It's upmost rare to stumble upon something so obnoxiously obtuse in a time of excessive signposting and way-finding, even more when such stubbornness is perfectly coherent with all the aspects of its own design.

Dragon's Dogma II is exactly that - unwilling to accommodate its structure to the modern demands, unapologetically stuck in its own idea of commitment and restrains, and unfathomably fascinating when all those things come together.

Fortunately, they all work together way better in this sequel than its original, and that's because of the egregious amount of polishing that the weakest factors of Dragon's Dogma got. The open world got by far the best treatment, delightfully explorable, even with climbing not being an option in the game, which restricts you to jumping and platforming. This alone marks an unquantifiable step forward from the original. Fetch quests are gone for good - they're replaced by more wisely paced events which you may stumble upon in the world - or may not. Escort quests are too part of a more authentic approach to the game's role-playing features. Main quests and sides quests - they are all true to the elegance of a better written world. Time-gating is here too - featured in less quests, but more involved, more cleverly designed, better written, and overall way more remarkable. One of those, which you may access to even in the most early stages of the game, involves you fighting one of the most fearsome bosses of the game. You may get onboard, do an hike comparable to the original's griffin run, get to the quest, and ultimately fail it. That still counts as completed.

Failure as a state is one of the many accepted outcomes in Dragon's Dogma II. It perfectly fits how much this game is willing to make you miss stuff, purposely hiding chunks of (in corporate speak) content, where other games would basically bend to you and pray "please, experience this thing and extend your playtime", even if at the cost of immersion. DDII is not expecting you to do so - it's simply designed this way. It does not care about you, in that regard. This game's indifference to the player's concerns befalls in every aspect of its journey. The best way to experience it, then, is to live it without fear.

Such is the world you're brought into. One of the first quotes from the game recites how you will come to learn and understand from it - so you might be able to banish all the evil there is in. Nothing was more true than that: explore, learn its ins and outs, understand its opportunities and its threats, find new paths, discover new places, and then backtrack your steps. The reality of transforming a journey from the discovery of the unknown to the sheer mastery of its terrain and what lies ahead only by the knowledge gained its unique to this game - thanks only to how much it conceals itself from the player. There's not bar, value, number or anything that may encompass this feel - it's all about you experiencing things.

Here the real journey in the world of DDII starts. It begins when you stop thinking about the game as checklist in order to experience the game as it is, when you decide to let the flow of things guide you, even if just a bit. You still have the agency you had in the original, but the deepened combat system, the physicality of it, the rag-doll, the environmental interactions, the AI, the game's structure, the depth of the quests and their outcomes - everything is tailor-made to suit curiosity and resourcefulness before all. The consequences of basically everything you may stumble upon are so much deeply rooted in your actions that you may as well recount your findings to a friend playing the game - chances are, he's gonna tell you a whole different story.

Story which is not only a far better suited tale for a game of the likes of DDII, but it's a blank slate of sorts for you ingenuity to manifest. Chosen one yes, but no one gives a shit about it. Hell, some (if not most) even despise you because of that. You'll have the time and the chances to build your affinity with other characters, get to know others, gift them presents, follow them in enormous and entirely missable quest-lines and more. The involvement and commitment you see in every aspect of the game does not fall short here. Instead, some of the strongest story beats and choices you're going to come across are not outspokenly announced by the game. DDII simply requires your attention on most of the times in order to make sense of things. On that, if you come from the original you surely have the upper-hand, but then again - I do, and yet I couldn't keep track of the numbers of times I was left surprised by the game's machinations.

On that regard, it's almost eye-watering how much DDII respects not only your time (even with the commitment required to only enable fast travel) but also your dedication to the game's world and its systems: it knows the player's not here to be hand-holded or to be scolded, but to witness the sheer audacity by which this game is dedicated, obsessively so, to its involvement in things. Keep in mind that there's been an egregious UX pass from the previous but, truth to be told, the updates in accessibility did not detriment the game design. Crazy, right?

On that note, challenge is not born out of the gameplay itself - that's not the point. Apart from the initial hours, the plateau of DDII's dynamic difficulty is quickly reached - and its hardships soon become a memory, apart from some specific outliers. The truest of the test to the player resides in how he undertakes the game's structure. Will he engage the game to the fullest of its extent, or will he fall behind because of the game's unwillingness to please every single soul in this world?

