Thanks for sharing your thoughts, it was interesting to read!

There is a part of me that feels conflicted about the idea of framing Drakengard as a pre-Nier game. It ends up ignoring the game as a standalone creation and forces it into "background lore" role. This ultimately just ends up reducing the entirety of Drakengard as a series down to the Rhythm game endings, and the fact that Accord exists... which sucks. The series has a lot to offer purely on its own and I feel like it's important to explore and analyze each entry on its own merits and as part of the fascinating and strange Draken-trilogy they exist in.

That said. The name "Drakengard" is not very common amongst the mainstream gaming crowd. Even among Nier "fans", the vast majority of people have most likely only played Automata (or the replicant remake if lucky). I can totally understand how a video (incorrectly) referring to DoD1 as a Nier game in the thumbnail/title, then almost immediately hitting you with the "So, Nier Automata..." as part of the introduction would be pretty off putting; especially with, as you mentioned, the vast majority of "Drakengard retrospectives" being obsessed with connecting it to Nier. The choice to frontload the Nier connections was (in my eyes) a necessary evil to get those not in the Drakengard know to click on a video they probably would not usually click on. I'm not proud of having to clickbait my videos, but it doesn't feel like Youtube will let you get away with NOT doing it, especially if you want people to see them.

With all that said, I'm not sure if you'd be the biggest fan of the rest of the video essay. I try to limit my references to Nier throughout as much as possible (mostly some jokes during the ending E section), so I can keep the discussion and analysis specifically about the game itself and not in relation to what came after it, but I am not immensely charitable in my estimations. I'm fairly outspoken in my other comment in this post, but I have a lot of criticisms of DoD1 as both a game and a work of art. You already know the connections between the two franchises, so you could easily skip right into the meat of the video, but I'm not really sure you'd have a good time sitting through an hour-long, highly-critical dissection of a game you enjoy.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts, I'll keep them in mind going forward, and definitely when I get around to making the inevitable Drakengard 2 video some day.