Drakengard 2

Andrew plays with fire (and dragons)

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On paper Drakengard 2 is a delicious prospect - a lengthy single player adventure game with multiple characters and endings, big boss battles, engaging combat set on foot as well as from the air - all this and more wrapped up in the endearing story of a rookie knight out to ensure that his father did not die in vane. However, as is often the case with getting a bit excited with the theory, playing Drakengard 2 isn't such a miraculous experience in practice.

The numeral placed after its title unsurprisingly suggests that Drakengard 2 is a sequel, one which was never going to blow the competition out of the water, but delivered nevertheless a solid chunk of gaming action. Its sequel is set 18 years after the original where our man of the moment, Nowe (pronounced a bit like No-Way), sets out to protect the seal of five magic portals that protect the world from an evil Red dragon. Nowe is called upon by the general of the Knights of the Seal who bestow this task upon him. However, it soon becomes apparent that the Knights of the Seal aren't the noble men they once proclaimed to be and are in fact oppressors of the land. Understandably Nowe isn't pleased with this discovery, so he rather bravely takes it upon himself (with the help of three of his pals) to not only protect the world's seals, but also take down the army of men who have betrayed him. It's all pretty fantastical stuff and fits neatly within the game's medieval setting.

The game takes place over 12 chapters split up into verses, each of which take the form of missions that you must complete before you can progress. Each mission is introduced within the confines of the story and involves a little puzzle solving, but mostly (as you will very soon discover), much more hacking, slashing, slashing, hacking, help me I've been hacking and slashing for the past twenty minutes and the number of enemies seems not to be depleting. Each character has a weapon specific to them, which, when selected, will automatically switch over control to them. This is a nifty little inclusion, but disappointingly it is more often a case of sticking with the character that has the most agile, destructive and leveled-up weapon instead of utilising everybody equally... which leads neatly onto the very uninteresting leveling up system. Each character and all of the 50 or so weapons available to you can be leveled up. However, the high number and density of enemies per stage means that when each weapon can only be upgraded three times, it isn't going to take you very long to do so. This is a shame as there is obviously great potential with such a wealth of weaponry and perhaps the ability for experimentation and combinations with it. Each character can also summon magic spells to destroy a wave of enemies if things get a bit hectic and you need a bit of breathing space.

In the first game Nowe was raised by a talking dragon named Legna. He returns for this second outing, providing the necessary transport for all of your aerial attacks. Aerial combat is a little more rewarding as Legna is able to lock on and destroy multiple enemies at a time, but his unresponsive controls and generally cumbersome nature means that what should be a refreshing and enjoyable turn on combat within the game just gets frustrating and tedious very quickly. Legna also earns experience points which enable him to lock onto greater numbers of foes, but it won't count for much when the numbers of enemies increase later on in the game, anyway.

The most disappointing element of Drakengard 2 has to be its overall graphical appearance. For a game created late on in the PS2's life (and by Square let's not forget), its landscapes and characters are unimpressively bland and lacking in detail. The main characters' movements aren't actually that bad and there's definitely a sense of weight behind your various executable attacks. However, the prospect of magnificent and bloody encounters with dozens of packs of ground-based enemies is spoilt by the fact that nearly all of them look identical in appearance, apathetic to the cause and about as animated as a child's stop-frame movie. The final nail in the coffin is a terribly poor draw distance which makes the openness of the landscapes look bare until you're able to navigate yourself towards a crowd of hapless enemies thanks to the game's onscreen radar. In the scheme of things, though, the graphics may be able to be forgiven in the light of one of the worst in-game cameras around. When battling like a crazy man, running here and running there, the last thing you want to be doing is constantly re-positioning a camera which seems to believe that the optimum viewpoint in a vast expanse of ground is directly behind your character or looking upwards from the ground behind them. Deary, deary me...

If there's one thing that Drakengard 2 does get right, it's the musical arrangements that accompany the game. They consist of dramatic and exciting orchestral arrangements that serve well in underpinning the game's setting as well as the intensity of the in-game war. There's also a lot of voice acting which isn't bad compared to the below-par examples of many games, though certainly wouldn't earn any of the actor's an Oscar or a voice in the next big Disney animation.

For all the work that's gone into Drakengard 2, it really isn't a great leap over its predecessor which is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the game. Disregarding that, while it encompasses everything that is distinctively average about a videogaming experience, there is a great deal of it - 30 hours or so in fact, which is enough to push up its final score a little. If you like your mysticism, your monsters, a well thought storyline and most importantly a lot of button-bashing combat, then Drakengard 2 may just be worth your time. For everyone else though, this beast of a game is one with a few too many imperfections to seriously recommend.

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By Andrew Macarthy