Drakengard 3

Drakengard 3 is a hack-and-slash action game with RPG elements, released in 2014 by studio Access Games as a prequel to the first game in the series. The player takes on the role of Zero, one of five sisters bonded with dragons, whose effort to kill her siblings opens up a dark, blood-soaked story full of morally ambiguous characters and shocking twists, typical of the creative signature of writer Yoko Taro, who is also behind the later Nier series.

The combat system combines ground-level carnage with swords, spears, or other weapons with flying on dragonback during larger-scale arena battles against giant enemies, where combat switches between ground action from a third-person perspective and aerial shootouts reminiscent of rail shooters. The game also offers distinctive rhythm minigames, in which the player reacts rhythmically to songs accompanying individual chapters, spicing up an otherwise fairly repetitive combat system. The narrative is divided into several branches depending on which character the player chooses for a given mission, gradually unlocking further, increasingly dark layers of the same story and revealing the motivations of the individual sisters and their dragon companions, similar to how previous entries in the series did it.

Drakengard 3 is typical of its creator with a raw, often harsh atmosphere, black humor, and a willingness to confront the player with uncomfortable themes of violence and sacrifice; the technical execution, including frame rate and loading times, remains rather modest by the standards of its time, placing the game more among cult titles for die-hard fans of the series than among mainstream action hits.

Why play it: For a dark, morally ambiguous story and the distinctive signature of series creator Yoko Taro.