Drag-On Dragoon（ドラッグオンドラグーン）

I remember first trying Drag-On Dragoon (what non-Jhipsters call Drakengard) many years ago. Alas, I must have been too immature as a gamer because I thought it sucked hard donkey balls and promptly turned it off, back to collecting dust on my gaming shelf. That is, if I was allowed to have a gaming shelf instead of putting all my "unsightly" shit in my closet, safe from the eyes of would-be disgusted visitors by all the anime "porn". (Cero D, I assure you, but try telling that to the house guests!)

My game "room" except I'm not a cute imouto, just a regular ugly nerd with beard and fedora.

Ahem, anyways, as I was saying, I was one of those typical young gamers who cared about stupid shit like graphics, responsive controls, and a camera you could control to see what the hell you were doing. Obviously, today as a distinguished gamer connoisseur, with experience going back all the way to PC88, I have a much bigger tolerance for such trivial things. After all, such annoyances are nothing compared to playing an adventure game ALL IN KATAKANA.

So when I booted up Drag-On Dragoon again, the shitty graphics, a useless camera that snaps back, and repetitive gameplay did not bother me one bit. In fact, the repetition was almost kind of therapeutic in a way. Just press square until you see the yellow flash then press triangle. Repeat this exactly 56,195 times and you're good to go! If you're wondering where I came up with that number, the game helpfully tracks the number of times you attack just so you can see exactly how many times you've repeated this action like the brain-dead, zombie gamer that you are. Thanks for making me reflect on my useless life and destroying what little self-esteem I had, game!

Bad guys have the courtesy to stand around and wait just like your favorite kungfu movie

The game also felt extra tedious in the beginning because you're so weak. It takes forever to kill anything. But if you know to ignore the random people when you first start, you'll find it much easier to get started. Your weapons level up by the number of people you kill so you can replay the earlier missions and wipe up much faster when you're stronger later on.

And speaking of the weapons, I can kinda start to understand why people like pokemon so much because even though the gameplay is SUPER repetitive, I just HAD to collect all dem damn weapons. Of course, once you collect a weapon, then you have to kill several hundred people with it to level it up. You also unlock the weapon's story in pieces as you level it up to level 4. So yeah, it's like dynasty warrior pokemon except for the part where you're basically massacring thousands of people. Otherwise, it's totally the same.

The flying missions are a nice break, because they are pretty simple except for a few damn tough bosses. You can hold square to auto-target and the rest is just moving around and using L1/R1 to dodge projectiles. As for those boss fights, yeah, you need to learn their patterns and get good. There's nothing like that feeling of beating a tough boss with barely any health left after about 6 or 9 tries.

It's like Lair (PS3) except Lair has fucking amazing graphics compared to this and is also $2 at Gamestop.

Honestly, the two screenshots above cover pretty much everything you'll see in the game but in different environments. The story is pretty short, told in a mixture of short dialogues and even shorter movies. It's definitely not a long-winded visual novel style affair. The mature themes are very subtle so you won't be seeing anything too explicit but you will definitely see some umm... interesting ideas to say the least. It won't rub anything in your face though so you'll have to pay attention, especially no pafu-pafu that's for sure.

You won't be seeing any panchira or oppai in this one... well... at least not the kind you would want

As for the music, well you know how there was supposedly a riot at the performance of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in Paris? Ok gamers, you know umm... music and culture and stuff? Yeaaaaah, anyway google it if you're a philistine. But basically, the entire soundtrack is pretty much Rite of Spring, a constant assault on your ears. Not bad by any means but definitely veeeery uncomfortable.

There's more than 30 tracks to torture yourself for your inner masochist!
As a Jhipster, I'm not too familiar with whatever censorship that may have been put on this game for the English version since I always play the OG dope shit. Googling around, I was confused about the whole "Watchers" thing until I realized that was something they made up to remove any references to God. Oh you silly American Christians, lighten up will ya??

