20:00 Clarification, The Queen Beast caused the White Chlorination Syndrome, which either turned people into pillars of salt, which has been mentioned in the main game story so far, or they became enthralled and turned into the members of the Red Eye Legion. The Black Scrawl is a separate disease.
*[Potential Spoiler Warning]* As I understand it, the main connecting theme between Drakengard and Nier is, "War is bad." But Drakengard has the theme, "War is bad because, even against an irredeemably evil foe, war glorifies terrible people and gives them the power to commit atrocities." Whereas Nier takes the stance of, "War is bad because good people commit atrocities against other good people, all over circumstances outside of their individual control." Yoko Taro's view on war changed as he read about the 2003 Iraq War, and saw that very often individual people on both sides saw themselves as fighting a necessary fight against a terrible foe who had greatly and unjustifiably wronged them. He decided that war wasn't just bad because it gave power to terrible people, but also because it forced good people commit terrible deeds, thus he decided to revamp his writing's anti-war themes with a new (but thematically connected) game series in Nier.
"No more sidequests" Not even Red-Bag Man's sidequest? The one that went incomplete due to his tragic death? That one's actually kinda worth doing for the final payoff.
Small story correction: The dragon brought magic (via some quantum particle thing) But the Beast - the big white lady monster, her remains brought white chlorination syndrome. "The city fell into a metropolis of salt" Basically this white chlorination syndrome would give a person a choice: A) become a red eye monster - legion, and be a slave to the dead god. Or B) die... And turn into salt. Black scrawl syndrome is an effect of the gestalt project. Which is what has caused issues with replicants specifically.
Yup came here to say this glad someone beat me to the punch, also i love that he glossed over the fact the actual final boss 'fight' is aka what up to that point has been a pretty standard hack n slash/panzer dragoon game suddenly becoming a weird rhythm game, also i think the weapons that nier picks up throughout the game are also Caim's
@@shaunpauldocherty2416 Yeah, there's this really interesting throughline that the games have about the power of song. Drakengard 1 with Inuart's story and the final boss battle. Drakengard 3 with its intoners and again the final boss battle. Nier with the android twins who sing and dance even as they battle you.
@@shaunpauldocherty2416 never played the game but I saw a video of the fight and ya, that was pretty neat subversion of gameplay. Honestly that's what I like about Nier and especially automata. The willingness to experiment and switch up gameplay and subvert expectations. I actually forgoes trying automata when it first came out cus at the time "bullet hell" was a game type that just didn't sit right with me. So I never looked into it. When I realized that was just a small aspect to it and it's got a lot of DnA from tones of different game genres, I was more sold on it. Also, heck it's Platinum. Fell in love with Bayonetta and teaming up with the minds behind Nier was just a match made in heaven I think. Here's to hoping they do another game.
Minor correction. And possible spoiler? Don't know how much this remake gets into these details. The beast that Caim and the Dragon killed over Tokyo caused White Chlorination Syndrome, not the Black Scrawl. It's remains proved highly toxic and caused unpleasant death to anyone who contracted those particles. You either became a statue of salt, or turned into a mindless red eyed monster called a Legion. (Messed up reason for that behind the scenes that has to do more with Drakengard, but death was the only real result.) Project Gestalt was created to safeguard humanity until the Legion and WCS could both be eradicated. The Black Scrawl is a side effect of the separation of body and soul. If the Replicant gains sentience, which they aren't supposed to be able to do, it causes the Gestalt to relapse and go feral. Because of the connection between the soul and clone body, it causes the Black Scrawl to infect the Replicant and quickly kills it. Magic was indeed directly gained from experiments using the Dragon's corpse, so fun stuff there. XD Lastly, I agree with Dan's comment that the Drakengard games stories are not required to follow Nier, but I disagree that the only real connection is Caim and the Dragon. There are a lot of thematic ties in the form of trends and themes (red eyes being the biggest one you can see all over the place) that imply there is a LOT more going on behind the scenes that tie everything together. This is especially true when you factor in all the supplemental material like the light novels, Final Fantasy XIV, etc. Also Yoko Taro is still working on the series in some form, so who knows what will happen next? That said, they are VERY dark games, and much different in both vibes and gameplay. So while I love them, I fully get anyone who doesn't wanna deal with that. Lol.
