tvtropes.org

Drakengard - TV Tropes

  • ️Tue May 29 2012

Drakengard (Video Game)

The unsuppressed soul lets flow oceans of blood.
The Watchers drink and raise high the basin of fire.
Mighty generals hesitate beneath a crimson sky.
As the tears of a goddess flow, four lost temples forebode the coming of the Queen.
The dragon plummets from the tower of red thunder, and where it falls no one has seen.

Drakengard (known in Japan as Drag-On Dragoon) is an Action RPG game developed by Cavia (who earlier in the game's release year developed Resident Evil: Dead Aim) and published by Square Enix, originally released in 2003 for the PlayStation 2. It disguishes itself as being both by being the first entry in the Drakengard series, as well as being the first game directed by Yoko Taro, who already at this point displayed a lot of his Creator Thumbprints. It's notable for its combination of a multilayered, surreal plot and excellent atmosphere, with rather weak, repetitive gameplay. The gameplay switches between Hack and Slash and Flight Sim, so one could think of it as a mixture of Dynasty Warriors and a sandbox version of Panzer Dragoon. It takes place in a Heroic/Low Fantasy medieval setting, and it follows Anti-Hero Caim on a mission to destroy an evil empire (aptly named "the Empire") while also protecting his sister Furiae. Also known as "the Goddess", Furiae is part of four seals that protect the world from an unknown danger—she is a living seal, and her death would herald chaos in the world. Caim is joined initially on his quest by Inuart, his best friend and Furiae's betrothed before she became the Goddess, and four other characters, the circumstances of each being varied and always tragic.

One of the major concepts in Drakengard is that of a pact, or of two beings of different races binding their souls into one. Caim is mortally wounded in the first stage as he runs towards Furiae's castle in the midst of a battle, and discovers a chained and wounded dragon in the courtyard. He proposes that in order to save them both, the two should form a pact. In forging the pact, Caim can control the dragon during flight and has access to the dragon's vast strength, but gives up his voice in exchange (although he's still capable of conversing with the dragon through telepathy). However, if either of the pact partners dies, so will the other, and it seems the pain one feels is transferred to the other as well. All of the other members of Caim's party have a pact, and a certain price they have paid for it:

  • Leonard the forester has a pact with a fairy. With it, he has access to the fairy's powerful magic. He gave up his sight. He stated to be a pedophile in the side materials version; the games mostly edited this part of his character out.
  • Arioch the elf mother has a pact with Undine and Salamander, the water and fire spirits, respectively. She can control water and fire to a certain degree (she can be seen walking on water in one cutscene, or being undamaged by a house burning down in another) and can summon the spirits to her aid. She gave up her fertility. She is quite insane; she's developed a certain fondness for the other, other white meat as a consequence.
  • Seere the young boy has a pact with Golem, a stone giant. Golem provides the ultimate protection for the boy's life and can destroy The Legions of Hell with ease. Seere gave up his "time", meaning that he will never age beyond his six year old body.
  • Verdelet the hierarch also made a pact with a dragon, but that was long before the events of the game and the dragon has since been petrified. He would normally have gained the allegiance of the dragon as Caim has from his pact, but he can't call upon his pact-partner. As a consequence, Verdelet can hear the telepathy that goes between pact-partners, but he gave up his hair.

The game starts off simply enough, with Caim and any party members he's managed to find running from one location to the next, trying to prevent the Empire from destroying one of the three land-based seals. Each seal that is destroyed makes the burden on the Goddess that much more unbearable. As Caim journeys on, he learns about the Cult of the Watchers which has taken hold over the Empire and their evil machinations for the Goddess. The game gets progressively weirder and more surreal as events go on, and the interactions between characters gradually become more nuanced and complex from the straight-up swords and sorcery formula. By its end, Drakengard has gone beyond the standard unspoken agreement between author and audience and thrown us into the stuff of nightmares. Watching how the characters react to this and observing their hopeless and doomed plight is strangely interesting; morbid curiosity drives one to finish the game's five endings. Drakengard does not shy away from the surreal, the macabre, and the downright depressing.

One of the most striking things about the game is how so many Video Game Tropes are turned completely on their head. Your main cast is less than virtuous: Caim is a mute bloodthirsty nutcase, Inuart goes completely nuts and evil, Furiae isn't entirely innocent, and the list just goes on and on. Really, there's few games like it out there.

A sequel named Drakengard 2 and a spin-off named NieR, following different endings of the original Drakengard, were released in 2005 and 2010. Drakengard 3, a prequel, was released in 2013 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the game.

These videogames provide examples of (Warning: major spoilers):

