Drakengard, known in Japan as Drag-On Dragoon,[a] is a series of action role-playing video games originally developed by Cavia and published by Square Enix.

Both series have been largely praised for their complex characters and storylines, although the practical gameplay of the Drakengard games has been criticized.

Both Drakengard and the original Nier have long been considered popular in Japan, selling well and gaining a cult following, and resulting in multiple adaptations and additional media such as books (including several novelizations), manga, comics, and a stage play.

They remained little-known outside of Japan until the 2017 release of Nier: Automata, which was a worldwide commercial and critical hit and led to an increase in interest from western countries, resulting in a remaster of the original Nier, subtitled Replicant ver.1.22474487139..., being released in 2021 to larger attention and substantially better sales than the original.

[26] Multiple staff members returned for the creation of the second game, although Yoko was mostly tied up with other projects and was replaced as director by Akira Yasui.

Yasui ended up making Drakengard 2 the thematic opposite of the previous game, employing a lighter tone and broader color palette.

[30] After its release, Cavia closed down and was absorbed by AQ Interactive,[30] then Yoko Taro left to pursue a wider range of projects.

[20][34] During the run-up to Drakengard 3's release, both Yoko and Shiba expressed their willingness to continue the series on the PlayStation 4 if the latest game was enough of a success.

[28][37][38] Yoko designed the darker elements to both contrast and actively compete with the likes of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.

Initially a minor staff member at Cavia, the team were impressed by his skill as an amateur artist and he was recommended for the post of character designer for the game.

Disliking some of his initial designs for Drakengard, he took the opportunity to remodel them more to his liking for the arcade game Lord of Vermilion.

[44][45] For Nier: Automata, the main character designs were handled by Akihiko Yoshida, an artist noted for his work on the Final Fantasy series.

[13] The Drakengard games take place in a dark fantasy version of Medieval Europe called Midgard.

[58] A recurring element across the series is the representation of magic using the Celestial Alphabet, with a common letter arrangement representing the human gene.

Drakengard 3 acts as the first game's prequel, but most of its events take place in separate timelines leading to different outcomes.

[61] In Drakengard 3, a malevolent flower uses servants called the Intoners, women gifted with the power to use magic through song, as instruments of humanity's destruction.

[63] In Drakengard 2, the Watchers continue to use the former head of the cult to destroy the new seals, while the dragons prepare to usurp the gods and rule over the world.

In the original, the player guides the characters around ground-based battles to combat small groups of enemy units.

[21] The team for the original game were influenced by Asian epic movies and western action-adventure films such as the 1999 remake of The Mummy and Dragonheart.

[75] The central theme of Nier: Automata is struggling out of a bad situation, defined by the game's staff using the Japanese word "agaku".

[76] The games received multiple adaptations and additional story content in the form of novelizations, manga and supplementary material.

[74] Square Enix also paired up with WildStorm to create a digital comic, which detailed the backstories of the game's characters and world.

While individual aspects have come in for criticism, the dark atmospheres, unconventional characters and general scenarios have been cited as one of each game's strengths.

[68][115][116][117][118][119] The major exception is Drakengard 2: the story's lighter tone and more traditional narrative were noted and sometimes criticized for being overly simplistic or too similar to other games in the genre.

[124] Among the most popular characters were the first game's main protagonists, Caim and Angelus (the former having earned the nickname Prince (王子, ouji) among fans).

[120][121][122][123] In contrast, the gameplay of Drakengard 3 was generally praised or seen as an improvement upon the previous two entries, though the dragon-riding segments came in for criticisms for difficult controls.

[68][115][116][117][118][119] Opinions were divided on Nier's unconventional mix of gameplay styles from multiple game genres, with some praising the variety and others seeing it as poorly executed.

[135] Nier: Automata became a worldwide success, shipping over 4 million copies by June 2019, becoming the best-selling title in the franchise.

[137] Less than two months after its release, the remaster of Replicant had shipped over one million copies worldwide,[138] two times the estimated sales of the original game.