When I first heard about Drakengard, I was really psyched. With warriors and dragons and epic battles, it all sounded way cool. Having now played it, I'm not quite as psyched. But that doesn't mean there's not some sweet gaming goodness to Drakengard.

Okay, I'll first state the obvious: Drakengard is from the folks who are masters of the Japanese role-playing game and through this mastery gave us the Final Fantasy series - Square Enix. Thus you'd expect the story to be fairly good and the characters intriguing. They are. But unlike Final Fantasy, Drakengard is a third-person perspective action RPG.

In Drakengard players take on the role of Caim - warrior of the Union, brother of Furiae goddess of the seals, and son of Empire-murdered parents. (See where this is going yet?) Wounded in battle defending the castle Furiae is protected in, Caim finds a badly wounded red dragon chained to the ground. Needing the power of this sinister beast to avenge himself and protect his sister, Caim proposes a pact with the dragon: he will allow the dragon to live and set it free if the dragon will join him. The dragon reluctantly agrees and, in a weird ceremony that looks like nothing less than Caim pulling his own life force out of his chest and the dragon hocking up an identical fish-egg looking thing out of his mouth, the two join their fates to one another. From now on the two share one life force. What follows is all the standard RPG elements: courage, revenge, love, betrayal, etc. But you're not getting any spoilers from me.

Gameplay consists of a series of missions where Caim will either hack-and-slash large numbers of enemies on the battlefield with his hand weapons and their associated magic attacks, barbeque large numbers of enemies in strafing runs just above the battlefield on the back of the dragon, or dogfight airborne enemies far above battlefields with the dragon.

As Caim and the red dragon engage in battle they will gain experience points and level up their powers and those of their weapons. The dragon actually grows in size as its abilities increase. Caim may carry up to eight weapons during any given mission and quickly change between them as the situation dictates. Dozens may be found as Caim fights his way through the game's levels. Experience may also be gained by engaging in "Free Expeditions" that are earned as Caim completes levels of the main game. These are also a good place to find a few useful items.

Caim will also find allies as he quests. These allies are useful because if Caim's hit points get low during a battle, an ally may be summoned to fight in his stead for a time. Each ally has a limit to the number of times it may summoned per mission, so the time to call in a substitution must be carefully weighed.

Graphics are very nice - especially for a PlayStation 2 game. The dragon's magic fire ground attacks are really awesome. Animations are smooth and the cut scenes are great. Sound is even better. The clang of battle and the roar of the dragon are satisfyingly realistic. The voice acting also seems to have about 40 percent less cheese than the average RPG.

Controls are simple and intuitive whether fighting on the ground or engaging in flying combat on the dragon. The learning curve is only about a half an hour of hard play. Camera control via the right analog stick was less than precise but it never rose to the level of a major annoyance.

The whole package is pretty good...but there is a problem. The gameplay gets way too repetitious very quickly. Once the first couple of missions are completed, you've seen what the game really has to offer in gameplay. The only thing that will keep most players going is the desire to see how the story comes out. While some may find the whole process of just taking on wave after wave of fairly mindless enemies and the occasional boss character to be rather fun in an old-school/Centipede kind of way, I think most modern gamers will find it tedious after a while.

The nice thing is that in small doses Drakengard is quite fun. The best way to play it might be like the novel you read on the subway on the way to and from work. Read a little bit each day as you ride and you eventually get the whole story while being entertained during the mundane task of getting to work. You may never get fully immersed in the story, but you find out how the book ends.