In General 

  • Alien Sky: Happens several times in both games. When the seals that keep the world from ending are broken, the sky becomes a sickening red in the first game, with Chapter 13 involving Caim and his dragon emerging in an alien dimension (actually modern-day Tokyo) where everything is Deliberately Monochrome. In Drakengard 2, the sky literally shatters to reveal a purple paint-like mess that covers the entire planet, with Legna claiming that it is the true state of the world.
  • Anti-Hero: Caim is… not a very pleasant fellow, with a magnificently enthusiastic approach to violence who just so happens to be fighting people and/or things which are even worse. He does occasionally have good or at least understandable motivations behind his behavior, though, especially in Drakengard 2.
  • Anyone Can Die: The first game alone has Caim butcher anyone standing in his way, including child soldiers. By the time Chapter 12 rolls around, Arioch and Leonard end up killed by Grotesqueries. Ending E also has Caim and Angelus killed by a missile from a fighter jet after they defeat the True Final Boss. The second game has Urick end up dead at Caim's hands, though Caim and Angelus also end up dead.
  • BFS: Hymir's Finger, a collectible weapon that's a Shout-Out to the dragon slayer and would since appear in every future game in the series (under the more-accurately-translated name "Broken Iron").
  • Bittersweet Ending: For the first game, Ending A. Ending D is also this with a bit of Fridge Logic: much of "Europe" is frozen in time and the protagonists have all suffered A Fate Worse Than Death, but the world as a whole is safe from the Grotesqueries. As for Ending E, Caim and Angelus's world is safe (maybe), but not only did they die immediately after their victory in an exceedingly humiliating and contrived fashion, they also completely ruined another world. Also, the first two endings in the second game, with the third ending approaching outright happy ending territory.
  • Bolivian Army Ending:
    • Drakengard 1 has Endings B and C, where Caim has to face off against an army of mutated reborn Furiaes in the former and pretty much every dragon alive in the latter.
  • Bond Creatures: In the setting, a person can form a "pact" with a creature (or in some cases, a pack of creatures), the person sacrificing "their most important trait" in return for both of them becoming more powerful (and for a chance for the monster to feast on the human's "negative emotions", which according to extraneous materials is a favorite of them).
    • Caim and his dragon, Angelus (sacrificing his voice).
    • Leonard and his fairy (sacrificing his sight).
    • Arioch and her twin spirits, Undine & Salamander (sacrificing her fertility).
    • Seere and his Golem (sacrificing his time).
    • Verdelet and his petrified dragon (sacrificing his hair; though his pact partner is petrified, rendering him powerless other than the telepathy shared between pact-partners).
  • A Boy and His X: A Boy And His Dragon. Caim and his dragon are both an emotional and battle pair. Throughout the game, the two’s relationship evolves from a very reluctant team-up due to hatred on both sides to a deep partnership and even romance, best seen in Ending A and C and the sequel.
  • Brutal Bonus Level:
    • Getting Ending E unlocks a Free Expedition mission to Tokyo, where you're pitted against a squadron of fighter jets that can fly circles around you (they fly so fast not even your homing shots can keep up with them) and fire even faster homing missiles. This is the closest measure of payback that Caim and Angelus will get after their deaths in Ending E.
    • New Game Plus in the sequel unlocks several Free Expedition maps as you progress through the additional playthroughs. Among these are incredibly tough enemy gauntlets where the Royal Duel took place in the tutorial as well as one in Manah’s mind.
  • Chasing Your Tail: The dragon versus dragon aerial fight with Inuart later in the original game. The fight with Angelus in the second game also counts.
  • Collision Damage: Considering you'll be fighting enemies by the hundreds, this is one thing you don't have to worry about (except for the occasional ramming attack). A few of the player's spells can damage adjacent/nearby enemies on contact, and the "shield" power in the sequel enables Legna to ram through enemies while it's in effect.
  • Cool, but Inefficient: Hymir's Finger is huge and damaging but slow. It's brutally damaging, but until it reaches its highest level, it's too slow for its damage output to be meaningful. At level 4, though…
  • Copy-and-Paste Environments:
    • Nothing but bleak landscape for miles in some, even most cases. The second game does a better job with the environments.
    • Not to mention the Ocean Fortress has the exact same floorplan as the Sky Fortress, the only real difference being whether you'll have to deal with anti-magic enemies.
  • Cosmic Keystone: The seals, including Furiae, a living seal. They keep two extraordinarily important things under wraps. The district keys in the second game along with Angelus also exist to prevent the world from ending.
  • Counter-Attack:
    • Most enemies have this ability; strike them repeatedly, and they'll eventually flash and become impervious to frontal strikes as they prepare to strike back.
    • In the sequel, when defending against attack, pressing the Attack button with precise timing will throw the attacker off guard and allow you a quick combo.
  • Crapsack World:
    • The first game takes place in a world ruined by war, with the Empire appearing to be a nigh-unstoppable force that seems to always be ahead of the protagonists.
  • Cutting Off the Branches:
    • Ending E leads into NieR, but the two "sequels" are treated as two separate Alternate Continuities. Drakengard 3 establishes that all endings are "canon" in the sense that they're the result of divergences that can be observed and even triggered.
  • Day-Old Legend: Averted here (where, in both games, weapons reveal their histories as they increase in level) in two ways: one, you don't craft weapons, but instead unlock them, so you're not just making ancient weapons from scratch; and two, the starting weapons of your characters in the second game... have the backstories of their wielders as their histories.
  • Death from Above:
    • Following the biggest military engagement in the game, the Empire nukes the victorious Union army from their sky fortress, rendering your entire efforts pointless. ...uh, thanks?
    • And as a gameplay mechanic in both games, some ground missions allow you to incinerate most enemy Mooks via dragonfire with absolute impunity.
  • Destructible Projectiles: Attacks from enemy mages and archers can be blocked by striking them with an attack, although the precise timing for this can be difficult to accomplish when fending off swarms of other Mooks at the same time. Some projectiles (like the bounty hunters' knives) can even be deflected back at the thrower.
  • Dragon Rider: Caim (and Nowe in 2) can take massive leaps to mount his dragon in field battles and rides on her back in aerial battles.
  • Dysfunction Junction: Anyone who is important is either a tragic figure of some sort or a slaughter-happy monster. Or both.
  • 11th-Hour Superpower: In the first game, the dragon obtains a Chaos Form for use in the final air battles and one boss fight against Caim in some routes. In the sequel, depending on your ending, Nowe will fight the final boss in his "New Breed" form.
  • Failure Is the Only Option:
    • Furiae dies in the first game regardless of which route you take. Not even resurrecting her turns out well as Inuart learns the hard way.
    • Destroying the district keys in the second game doesn't save the world as Nowe and Manah are led to believe, and instead of only dooms it.
  • Fighting Your Friend:
    • After the Empire kidnap Inuart and brainwash him, he fights against Caim a couple of times. He still does so after his brainwashing is broken, due to him wanting to resurrect Furiae, which (unbeknownst to him) will bring about the end of the world.
    • Subverted with Urick in the sequel. He explicitly informs you how to actually kill him, but Nowe won't have any of it and decides to take Caim out instead. In return, Caim's the one who slays Urick.
    • Then there's Ending C in the first game, where the dragon ends Caim's pact and the two of them fight to the death to determine the fate of the world.
    • Likewise, the standard ending in the sequel pits Nowe against Legna, which also happens in the final one.
  • Flavor Text: The histories behind each and every weapon you can collect. They also differ between the two games.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • The first game's intro text summarizes what happens during the game: The protagonists try and fail to prevent the seals from being destroyed, the Watchers later invade the world and Caim has to fight their queen.
    • Right at the start of the first game, Caim gives Angelus the choice between "a pact or death". Post-Ending E, it is revealed that anyone who comes into contact with the maso particles brought into the world by the queen-beast is forced to make a pact with a god and become one of the mindless Legion, or else be turned to salt and die.
    • There are quite a few hints that Nowe is the son of Inuart and Furiae that can be found long before the Info Dump in Chapter 11 confirms it. For starters, Nowe's father is Legna, who was Inuart's pact partner, and one of the weapons that Nowe can obtain is called Inuart's Long Sword .
    • During the second game, the player can still obtain spears for Eris despite her being stabbed by Nowe during his encounter with General Gismor at the District of Heavenly Time. As it turns out, she's not really dead after all and re-joins the party before the final chapter.
  • Guide Dang It!:
