  Sure, don’t get me wrong, it gets the job done and the mere fire breath attack can knock out a squad of enemies, but controlling the aerial titan is a little hard, and the camera can go wacky sometimes, leaving you temporarily disoriented.  

Another thing that keeps you hooked besides the constant killing for experience is the search for hidden weapons in the many levels.  In most missions, there is a certain group of enemies you need to defeat, an area to explore, or a time limit in which you must beat the mission in, in order to get a secret weapon.  The weapons themselves are upgradeable, and can also gain levels along with you and your dragon.  The weapons, all 65 of them, have a “unique” magic that can inflict more damage every time your magic bar fills up. Now I say “unique” because they are not really unique at all.  I have picked up maybe 5 different weapons already that do the same magic but just with a different color glow.  

But the game isn’t entirely focused on land combat.  You are also thrown into the fray of aerial battles that depict the Panzer Dragoon series.  It is basically the same thing.  You aim with the target, hold down circle, queue up enemies, and fire homing flames at each of the enemies.  Drakengard tries to diversify it by giving enemies shields, but it’s all the same really.  

The game definitely has breathtaking cinemas, which give the same old Final Fantasy touch.  And like I said before, the story is amazing.  The graphics, however, are sub-par, and during battle, you can hardly see what’s in front of you being the draw distance is so close.  Hitting enemies can look silly sometimes, because when you walk into your foes, you move them too.  When they are knocked to the ground, you can still walk into their fallen bodies and they move around as you move too.  It’s very odd, and can look quite strange on the battlefield.  The missions themselves sometimes seem pointless.  You are told countless times by the computer to stop the advance of the enemy forces into a castle on one level, but when you look at the enemies, all they do is stand there, doing nothing.  It sort of just kills the whole idea of giving you an objective, since the enemies just stay in one place, waiting for you to spill their blood and to reap there experience.  

Drakengard, albeit an incredible storytelling adventure, is nothing more than that. Only if you are a diehard Dynasty Warriors fan, or have a really strange fetish for action games, should you even consider this to be in your collection.  It is nothing more then a rental, maybe.  It’s lackluster graphics, little weapon diversity, and poor dragon controls just bring the game down into a hole, that only a few more months of development could have fixed.  Simply put, its innovative ideas just fall flat, cutting short of what they were probably expecting of a game of its caliber.  Now excuse me folks, I believe I have a hat to go eat.