I've read the light novels. But is ff14 really that relevant? I've been on the fence about playing the (expanded Free Trial of our critically acclaimed MMORPG #FFXIV? You can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 for FREE with no restrictions on playtime! 😲) But I'm not sure if it's my type of game. Though my preconceived notions of it is that it's a numbers game that isn't really dependent on skill as it is on time spent on mind numbing farming (quests?).
Hard to say. The yorha story on ffxiv is really cool and very fun. Well told and ties things from all over the drakengard/nier universe together. Is it canon or vital? Who knows? Hard to tell with Yoko Taro, but he did literally write the scenario himself so I’m betting it is. Ffxiv itself is hands down the best mmo i’ve ever played. So for whatever that’s worth. :-)
Well, the next thing is possibly the phone game that finally got a full trailer in the last couple days. I'm unsure if he's writing it or not, but the title, combined with some of what's shown in the trailer makes me think that it's set in a specific location post Automata.
@@pyrosianheir Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on that one. Very hard to tell what it will be like, storywise or canon status. Lol. It's a gacha game sounds like, so that might make it tricky to have a formal story. Though to be fair, Yoko Taro isn't known for 'traditional' storytelling, so I'm sure he'll make it work. XD
Re: Drakenguard connections There are a few other connections between the two (Accord for example) but they're mostly either background details that are honestly window dressing, or more thematic throughlines - stuff like the twins theme, the red eyes, the main supporting cast all being outcasts of their respective societies, etc etc etc. It's definitely *not* story connections.
Yeah you hit the nail on the head there drakengard especially the first game is a much more bleak amd dark experience especially upfront and only gets worse when you read up on the expanded lore, Hell Caim and his companions makes post-timeskip Nier and friends look like well-adjusted individuals.
so, about accord, she's functionally a cameo in this version of nier, but if you want to know about her, minor spoilers for drakengard 3: accord is basically a time-cop who travels the timelines to ensure nothing universe-ending happens. according to yoko taro, she's slated to appear in a future nier game, but other than that, she's a cameo.
21:24 "You don't need to play every FF and watch every Disney animated feature in order to play the KH games". If you listen closely you can hear Nomura taking notes on KH4 while laughing maniacally at Dan's naivety.
It's kinda interesting hearing Nier and Devola's conversation about "doing it for the people of the village" after you find out they're supposed to moniter the human shell things
I didn't know Papa Nier was in this! I don't think Dan took the time to try and get the camera close enough to admire it, but his model looks *so* much better than the original game, and it didn't even take that much to make it work. Since they already had to have Jamieson Price come back for a few lines, and they animated his combat moves again, it would have been neat if they let players choose whether to play Nier Gestalt or Nier Replicant at the start. It's understandable why they didn't, though, I'm sure animating one set of cutscenes took long enough, much less a separate set of cutscenes. This game really is Kingdom Hearts by way of Horizon Zero Dawn. Spoilers below: . . . Both worlds are post-post-apocalypse games set in a world that completely forgot about the old world, where science succeeded in preserving and recreating life, but failed to preserve our societies; both main characters are far-future reincarnations of a near-future person whose role was pivotal in helping humanity survive the end of the world.
Apparently this part of the soundtrack was also composed by Keiichi Okabe who made the tekken series soundtracks. If you're a fighting game enthusiast you definitely heard "GET READY FOR THE NEXT BATTLE" before every challenge room here.
on the Drakengard ending, the game didn't treat it as a joke, like, the Silent Hill 2's dog ending is clearly a joke, and it's treated as a joke, but Drakengard ending E takes itself very seriously. players can find it funny, sure, but it's an absurdist kind of a humour. the characters and the world they inhabit probably didn't find it very funny.
The spear you get from the 3rd DLC is actually stronger and easier to upgrade than the Phoenix Spear. And that part is indeed more difficult than the other two. You don't need to redo the side quest to get the weapon from it. After a certain point in this second run, you can just talk to the fortune teller and go back into that 5 minute fight thing and get it. Also, now that Dan mentioned the gameplay of the Drakengard games, I wanna play them more... just gotta get some more free time and boot up the ps2. Have a good day.