    • The various weapons in the first game have often-counterintuitive and occasionally contradictory unlocking conditions. Worse still, you're required to get them all alongside completing Chapter 12 if you intend to unlock the True Final Boss.
    • There are a few weapons that have the "Unknown Trait" in the second game. The game never tells you that these weapons deal more damage to certain bosses. Inuart's Long Sword doesn't have this trait, but the game never tells you that it deals more damage against Caim during his boss fight.
    • Various Free Expeditions in the second game tend to update themselves during the main story, though the player is never told when this happens. This means that some require you to complete the same Free Expedition more than once to get everything.
  • Hack and Slash: It's similar to Dynasty Warriors with RPG Elements, except with extremely limited combos and magic and a slower pace and... well.
  • Heal Thyself:
    • The first game has two weapons whose magic allows the player to heal themselves.
    • The second game allows the player to buy a variety of items to heal themselves during both Aireal and Ground mission.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters:
    • The Fairies justify their Jerkass natures with this. Angelus also has a tendency to act haughty and superior when around humans.
    • "A wise man chooses death before war. A wiser man chooses not to be born." Ouch.
    • Legna picks up right where Angelus left off in the sequel.
  • 100% Completion:
    • Downplayed. Ending E requires you to collect every weapon in the game before it can be played, though you thankfully don't have to max them all out (and doing so doesn't really have much purpose besides that).
    • The second game rewards the player for obtaining all weapons by allowing them to refight bosses, though said fights are much harder than they were originally. Also the player gets the Super Orb which allows you to play as Nowe in his New Breed form, though it doesn't come with his 11th-Hour Superpower that he had during the Final Boss fights.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: You can carry eight weapons ranging from polearms, hammers, and axes to daggers and swords (including the world's largest sword) into battle with you. Joy!
  • Katanas Are Just Better: They look better, sure, but they're actually no better numerically than any other weapon you could choose from.
  • Knight in Shining Armor: Deconstructed in the first game with Caim, and then played straight with Posthumous Character Oror in the second.
  • Knockback: Hammers, maces, and axes generally send enemies flying with every hit that connects, making them useful crowd-clearing weapons in your hands, and annoying weapons in the enemies' hands.
  • Law of Cartographical Elegance: Yup, all the world is a square. At least the map is.
  • Let's Play:
  • Level Grinding:
    • The main reason to slay hundreds upon hundreds of enemy Mooks.
    • In the first game, Caim's kills increase his maximum HP (which the dragon shares), while the dragon's kills increase her attack power. Weapons increase based on the number of actual kills, so replaying early levels to slaughter scores of low-level enemies is a fairly easy way to level up.
    • In the sequel, characters collect their experience points individually, with slight increases in HP, attack, and/or defense power as they level up.
  • Level-Map Display: Both games display a map of the level when pausing the game; the second also allows you to switch between your enemy-radar and level-map overlay at any time (once you collect the area's actual map).
  • Love Triangle:
    • Inuart is in love with Furiae. Furiae is in love with her brother. Caim is in love with murdering everything that gets in his way.
    • Nowe and Eris have mutual crushes, though Eris is destined to become the celibate goddess. Nowe falls in love with Manah through the course of the game. Depending on the ending, he can end up with either woman.
  • Merging the Branches: Ending A of the first game is naturally the one that leads to the sequel, since it's the only one that doesn't feature either a world-ending apocalypse and/or Caim and Angelus disappearing into a portal, though Ending E, the one where Caim and Angelus follow the Grotesquerie Queen to 2003 Tokyo, kill it, then get unceremoniously shot down by a Japanese fighter plane, splits off to lead into NieR. However, later material released for Drakengard 3 reveals that the Drakengard timeline is pretty similar to our own up to about 856 AD, where a calamity known as the "Great Apocalypse" happens, and it goes its own way for a while until sometime after the events of the second game, circa 1117 AD, where its timeline starts to match ours again with a few minor differences, like Black Friday instead being "Black Thursday". Then things go off the rails again when one day in 2003, the sky opens up over Tokyo, spitting out a giant grotesque creature and a smaller red dragon intent on killing it, which the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force scrambles fighters to deal with...
  • No Biological Sex: Dragons, while they may have voices and traits that may make it seem that they have genders they are genderless.
  • One-Man Army: The player character, whether it be Caim and his allies in the first game, or Nowe and his in the sequel.
  • Party in My Pocket: Only one member of the party is actually on the field at a time, though dialogue overlays imply that they're intended to be all present at once.
  • Point of No Return: Nope, the first game uses a level-select feature, while the second allows you to return to the World Map for shops / sidequests before any mission.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: In the first game, the seals were just kind of... there. In the second, they're fueled by the life force of the surviving Imperials.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Consider the, uh, "heroes" —
    • Drakengard: Deposed prince with a penchant for slaughter, dragon who thinks humanity barely rates above roaches, paedophile and his jerkass fairy companion, cannibal survivor of the elven holocaust with a taste for human veal and her elemental buddies, blond kid with a giant magic rock friend, and a long-winded old bald priest.
  • Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: All named dragons introduced so far all have some sort of angelic name such as Angelus, Legna, Mikhail and Gabriel. The human characters meanwhile are mostly named after demons.
  • Ring Menu: The Weapon Wheel allows the player to switch between up to eight weapons during combat. The sequel adds a second layer which can hold up to six items (Healing Potions, etc).
  • Scratch Damage: While melee attacks can be blocked without harm, blocking magic attacks will incur token damage to Caim in the first game (though at least without the accompanying stun or knockdown) and your party in the second game.
  • Shoot the Medic First: Some enemy mages have the ability to strengthen/heal their comrades, and the game explicitly advises slaying them first to gain an advantage.
  • Simulation Game: Flight Sim in particular, via Dragon Rider.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Very cynical. The second game shifts a little towards idealism, but only just a little. With the exception of the final ending, which plays the Earn Your Happy Ending trope completely straight.
  • Timed Mission:
    • All missions in the first game have a standard timer of 60 minutes (not that you really need that much time to complete your objectives), although some missions have shorter time limits and will display the clock onscreen. Chapter 10, Verse 3 in particular gives you 150 seconds to traverse the level (fortunately, devoid of any enemies to slow you down).
    • The second game generally lets you Take Your Time, except for a few cases where a blue "time" meter is shown on the side of the screen and slowly drains.
  • Turns Red:
    • About the only boss who doesn't change their attack patterns is the Final Boss of Ending 2 in Drakengard 1, the Came Back Wrong goddess Furiae.
    • General Gismor also plays this literally; he normally switches from red to blue to indicate his particular attack pattern, but when he runs low on HP, he turns a dark red and opts for homing projectiles instead of the usual energy shockwaves.
  • Unbreakable Weapons: Which is good, considering how much of a workout they get.
  • Underground Monkey:
    • Most enemies in the first game also come in red armor which protects them from magic attacks, but they are otherwise the same.
    • Enemy mages in the sequel have different colors and attacks, and then there are "the gods'" monsters which resemble knights and orcs.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
    • Done in quite an asinine-yet-realistic fashion in Ending E when Caim and Angelus finally defeat the Eldritch Abomination Big Bad... and are then abruptly shot down by fighter jets. The citizens of Tokyo have no understanding of what is going on, they just want to stop these otherworldly things that appeared out of thin air and wrecked half of their city. Unfortunately, the truth is that only one of the beings was malevolent and is spreading The Corruption from its remains, and the only being Tokyo could've asked for help is the same one they lethally shot down. This results in NieR.
  • Upgrade Artifact: The weapons gain levels and longer (tragic) back stories as they kill more enemies.
  • Voice of the Legion: Manah gets this in both games whenever she's possessed by the Gods. It's Narmy as all get-out, too due to the monochrome male voice that sounds more bored than demonic.
  • Where It All Began: The Castle of the Goddess was the very first stage in the first game. In the sequel, the skies above it are the setting for the final duel against Angelus, aka Red, aka the new Goddess.
  • You ALL Look Familiar: Any soldier you talk to looks the same and has the same face.

