Hi all. I was wondering how closely Nier is tied into the Drakengard series from a story perspective. I've seen in other topics that people recommend looking for Let's Plays and summaries of the first two Drakengards, play 3 and then try Nier. I wanted to hear everyone's opinion as I am thinking of diving in and wanted to know how necessary the earlier games in the franchise are to play. Thanks!

Nier is a continuation of Ending E of Drakengard. However, as far as I remember that actual events leading up to that ending aren't ever explicitly mentioned in Nier other than a couple small references here and there. That said, there was a full backstory thing for Nier only released in Japan that covers the events between Drakengard and Nier in great detail and is super interesting and worth checking out. Drakengard 2 is a continuation of Ending A of Drakengard and therefore not important in the slightest while also being terrible. Drakengard 3 is a super weird thing that may be worth checking out but since it was released after Nier you shouldn't look at it before playing Nier. 3 is also a prequel to the whole series.

Long story short, you only need to look into Drakengard if you want to dig into the backstory of Nier but if you have the time I would totally recommend it. The Dark Id's screenshot Let's Plays are totally the way you should consume Drakengard since it's not fun to play plus his Nier LP has translations of the full backstory at the end of it.

Yeah, the connections between the games are really tenuous, and have little impact on the games themselves. You have to dig though a bunch of short stories, audio dramas, and manga only released in Japan to get any real details. Heck, Nier itself leaves out huge chunks of its own backstory (like what the opening scene is about), and unless you know Japanese all you have to go on is fan translated summaries of the short stories that came out in Japan.

Cool thanks for the help!