True sovereignty of the world of DDII lies in using to its maximum extent every system that is given in game. You may come to a point when fast travel becomes not only a must - but also cheap and, in that regard, sustainable, even with a lot of upfront expenses to merchants. You can always sell stuff around - and there are small glimpses of an economy in the game, which you may use to your own advantage, such as some goods available only in specific countries of the game's world. You will find out how enhancing an item is not a do-and-done thing, but something with more depth and complexity than before. Camping starts as a luxury, for only to become one of the ways to maximize buffs for the upcoming boss fights. Nights start frightening - and then they become an opportunity to collect things you won't find elsewhere. Same goes for dungeons and bosses. You may find some items only if you visit such dungeons, and some monsters become a treat for your business as an Arisen. One of the vocations being literally the ultimate show of mastery of all of the move-sets of the game, alongside their abilities and spells. It really feels like a power climb of sorts, but in the best way possible. You're not asked to do so: you're doing this out of your own volition. On that, again - a game so coherent in and out of itself.

All of this ultimately became clear as day as soon as you stumble in the end-game. The original game holds nothing compared to this, and the way it's graciously intertwined with the game's world and narrative is just - chef kiss, really. All of this happens while the game unravels itself in the boldest way possible and, dare I say, unmatched even by the likes of other games which tried that thing before. All the systems you've got used to get turned around, and all the items which were collecting dust in your inventory have to be used, and extensively so. As if it wasn't enough, a spectacle which by itself alone eclipses the original Dragon's Dogma final stretch reveals itself right before your eyes. It's remarkable how much this game resonates and communicates with the original and its expansion in a way that, in my opinion, almost requires experiencing the full original game in order to truly taste the accomplishments performed here. I cannot delve more on this in fear of spoilers, but you won't be disappointed.

Some minor criticism can be done regarding the balancing of the vocations, with some really strong exceptions: nothing new if you come from the original game. Other minor things, truly nitpicks from my side, are the more streamlined systems (like the layered armor and dragon-forging) which are more straightforward in expense of... I dunno, flavor? The enemy variety is just a tad better than the original game, with some additions coming straight from Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen. Some iconic monsters of the original game are, instead, inexplicably missing from the sequel: they do have their replacement, though, in the form of new bosses. Dungeons are way more than before, some of these even bigger than before, but less remarkable from the ones of the first game, level-design and environment art wise. The music in the sequel is missing the electric guitar from the original. Again, I'm really trying to be a pain in the ass to an otherwise phenomenal game.

What would be an unadulterated experience is sadly only stained by micro-transactions, which serve no purpose and have no place here, and the performance, which is still bearable, but subpar in some specific moments of the game. I cannot stress enough how those things are, in my point of view, not detrimental at all to the game's experience. With or without those - the game's still here, and it'll have the same things which will make you either fall in love with it or absolutely despise it. This remains unchanged from the previous iteration of the series - since this game is basically an exponential increase of all the things you adored and loathed of the original. Take it or leave it, really.

In the end it truly is, and I cannot understate it, a case of you get exactly what you're looking for in this game. The more you delve into the game's intricacies', the more you will be rewarded, in a way no other game can achieve. Do take your time with this one - you'll be thanking your past self for that.

Dragon's Dogma II was never about just its gameplay, or its stubbornness in the game systems, or its loose writing - it was always about everything coming all together. The single writings on the wall may encompass only some the strongest or weakest sides of the project, but it's when they become whole that its magic is finally revealed. It's about the war stories of your battles, the tales of your journey from a place to another. It's the unexpected, the unpredictable, the unaccounted for.

And all of that is unique - remarkably so. You'll never find anything like this in any other game for the time being.

Must-Play.

12 years on from the strange, incomplete original, DD2 is more of the same, uneasily sitting between the uncompromising Souls series & more conventional narrative ARPGs. At times evoking a desolate offline MMO, DD2 is at its best when out in the wilds, the sun setting at your back & two or more beasts landing on the path ahead, all Arising out of dynamic systems.

The main questline unfortunately does not play to these strengths, with much of Act I confined to the capital & some really dull writing. Fortunately, writing does not maketh a game, and side-quests that take you out into the unreasonably huge map are much more interesting, and really need to be sought out in the crowds and corners of the world. Keeping track of these with the bizarre quest tracker is uneven and obtuse: you’re either reading the landscape and tracing clues or just beating your head against a wall figuring out what the game requires of you.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is singular, not quite fully realised, a beautifully rendered physics-heavy oddity. The art direction is profoundly generic, but so deceptively understated it at times resembles a Ray Harryhausen film, full of weight, movement and character. DD2 makes you feel like you have friends, albeit stupid friends, who'd throw themselves off a cliff for a view of yonder.

In one of its previews, Hideaki Itsuno was deliberately evasive when asked about why Dragon’s Dogma II’s title screen initially lacks the II, saying only “nothing in this game is unintentional.” You can draw whatever conclusion you like from that, but I think I’ve a different interpretation from most – it’s less a signal that this is a reimagining or a remake or whatever else in disguise than a display of confidence in how well he and his team understand what makes it tick.