Drakengard 1 

  • All There in the Manual: Among other things, it's revealed that Leonard was absent from the massacre that killed his brothers because he was alone masturbating in the forest.
  • Alternate History: Drakengard actually takes place in an alternate world version of 11th century Europe (specifically around the Iberian Peninsula), just with magic and fantasy elements, though the connections to the real world are otherwise pretty slim. Or so it seems. In truth, the game takes place in a timeline which started off identical to our world until the year 856, at which point a futuristic city filled with magic and fantasy creatures (the Imperial Capital from the game) inexplicably materialized in midair and greatly impacted the course of history for millenia to come. Ending E has Caim and Angelus travel to 2003 in a version of the world where this event didn't happen — as in, the normal human world — but by doing so, they inadvertently introduce magic to it, thus kicking off the NieR timeline, which is heavily implied to eventually cause the aforementioned event of 856 back in the world of Drakengard. If all this sounds like a Temporal Paradox, that's because it is. There are forces In-Universe who are aware of this and are trying to stop it by unscrambling the Timey-Wimey Ball that the timeline had become, but not only have they not been succesful thus far, it's implied the world has already looped over in different ways multiple times. As a final twist of Mind Screw, the real real world (as in, the one you exist in right now, where Drakengard is a game) appears to be observable In-Universe as demonstrated by Accord in Drakengard 3. So, yeah, just a bog standard medieval fantasy world.
  • Apocalypse How: The Empire initially seems to be striving for a Class 0~3 extinction by ignoring peace treaties, destroying the status quo, and generally murdering as many innocents as possible in their attempts to break the Seals. As it turns out, they're being manipulated by the Cult of the Watchers, who is in turn a vessel of an elusive God who is aiming for a Class Z Apocalypse; the destruction of not only the world of Drakengard, but its parallel worlds (i.e. Ending E's "real world" and by extention the Nier timeline that picks up from there) and different game universes altogether (i.e. Final Fantasy XIV, whose collaboration event with Nier Automata inadvertently sheds some light on the original Drakengard).
  • Armor Is Useless: The protagonist and company rarely wear more than a little shoulder armor. The hordes of tin can knights might as well be in jammies for all the good their armor does.
  • Assist Character: Your ally functions like this during the first game. You can summon them to take your place 3 times per level, and their health gradually decreases until it reaches 0 and they leave. But in the meantime they get infinite uses of their magic ability, which can not only be charged for greater power, but bypasses red enemies' magic resistance.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: When Verdelet attempts to exorcise the Watchers from Manah in Ending A, she instead transforms into a giant. The Mother Grotesquerie seen during the last few chapters counts as well.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: How Caim views the people of the Empire. As far as we can tell, this is true as long as the Cult of the Watchers is in charge. Once they're deposed in Ending A and the sequel rolls around, though...
  • Badass Boast: Angelus gives a good one near the end of game one.

    Angelus: Nothing is stronger than we are now. Let nothing that values life stand before us!
    Angelus: You fight well. But your strength is no match for my dragonfire!