You may want to skip to the end if you want to avoid even the slightest hint of spoilers, but this is the first game I've played where every ending gets worse than the previous one. To give you an idea of how fucked things get, I was pulling my hair out because I could not for the life of me find a spear, even though the game said the chest containing said spear appeared. Turns out the game was lying to me and I had to kill ALL the giant babies to the north to make it appear. However, I had to go to work before I could try that so basically, I spent all day thinking about killing babies. Does that kind of give you an idea of the fuckedupedness? By the way, the English version calls them something else and not babies even though that's plainly what they are.

33,100 people killed, totally like Pokemon

Score: 3 still have no clue how this relates to Nier but don't fucking tell me goddamn internet spoiler nation out of 5 (34 hours to beat)

Overall, despite the crappy gameplay, or maybe even because of it, I really enjoyed my time with Drag-On Dragoon. The story, while not too detailed, was interesting and I couldn't wait to unlock the next ending. However, collecting all the weapons is pretty much impossible without a guide and the last stage was an absolute pain in the ass to beat (don't be ashamed of the pause button).

A very unique and interesting title but one I would still give an average score of 3. Definitely worth checking out but not what I would call a great game. I have NO IDEA why they would decide to change the name to Drakengard outside Japan. Drag-on is such a fucking accurate description AND when put together, it spells "Dragon". GENIUS!

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

bitter smile.

OH MY GOD

Doth my eyes deceive me? Is bitter smile. a japanese game title that's not only NOT all in caps but actually foregoes upper case entirely??? Ok, there's a weird and pointless period in the title but still, bravo Giga for bucking the trend with an almost regular English title.

I cannot be obedient for the palpitation... ok, well, it was a good try at least

This is the 2nd Giga title I've finished albeit in all its TGL consumer port censored glory and my 4th galge overall so I guess I'm on a roll. It's not like I'm even really that much into the genre, it's just that these games are taking up space on my Vita memory card and as we all know, Vita memory is FUCKING ridiculously expensive.

The Cero C censored (non) sex has nothing to do with my play preference

This game doesn't have a platinum trophy so it's not a good game for trophy whores. Who am I kidding? Dumb trophy whores don't care that! Out of the 583 owners who use psnprofiles, almost half "completed" the game in under 3 hours which is total bullshit. Incidentally, it took me a little over one month, which currently puts me at around #508, which is like the last page of the fastest (aka slowest) achievers. Doya!

Trophy whores everywhere I go

Putting aside my usual griping of trophy whores (where the fuck do they come up with the money to waste just for fucking trophies???) ahem, the game itself was so-so. My main crush was your kouhai Arikawa Chiseka but unfortunately, she's just a side character with no route. BOOO!

My kouhai... not sure what's going on here cause Cero C censorship

All the routes were pretty uneventful except for one, and even that was just kinda meh. There's not much to see here except for a very standard love story. However, one thing to note is that the Vita port was absolute shit. This must be one of TGL's earlier ports because the control scheme is jacked and worse, NO VOLUME CONTROLS!!!

L+X to save?? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK??

The backlog was shit cause you can only see ONE LINE at a time and weirdly enough you can stop the music so you can actually hear what they're saying but only in the backlog after you already couldn't hear it in the game itself. Anyway, long story short, if it wasn't for the sex which my delicate enlightened mind cannot handle, I would say the PC version is far superior. Except you know, don't be a filthy pirate and buy your game, etc. etc.

Reader XXXonepieceinyofairytaleXXX sent in this screenshot of the PC version (god damn filthy pirate)

Score: 2 ok ok, I swear my next blog post will be for a real game out of 5

Given the pretty vanilla, standard story and the awful piss poor job done of the Vita port, I'm gonna have to give this one a solid MEH score of 2... barely. If only the consumer port added some extra scenarios namely censored (non)sex with ultimate tsundere Chiseka, it might have gotten a bit higher score but alas, she will be forever unattainable (fingers crossed for expanded nintendo switch port??).

Bonus screenshots for the future galge museum

How the fuck developers make this and not make her a route? Goddamn tease.

Chiseka school of tsundere 101 (sorry non-jhipsters)

Hot damn! Is it ok to have this kind of language in Cero C?? (sorry non-jhipsters)

Seriously, the story is not as moving as the broken English tries to say it is

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely