This game is a masterpiece. It's trash. It's so incredibly engrossing. It's tedious as fuck. Everyone should play it. You're better off watching a let's play on youtube.

It's impossible to say a single coherent thing about Drakengard 3 because for every true statement about this game, it's negation is also as true. So let's start with the basics.

The world was un chaos until 5 waifus came and enchanted everyone with their songs. Now these "Intoners" maintain peace by each presiding over their kingdom of simps. You play as Zero, the sixth waifu and your mission is to kill all the other sisters because you are an asshole that want to be the only Intoner. To that aim you plow through each Intoner's army of innocent minions, kill each of them and get their alpha simp (called the Disciple) into your party. Eventually you kill every sister and finish the game.

Except that that's not the whole story. It's not a spolier to say that there's so much more to it. As various "branches" alternative versions of the story and open up different endings the plot gets more and more convoluted and confusing. And while there is some method to the madness, but it's mostly madness.

Gameplay is... well, that's another thing that is mostly madness.

Most of the time the game is a tedious hack-and-slash affair in samey corridors interspersed with tedious dragon riding sections. And even if individual enemies are easily to kill, their sheer number combined with the unruly camera and the relative scarcity of healing items and checkpoints will force you to replay entire sections multiple times.

So how do you elevate a game that plays like shit if you don't have the budget to fix all the issues? You write your ass off into including the tedious gameplay into the story in a way that shows what the whole medium of gaming is capable of.

Every single character starts of as the most irredeemable piece of shit in the planet. Zero is a fucking terrible person that treats her loving pet dragon as a welcome mat and every Disciple is some disgusting sociopath, idiot or both. The whole party constantly mock the hundreds of innocent soldiers whose deaths and screams pave your path of destruction and are weirdly obsessed with sex.

But as Zero and her companions whine and complain about having to fight the same enemies over and over, cursing the bad platforming sections, and wanting to kill everything quickly to get over with it you as a player are forced to agree. Indeed, the game is so tedious and unfun to play, that you quickly start to roll your eyes at yet another wave of witless soldiers that are as easily dispatched as a booger stuck to your left nostril. You quickly start passing over their dialogue that shows them as loyal, brave and human. It's like a magic trick.

As you start empathising with these horrible bastards against your will, then the emotional moments come and hit like a ton of bricks. Zero starts to open up to her dragon and you see that all her insulting was a defence mechanism to hide a deep loss. You start to see that she's hurting as she kills her sisters. Eventually even the disciples are shown to be tragic figures enslaved by their destinies.

The first ending packs a surprising emotional punch and then you start the second playthrough, in which things start to get even weirder. The path through alternate realities fleshes out the plot and characters even more, also padding out the gameplay without the devs needing to design new areas or enemies, so it's a win-win.

Then, after about 20 hours you probably mastered the tedious combat so it's less of a chore the ending boss throws a massive curveball that is both a gorgeous and a complete slap in the face to the player.

The boring combat and player-hostile design might not be for everyone. I wouldn't have finished the game if I hadn't downloaded a save file with all the weapons unlocked, which is a stupid requisite to play the final branch. But Drakengard 3 is a hauntingly fascinating game that is a must play for anyone who enjoyed any of the weirdness in Nier.