Welcome to World Zero - Reviews for the hardcore gamer

The defensive game is made even more important not simply because it’s essential for survival, but because parrying and strafing are such effective maneuvers. With a tap of the R1 or L1 buttons, your character will quickly dart around the side of an attacking foe, as mentioned above. Ideally, you’ll be facing his back before he has finished extending the first swing of his weapon. Now, your previously impervious foe is completely vulnerable and you’re presented with a brief window of opportunity to unleash one of the numerous combos at your disposal. Staying on the defensive and looking for an opening is crucial, but knowing when to parry can grant you that opening just as easily. This is extremely significant because parrying is traditionally set up in most games as a gamble, and a poorly-timed parry during a massive, hectic battle is unquestionably inevitable. Here, there is no penalty for a missed parry. If your timing is off, it simply counts as a block. Remember, all this is going on with a swarm of enemies encircling you, hence the intelligent decision on Cavia’s part to avoid creating a potentially useless tool in your arsenal by simply granting you room for error, and once again, accounting for the game engine being in the confines of a massive battle.

Yet another advancement to the massive-combat concept is that both you and your enemies have the opportunity to launch your foes into the air, Devil May Cry style. The catch is it’s not setting the aggressor up for an air-combo string. Instead, being sent flying into the air means the inevitable; crashing down towards the earth. This results in some pretty hefty damage which, in turn, results in a frantic battle of righting yourself (via the block button) before you collide with the ground. Clearly less dramatic in description than in execution, so here’s an example; A mage, probably a hundred or so in-game feet away, launches a fireball towards me, interrupting my already lop-sided skirmish against five soldiers. The explosion from the magic launched both me and my five foes soaring high into the air. I was able to quickly right myself to instinctively avoid the brutal falling damage. I quickly turned this situation to my advantage by attacking my surrounding air-born foes mid-air and sent them crashing back towards the ground before they had a chance to right themselves while I landed safely on my feet. In turn, those five enemies took the mage’s fireball damage, my mid-air attack damage, and the high-fall damage all within the span of two seconds, resulting in five dead soldiers that perhaps would have necessitated a defensive and offensive tug-of-war to bring down individually. It’s all about reaction.

Drakengard 2 also implements an impressive chain-combo system that not only keeps track of your combo strings in the bottom right of the screen, but actually adds an experience multiplier to your kills based on how high your chain-combo counter gets. As your combo counter increases, the speed at which you swing your weapon also increases, allowing the combat system to take on an ever changing, dynamic nature that not only feels innovative, but rewards you in the heat of battle. Since the combo counter only drops if you fail to make contact with an enemy after a second or so, it provides you with both the opportunity and the motivation to get your combos into the hundreds. Because there’s tangible reason to do so, it is far more rewarding than simple bragging rights. Combos also serve as the means to fill your magic meter, which is Drakengard’s take on the “overdrive” meter; fill up one bar of the magic meter and you can unleash a powerful magic attach unique to each weapon. The number of bars your magic meter contains parallels to your equipped weapon’s level. Pressing circle uses a single bar, while holding circle causes you to use up multiple bars based on how long you hold down the button (provided your weapon level is high enough). Your magic meter maxes out at four bars, but unleashing a magic attack of this caliber usually results in some visually impressive, massive on-screen destruction with your victims’ bodies flying absolutely everywhere.

In addition, each of the game’s approximately 70 equipable weapons (which can be either acquired on the battlefield or bought in one of the game’s shops) gain experience and levels up independently of their respective characters, granting you new combos and higher stats with each successive level increase. Eight different weapons may be brought along on a single mission, and each weapon type results in a different playable character making use of it. Both one-handed and two-handed swords are utilized by the main protagonist Nowe, the regrettably cliché young fantasy hero archetype. Pole arms and lances are wielded by Eris, an armor-clad valkyrie. Magic staffs are used by the mage Manah, whose magic attacks are her true weapon. And finally, two-handed axes and the occasional scythe are wielded by the game’s most interesting character, Urick, who is, in my opinion, the true star of the show here. Urick is a former Knight of the Seal (the same group of Knights in which Nowe is currently a part of), whose mysterious exodus resulted in him making a pact with The Reaper. When Urick finally joins your party, you are introduced to not only the ghastly, demonic helmet he wears to conceal his identity, but also to an ominous cut scene involving him undoing his shirt, displaying something unknown to the audience but quite apparent to an advancing group of blood-thirsty bandits who, in turn, run away in sheer terror at what they have just seen. Now this is a character introduction. Developers take note.

