Became one of my favourite games of all time about 5-6 hours in.
Beautifully written, filled to the brim with charm. Manages perfectly to be funny, unnerving, and emotionally charged all at the same time while elegantly avoiding tonal dissonance.
This is overall an incredible sequel to Anodyne 1 that improves in every single possible aspect and fixes all the small issues and nitpicks one could possibly find within the first game, letting the talent and passion of the developers shine through beautifully.
It's creative, it's genuine, it's funny, it's consistently amazing and it made me teary-eyed as I read the final blurbs of text in the ending.

Also it's subtly but unapologetically queer as fuck which nets it +.5 points in my book, so this is actually a 5.5/5.

the final few hours are really good, but the stuff leading up to it is Bad, the characters have layers of complexity that make them somewhat interesting if you decide to go beneath the surface, but the sturface is really obnoxious. That's for sure by design but I was groaning through most of the dialogue, I think it's a tad overdone. The constant sexualization of all the female characters is icky too (I'm sure it's there to deliver some sort of point, but it's not clear what that point is and it just ended up feeling uncomfortable.)

Calling games that try to push back against the standardization of the medium "pretentious" is lazy. (Although I actually quite enjoyed most of it) Drakengard is bad, tedious, unintuitive and not even internally coherent at times. Yet, its uniqueness and the fact that nothing like it has been made (or will be made anytime soon) makes it hold a very special place in my heart.
A lot of people seem to think this game is a great story with gameplay that makes it hard to enjoy, I believe that the janky gameplay goes hand in hand with the depressing themes and the subversion of gaming tropes that the game expresses.

That said, fuck whoever designed the ending E fight, I feel like I lost years of my life trying to complete it.

this shows a ton of potential. Sadly the sheer amount of characters and themes touched upon during the very short time you play it for makes the game feel vague, I think it might have benefitted from focusing on a smaller cast and maybe a more linear story.
Overall I didn't have a bad time with this game.
The soundtrack is good, the art is great and its gameplay (while not expanded upon in a significant way) is a neat concept.
That said, it still left me wanting for way more (and not in the good way).