The Let's Play Archive

Drakengard

by The Dark Id

Part 27: Episode XXVII: In Which We Get the Canon Ending




Episode XXVII: In Which We Get the Canon Ending

Verse 7: Unrelenting


Alright. This is it. The Final Battle! Caim and Red versus the Fifty Story Tall Priestess Manah!


"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
...This has got to be the most retarded thing I've seen all month.
"You read my mind..."


So...Manah... Manah Manah Manah... Manah is...a very, very annoying boss. This is mostly due to her first attack pattern and the fact it takes for-fucking-ever to whittle it down. The attack pattern itself is very simple. To begin, she forms this giant sphere shield around her.



She then scribbles something on the shield, spins around merrily, and a volley of homing lasers erupts from the shield shattering it and locking onto Caim and Red. Now, this attack is no big deal. Simply dodging the attack to the right or left around a second before the blow impacts will avoid the strike 95% of the time. The annoying part is actually attacking the oversized kindergartner.


You see, Manah reforms her shield roughly two seconds after she unleashes her laser blast. So, taking dodging her attack into account, there's around a 1.5 second window to attack her. Couple that with the fact you cannot just fly straight toward her, but must follow a clockwise or counter-clockwise arc (her newly formed shield will blow Red back significantly if she flies too close. To make no mention of the damaging lasers forming) and...it's a bit of a pain to actually hit her before the shield reforms. But, that's not all!


In Manah's first attack pattern she doesn't play by normal enemy rules. Oh no. You know how in old platformer games like Sonic the Hedgehog or Super Mario World where after taking a hit your character would flash for a few seconds and be invulnerable?


Yeah...Manah is running on those rules minus the flashing. No more than at the very most two charged shots or one dummy fire shot will hit Manah before she reforms her shield. She has about a few second of invulnerability after each hit following that. So, locked-on shots and Red's magic attack are pretty much as damaging as a mosquito bite to her.


<snort> Do we really have to pretend this is a final boss that can be taken seriously?
"Stop breaking the fourth wall, Caim!"
Can any of you out there take this thing seriously? I mean COME ON!
"Put a lid on it and let us finish this thing. However silly it may be."
Seriously... I can't believe THIS is the canon ending. This is how we're going to move into Drakengard 2...
"Caim!"
Yeah, yeah. I'll shut up. Hur hur. Get it? Since I'm mute.
"It's a shame your stand up act never took off. The better part of the continent might have double a population at this point."


Spoken in the tone of a giant fuck off pissed dude growling... Okay it's that same Watcher angry voice going "Grrrr!" Still...


Spoken like a senile old man that's hard of hearing. Verdelet is so goddamn useless. But, fear not! There is a happy ending to his history of worthless attributes. Stay tuned to the next update. I think you'll be pleased.


After whittling down around 75% of Manah's health (after a good ten minutes of tedium) she finally switches up her tactics.



First of all, she signals her next round of attack by surrounding her next shield formation with runes then blowing it the fuck up. It's best to be way the hell away from that when that happens.



After that, she goes into a rather simple attack pattern where large circles of runes periodically erupt horizontally from her body. Despite the fact they randomly spawn, they are all rather easily avoided by just having Red fly roughly in the middle of where two rune circles form and just gliding up or down to avoid them. They're all rather slow and their hitboxes seem to be geared more toward the center of each.


This form is ridiculously easy and Manah's invulnerability window shrinks considerably. Magic and lock on is still worthless, but the best tactic for this round is to just fly far away as possible then turn back, aim Red toward Manah's chest, then just dummy fire a steady stream of shots while drifting slowly up and down to avoid her attacks. There's a considerable lag time between kicking the shit out of her in this form and her shifting to her final attack pattern. I think I managed to get her down to around 10% health before she swapped over once.


After knocking Giantess Manah past 25% health, she slowly shifts to her final attack pattern. At this point her damaging purple rune circles start going all willy-nilly in all directions. They also start emanating from her crotch. I have no comment. DO NOT COMMENT EITHER YOU CREEPY LURKER FUCKS.


This section gets a wee bit hairy to say the least. Which is why pounding the shit out of Manah in the previous attack pattern is a good thing. NO COMMENT ON THAT WORDAGE ALL YOU CREEPY BASTARDS. I WILL KILL YOU IN YOUR GODDAMN SLEEP!