Making up for Nowe’s disappointing, stereotypical personality and design is his dragon, Legna. In any outdoor environment, pressing select while controlling Nowe calls out for the winged beast. In a dramatic yet brief moment, Legna comes swooping down from the heavens while Nowe leaps high into the air, landing on the dragon’s back, all in real time. Here, you’re now controlling the dragon directly, staring down a hundred feet at the previously overwhelming army you were formerly combating alone on the ground. While riding Legna, you’re free to decimate the crowd via fire, talons, or freaking eating them alive. Yes, you’re as overpowered as it sounds, with only archers and magicians even able to reach you. The catch is that you’re no longer gaining experience with your chosen character, or with said character’s equipped weapon. While Legna does in fact level up and gain some impressive skills of his own, the meat of the game is on foot, and overusing Legna eventually makes your ground troops significantly underdeveloped.

To break up the massive ground-based skirmishes are the occasional aforementioned “Panzer Dragoon-like” air battles. While not as deep or as visceral as the ground combat, these stages are effectively used to break up the already lengthy ground campaign. They actually come off as bonus missions rather than actual levels at times; some stages merely require you to fly to a specific location, but others demand you double-back and take down a pursuing armada, or chase after and bring down a massive aircraft. Regardless, these stages last a fraction of the time it takes to complete the lengthy ground scenarios and ultimately serve as a diversion as opposed to a fleshed out game mode. That’s not to say one should dismiss them outright, though. There’s a definite feeling of an old school shooter present in these stages that’s quite enjoyable due to its simplicity. As mundane as it seems, one of the most enjoyable aspects of these stages is its throwback to the classic shooters, in the form of enemy dropped power-up orbs. Each level up Legna achieves grants him a new special attack, and if an orb drops, it is randomly assigned to one of those attacks. The neat little throw back here is that the orb can be shot, changing it to a different special attack each time you blast it. When you’ve cycled the orb to your desired attack power-up, simply fly into it, and it’s yours.

Pressing square launches a single, but powerful fireball while holding square and hovering your sight over an enemy allows a lock-on missile barrage attack, not doubt where the Panzer Dragoon influence shows, but other than that (and the fact that a dragon is involved) that’s really as close as the two get. These dragon stages are not confined to an on-rails stage progression, you are instead let free to fly where ever you choose. Your dragon also sports some essential aerial maneuvers that mirror the nature of your ground units’ strafing; a tap of the R1 and L1 buttons makes you quickly dart to one side, providing you with the ability to duck and weave through virtually any onslaught the enemy throws at you. Pressing both shoulder buttons at once flips your Dragon around, providing you with a quick 180 turn, effective against the pesky mobs that try to sneak past you.

What ultimately holds Drakengard 2 back is that the game is merely very good and not outstanding; there’s just enough room for improvement that it’s noticeable. Drakengard 2 has admittedly pushed the envelope by adding fresh nuances to its genre, but the core fighting system simply does not feel as tight or streamlined as either Dynasty Warriors or Devil Kings. Your characters move a little too fast for their own good and they don’t seem to convey the sense of weight that they should, especially those wielding massive weapons, which ultimately results in them feeling a tad on the “floaty” side. In addition, the game just doesn’t deliver artistically. While the combat is flashy and visceral, the game is pretty unsightly from a technical standpoint. Moreover, Drakengard 2’s aesthetic style is nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times over; which wouldn’t be so bad if it was implemented well, but it isn’t. Urick is essentially the only character who isn’t either a walking RPG cliché or utterly boring. This unoriginality is unfortunately mirrored in the game’s environments as well.

In the end, Drakengard 2 is an excellent overall experience; what it does, it does significantly well. It’s not the next big blockbuster or even the next Panzer Dragoon or Dynasty Warriors. Perhaps the overall critical disappointment has stemmed from Drakengard, in fact, not being Dynasty Warriors with dragons. Who knows? As long as gamers go into this experience with no preconceived notions, I think they’ll find a surprisingly enjoyable sleeper hit on their hands, just like they did with its prequel.

Rating	The rating scale in detail
6.9	-- Sub-par visuals, even when taking into account the amount of characters on screen at once. + Most weapons are surprisingly detailed in-game. + While the environment is generally sparse and indistinct, it looks pretty impressive during the air-battles.
8.9	++ Fantastic, soaring orchestral soundtrack. + While there are a few exceptions, Drakengard 2 contains some impressive voice acting overall, even utilizing a few familiar actors from the flawlessly-voiced Fable.
8.5	++ Outstanding chain combo system that rewards you with more experience the higher your combos get. More importantly, it makes your attacks quicker as well, resulting in a dynamic race for more power on each successive battlefield. - Dragon stages are simply mediocre.
6.0	+ Terrific presentation told through some decent pre-rendered cut scenes and a great story. -- Overly generic game world and characters, lacks a cohesive sense of style.
9.0	++ 25 hour-long quest that almost demands to be played through three times.
8.3	+ Despite a few mediocre aspects, Drakengard 2 is an extremely enjoyable experience overall.