  • Barbie Doll Anatomy: The Grotesqueries are missing any sort of identifying genitalia, making them androgynous.
  • Black-and-Gray Morality: A revenge-driven genocidal maniac, a Jerkass, human-hating dragon, a suicidal pedophile and his sociopathic fairy companion, a psychotic cannibal who likes to eat children, a cowardly priest, and a naïve young boy who shouldn't be in this Ragtag Bunch of Misfits... They are all that stands in the way of The Empire headed by a possessed Creepy Child.
  • Bleak Level: Tokyo, oddly enough. All of Ending E is Deliberately Monochrome, with all voice acting and sound effects during cutscenes sounding muted underneath a layer of static, and the only music to be heard are some ominous bell chimes created by Caim and the giant Grotesquerie Queen battling it out. After the ending and Caim and Angelus' deaths are some Silent Credits with only the sounds of traffic in the distance.
  • Would Hurt a Child: The side chapter, "Leonard's Regret", involves taking out a garrison of Imperial child conscripts despite vocal protests from Leonard. And frankly, the whole game may as well be renamed "Would Hurt A Child: The Game".
  • Boring, but Practical: For the most part, one of the easiest ways to get through the first game is to stick with Caim's Sword and fully level it up. It's attack power is decent enough to get you through the Ending A route and it's magic attack is useful for mowing down weaker enemies and stunning stronger ones at least. If anything, it'll do until you can get your hands on better long swords or other weapons with far higher attack power.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: The ??? unlocked after beating the final Free Expedition is for the most part rather fun to play as, and is suitably powerful befitting it's status as a post-game reward. However, it's utility is rather limited because you can't freely choose Angelus's forms in the story mode, therefore meaning that you can only use it in Free Expedition missions, and by then you've already obtained every single ending and completed all the Free Expeditions in the game.
  • "Bringer of War" Music: The ground theme in "Seere's Prayer" samples the piece itself.
  • Broken Record: The game's soundtrack is best described as Philip Glass on steroids having a schizophrenic fit. With apocalyptic bells.
  • Brother–Sister Incest: Furiae wants Caim. Sexually. References to such were mostly removed from the US release (although it was left explicit in the PAL version), but some hints remain sprinkled across a few scenes. Whether or not Caim returns those feelings is left to the player's interpretation of his wordless reactions, though some novelizations explicitly state the feeling is mutual, and that the reason the price of his pact was his voice was that it prevented him from telling her the truth before it's too late.
  • Came Back Wrong: If Inuart succeeds in resurrecting the goddess Furiae during the Ending B route, the Seed of Resurrection transforms her dead body into a monstrous angel-like creature with a skeletal tail. Unfortunately for Caim, the resurrected Furiae was only one of many and it's implied that the world is now doomed as a result of Inuart's ability to let go.
  • Character Development: Caim and Angelus start out hating each other's guts and only cooperating for the sake of survival. Canonically, they grow to respect each other and by the end actually become friends and even possible lovers, as seen in ending A and C. In the sequel, Caim is willing to destroy the world in order to free Angelus from her torment.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Note that red Mooks are immune to magic (including dragonfire) and will merely reflect spells back at you.
  • Colossus Climb: See that scaffolding on the Imperial war cyclopes? Better get ready to... take them out from the sky with your dragon instead.
  • Completion Mockery: The more you complete of the original game, the more unhinged the main character reveals himself to be and the worse the endings that you unlock become.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The Grotesqueries don't follow the same rules from level to level. After a flying level where the player can roast them with ease and their projectiles only hit for about a circle of health, the next level is an on-foot level where they're suddenly immune to dragon breath and magic. Two levels later is one more flying level where their projectiles suddenly hit you for a quarter of your health. No mention is made of them getting stronger in-universe, they just seem to have whatever abilities is convenient for that level.
  • Conveniently an Orphan: Deconstructed with vengeance. The brutal deaths of Caim's parents act as the driving force behind his bloodthirsty behavior, though the game itself admits that it's a thin vaneer for Caim's desire to sate his rage.
  • Convenient Questing: For the main story, at least. The side quests in the first game instead take the heroes well out of the way of where they're supposed to go. Chapter 10, which you never play in the first ending path, is called "Astray" for a reason.
  • Creepy Monotone: As practiced by The Evil Army, who mutter inane semi-ominous gibberish a few times throughout the game. Manah's second voice also dips into this at times.
  • Damage Over Time: The True Final Boss fight in the first game has the player's HP drain constantly, with the only way to recover HP being that you successfully counter the enemy's notes. Despite this, you're a One-Hit-Point Wonder and getting hit by an enemy note will cause an immediate Game Over.
  • Dark Fantasy: Starts off this way, and graduates into a Cosmic Horror Story by the end.
  • Death Course: The final level of Ending D. Instead of a final boss battle, you have to fly through a cloud of Grotesqueries and repeatedly dodge their onslaught of magic, all to get Seere into position over the Queen Beast. Faltering for even a few seconds will see you fail, and you'll have to do this Suicide Mission all over again.
  • Deconstruction:
    • The first game gives us a glimpse into the psyche of the kind of person in an RPG who would be willing to kill a buttload of people in order to strengthen his weapons and level himself up. The result? Not very nice.
    • The game also takes a jab at Multiple Endings being unlocked by completing other criteria in-game. What, you think you deserve a better ending because you killed more people? Indeed, almost every ending past A makes the situation worse and worse for the cast and world. Or, in Ending E's case, a parallel universe.
    • In many an RPG, players ask why the heroes don't just kill the Big Bad and be done with it. Seere does exactly that in Chapter 11, causing the Grostequeries to show up and make things, far, far worse than if he just left Manah alone.
  • Deliberately Monochrome: Modern-day Tokyo in Ending E is black and white. Even the final boss's and the player's attacks are black and white energy waves.
  • Diabolus ex Machina: The universe of Drakengard is just deadset on killing any chance of hope or success, especially in Endings B through E.
  • Damsel in Distress: There exists Furiae concept art where she wields a crook as a weapon and is shown with a pact-beast. In-game, she spends all but the first handful of levels captured and dies in every single ending.
  • Downer Ending: Every single ending in the first game apart from the first one, most especially Ending B, Ending C and Ending E, the last of which creates NieR's post-apocalyptic Crapsack World. According to Word of God, this is because he believes a story where the main character kills thousands of people in a horrible war doesn't merit a happy ending, not to mention the cast of Drakengard being comprised of such terrible people that they don't really deserve one anyways.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: As the first game in the series as well as Taro Yoko's first real project, it's unsurprising that this game sticks out compared to later installments, for instance lacking much of the quirky humor and moral complexity of later titles. To elaborate, not only are the villains essentially mere thralls of an Ax-Crazy genocidal cult, the "heroic" main cast of the game is a rather unsubtle Take That! against the tropes he was Deconstructing at the time, with their humanizing and sympathetic moments being few and far between. The characters in all his later games were given considerably more nuanced and sympathetic portrayals even with the Deconstructor Fleet being in full effect.
