Like the original, Drakengard 2 combines on-foot hack and slash with aerial combat stages and role-playing mechanics.

Western reviews praised the story, but gave mixed opinions about the graphics and widely criticized the gameplay.

[4] In ground combat, the player controls multiple characters, switching between them via the pause menu in order to use their different weapons.

Caught up in the conflict were Caim and Angelus, a human and a dragon who had made a pact (a magical ritual that linked their souls), and fought to try to keep both the Seals and the Goddess safe.

[10] The game's main character is Nowe (ノウェ, Nōe), a Knight of the Seal who possesses superhuman powers.

During his first mission, Nowe begins to doubt the ethics of the Knights' methods, as the seals require human sacrifices to remain strong.

[14] Surviving and escaping with Legna, Nowe is pursued by the Knights, including Eris, who wishes to persuade him to return.

Nowe and Legna eventually rejoin Manah and join her on her quest to destroy the seals and, in her mind, free the people from the Knights' oppression.

After taking down Lieutenant Yaha and destroying the seal in the District of Precious Light, Manah is captured by the Knights and sentenced to death.

Believing Eris dead, Nowe and Manah pursue Gismor, but are met by Seere, who unsuccessfully tries to stop them.

[20] With the seals destroyed, the world begins to fall into chaos and Manah is driven mad by the memories of her actions eighteen years before.

[26] Producer Takamasa Shiba and character designer Kimihiko Fujisaka returned to the team,[27] alongside actor Shinnosuke Ikehata, who voiced the dragon Angelus and its partner Caim in the previous game.

He and Drakengard 2's director Akira Yasui suffered from creative differences, with the result that Yoko termed their relationship on the project as a "love-hate" story in a 2013 interview concerning the series.

Yoko was eventually brought on fairly late in the game's production to act as video editor for the CGI cutscenes and trailers.

Shiba, speaking in a 2013 interview, said that the reason for this was that Square Enix, the company's Japanese publisher, wanted that aspect toned down to make a more mainstream game.

Other themes explored were love and hate, and the ambivalence represented in the world's prevalent factions (the Knights of the Seal, and the Cult of Watchers).

Highlighted aspects of the story were the father-son relationship between Nowe and Legna, and how Manah had matured since the events of Drakengard.

[38] Shiba had mixed feelings about the final fight between Legna and Nowe, which he saw as a drastic change from both the first game and the series mechanic of the protagonist riding a dragon.

Shiba ended up writing their dialogue to emphasize their relationship and the difficulty of them fighting each other, paralleling earlier scenes between Caim and Angelus.

[38] The deaths of Caim and Angelus was intended to be "short and ruthless", but Yasui had it changed to the more sentimental version present in the game.

[43] The soundtrack was designed to be a fusion of J-pop and conventional video game music, and to evoke the emotions of the various characters and the feeling of battle.

[45] The game's theme song in Japan, "Hitori", was sung by Mika Nakashima, who also worked as a sound producer.

IGN's Ed Lewis said it "admirably [continued] the bizarre and fantastically medieval world that was established in the original game.

[53] The GameTrailers reviewer praised the character animations, but cited the environments as bland and felt that there were too few FMVs and too many game engine-driven cutscenes, which he described as "awful".

[54] Parkin criticized the game's graphic capacities, commenting that players would "stop watching the main screen instead fixing upon the little map in the corner to guide your character towards hostile red dots that only materialize polygonal just seconds before you lock swords.

[22] 1UP said that the graphics "[don't] hold up to the visual quality of Cavia's other titles like Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex [or] Naruto: Uzumaki Ninden".

Parkin called the battle gameplay "lightweight" and the balance between ground and aerial combat poor despite a good character leveling system,[50] while Lewis described it as being without strategy, with the game "just dumping in more boring enemies to wade through".

[58] In the year of its release in Japan, the game received a novelization written by Emi Nagashima under her pen name of Jun Eishima.

[63] Drakengard 3 was eventually unveiled in 2013, with Shiba, Yoko and Fujisaka returning to their former roles and the story being set before the original game.