I don't think it's even possible for you to replay that sidequest. In any case, the weapon will be given to you after ending B, so it's not actually required to grab it during the quest.
Drakengard 3 looks really fun actually. That’s the one I want to try. Considering it came out between Replicant and Automata, it’s probably pretty good mechanics wise. Also I soooo want you to use the outfits. Since they use game models in most cutscenes, it doesn’t actually break immersion. And they look REALLLY good.
Drakengard 3's combat is what I'd call "serviceable", which means that it technically works, but it's not really much fun. Plus, it has the "get all the weapons to get the final ending" issue that Nier and the other Darkengard games have (but not Automata, thank goodness), and the hoops you need to jump through to do it are a pain. However, the characters are a lot of fun, when they're not being creepy sex addicts, and your dragon companion is the best character out of all the Draken\Nier games.
@@stevejakab274 Automata does have an ending that requires you to not only have every weapon, but you also need to upgrade all of them to max. Thankfully its not as tedious as in this game, but it still a grind.
The third door of the Diary is very really tough. If you find yourself having trouble, I suggest looking into Dark Wall (a real lifesaver), and, the various Atk and Def boost consumables
23:00 I do think Dan undersells the connections between Drakengard and Nier somewhat - especially the thematic ones - but I'll be the first to agree that the Drakengard games just aren't that good. Not nearly as good as the Nier games, at any rate. Because all the more explicit connections are left to supplemental materials, you can enjoy the games just fine without getting overwhelmed by worldbuilding, but there's a deeper level of understanding there for fans who want to delve into a bunch more fiction. I think a better comparison is something like Lord of the Rings, where a ton of stuff we "know" about Middle Earth is actually from Tolkien's supplemental appendixes and notes and whatnot, not the novels themselves. But that shouldn't stop someone from being able to just read the trilogy (or watch the movies) and enjoy them without delving into all the extra material. Yokoverse and Nier are the same way, imo. That said, I definitely recommend *watching* Drakengard 1 and 3 rather than playing them, because the story is way more interesting than the gameplay. Drakengard 2 is actually non-canon, at least with regards to Nier and the wider Yokoverse. 33:00 Dan will probably read this too late, but you don't need to redo that sidequest if you don't want, you get that weapon automatically after Ending B. The sidequest just lets you get it early. Also Dan mentioned needing an Eagle Egg. As a fellow Phoenix Spear user, I can tell you that the rare spawn in the Aerie is the only way to get them. Real easy to get, really, no effort to it, but can get time consuming if you have to zone in & out a bunch before it spawns. I casually looked for one while cleaning one day lol.
You can get eagle eggs behind the 3rd door in the DLC content, that Dan didn't do in this episode. In the chamber that is the Underground Lab, there are a ton of breakable boxes, and in those boxes contain almost all of the rare upgrade materials, including Eagle Eggs.
You say dream dairy, or dream journal.... What about "magic story book" ... what if when you get Yonah back, she's secretly a high level badass from practicing in the dairy multiple times per day?
Hey, Dan, now that you're into the alternate endings parts of Nier, I'd like to throw in my voice to encourage you to play the "ending E" run after you play Automata. I think it will have more of an impact if you treat it as a final ending to both games.
I'm probably going to do it in this playthrough, just for the sake of simplicity (and because I won't be jumping into Automata for a little while). Good to know to keep that ending in mind once Automata comes around, though!
14:10 Well dammit, then is it me not getting something or did the writers slip up in Kainé's story? Friday's episode (at 22:30) mentions dusk approaching and is in general full of expressions like morning, tonight, other day...
I'm pretty sure it was just meant to be poetic language to describe the Gestalts (one [side] that knows not day) and Replicants (one [side] which has never seen the night) and Dan was making a joke as a callback to way earlier in the playthrough.