  • Earn Your Bad Ending: The first ending you get in Drakengard 1 is bittersweet. All subsequent endings get progressively worse (mostly) and require increasingly more effort to unlock.
  • Easter Egg: The Su-47 in the first game is reference to the Ace Combat series that is unlocked after beating the Tokyo Free Expedition.
  • Easy Level Trick: "Awakening" would be considered one of the hardest levels in the game due to it pitting you against an army of Grotesqueries, all of whom are much stronger now and can shave off masses of your HP with a few shots despite your Dragon being in Chaos Form. Or you could just use the Circle button to shut off your lock-on and go straight to the target, ending the mission in less than a minute.
  • Eats Babies: Arioch, in an act that she believes would "protect them in the safety of her womb". She has the tables turned on her by the Watchers, which she seems to actually be pretty happy with.
  • Eldritch Abomination:
    • The Grotesqueries, in an unspeakably creepy parody of innocent baby-like cherubs. They have teeth and slasher smiles.
    • In the Ending B route, Inuart places Furiae into a Seed of Resurrection, causing her to return to life… as a horrifically twisted version of herself. The end result has thorned tentacles, massive angel wings with her old arms on the very ends, and with her human face still on the end, among other things. And then, in the end, every other seed gives birth to a copy of that monstrosity!
  • The Empire: Subverted with "the Empire", who aren't actually an empire by any definition of the word, but rather are a ragtag collection of mind-controlled strangers assembled into a zombie-esque army by a cult who is trying to destroy the world, meaning they understandably don't care much about gaining land and their "capital" is just the city they happened to pillage first in their quest to break the Seals.
  • The End of the World as We Know It: Most endings except in Drakengard 1 imply this to some extent sans Ending A. Ending E ends up bringing it to the modern-day world.
  • "Everybody Dies" Ending: In most endings, the cast gets decimated at least, wiped out entirely at worst. The events of Ending E even lead to the extinction of the human race in another timeline.
  • Evil Hero: Caim battles the Empire so as the save the world, but also does so to satiate his bloodlust and hatred against them, and frequently abuses both his teammates and random innocents.
  • The Fair Folk: Brushed upon. Fairies are mostly jerks who mock humans for their failures and weaknesses.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Map: The map is an inverted version of Europe, especially Spain, reflecting how it was an alternate version of Europe before magic was introduced by Stable Time Loop.
  • Fate Worse than Death: Several. Including...
    • Manah begging for death after being defeated in Ending A.
    • Furiae being resurrected into not one, but several thousand horrific monstrosities.
    • Seere, Caim, and the dragon when time itself is destroyed around the Imperial capital. Seere never gets to die and rejoin his mother, and Caim and the dragon are stuck in the midst of being devoured by Grotesqueries. Forever.
  • Foe-Tossing Charge: Caim is capable of these in the opening movie and during gameplay if he builds up enough speed to dash at the enemy.
  • For Doom the Bell Tolls: The True Final Boss theme of the first game is nothing but eerie bells.
  • Gameplay Ally Immortality: In the first game, allies are "summoned" to replace Caim for a limited time. The manual even recommends summoning them when Caim is low on HP.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • Early on, an Empire soldier catches Caim in the back, causing him to bleed out and therefore prompts him a pact with Angelus. Despite this, Caim has no special weakness to back attacks during gameplay and not once does he ever consider getting a better set of armour to prevent this from happening again.
    • Despite Leonard's horror at Caim murdering child soldiers, the game doesn't prevent you from selecting Leonard as an ally during any missions where you fight them.
    • During the second game, despite Nowe pleading with villagers and the Knights early on to lay down their weapons, the player can still kill them en mass without any negative consequences.
    • The Mourning Thorn weapon in the second game is stated to make it's wielder more bloodthirsty and aggressive, though Urick, the one character who can wield it recieves no gameplay changes for wielding it.
  • Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration:
    • Once Caim makes the pact with Angelus, he loses his voice because his pact mark is on his tongue. As a result, Caim becomes a Heroic Mime for the rest of the story, except for the Ending C final boss due to Angelus severing their pact because of her loyalties to the dragon race.
    • After being poisoned by General Gismor, the following level has you escape from the castle while gradually losing HP due to being poisoned.
  • Infinity +1 Sword:
    • Kingsblood and Hymir's Finger in the first game.
    • The second game has Hero's Knife/Moonfire for Nowe, Falcon's Pinion for Eris, Monk's Red Staff for Manah and Broken Iron for Urick.
  • Genre Deconstruction: Drakengard is to Action RPGs what Neon Genesis Evangelion is to the Super Robot genre (which is incidentally directly stated to be an inspiration and has a Shout-Out to it in-game).
  • Genre Shift: From dark Heroic Fantasy to Cosmic Horror Story Survival Horror.
  • Gentle Giant: Seere's pact-partner, Golem agreed to their pact because he wanted a friend. When an enemy mage takes control of him during the "Seere's Prayer" chapter, he gets distressed about it and when Seere orders Golem to punch him, the giant expresses remorse over punching Seere despite both of them still being alive due to their pact.
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The final boss changes based on the ending route (though Ending D lacks a proper Final Boss), and most of them could not have been expected from information presented in-game —
    • "A" route: Giant-sized Manah! While the opponent was expected, the form was not.
    • "B" route: Giant mutant resurrected Furiae!
    • "C" route: Not-that-giant-but-still-rather-large Chaos-version Angelus!
    • "E" route: Rhythm game with a giant Mama Grotesquerie in downtown Tokyo! And then some fighter jets blow you up.
  • Grimdark: In spades. Here's the little story for Bonebreaker, an axe you can unlock: "Once, a man opened a shed, and there were a bunch of skeletons and stuff. Oh, and he had an axe. THE END." And it just goes from there.
  • Hand Wave: Happens a lot in some of the more disturbing endings, often as a Lampshade Hanging on the intensity of how crazy things get.
  • Happy Ending Override: Ending E ends with pieces of the Grotesquerie Queen's magical flesh falling over Tokyo as ash. As NieR would reveal, people ended up getting sick from this foreign substance, although it's heavily implied that it was more that she was forcing those who ingested her flesh to pact with her or die rather than foreign contamination.
  • Harmful to Minors: As a child, Caim witnessed the brutal death of his parents at the hands of the Empire.
  • Heroic Mime: For a very, very loose definition of hero. Caim is mute, due to his pact price with the dragon, and tends to 'communicate' through the medium of "kicking my allies in the head and brutally murdering my enemies". This carries on into the second game, where he is an Enemy Mime instead.
  • Hit Me, Dammit!: Manah to Caim in Ending A. Despite his initial decision to kill Manah, after being talked out of it, he settles on letting her live so that she may see what her actions have caused.
  • Just Eat Gilligan: Deconstructed. The last two Ending routes happen because Seere decides to do the logical thing by killing off the Big Bad. Instead of just instantly solving everything, things get worse as the Grotesqueries show up and begin the process of laying waste to the entire world.
