Drakengard

The Good
Not being a huge fan of Squaresoft or nowadays Square-Enix, I've learned to trust them on occasion, if only for the high-budget games that at least capture you visually. Well, games such as Kingdom Hearts poured me a reason to try to trust this one out, and it's always great to see Square releasing a game that is not part of Final Fantasy saga. I don't have much sweet thoughts about this game as a whole, but gameplay and a bundle of cinematics is something I can appreciate. The main story progresses through a series of chapters and missions interconnected with ingame and pre-rendered cutscenes, which you can all watch at any time (that's probably one of the finest thing in the game, even though it lacks a good implementation), that is, to the point in the game story that you have reached. Flying missions are well done, and although much shorter from the ground missions, they seem to hold much better gameplay interface, whereas on the ground it may sometimes be confusing that camera doesn't always stick to your back so you have to use a radar in the long run (I mean it literally, not in the slang term).

The Bad
Yet another game spoiled by the rules of Squaresoft company. You get multiple endings, but in order to reach them you have to do silly things such as, for example, inflict 80% of damage to an enemy dragon in less than 4.5 minutes. Such things I'm familiar with from their Parasite Eve II, they always have to act smart for some weird reason, no wonder I prefer Capcom, Koei, or Konami, anytime of a day. I dunno about the music on this game's soundtrack, but I can't say I heard much of it, and what I did was quite annoying and could've been done better and less harming. But hey, I never got along with the classic, and that didn't prevent me from playing this game. Story, uh, that's a thing to discuss indeed. Can't say I liked it, nor quite understood its logical support nor how such idea can be amusing at any level of gameplay, so I think it harmed the game a great deal of pain, and many of those pre-rendered cinematics were then quite boring and depicting scenes that could've been done with ingame graphic to no loss. As for the voice-acting... hm, I hope Square will next time learn from LucasArts or their more renowned titles.

The Bottom Line
I made a pact with this game alright, and I would do it again. Inspite of all my nagging, it did capture my interest in one way or another, at least to finish it once. But the bottomline is, Square made better games for PS2, so unless you don't have them all, no reason to start with this one, 'cos you may get the wrong picture of those guys, Square did make some great games... and I can't believe I'm saying that.