@@trace9021 Ok, I checked, apparently Yoko Taro confirmed in 2018 Earth was tidally locked in the apocalypse and one side is always sun facing while the other is in perennial night. I have yet to find the video itself so I'm not 100% sure.
The world 100% is tidally locked now, and no longer has day/night cycles. This is alluded to in the game and confirmed by other materials. However, several times through the game people still refer to time using modern terms, like days, nights, morning, etc etc. This can be most naturally seen as an example of skeuomorphic language - where outdated terms & symbols are still used, their new meaning derived from their original meaning somehow. So even if we lose day/night cycles, we would likely still continue to refer to communal sleep times as "night" and communal wake times as "morning" and so on. So "dusk" could just mean "it's getting late / need to sleep soon", not "it's literally getting dark". I think this would make sense in the Kainé story, as she says that dusk approached when referring to finishing a long day of work. If the sun doesn't set, it'd make sense to use language like that to talk about just needing to wrap things up and sleep soon. The other explanation would be that the terms got muddled in translation and the localizers picked the best sounding English terms. But AFAIK, there's never any explicit mention of the sun setting at night. There is the Kingdom of Night mentioned in some supplemental material, but it's on the dark side of the tidally locked Earth, so it's always night there.
@@brettd2308 makes sense, thank you. Although it would have been cool if they had used the opportunity to do a little bit of worldbuilding like on how they keep time or maybe if they have nights of alternating lenghts (afternoon naps vs proper sleep). But replicant seems to focus on charachter more than the world so it's ok.
@@theophrastusbombastus8019 Yeah, I saw an interesting interview with Yoko Taro where he talked about how he wrote a ton of worldbuilding stuff while making Nier, then he went back and kept removing it until he arrived at a story he felt was focused on the characters and their struggle. IIRC, he claimed to have cut like 90% of the worldbuilding he wrote. He made some great points about having a world that makes internal sense, but not stopping the story to explain it. I do a similar thing with my own writing - including lots of exposition in the first draft to help myself figure everything out, then cutting almost all of that during revision - so I definitely see where he's coming from.
So of popala and devola interfered with neir rescuing yonah at the end of the story, why did popala even tell neir about the lost shrine? She could have lied and said she had no information. Why send them then try to stop them once they get there? Weird!!!!
I played Drakengard for the first time a couple of months ago. Hoo boy it's rough, interesting in a strange gonzo way but almost impossible to play by today's standards.
![CAMPปลิ้น | EP.83[1/2] เปิดแคมป์หลอนต้อนรับ 2 ตัวพ่อแห่งวงการผี!](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/2uPuHYHgwiI/mqdefault.jpg)
"Stop it robots, I've fought quite enough of you for a lifetime... or two, or three."
Well, NieR Automata won't be the soothing salve you desire.
To be fair, there’s a fair few lifetimes between the two games.
20:00 Clarification, The Queen Beast caused the White Chlorination Syndrome, which either turned people into pillars of salt, which has been mentioned in the main game story so far, or they became enthralled and turned into the members of the Red Eye Legion. The Black Scrawl is a separate disease.
Thanks for the clarification!
So it was poisonous, but it was poisonous in the weirdest possible way.
Does this White Chlorination deases ever show up in Neir, or is it just another reference to what the monster does in Drakenguard?
@@jeremysmith7176 You've already seen the effects of it, actually. Remember the intro? That wasn't snow.
@@Areyallok42 Also depicted in the Forest of Myth memories.
In the original (US) game's DLC, the diary is Nier's wife's, and you play as brother Nier.
19:30 "Drakengard spoilers, but I don't recommend you play it"
- Drakengard community in a nutshell.
Dan: Stop it Robots! I've fought quite enough of you to last a lifetime... or two... ... or three.
*Eyes NieR Automata* So... shall I tell him?
*[Potential Spoiler Warning]* As I understand it, the main connecting theme between Drakengard and Nier is, "War is bad." But Drakengard has the theme, "War is bad because, even against an irredeemably evil foe, war glorifies terrible people and gives them the power to commit atrocities." Whereas Nier takes the stance of, "War is bad because good people commit atrocities against other good people, all over circumstances outside of their individual control." Yoko Taro's view on war changed as he read about the 2003 Iraq War, and saw that very often individual people on both sides saw themselves as fighting a necessary fight against a terrible foe who had greatly and unjustifiably wronged them. He decided that war wasn't just bad because it gave power to terrible people, but also because it forced good people commit terrible deeds, thus he decided to revamp his writing's anti-war themes with a new (but thematically connected) game series in Nier.