  • Kaizo Trap: In the original, the final battle for Ending E is a two-and-a-half minute rhythm game, where getting hit once will force you to start the "battle" over. As it approaches the end, the Queen-Beast will launch a rapid-fire series of 49 attacks. If you manage to survive this attack, don't put down your controller and relax just yet. She'll fire a single attack five seconds afterwards.
  • Karmic Death:
    • Inuart's role in kidnapping Furiae eventually leads to her death and his attempt to resurrect Furiae with the Seed of Destruction only makes things worse in the Ending B route. For his trouble, Inuart ends up getting impaled by the resurrected Goddess's skeletal tail.
    • Arioch, in the fourth and fifth endings, gets devoured by the Grotesqueries.
    • Caim spends most of the game butchering enemies en mass and shows no qualms about killing children. While he gets the closest he'll ever get to a happy ending in Ending A, manages to secure a Bolivian Army Ending in Endings B & C and barely averts getting this in Ending D by being eaten by Grotesqueries, Ending E sees him and Angelus killed by a missile from a F-15DJ with only Angelus's body remaining, ensuring that Caim dies forgotten and that the only people will miss him are the Union (who are likely gone as well).
  • Multiple Endings: Drakengard has 5 endings, which are unlocked after getting the previous ones, and all of which have a name with a relevant letter highlighted in red.
    • Ending A: the Anguish of an unsmiling Watcher. The default and canon ending that directly leads to Drakengard 2. Caim and Angelus defeat Manah, and Angelus goes on to become the new Seal in the fallen Furiae's place.
    • Ending B: flowers for the Broken spirit. Inuart resurrects Furiae with a Seed of Resurrection, causing Furiae to be reborn as an insane monster. No sooner does Caim put her out of her misery does he witness a horde of Furiae clones flying upwards, dooming humanity.
    • Ending C: a Companion's eternal farewell. Angelus turns against Caim, who ends up killing her and proceeds to battle against the rest of her kind.
    • Ending D: the wild dreams of a Deluded child. Seere kills Manah, unwittingly bringing forth the Watchers and the Grotesquerie Queen upon the world. Seere uses his immortality to freeze the Watchers, Caim, Angelus, and himself in time forever.
    • Ending E: the End of the dragon sphere. Caim and Angelus chase after the Grotesquerie Queen to another world, landing in Tokyo of all places, and successfully destroy her. However, they are immediately shot down by missiles and killed, and the Grotesquerie Queen's remains would bring about White Chlorination Syndrome, leading to the events of Nier.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Many of the endings of the first game, except the ending A, are like this. Probably the worst offender is the bonus "E" ending, which only unlocks after collecting all 65 weapons (Guide Dang It!!), whose sole mission pits the player against a Nintendo Hard Unexpected Gameplay Change, which ends in the player characters being shot down by a jet.
  • Shout-Out:
    • In the Japanese version of Drakengard, the fighter jet that kills Caim and Angelus in Ending E has the callsign of "Scarface", referring to the original Player Character of the Ace Combat series who has the callsign "Scarface 1". You can also unlock the Su-47 Berkut, a jet prominently featured in Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies, as a playable dragon for Caim to ride.
    • According to the developers, the official title of Ending E, "The End of the Dragon Sphere" ("Dragon Sphere" being the game's Working Title) is a reference to The End of Evangelion.
  • Hide Your Children: Very, very much averted, with one level even having Caim slaughter Child Soldiers.
  • Infallible Babble: Graffiti written in blood is surprisingly reliable!
  • Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Red-colored enemies are not only immune to magical attacks and your dragon's fire breath, but will automatically counter with a projectile attack of their own.
  • Lampshade Hanging: When the metaphysical shit hits the fan this hard, even the game has to step back and acknowledge it. In an especially cruel fashion, Seere's Heroic Sacrifice is mocked in the ending titles when he tries to compare it to a fairy tale his mother told him. Even the post credits screen isn't so kind either.
  • The Load: Seere borders on this: he wastes a lot of the group's time by making them go on a wild goose chase looking for his family, then gets kidnapped and needs rescuing; without Golem, he's about as useful in combat as you'd expect from a real eight-year old. His (or rather, Golem's) actions when they encounter Manah may make up for it, though. (May being the key word, seeing as this act ends up causing the Grotesqueries to descend upon the world.) Verdelet also borders on this, not so much because he needs saving all the time, but because he never really does anything useful, and one of the few times he tries, it backfires spectacularly.
  • Low Fantasy: While the game is technically high fantasy (flying castles, airships, enemy wizards, goblins, giants, apocalyptic horrors, dragons, seventy-odd cursed magical weapons collectible by Caim), the game is so dreary and depressing the wonder of such things is replaced by horror.
  • Magnet Hands:
    • Caim never drops his weapons no matter how far he gets thrown around. It gets ridiculous when bigger weapons are involved.
    • In the first game, the only time we ever see Caim without his sword visibly in hand is in one of the ending cinematics.
  • The Man Behind the Man: The Watchers. It turns out that Manah was just their figurehead and once she's dead, the Watchers themselves choose to take action.
  • Medium Blending: Tokyo in Ending E is rendered in cutscenes via live-action footage with 3D models added in.
  • Mercy Invincibility: Except for a few enemies' combo attacks, taking any damage in the first game results in this, allowing you to counterattack immediately. The second game lacks Mercy Invincibility entirely.
  • Metal Slime: In the first game, magical soldiers with a 60-second timer appear in a few levels. If you can defeat one, they drop a bonus orb that bestows free "kills" on all weapons you brought into the level with you.
  • Mind-Control Eyes: Inuart and the whole Empire — anything acting at the behest of the Watchers.
  • Mind Rape: Inuart and Furiae, both by the gods. The former pulls a Face–Heel Turn and serves the Empire in order to save Furiae. The latter admits her feelings for Caim, much to his disgust.
  • Mind Screw: Endings D and E in the first game. The first suddenly introduces the Grotesqueries, who start to devour and destroy everything, and the second has Caim and Angelus chase the Grotesquerie Queen into real-life Tokyo to defeat it, where they're promptly shot down by fighter jets afterwards.
  • Mirror Boss: Inuart's Black Dragon has similar abilities to your own.
  • Mook Chivalry:
    • Nope, enemies will gladly surround you and start poking you from all directions. Most enemies don't actually attack very frequently, but if several of them start attacking all at once...
    • This also applies to enemy squad leaders (marked with a yellow dot) in the first game, who are often higher-class soldiers than their subordinates and are more aggressive.
  • Mook Commander: In the first game, enemies with a yellow dot next to their Life Meter are designated squad commanders (some of which may be Elite Mooks). The more commanders that are present in a given fight, the more aggressively they (and other Mooks) attack.
  • More than Mind Control: Inuart and, again, possibly the whole Empire. While some are under obvious Mind Control, a few soldiers at least retain their individuality; they may even make small-talk when they aren't required to fight.
  • My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Verdelet's goes off all the damn time. To a lesser extent, Leonard might as well have 20/20 vision thanks to how he "senses" his way through battles.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: Seere in Ending D. We know his time has been taken away from him, so obviously throwing him at the Time Monster causing the world to fall apart will end in kind-of sort-of victory! It's a cross between a bad-episode-of-Star Trek Ass Pull and partly justified, given what the heroes are up against.
