#*now* you're ready to look at drakengard's maliciously jank gameplay and story that actively punishes you for digging and understand | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

jessielefey · 9 months ago

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One should play the Drakengard/nier games in reverse publishing order in order to get the most out of them. Like how Bloodborne can be said as to "teach you how to play Souls games", Automata followed by Drakengard 3 followed by Replicant teaches you how to read Drakengard as a metacommentary in a way that conceptually proves "just starting from the first game in the series" is doomed to leave you confused and angry and heartbroken; in this essay I will...

#but seriously: thing that seems to have been lost by new kids jumping on from automata... the meme used to be 'cavia hates you'#or to give it more context: cavia got sorta notorious as like evil!Kojima games; cavia *loves* games but *hates* players #yoko taro doesn't hate us anymore but he remembers when he did #and it's all over the newer games this... sorta step-by-step guide on how to read theme into game mechanics #if you just go from Automata -- a love letter -- to the first Drakengard -- an active sneering declaration of war...#it's not hard to see why people just bounce off like 'wow this game is shit'; bad-on-purpose/bad-for-a-purpose is sketch ground to pick #but the both necessary and entirely unnecessary ten thousand automata endings? that's a lesson.#drakengard 3 going so meta its plot implodes and all you're left with is the symbolic story? another #nier literally mocking you for doing unnecessary side quests and the only good ending is to literally not-play? now you're almost ready #if you can appreciate *what the game is saying* in nier by the easy gameplay doing just about everything to get you to the end #the same end that tells you your effort was less than pointless and then lights it on fire as it makes you watch #*now* you're ready to look at drakengard's maliciously jank gameplay and story that actively punishes you for digging and understand #(reason why nier both is and is not a drakengard game is in the difference between the maliciously too-easy gameplay #and 'we're the bad guys' this was all futile conclusion and drakengard's maliciously too-hard gameplay #and 'we're the bad guys but from the opposite angle' we as devs are literally laughing at you conclusion)#(and you can see that best in drakengard 3 which *is* a drakengard game through and through even with less jank mechanics)#heh hot take: drakengard and pathologic are kissing cousins #also also: Drakengard is to NIN's Hurt as Automata is to Cash's Hurt #(((but where's the essay OP? in the tags apparently; keep up :-p)))

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