A few minutes of spitting fireballs in a gigantic six year old girl's face later...




And thus the little girl rockets to her death screaming for her mother.

Bwahahaha. Nope... That's saved for another ending.... Let's go see how she turned out post battle.

Verse 8: Sin


Whelp, Caim and Red have officially kicked the Watchers out of Manah's head. Time to be an asshole to the remaining little girl they possessed.


"The gods are watching! It is their last judgment! We will be transformed!"



Verdelet, in his most useful role in the entire game, pushes over a six year old child.


Caim follows up with a sword drawn to neck like the sociopath we all know and love.


"Kill me if you want."


"I don't mind. I'm loved, you know. See, mother has to love me, if the gods love me."


<sigh> Ugh...


Oh great...she'll do...something! This kid ain't the avatar of...the Viewers or some shit anymore...is she...?
"The Watchers."
Feh.


"Don't hate me, Mother, please. I'm going to die, you see."
"..."
Ugh... Well what the hell is the fun in that...? Even if I could speak I cannot express my disappointment with this bullshit... Bleh... Talk about a buzz kill...


Dragon... I'm not feeling this... Not feeling it at all. I love the feel of battle! The clashing of bone and sinew! The cracking of bones and the screams of dying men! Some dumbass kid begging for death, though? I mean... I hate the little shit... I WANT to kill the little shit... But, dragon... This just isn't doing it for me...ya know...?
"..."
"I think I understand, Caim."
You...do...?
"In some strange way... I think I do, friend. Let me speak for you..."


"...!" <gasp>
"You will be despised by every soul in this world, unforgiven for all eternity."
"..."
<sobs> "No, no, no."
Damn, dragon. I think I like the sound of that... I like the sound of that a lot!
"I thought you might.'



Manah proceeds to throw a sobbing tantrum...


"Hahaha!"
"You enjoyed that?"
Long...term...torment... I'd never even considered it... It's like a savings bond of murder... Fantastic!


"We must find a new goddess at once. Another sacrifice to the seal. I am no priest. I am an executioner."
Baldy was a frickin' priest?! I thought he was a hired archer or something.
"Hierarch."
I did say OR SOMETHING!
"Hehe. I suppose you did..."
Heh...dragon. I think you may be one of the first to actually get me...


Eh...? I thought you thought that was "patronizing."
"I say many things, Caim."
Heh... Sure...


There you go, girl. We kicked some ass today, didn't we...?
"Indeed, we did Caim."
"..."


Any time, bud. Man...I've got some thinking to do... This kid needs a proper mindfuck by my measure... Let's see... Let us see...


"...!"
"But, do you know what you offer!?"



And thus Red makes her fateful decision...

Epilogue - Verse 9: A Soul Sealed


Aww...Red...




They sort of neglected mentioning it with Furiae's dull ass, but apparently becoming the Goddess is painful as fuck. In addition, it also seems to be magnified by the strength of the creature to become the goddess. So, Furiae's bland ass was limited to being a frail, bland, possibly barren lamer. Red... Well...





Well, the process begins with converting some scripture verse into raw energy.





Then said energy runes burn themselves extremely painfully into the target's flesh like a red hot iron branding...



Pfft... What are you *sniffle* talking about, dragon? It's just the damned rain. Big surprise! The Empire's weather is *sniff* shitty...




So Red is really Angelus (and just "Angel" in the Japanese version.) I don't know... I liked Red... The Black Dragon's name was "Legna" for reference. His dad's name was "Alucard".






And with that...The Red Dragon Angelus turns into a glowing orb...


...and flies into space. Yeah...I don't know what the fuck either...


Caim murders the shit out of Verdelet between games. There. I spoiled it. It's the best spoiler there is to be had.



Drakengard!


And that concludes the lamest, yet somehow canon, and least fucked ending of Drakengard! I'm almost positive this thing was forced unto the development staff by the producers for marketing purposes. So here's your vanilla, safe, and inoffensive but somewhat depressing ending. It's all increasingly fucked from here on out, kiddos. Strap in!

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Stay tuned...

Bonus Content:

Movies -
Manah's Final Hissy Fit
Drakengard: Ending A

Music -
Final Boss: Manah
Staff Roll A