  • No Endor Holocaust: Averted. As Grimoire Nier reveals, the events of Chapter 13 in Tokyo do result in massive damage. 320 are injured, 56 are dead and 60 billion yen in damages was dealt. Not to mention the remains of the Queen forcing a pact on the population and eventually leading into the apocalypse that the NieR games take place after.
  • No Ontological Inertia: There are a few cases where defeating a squad leader eradicates its entire party, such as with the Imperial war cyclopses in Chapter 7.
  • Not Quite the Right Thing: Ending E. Caim and Angelus defeat the Queen in another world to ensure that she can't return in the Drakengard world... except this other world is our world. At first, it seems the only downside is that it resulted in expensive property damage as well as some injuries and casualties and the government having to clean up the corpses of Caim, Angelus, and the Queen — but Grimoire Nier and collectible files in NieR reveal that the Queen survived via forcing everyone who ingested her ashes to pact with her or die so she can take over the world, resulting in the decline of Earth's society over the next century or so as they try to preserve humanity, leading to the post-apocalyptic background of the NieR games.
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: Subverted. Some of the game's stages have it as part of the background music, but Ominous Latin Chanting is never used to underscore an important plot event.
  • On-Ride/On-Foot Combat: Most open-air segments let you fight as Caim on the ground or from the skies on his Pact-bonded dragon Angelus. While the dragon can wreak devastation on ground units, Caim's weapons won't level up unless he's killing things in melee, and some units (notably archers and some units which actually reflect dragonfire back at you) can do a lot more damage to the dragon than to Caim, and Caim can only regain health for their Shared Life-Meter while on foot.
  • Optional Party Member: Leonard, Arioch, and Seere are completely optional. Seere in particular cannot be unlocked until having beaten the game once already.
  • Outside Ride: With the unlockable jet fighter Caim decides to sit on top of it instead of in it.
  • Pet the Dog: Near the end of the second game, as Angelus lays dying, Caim does his best to comfort her.
  • Power at a Price: Pacts. The human partner loses a function of their body, with implications that the beast is the one deciding what that price is. Some prices are particularly karmic, and some less literal than others; Caim lost his voice, Leonard his sight, Seere... his ability to age? Verdelet lost his hair?!
  • "Psycho" Strings: The first game's soundtrack is pretty much entirely made of spliced and distorted samples of classical orchestral symphonies, and thus is all over this trope like jam on toast. The sequel, less so, but when the world breaks again after the seals get destroyed, the background music makes use of it again.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: The soldiers of the Empire all have red eyes to indicate that they have been mind-controlled, which would later become an important recurring theme in the franchise.
  • Rival Turned Evil: Inuart. After being broken by the gods during his imprisonment, Inuart seeks to become stronger and eventually forms a pact with a black dragon, the same one that killed Caim's parents.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: The Grotesqueries are prevented from entering the world due to the four seals. Though they break in the all the endings, the Grotesqueries don’t show up until Ending D.
  • Sensory Abuse: The soundtrack is made up of orchestral pieces chopped up and remixed together, often in very jarring and repetitive ways and with lots of "Psycho" Strings. The result gives the game a very manic and unsettling atmosphere.
  • Shared Life-Meter: Caim and his dragon share a life bar both when he's riding and on the ground, though Caim has the opportunity to replenish it (by killing enemies such as archers, who can take out them very quickly when airborne).
  • Silent Credits: Ending E immediately after the Dropped a Bridge on Him moment.
  • Standard Snippet: A few bars from classical music appear here and there, most noticeably from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.
  • The Stoic: Arioch's pact-partners Undine and Salamander, for what little time they have on-screen.
  • Stylistic Suck: The first game's soundtrack, while not meant to be "poorly composed" per se, is intentionally cacophonic and dissonant, utilizing classical music samples that are edited with lots of short loops and glitches in order to evoke a feeling of anxiety in the listener rather than being pleasant to listen to. Drakengard 2 and the rest of the series dropped this concept in favor of more traditional soundtracks for the most part.
  • Summon Magic: Leonard, Seere, and Arioch summon their pact monsters for magic attacks. Caim appears to summon his party members to deploy them in the field.
  • Sword Pointing: Caim's Idle Animation in the first game.
  • Sword Beam: Specific weapons can produce a projectile attack when finishing certain combos.
  • Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: Because where else would Caim and Angelus get transported to in ending E if not the capital city of Japan? The Shinjuku ward to be exact, though they (or at least Angelus) wind up skewered on top of Tokyo Tower by the end.
  • Take Your Time: Sure, go and chase after Seere after he gets his fool ass kidnapped. It's not like you're going to save that seal anyway.
  • Taking You with Me: Leonard's death in Chapter 12 (leading to ending D) has him grasp Faerie in his hand to prevent them from trying to cancel their pact, ensuring that he sacrifices himself to buy Caim and Seere more time to stop the Grotesqueries.
  • Theme Naming: The main cast in the first game are named after demons, while the dragons seem to have angel-related names.
  • Time Stands Still: Ending D has Seere make use of the Great Time to freeze both ally and enemy in time forever to stop the world from being destroyed.
  • Trauma Conga Line: Gets worse and worse as you obtain the rest of the endings (in the first game, anyways).
  • Trippy Finale Syndrome: Ending E. Caim and the dragon are warped to modern-day Tokyo, where they defeat the queen Eldritch Abomination with an Unexpected Gameplay Change. Then they are shot down by Japanese air defense pilots. Really.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: The Final Boss fight (which proceeds like a game of Simon Says) is a controller-shattering exercise in frustration until you memorize the pattern.
  • Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: Upon appearing over Tokyo in Ending E, Caim and Angelus are eventually shot down by JSDF fighter jets. The Free Expedition unlocked after this pits the player against an entire squadron of them, and they're easily able to outmaneuver and outgun Angelus.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: That level where you kill Child Soldiers with Leonard calling you out on it? It's possible to have Leonard kill them.
  • Wave of Babies: The Grotesqueries in Chapter 12 are giant-sized babies.
  • Weapon of Mass Destruction: The Seeds of Resurrection aren't particularly good for resurrection, unless you count the last thing in the universe you want resurrected.
  • Wham Episode: Chapter 12, "Chaos", where the Watchers are introduced and all hell breaks loose.
  • Wham Shot: The shot of a modern cityscape in Ending E of the first game, followed by a caption reading "TOKYO".
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Caim is openly criticized for his eagerness to go out, fight, and slaughter Imperial Mooks by the hundreds. Especially in "Leonard's Regret", which involves wiping out Imperial child conscripts.
  • Wolfpack Boss: A dogfight against Tokyo's elite air defense pilots is unlocked if you successfully unlock (and complete) Ending E in the first game. Who will win, a dragon armed with homing firebreath, or a squad of five high-speed fighter jets with (equally high-speed) air-to-air missiles?