Negatives first

Ground mission gameplay was insanely boring and repetitive, majority of the cast is eh, and most of the music is pretty fuckin bad

However the narrative and stylistic strengths of Drakengard still push it above most of these criticisms. The story is fucking nuts, the cutscenes are fuckin nuts, caim and angelus are great, and the dark fantasy atmosphere is conveyed really well. Genuinely just really well done nightmare world.

The gameplay may be subpar (aside from a few really enjoyable dragon sections), but i will never forget moments like ending B or D, shit just goes absolutely bananas

Drakengard es un juego pobre. No todo será su culpa ni todo se lo puede perdonar por los problemas presupuestales o directivos. Hay varias decisiones cuestionables mas enfocadas en la planificación de misiones (como tambien los bloques entre cada una de ellas, para conversar o conectar con una cinemática), escenarios y combates que son sumamente erróneas y agobiantes (depende de cada uno verlo proyectado por los desarrolladores para contribuir al "high concept" del juego, que es lo que hizo, para la mayoría seguramente, seguir hasta completarlo) personalmente no puedo concebirlo como un juego recomendado o bueno. Aun así quiero decir que Drakengard es único y que muy pocos en su momento habrán jugado algo como esto antes. Posiblemente sea el mejor juego de Yoko Taro, no estoy seguro. Por eso mismo me encantaría verlo en un remake gracias a lo famoso que ha vuelto el director en el ultimo tiempo, de verdad seria, sin dudas, uno de los juegos mas grandes de la historia. O capaz me equivoque, y eso le quite toda la magia al juego con la idea de" Que hubiera pasado si...". Quizá Drakengard tuvo que salir así y no necesite ser reedificado, al fin y al cabo se gano todos sus méritos tal y como es.

Having heard a lot of hype for Nier: Automata, I decided to check out it's origins with it's rooted series, Drakengard. Drakengard is kinda regarded as a hot mess due to graphics, controls, and otherwise mechanics being awful for what the story actually tries to do, and well, yeah...exactly.
While I don't remember too much about the game, the fact that it ended facing a giant child with immense powers was certainly a twist that feels very on par with the writer of this game, Yoko Taro. Most of the game though takes place in rather generic settings that just leave little to the imagination, and make me tired just thinking about it. Rest assured that there is still charm in the original Drakengard, but it's just not shown as much compared to the rest of the series. A lot of the game is played completely straight, and while that is usually fine for series that do a lot of twist and turn stuff, the first playthrough just feels like a generic adventure till near the end.
I'd like to say the gameplay is better, but it's really not. Not till Nier did this series get any considerable recognition, and for good reason. A lot of the game focuses on hack and slashing enemies with like 1 combo, and the game can't render a lot of enemies at once which means you have to do more of that hack and slash combo over and over again. To say this game is repetitive is giving the game too much credit. It's honestly a bland-less mess of combat that really should have been worked better to provide anything interesting. It's cool that we get to ride a dragon, but it's novelty wears out immediately as the Dragon combat doesn't add anything more than just a different kinda of repetition. Playing through this game feels awful, it plays awful, and honestly you just feel like you want everything to be over soon.
While I can give credit to the Drakengard starting a lot of what made Yoko Taro a more household name today, the fact is that this game rarely dives into anything interesting both story and gameplay wise. It's not completely devoid of interesting ideas or twisted mishaps, but it's largely just not worth your time to see how twisted this game can be.

This game is an erratic fever-dream, a bizarre nightmare - or in plain language: just hella weird.

Nowadays I prefer my "deconstructions of tropes" to be a little more nuanced and less edgy, but back when I was 14/15 and bought this on a school trip in England, this was wild and I liked it even more a couple of years later, when I was in a - just as edgy - misanthropic phase.
I still like it's dark atmosphere, even though it can get really overly gloomy and self-important at times and the combat is... Not the best, to say the least. Aerial stuff with the dragon actually holds up rather well.
In a lot of regards it's kinda "avantgarde": Multiple endings with diverging timelines/ chapter select for getting these endings/ kinda non-linear story telling/ plot-relevant dialog during gameplay; all pretty interesting to see still today. Yoko Taro's stuff
would get more refined over the years, but it's neat to experience where he started as a director and story teller.

(One a side note, why are we calling him Yoko Taro in English, when Yoko is his last name? We don't do that we other Japanese directors. Kojima Hideo? Nomura Tetsuya? Did someone get his name mixed up, cuz Yoko is also a (female) first name?)