#The dragon katana zero serial
#The dragon katana zero series

In the following scene, Dragon gets into a conversation with two other drunk men at the bar who are arguing about the recent war between vague factions in New Mecca.

In a rare moment of ludonarrative harmony, Dragon decides he needs a drink. Then, after a motorcycle chase that leads to VвЂ™s death, it is revealed that there is another katana wielding quasi-samurai, and that he in fact is the real Dragon (for the sake of clarity, however, I will continue to refer to the protagonist as Dragon). Dragon wakes up to find that V has kidnapped him, and that heвЂ™s working together with Snow, another mysterious sword-toting figure, both of whom work for вЂњthe boss.вЂќ DragonвЂ™s relationship with the little girl next door deepens as she comes over asking if heвЂ™s seen lost toys, as well as gifting him a stuffed animal to keep him company. Several scenes that appear to be real turn out to be dreams, and vice versa. DragonвЂ™s dreams persist, becoming more and more garbled until all sense of reality is lost. Dragon refuses, causing V to turn against him and become the villain. V courts Dragon and suggests they join forces.

This cycle falls apart completely when, for reasons unknown, Dragon stops attending therapy in the pursuit of a thug named вЂњVвЂќ who killed DragonвЂ™s neighbors. After the first two or so missions, Dragon is greeted by a little girl at his apartment, who begs for him to let her stay at his place in order to escape her raging father. The therapist continually references DragonвЂ™s PTSD and lowering the dosage of the strange drug he injects Dragon with at the end of each session before assigning the next mission.

#The dragon katana zero series

Using his powers of pre-cognition (the ability to predict the future), Dragon completes a series of missions for his therapist/boss, all of which are followed by increasingly vivid nightmares of Dragon, as a child, being killed by a mysterious soldier. Further, time itself is central to the gameвЂ™s story, which I will now outline (to the best of my ability) in three acts in order to contextualize my arguments. These aesthetic elements serve to make your character feel out of place вЂ“ a theme that gets repeated throughout. On death, the game plays the sound of a tape rewinding as your character respawns, and the bright blue pause screen superimposes VCR-era distortion onto the screen.

#The dragon katana zero serial

The game takes place in New Mecca, a futuristic dystopia, yet your character, a serial killer nicknamed вЂњThe DragonвЂќ listens to music on a Walkman, talks on a Nokia-style phone, fights with a katana, and watches the nightly news on an old wide-backed TV.

Katana Zero has an incredibly strong sense of aesthetics, mainly in its establishment of anachronism. In reality, they both contribute to Katana ZeroвЂ™s sloppy implementation of narrative design, and by taking an approach that focuses more on the marriage of these two elements вЂ“ story and gameplay вЂ“ I think the majority, if not all, of Katana ZeroвЂ™s problems would be solved.Д«efore I discuss what these problems are and what I would do to remedy them, I want to reiterate what the game does well. Further, my first review sorts the gameplay issues and story issues into two separate review sections вЂ“ this is another area where I think I underestimated the complexity of the gameвЂ™s issues. Katana Zero has the pieces necessary for a masterpiece, but it feels as though those pieces were jammed together with brute force rather than assembled carefully and deliberately. Initially, I wrote that the gameвЂ™s numerous design flaws and baffling story were to blame for the low score, but upon a second playthrough I realize that it is more complicated than that. When I first reviewed Katana Zero, I gave it a five out of ten вЂ“ the lowest score I have given anything to date.