"No more sidequests" Not even Red-Bag Man's sidequest? The one that went incomplete due to his tragic death? That one's actually kinda worth doing for the final payoff.
"Soldiers of salt calling forth white death. They are Legion, those who plunged the world into darkness."
Is this talking about the Internet?
Small story correction:
The dragon brought magic (via some quantum particle thing)
But the Beast - the big white lady monster, her remains brought white chlorination syndrome. "The city fell into a metropolis of salt"
Basically this white chlorination syndrome would give a person a choice:
A) become a red eye monster - legion, and be a slave to the dead god.
Or
B) die... And turn into salt.
Black scrawl syndrome is an effect of the gestalt project. Which is what has caused issues with replicants specifically.
Yup came here to say this glad someone beat me to the punch, also i love that he glossed over the fact the actual final boss 'fight' is aka what up to that point has been a pretty standard hack n slash/panzer dragoon game suddenly becoming a weird rhythm game, also i think the weapons that nier picks up throughout the game are also Caim's
@@shaunpauldocherty2416 Yeah, there's this really interesting throughline that the games have about the power of song. Drakengard 1 with Inuart's story and the final boss battle. Drakengard 3 with its intoners and again the final boss battle. Nier with the android twins who sing and dance even as they battle you.
@@shaunpauldocherty2416 never played the game but I saw a video of the fight and ya, that was pretty neat subversion of gameplay.
Honestly that's what I like about Nier and especially automata. The willingness to experiment and switch up gameplay and subvert expectations.
I actually forgoes trying automata when it first came out cus at the time "bullet hell" was a game type that just didn't sit right with me. So I never looked into it.
When I realized that was just a small aspect to it and it's got a lot of DnA from tones of different game genres, I was more sold on it.
Also, heck it's Platinum.
Fell in love with Bayonetta and teaming up with the minds behind Nier was just a match made in heaven I think.
Here's to hoping they do another game.
For being a full episode of combat-only DLC, this was pretty chill. It was cool to get to see Papa Nier.
Minor correction. And possible spoiler? Don't know how much this remake gets into these details.
The beast that Caim and the Dragon killed over Tokyo caused White Chlorination Syndrome, not the Black Scrawl. It's remains proved highly toxic and caused unpleasant death to anyone who contracted those particles. You either became a statue of salt, or turned into a mindless red eyed monster called a Legion. (Messed up reason for that behind the scenes that has to do more with Drakengard, but death was the only real result.) Project Gestalt was created to safeguard humanity until the Legion and WCS could both be eradicated.
The Black Scrawl is a side effect of the separation of body and soul. If the Replicant gains sentience, which they aren't supposed to be able to do, it causes the Gestalt to relapse and go feral. Because of the connection between the soul and clone body, it causes the Black Scrawl to infect the Replicant and quickly kills it.
Magic was indeed directly gained from experiments using the Dragon's corpse, so fun stuff there. XD
Lastly, I agree with Dan's comment that the Drakengard games stories are not required to follow Nier, but I disagree that the only real connection is Caim and the Dragon. There are a lot of thematic ties in the form of trends and themes (red eyes being the biggest one you can see all over the place) that imply there is a LOT more going on behind the scenes that tie everything together. This is especially true when you factor in all the supplemental material like the light novels, Final Fantasy XIV, etc. Also Yoko Taro is still working on the series in some form, so who knows what will happen next?
That said, they are VERY dark games, and much different in both vibes and gameplay. So while I love them, I fully get anyone who doesn't wanna deal with that. Lol.
I've read the light novels. But is ff14 really that relevant?
I've been on the fence about playing the (expanded Free Trial of our critically acclaimed MMORPG #FFXIV?
