A First Look At Drakengard 3’s Aerial Battles On Dragonback

In Drakengard 3, you’ll be playing as the deadly Utautai Zero, who can hold her own on land, but when it comes to aerial combat, she’ll be needing the help of her partner dragon Mikhail. Square Enix showed off some of the game’s aerial combat during a NicoNico Live Drakengard 3 event.

The video starts out with a look at what it’s like to ride on Mikhail while blasting away foes with her powerful fire breath attacks on land. After flying up in the air, she is shown shooting her attacks towards enemies with anti-air weapons.

During the flight, there’s a brief exchange between Dito and Mikhail, where the apostle is heard bad-mouthing Zero for her lack of appreciable qualities. When Mikhail claims that this isn’t true, he asks her to name some of her good qualities, which she fails to do. The exchange is interrupted when Zero tells Dito that she’ll take care of him later.

At 1:20, we get a look at some of Mikhail’s physical attacks, as she is seen tackling some enemies, followed by what appears to be a stomp. According to producer Takamasa Shiba, aerial combat will be like a shooter, but with controls similar to the action on land, and most of the commands can be done with a straight-forward input.

In our earlier report, we got a brief look at the aerial combat, which will involve plenty of dodging when enemies shoot projectiles. At 2:15 we get a look at some of Mikhail’s land-based strafing actions, that may come in handy when enemies attempt to shoot her down… although most of the time spent on Mikhail will involve burning down helpless enemies.

Once the enemies bring out their cannon around the 2:52 mark, we get a look at some of the barrel roll dodging we’ll have to do in order to avoid taking heavy damage.

For the most part, you’ll almost feel invincible taking on smaller foes while riding Mikhail; however, you’ll need to be more careful when larger enemies and other anti-air enemies appear. When things get rough, you can always charge up your gauge and activate the deadly “Utautai Mode” even while riding Mikhail, as seen at 4:00. Doing so will increase all of her parameters, making her even more powerful.

Drakengard 3 will be released on December 19 for PlayStation 3 in Japan.