The game starts with a young knight in training called Nowe and the blue dragon that raised him, Legna. Though initially loyal to the Knights of the Seal, Nowe begins to doubt them upon realizing that the Seals are reliant on human sacrifices and that the seal guardians might not be as noble as they appear to be. Once General Gismor tries to poison him, Nowe turns against them for good and meets a young woman called Manah. Taking place 18 years after the first game, Manah is one of several returning characters changed by the ongoing flow of time. Throwing in his lot with her, Nowe goes on a journey to break the seals and save the world. Much like Caim before him, Nowe ends up building a party of his own.

• Manah, an amnesiac young woman who wishes to free the people from the oppression of the Knights of the Seal. She used to be the cult leader of the Empire until she was defeated by Caim 18 years ago and forced to see what her actions had done to the world. She uses staves in battle, which allow her to focus on her magic.
• Eris is a member of the Knights of the Seal, and Nowe's childhood friend. Despite Nowe's betrayal, she only wants to understand why Nowe attacked General Gismor and betrayed the Knights. Eris uses spears in battle but due to her differing alignment to the player, she is unplayable for most of the game during the first playthrough, ensuring that players won't get to fully master her skillset until later.
• Urick is the last member to join the party, and his pact partner is the Grim Reaper in exchange for his mortality. His affable demeanour hides his dark past, and his weapon of choice are axes.

The game made several changes intended to improve the overall experience such as increasing Nowe's movement speed, removing time limits for missions, allowing the player to take healing items into battle and buying weapons instead of scouring every last level and fulfilling hidden conditions to unlock them. Some of its changes were quite divisive such as the alterations to Legna's magic or making the stage selection more linear and streamlining it so that the main campaign and Free Expeditions are no longer two seperate modes; this however means that players now have to do multiple playthroughs in order to get all of the endings.

All spoilers from Drakengard will be unmarked. You have been warned!

This video game contains examples of:

• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Among the sequel's New Game Plus bonuses are accessories that change the appearance of Urick, Nowe, and Eris.
• Anti-Hero: Caim is… not a very pleasant fellow, with a magnificently enthusiastic approach to violence who just so happens to be fighting people and/or things which are even worse. He does occasionally have good or at least understandable motivations behind his behavior, though, especially in this game where he only wants to end Angelus's suffering as Goddess of the Seal.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If the player dies during a mission, they still get to keep any EXP they've earned before they died.
• Big Bad: General Gismor is the leader of the Knights of the Seal who tries to kill Nowe by poisoning him, prompting the young hero to turn traitor. He's also revealed to have corrupted the Union from within after killing Nowe's human father General Oror, and is also the guardian of the final district key.
• Bolivian Army Ending: Ending B shows Nowe and Eris are leading an army of Holy Dragons to fight against the Watchers in the sky.
• Bootstrapped Leitmotif: Growing Wings/Exhausted only played during the credits in Ending B of the first game. In this game, it gets promoted to the main theme with several tracks utilizing it as a leitmotif, one of which is the Final Boss theme.
• Bond Creatures:
  • In the setting, a person can form a "pact" with a creature (or in some cases, a pack of creatures), the person sacrificing "their most important trait" in return for both of them becoming more powerful (and for a chance for the monster to feast on the human's "negative emotions", which according to extraneous materials is a favorite of them).
  • The four Knights of the Seal lieutenants guarding the various keys all have pacts as well. Zhangpo is bonded with the jinn Ifrit, sacrificing his ability to eat; Hanch is bonded with the sea creature Kelpie, sacrificing her charm; Yaha is bonded with a large pack of gnomes, sacrificing his "luster"; and Urick is bonded with a Reaper, sacrificing his mortality. Their leader General Gismor is bonded with a Shadow, though its unknown what his pact price was.
• Bonus Feature Failure:
  • Some of this game's bonus content leaves much to be desired. The alternate costumes take up the same slot that players use for equipping accessories, and the costumes themselves don't really have any bonus attributes to make them worth equipping ^note Nowe's Super Orb is the worst offender in that it only changes Nowe's appearance to resemble his Newbreed form with none of the abilities from the final Legna fight in the first and third playthroughs of the game..
  • Obtaining all 65 weapons unlocks... the ability to refight every boss in the game at a far higher difficulty. The first game allowed you to freely replay levels, including the boss fights, and yet in this game, you have to do at least 3 playthroughs on harder difficulties just to earn a feature that was already a default option in the previous game.
• Breakable Weapons: Mostly averted, but weapons with the "Chip Easily" trait in the second game display a downplayed version of this. They're stronger than average at level 1, but become weaker at levels 2 and 3 to represent a damaged weapon, before becoming strong again at level 4.
• Continuity Nod: The Bone Casket's second phase is an aerial battle where the boss fires out energy waves, similar to the Giant Manah battle from the previous game.
• Crapsack World: See that horrific red-sky hellscape that overtakes the normal world when the seals break? Legna reveals that this is the default state of things.
• The Chosen One: Nowe, which earns him some disrespect among the Knights. Nowe himself just wants to be normal.
• Crack in the Sky: The destruction of the final seal causes the sky to crack and shatter as The End of the World as We Know It sets in.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Downplayed. Drakengard 2 is for the most part a sequel to Ending A of the first game but also has some elements from Ending B and according to Word of God it's not meant to be a 100% direct continuation of any of the first game's endings per se.
• Dark Reprise:
  • Inverted with Growing Wings, which is actually less dark than the original and instead is more melancholy.
  • After the final seal is destroyed and the world ends, several tracks get darker variants. Plains of Pity has Reminiscence is Madness, Valley of Darkness has Black Requiem, Abysmal Earth has Furious Earth and Twilight Hill has Decision's End.
• Doppelgänger Attack: The boss battle against Manah's personal demons in the sequel; defeating the dopplegangers doesn't even earn you kills or experience points. However, there is a way to tell the real Manah from the fakes: the real one produces flower petals and can create a giant fireball wheras the copies can only stab you repeatedly.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: The choice to turn "God" into "gods", plural, created some plot-related confusion, which was further exacerbated in Drakengard 2 as it implied that the Watchers and the "nameless entity" that once warred with the dragons are one and the same. The true nature of "God" and the Watchers is a closely guarded mystery even in the Japanese versions, but at the very least the in-game text implies them to be separate from one another and "God" is usually addressed in the singular.
• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • You need to beat it at least three times to get the best ending. The bad part? The game automatically fixes the difficulty to hard and then extreme. Not even an option in the first game, where each ending becomes both harder to achieve and more depressing.
  • To wit with best ending: The corrupt Knights of the Seal are defeated, the world is saved from both the dragons and God, all of Nowe's friends survive, Caim and Angelus are finally at peace, and after two games' worth of death, destruction, betrayal, and despair, the world is finally beginning to improve.
• Exploding Barrel: You'll find plenty of them hanging around in the sequel, with completely no explanation why. Their explosions are surprisingly deadly to mooks and surprisingly harmless to you.
• Foreshadowing: Long before the player learns Nowe's origins, the player can obtain Inuart's Long Sword, which also deals extra damage to Caim.
• Fake Longevity: Getting the other two endings require you to do two more playthroughs of the game, meaning that you have to do the entire game again on a harder difficulty. You'll be grateful that everything you have carries over from your last playthrough because you'll need them to complete the game if you want those endings and other rewards exclusive to those playthroughs.
• Friendly Fireproof: Friendly units in the sequel almost never take any damage from your attacks, combos, spells, whatsoever. Even Legna's dragonfire, which sends them flying like any other enemy, fails to inflict actual damage on friendlies.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Despite Nowe pleading with villagers and the Knights early on to lay down their weapons, the player can still kill them en-masse without any negative consequences.
  • The Mourning Thorn weapon is stated to make it's wielder more bloodthirsty and aggressive, though Urick, the one character who can wield it receives no gameplay changes for wielding it.
  • Urick is stated to be immortal due to his pact with the Reaper yet during gameplay, if he loses his HP, he still dies and the player fails the mission.
  • During the final boss, Nowe takes on an empowered Newbreed form that can fly and has a sword with a long range. Nowe's Super Orb says it that turns him into the Newbreed, but when you equip it, you just get a recoloured version of regular Nowe's model (despite his Newbreed form already having its own model) with none of his EleventhHourSuperpowers.
• Glass Cannon: Equipping Nowe with Takamasa turns him into this because the weapon's effect in this game causes the player's HP to decrease significantly if they take damage.
• Ground Pound: The player can jump and then press the Square button to strike enemies from above. Useful for dealing with groups of fast moving opponents.