You can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 for FREE with no restrictions on playtime! 😲)
But I'm not sure if it's my type of game. Though my preconceived notions of it is that it's a numbers game that isn't really dependent on skill as it is on time spent on mind numbing farming (quests?).
Hard to say. The yorha story on ffxiv is really cool and very fun. Well told and ties things from all over the drakengard/nier universe together. Is it canon or vital? Who knows? Hard to tell with Yoko Taro, but he did literally write the scenario himself so I’m betting it is.
Ffxiv itself is hands down the best mmo i’ve ever played. So for whatever that’s worth. :-)
Well, the next thing is possibly the phone game that finally got a full trailer in the last couple days. I'm unsure if he's writing it or not, but the title, combined with some of what's shown in the trailer makes me think that it's set in a specific location post Automata.
@@pyrosianheir Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on that one. Very hard to tell what it will be like, storywise or canon status. Lol. It's a gacha game sounds like, so that might make it tricky to have a formal story. Though to be fair, Yoko Taro isn't known for 'traditional' storytelling, so I'm sure he'll make it work. XD
@@pyrosianheir Also I looked it up, and Yoko Taro is directing and writing on Reincarnation. :-)
Re: Drakenguard connections
There are a few other connections between the two (Accord for example) but they're mostly either background details that are honestly window dressing, or more thematic throughlines - stuff like the twins theme, the red eyes, the main supporting cast all being outcasts of their respective societies, etc etc etc.
It's definitely *not* story connections.
"I feel as if I've just awoken from a most unpleasant dream" sounds like Weiss dissing the DLC
Or Papa Nier.
The context changes that Devola conversation a LOT
Yeah you hit the nail on the head there drakengard especially the first game is a much more bleak amd dark experience especially upfront and only gets worse when you read up on the expanded lore, Hell Caim and his companions makes post-timeskip Nier and friends look like well-adjusted individuals.
so, about accord, she's functionally a cameo in this version of nier, but if you want to know about her, minor spoilers for drakengard 3:
accord is basically a time-cop who travels the timelines to ensure nothing universe-ending happens. according to yoko taro, she's slated to appear in a future nier game, but other than that, she's a cameo.
21:24 "You don't need to play every FF and watch every Disney animated feature in order to play the KH games".
If you listen closely you can hear Nomura taking notes on KH4 while laughing maniacally at Dan's naivety.
It's kinda interesting hearing Nier and Devola's conversation about "doing it for the people of the village" after you find out they're supposed to moniter the human shell things
I didn't know Papa Nier was in this! I don't think Dan took the time to try and get the camera close enough to admire it, but his model looks *so* much better than the original game, and it didn't even take that much to make it work. Since they already had to have Jamieson Price come back for a few lines, and they animated his combat moves again, it would have been neat if they let players choose whether to play Nier Gestalt or Nier Replicant at the start. It's understandable why they didn't, though, I'm sure animating one set of cutscenes took long enough, much less a separate set of cutscenes.
This game really is Kingdom Hearts by way of Horizon Zero Dawn. Spoilers below:
.
.
.
Both worlds are post-post-apocalypse games set in a world that completely forgot about the old world, where science succeeded in preserving and recreating life, but failed to preserve our societies; both main characters are far-future reincarnations of a near-future person whose role was pivotal in helping humanity survive the end of the world.
Apparently this part of the soundtrack was also composed by Keiichi Okabe who made the tekken series soundtracks. If you're a fighting game enthusiast you definitely heard "GET READY FOR THE NEXT BATTLE" before every challenge room here.
And the Kingdom Hearts saga continues...
A dream world...
13 vessels...
Maybe Yoko Taro and Nomura went to the same school or something...
they both work for square enix, wouldn't be shocked
We are just now into the weirdness?
You say that like everything up to now was normal till now 😹
"Is this the Land of the Gods?"
TOKYO, JAPAN
That title card is probably my favorite part of all Drakengard haha.
@@brettd2308 Same!
It’s also technically true, for -him- them at least.
@@dracosfire7247 It was Angelus that said it, but I guess it's for both of them since Caim was riding.
