You begin the game as a young man, orphaned at an early age and raised by a Dragon, of all things. He’s just joined the Knights of the Seal, and everything in life is going pretty much the way he wants it to. However, the appearance of a mysterious woman decidedly shakes things up a bit, and he comes to learn that the world might not be as black and white as it seems. It would appear that the Knights of the Seal are in fact quite evil, so our young protagonist switches sides to join in the uprising against these oppressors.

Drakengard 2 sports multiple playable characters, outside of just the main protagonist. There are quite a few weapons and accessories to be found and equipped, and an abundance of enemies to be slaughtered. Unfortunately, as is often the case with this style of gameplay, there’s a lot of mindless hack and slash to be found. A typical level will have you simply pressing the square button over and over, as you make your way to the end boss. There’s not a lot of need for strategy or thinking, and after a while things tend to get pretty dull.

During battle, you can switch between characters at will, and each character sports their own special attributes and powers. However, due to the mind numbingly dull gameplay, you’ll rarely need to use these abilities, or use any type of strategy when it comes to putting them to use. Typically you’ll want to rely on whoever has the best weapon, or strongest main attack at the moment, to make your way thru the levels. And when it comes to defeated a level, well, its pretty simple and straightforward as well. Typically it’s a matter of going from point A to point B, and you can even bypass a lot of the mindless enemies as you do so, making quite a few of the levels fairly simple.

The gameplay does switch up a bit at times, particularly when you ride aboard your Dragon for the Panzer Dragoon inspired levels. This is the most fun I had with the game, but the levels are too short and far between to really hold your interest for long. I’m not saying I’d like to see a PD clone, but there is a lot of potential in these stages, and it’d be nice to see them more fully realized. It’d be nice to see the level of challenged raised a bit here too, as the levels are still quite easy.

Drakengard 2’s outdoor environments are just about as uninspired as the gameplay. A lot of the outdoor levels look alike, and there’s not much detail put into the background or overall level design. The indoor sections look quite a bit better, but still fail to impress. Character models however, are pretty nice and detailed, and animate fairly well. The camera tends to be a bit bothersome at times, particular when you’re inside. It has the tendency to move around on its own, and typically to troublesome spots. It’ll also jerk back and forth a lot, which is pretty annoying.

The game tries to feature a bit of replay value, with multiple endings being dependent on the various difficulties. However, if you can stomach playing thru this game more than once, I completely salute you. I’m positive that I could not.

In the end, Drakengard 2 manages to bring about a few improvements over the original, but not where it counts. Bland and uninspired gameplay, dull level design, and overly simplistic goals do not make for a fun game, and Drakengard 2 is not fun at all.