Part 30: A Look at New Game Plus
A Look at New Game Plus
So we're on the second playthrough and all the sudden we're tossed back to Chapter 4 and there's a new character and you don't know what the fuck, right? Let's try to clear that up a bit.
Drakengard doesn't really employ a New Game + mechanic in the traditional sense of "starting from the beginning but retaining all your stats." But it does in the sense that after the game is completed, a host of branching alternate paths unlock for new endings. And the whole stat thing too... But, when I say it isn't in the traditional sense, I mean the whole going back and replaying stages with your previous game's stats thing is available as soon as you load your game.
So, New Game + essentially starts from the get go. It's possible to go back and play any previous stage as soon as a game is loaded up. Caim's levels, weapons and such are all carried over. Same deal with Red's attack power (though not her leveled up forms.) Strangely enough, the recruited party members (Leonard, Arioch, Seere, and Verdelet...yes he counts) also are a constant. So, as far as the game is concerned, once you recruit any of the four, it considers them to have been with Caim since Chapter 1.
Indeed, all the sub-character's side story chapters' triggers take place several verses before when they initially get recruited. For instance, Seere's side story triggering verse takes place back in Chapter 4 where Red realizes Caim's parents were killed by a dragon. Arioch's takes place right when we meet Verdelet. And Leonard's takes place when we first found that guy who squeezed out all his blood to write about The Watchers.
Having completed the game once, we unveiled a couple of new chapters. Despite the fact they're labeled "Chapter 9" and "Chapter 10" they don't actually take place after Chapter 8. Both have a bit of requirements to unlock though. Drakengard is actually nice enough to tell you how to unlocked alternate chapters and verses.
For Chapter 9 it just involves completing the game and fucking up Inuart quickly during the second fight with him. Easy enough.
And this one requires getting all the sub-characters, beating the game, and going back to some random verse. Right...
As I said, despite the ascending chapter numbers they don't actually go in order. For instance, in this playthrough we'll be doing:
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 10 Verse 1-4
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 9
Edit: I should mention they ditch this in Drakengard 2 and just go "Fuck you. Replay the game. Also you cannot go back and replay parts you already completed because there's no chapter select, only one save, and the game autosaves between chapters."
Fuck Drakengard 2.