@@finngswan3732 Fixed
on the Drakengard ending, the game didn't treat it as a joke, like, the Silent Hill 2's dog ending is clearly a joke, and it's treated as a joke, but Drakengard ending E takes itself very seriously. players can find it funny, sure, but it's an absurdist kind of a humour. the characters and the world they inhabit probably didn't find it very funny.
The spear you get from the 3rd DLC is actually stronger and easier to upgrade than the Phoenix Spear. And that part is indeed more difficult than the other two.
You don't need to redo the side quest to get the weapon from it. After a certain point in this second run, you can just talk to the fortune teller and go back into that 5 minute fight thing and get it.
Also, now that Dan mentioned the gameplay of the Drakengard games, I wanna play them more... just gotta get some more free time and boot up the ps2.
Have a good day.
I don't think it's even possible for you to replay that sidequest. In any case, the weapon will be given to you after ending B, so it's not actually required to grab it during the quest.
Drakengard 3 looks really fun actually. That’s the one I want to try. Considering it came out between Replicant and Automata, it’s probably pretty good mechanics wise.
Also I soooo want you to use the outfits. Since they use game models in most cutscenes, it doesn’t actually break immersion. And they look REALLLY good.
Drakengard 3's combat is what I'd call "serviceable", which means that it technically works, but it's not really much fun. Plus, it has the "get all the weapons to get the final ending" issue that Nier and the other Darkengard games have (but not Automata, thank goodness), and the hoops you need to jump through to do it are a pain.
However, the characters are a lot of fun, when they're not being creepy sex addicts, and your dragon companion is the best character out of all the Draken\Nier games.
@@stevejakab274 Automata does have an ending that requires you to not only have every weapon, but you also need to upgrade all of them to max. Thankfully its not as tedious as in this game, but it still a grind.
The third door of the Diary is very really tough. If you find yourself having trouble, I suggest looking into Dark Wall (a real lifesaver), and, the various Atk and Def boost consumables
Fun fact: You play as Brother Nier in DLC if you played it in the western release of Nier.
23:00 I do think Dan undersells the connections between Drakengard and Nier somewhat - especially the thematic ones - but I'll be the first to agree that the Drakengard games just aren't that good. Not nearly as good as the Nier games, at any rate. Because all the more explicit connections are left to supplemental materials, you can enjoy the games just fine without getting overwhelmed by worldbuilding, but there's a deeper level of understanding there for fans who want to delve into a bunch more fiction. I think a better comparison is something like Lord of the Rings, where a ton of stuff we "know" about Middle Earth is actually from Tolkien's supplemental appendixes and notes and whatnot, not the novels themselves. But that shouldn't stop someone from being able to just read the trilogy (or watch the movies) and enjoy them without delving into all the extra material. Yokoverse and Nier are the same way, imo.
That said, I definitely recommend *watching* Drakengard 1 and 3 rather than playing them, because the story is way more interesting than the gameplay. Drakengard 2 is actually non-canon, at least with regards to Nier and the wider Yokoverse.
33:00 Dan will probably read this too late, but you don't need to redo that sidequest if you don't want, you get that weapon automatically after Ending B. The sidequest just lets you get it early.
Also Dan mentioned needing an Eagle Egg. As a fellow Phoenix Spear user, I can tell you that the rare spawn in the Aerie is the only way to get them. Real easy to get, really, no effort to it, but can get time consuming if you have to zone in & out a bunch before it spawns. I casually looked for one while cleaning one day lol.
You can get eagle eggs behind the 3rd door in the DLC content, that Dan didn't do in this episode. In the chamber that is the Underground Lab, there are a ton of breakable boxes, and in those boxes contain almost all of the rare upgrade materials, including Eagle Eggs.
@@fatmatt589 Oh, that's nice to know.
The music in this DLC reminds me a lot of Furi.
Are we going to be doing any fashion replicant-ing now that we have outfits??
Funny Kabuki boy commits accidental genocide
@@uhoh7545 one-man extinction event wearing a funny hat.
ooooh, so the earth is tidally locked now, like the moon! so the same side always faces the sun, and the other side is never sees it.
I was wondering: in the Japanese OG Nier, which Nier was the playable one in the DLC?