• Guide Dang It!: Has far less of this than the previous game. Despite this, the game doesn't really elaborate on several weapon traits, such as the "Unknown" trait which means that a boss is weak to that specific weapon ^note e.g General Gismor is weak to Oror's Lionblade while his Shadow form is weak to Oror's Falconblade. or how weapons with the "Chips Easily" trait regain their strength if you look past their weakness and commit to levelling them up.
• Handicap Mission: After being poisoned by General Gismor, the next mission involves Nowe fleeing while the poison causes his HP to gradually drain away.
• High School AU: Not really, but there are some images of this for the second game in the Memory of Blood supplement. They even show how Angelus and Legna would look like in human forms!
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Nowe vs. Caim in the sequel. Even after being defeated, Caim is still raring to go and if it weren't for Urick, would've likely killed Nowe.
• Infodump: During Chapter 10, the player is subjected to this once they make it into the Ancient Tomb. The dialogue is framed as ancient history designed to inform Nowe of his origins - namely that he is the hybrid of Inuart and Furiae created by Legna for the purpose of attaining Newbreed status and destroying the Watchers once and for all.
• Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: During one Timed Mission in the sequel, Nowe picks up some dungeon keys, specifically noting that each one only works once. Otherwise averted in every other mission in the game.
• Knight Templar: Eris at the beginning due to her loyalty to the Knights of the Seal. She only rejoins Nowe after her organization has disbanded due to the world ending.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: In the sequel, Nowe enters Manah's mind to save her. The location is also reused for a Brutal Bonus Level unlocked during a New Game Plus playthrough.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to the original, is much less messed up in its tone, though it still has its fair share of dark moments.
• Magikarp Power: A few weapons in the sequel (including the legendary Weapons of the Seal) have weak attack power, learn few or no combos, and level up much slower than other weapons. But once they reach maximum level...
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": In 2, Eris and a small army of Knights of the Seal ambush Nowe and Manah...and then Caim shows up, and everyone panics and flees.
• Multiple Endings: Five for the first game, three for the second. Both games are kind enough to tell you exactly how many, and toss in some broad hints for unlocking them. Deconstructed in the first game, as all the alternate endings are bad endings.
• Musical Spoiler: General Gismor's status as a Disc-One Final Boss is spoiled by the fact that his first fight uses the regular boss theme and his Shadow form uses the same battle theme as Caim's.
• Never Grew Up: Seere in the second game, thanks to his pact with Golem still has the body of a young child. This serves to contrast him with his sister Manah, who aged normally and grew up to become someone with a strong yet misguided sense of justice.
• New Game Plus: Unlike the first game, Drakengard 2 doesn't allow the player to revisit/replay earlier story chapters at their leisure but all weapons, items, and Experience Points carry over to a new game, and it explicitly tells you what other bonuses you get (like rare weapons, and the ability to use all party members at any time). This is also a requirement for achieving the alternate endings, but it's also accompanied by an increase in the game's difficulty level.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!:
  • Nowe and Mannah's crusade to stop the knights' oppression unleashes Angelus, who's gone Ax-Crazy from her imprisonment and wants to burn down the entire world. And since Angelus is the new Goddess Seal, killing her means saying hello to The End of the World as We Know It. Oops.
  • Hilariously, our heroes had always been told that disaster would follow if the seals holding Angelus were broken. But because they believed the organization protecting them was oppressive, they mistakenly assumed it must also be lying and corrupt.
• Nostalgia Level: Late in the game, the player can go to the Castle of the Goddess from the previous game. Its also somewhat of a Remixed Level in that the place has been worn down by age, the enemies there are completely different, and the player starts from the top of the castle instead.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Consider the, uh, "heroes" —
  • Over-idealistic fluffy-haired protagonist, his slightly grumpy childhood friend of the opposite sex, amnesiac major antagonist from the last game, purple-haired masked coolguy with a pile of hidden remorse, and non-amnesiac antagonist from the last game (who is a dragon).
• Raised by Wolves: It's never clarified how old Nowe was when he was adopted by either Legna or the knights; there are hints that he used to think he was a dragon (and didn't know how to wear clothes), but that he also apparently hasn't had too much trouble learning how to behave as a human.
• Rogue Protagonist: Caim in the second game. And nope, it's not due to the main character being Locked Out of the Loop, or any of the other common reasons: All that's changed is that you're now on the receiving end of Caim's sword.
• Sad Battle Music:
  • The second boss theme "Fate" is a tragic piece in a classical music style that plays during the fights against Caim, Shadow Gismor, Angelus and Demon Manah.
  • Alone, a remix of Growing Wings that is used during the Final Boss fight against Legna and the Bone Casket's second form is used to underscore the sadness of Nowe fighting against his father figure and his love interest respectively.
• Sequel Hook: The cutscene after the end of the credits of Ending C shows the shadow of a dragon flying overhead, despite what Seere said before about all the dragons disappearing, also possibly implying that Legna may not be dead.
• Screw Destiny: Nowe's answer when he learns how the dragons intend to save the world.
• Sdrawkcab Name: Legna? 'Cause if Angelus was just "Angel" in the Japanese version, then...
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Nowe's swords are super-effective against knights. Eris's spear is super-effective against undead (she even says so in a bit of in-game tutorial); Manah's staff against mages and undead, and Urick's axe against monsters and larger enemies.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • A weapon story reveals that when Manah and Seere's mother was pregnant with them, a nameless seer crashed her baby shower and told her a prophecy that one of her children would be of darkness and the other of light. He then left before anyone could question him. This foretelling made her so paranoid, that she abused Manah and treated her as The Un-Favourite while giving Seere all her love. This caused Manah to develop a nasty case of I Just Want to Be Loved, which made her vulnerable to being possessed by the Watchers and kickstarted the entire plot of the first game, making this a truly epic case of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. To that nameless seer, nice job breaking it, jackass.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: In the sequel, characters have their own HP meters, but if any one of them dies, it's instant Game Over.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Whatever happened to Leonard and Arioch in the sequel?
  • Leonard gets a brief mention in the City of Rust, and his weapon's Flavor Text says he went back into hiding due to his "certain anti-social tendency". Arioch is only referenced in the weapon story for Mourning Thorn, but is never seen at all otherwise, unless you want to take to heart the dark implications of her weapon being found in an empty jail cell in the Grand Shrine, that is...
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Urick, due to his pact with the Reaper preventing him from dying. He even asks Caim to end up his life, though Nowe interferes with this by fighting Caim in an attempt to prevent Urick's death. Despite winning against Caim, Urick still dies anyway.