My import copy finally turned up, I played a bit of it and wanted to share some initial thoughts. From a technical standpoint, it's poor, control of your character is entirely too rigid and would benefit from some transitional animations as your character changes between different states and would give movement some sense of fluidity. I wasn't expecting anything approaching technically competent from these devs though, framerate issues are also prevalent even when there's nothing of note happening in the scene.
Level design so far is uninspired, the main draw is hearing what Zero/Mikhail and the various soldiers say as you cut them all down. Combined with the technical shortcomings listed above I honestly feel like I'm playing a PS2 era title in terms of mechanical scope. All this being said, I thought that both previous Drakengard's are guilty of all the above listed issues. While I enjoy Drakengard I'm still amazed Square greenlit this when they have a whole host of more deserving IPs and developers languishing in a vault somewhere.
On the plus side of things, I'm enjoying the conversations and voices overall, just beat Five and not much solid plot has presented itself thus far, hopefully that will change. I knew I'd heard Zero's voice before and it turns out she also voiced Mitsuro in Persona 3 and Hrist in Valkyrie Profile 2, so that's a plus and will help carry me through the game
This probably comes across as overly harsh considering I'm liking (but not loving) the game so far but it is what it is.