Perhaps the most striking thing about the Drakengard JRPG series, and its spin-off game Nier, is just how strange the stories are. Drakengard 3 is no different in that respect. You play as Zero, a songstress god who is out to kill her five sisters for unknown reasons. Along for the ride is her dragon friend and, eventually, the disciples of her sisters that she'll pick up along the way. It's the combination of the interactions between these diverse characters and the ill-explained main plot-line that makes Drakengard 3 such an odd experience and, if nothing else, it was worth my time playing Drakengard 3 just to see a dragon interrupt a serious conversation by taking a piss.

Until you approach the end of the game, and the climax of the story, the only narrative elements that pull things forward are the interactions between the game's central characters, which mostly revolve around sex. Disciples are taken by intoners to help them in fights but even more so to help them in the bedroom. As Zero deals with her sisters she takes on these disciples for herself and each one has its own little quirks. Some may view it as unnecessarily filthy but I actually enjoyed the conversations between these characters where sexual matters were just as mundane and common a topic as the weather. The masochistic and old pervert characters are particularly amusing, and when all of this is played against the naivety of Zero's dragon it makes for some hilarious interactions. Crucially it also helps to keep the player motivated when the main story remains too confusing to be entertaining.

Other presentational aspects are fairly low quality, with obvious texture pop-in and some of the worst framerate dips I've ever seen in a console game, to the point where I'd call it momentary freezing. The voice acting is serviceable and the soundtrack is interesting, although I wouldn't go out of my way to buy the soundtrack separately; it works well with the game world but doesn't strike me as something worth listening to outside of that context.

A confusing plot is perfectly capable of being enjoyable if, at some point, it all gets explained and the pay-off is worth it, but I did not appreciate how Drakengard 3 locked the only ending with any real explanation behind one of the most arbitrary barriers I've ever seen in a game. In order to unlock the final chapter you have to obtain every single weapon possible. This added about two hours of straight grinding to a game that only took me 21 hours to complete in the first place, making it feel purely like an attempt to artificially increase the game's playtime. The main issue with this isn't the weapons you can buy - that's a goal you can easily work towards - but the weapons that come in treasure chests within a standard mission or rewards for completing side quests. I had no way of knowing which treasure chests or side quests I had missed before reaching this roadblock, so I was forced to slowly work my way through them all until I got lucky.

Drakengard 3 seems to actively work against explaining its own plot and the frustrating weapon roadblock is followed up by probably the most strange, unexpected, and difficult final boss ever created. After so many hours of playing an action RPG with fairly standard gameplay (which contains some nice touches, like different weapon models for upgraded weapons) the final boss fight has absolutely nothing to do with any of the skills or weapons you ultimately amass. I won't spoil it for those who are still getting to that point in the game, but it is the very definition of weird and infuriating game design. What is commendable, however, is the attempt to make some of the boss fights more unique. One in particular that includes an old fashioned “find the ball under the cup” game is commendable for how it folded this concept into an otherwise standard boss fight. Unfortunately most of the bosses don't follow this unique and innovative structure but are instead simplistic and sometimes even repetitive affairs.

Outside of bossfights you can think of Drakengard 3 as being a Dynasty Warriors-type action RPG. Waves upon waves of jobber enemies will either run at you to their deaths or stand between you and the end of the corridor level that you need to reach. Four different weapon types exist and you can have one of each type equipped at a time, but the chakram weapons are largely useless, so for all intents and purposes you can have three useful weapons equipped at once. Each weapon can be upgraded three times but since you'll need to save up your money in order to purchase all of the weapons later on in the game I'd suggest keeping that practice to a minimum. It takes quite a while for the challenge to ramp up to a point there you have to think about what actions you're taking instead of just spamming attacks, but once it does I found the fast-paced dodging and counter-attacking gameplay enjoyable.

Drakengard 3 isn't a great game, but if you find the concept itself intriguing then I would recommend a playthrough - just go into it with the knowledge and expectation that certain sections will be arbitrarily difficult and repetitive. On the other hand, if you aren't intending to play through Drakengard 3 simply for the novelty of the characters and the story then I would strongly urge caution.