Pappa Nier sounds like Flame Alchemist from Full Metal Alchemist original and brotherhood.
You say dream dairy, or dream journal.... What about "magic story book" ... what if when you get Yonah back, she's secretly a high level badass from practicing in the dairy multiple times per day?
Oooooh, is it just me or does the music in the DLC have some TWEWY vibes? :D
Hey, Dan, now that you're into the alternate endings parts of Nier, I'd like to throw in my voice to encourage you to play the "ending E" run after you play Automata. I think it will have more of an impact if you treat it as a final ending to both games.
I'm probably going to do it in this playthrough, just for the sake of simplicity (and because I won't be jumping into Automata for a little while). Good to know to keep that ending in mind once Automata comes around, though!
14:10 Well dammit, then is it me not getting something or did the writers slip up in Kainé's story? Friday's episode (at 22:30) mentions dusk approaching and is in general full of expressions like morning, tonight, other day...
I'm pretty sure it was just meant to be poetic language to describe the Gestalts (one [side] that knows not day) and Replicants (one [side] which has never seen the night) and Dan was making a joke as a callback to way earlier in the playthrough.
@@trace9021 Ok, I checked, apparently Yoko Taro confirmed in 2018 Earth was tidally locked in the apocalypse and one side is always sun facing while the other is in perennial night. I have yet to find the video itself so I'm not 100% sure.
The world 100% is tidally locked now, and no longer has day/night cycles. This is alluded to in the game and confirmed by other materials. However, several times through the game people still refer to time using modern terms, like days, nights, morning, etc etc.
This can be most naturally seen as an example of skeuomorphic language - where outdated terms & symbols are still used, their new meaning derived from their original meaning somehow. So even if we lose day/night cycles, we would likely still continue to refer to communal sleep times as "night" and communal wake times as "morning" and so on. So "dusk" could just mean "it's getting late / need to sleep soon", not "it's literally getting dark". I think this would make sense in the Kainé story, as she says that dusk approached when referring to finishing a long day of work. If the sun doesn't set, it'd make sense to use language like that to talk about just needing to wrap things up and sleep soon.
The other explanation would be that the terms got muddled in translation and the localizers picked the best sounding English terms. But AFAIK, there's never any explicit mention of the sun setting at night. There is the Kingdom of Night mentioned in some supplemental material, but it's on the dark side of the tidally locked Earth, so it's always night there.
@@brettd2308 makes sense, thank you. Although it would have been cool if they had used the opportunity to do a little bit of worldbuilding like on how they keep time or maybe if they have nights of alternating lenghts (afternoon naps vs proper sleep).
But replicant seems to focus on charachter more than the world so it's ok.
@@theophrastusbombastus8019 Yeah, I saw an interesting interview with Yoko Taro where he talked about how he wrote a ton of worldbuilding stuff while making Nier, then he went back and kept removing it until he arrived at a story he felt was focused on the characters and their struggle. IIRC, he claimed to have cut like 90% of the worldbuilding he wrote. He made some great points about having a world that makes internal sense, but not stopping the story to explain it.
I do a similar thing with my own writing - including lots of exposition in the first draft to help myself figure everything out, then cutting almost all of that during revision - so I definitely see where he's coming from.
Is Papa Nier the same voice actor as the Commander in MHW?
Sure is!
Jamieson Price, who also does Sojiro in Persona 5 and JARAXXUS, EREDAR LORD OF THE BURNING LEGION in WC.
Strong Devil May Cry vibes
Dan, you're so "Nierd" :P
Would you be willing to show us those new outfits?
So of popala and devola interfered with neir rescuing yonah at the end of the story, why did popala even tell neir about the lost shrine? She could have lied and said she had no information. Why send them then try to stop them once they get there? Weird!!!!
Speaking of similarities between this game and Kingdom Hearts: "thirteen pacts"? Is this trolling? Are we being trolled?
In a Yoko Taro game? Heaven forfend!
I played Drakengard for the first time a couple of months ago. Hoo boy it's rough, interesting in a strange gonzo way but almost impossible to play by today's standards.