As much as I’ll never wrap my head around how they got the first Dragon’s Dogma running on 7th gen hardware (albeit just about), I would’ve said it was impossible not to feel how much more II has going on under the hood in even the briefest, most hasty of encounters if it weren’t being so undersold in this respect. While my favourite addition is that enemies’ individual body parts can now be dragged or shoved to throw them off balance, tying into both this new world’s more angular design and how they can be stunned by banging their head off of its geometry, yours might be something else entirely with how many other new toys there are to play with. One particularly big one’s that you and your pawns can retain access to your standard movesets while clinging to larger enemies if you manage to mantle onto them from the appropriate angle, but you’ve gotta watch out for the newly implemented ragdoll physics while doing so, since the damage received from getting bucked off now varies wildly depending on your position at the time and the nearby environment as a result of them. Successive strikes create new avenues of offence akin to Nioh’s grapples, pressuring you to get as much damage in as you can before letting one loose and taking your target out of its disadvantage state, while also enabling you to keep them in a loop if you’re able to manipulate their stun values well enough. Layers of interaction just keep unravelling further as you play – controlling the arc you throw enemies or objects in, tackling smaller enemies by grabbing them mid-air, corpses or unconscious bodies of bosses now being tangible things you can stand on top of instead of ethereal loot pinatas… I would’ve taken any one of these in isolation. To have them all, plus more, every one being wholly complementary and faithful to the scrambly, dynamic, improvisational core of Dragon’s Dogma’s combat? It’s i n s a n e to me that someone can undergo even a confused few minutes of exposure to any of this and reduce it to “more of the first” or what have you.

Your means of approaching enemies or general scenarios which return from the first game’re further changed by II’s more specialised vocations. Having spent most of my time with Warrior in both titles, I love what’s been done with it in particular. They’ve taken the concept of timing certain skills and applied it to almost every move, anything from your standard swings to its final unlockable skill becoming faster and faster as you time successive inputs correctly – this is only the slow, basic version of the latter and I still feel bad for whatever I batter with it – with chargeable skills now also doubling as a parry for attacks they collide with, similar to DMC5’s clashing mechanic. It’s emblematic of the devs’ approach to vocations in general; Archer’s relatively lacking melee options and litany of flippy, full-on Legolas nonsense encourages keepaway where its four predecessors were all slightly differing flavours of “does everything”, Thief trades access to assault rifle-like bows and invites stubbiness for being able to navigate this world’s much rockier terrain like it’s a platformer, Fighter no longer has to waste skill slots to hit anything slightly above your head and has more versatile means of defence in exchange for melee combat being more punishing in general, etc. It’s to the extent that choosing between any two vocations feels like I’m switching genres, man. In a landscape where people are demonstrably content with having no means of interacting with big monsters other than smacking their ankles, how is even a pretty simple interaction like this not supposed to feel like a game from the future?

On simple interactions, much of this would be lessened if it weren’t for the loss gauge in tandem with the camping system and how these accentuate the sense of adventure which the first game built. The persistent thoughts of “how do I get there?” are retained, but only being able to fully recuperate your health via downtime with the lads and/or ladesses fills every step of the way toward the answer with that much more trepidation, bolstered further by the aforementioned verticality and on the more presentational side of things by how your pawns actually talk to each other now. It leads to some very memorable, emergent experiences which are personal purely to you – one I’m especially fond of involved resting after killing a drake, having my camp ambushed in the middle of the night by knackers who were too high up for me to exercise my k-word pass and having to trek all the way back to Bakbattahl with barely a third of my maximum health as my party continually chattered about how freaky the dark is. I take back the suggestion I made regarding potential changes to the healing system in my review of the first game, because even superfans (or, maybe, especially superfans) can, and do, think too small.

I realise in retrospect that even I, on some level, was wanting certain aspects of Dragon’s Dogma to be like other games instead of taking it on its own merits, something II’s seemingly suffered from all the more with how much gaming has grown since the original’s release, the average player’s tolerance for anything deviating from the norm and, presumably, frame of reference growing ever smaller. Look no further than broad reactions to dragonsplague and its effects (which I won’t spoil) being only the second or third most embarrassing instance of misinformed kneejerk hostility disguised as principled scepticism which enveloped this game’s release to the point you’d swear Todd Howard was attached to it – we want consequences that matter, but not like that! Even if you aren’t onboard with this being the coolest, ballsiest thing an RPG has bothered and will bother to do since before I was born, how can you not at least get a kick out of starting up your own homegrown Dragonsplague Removal Service? You thought you could escape the great spring cleaning, Thomyris, you silly billy? I’m oblivious like you wouldn’t believe, had her wearing an ornate sallet by the time she’d first contracted it and still noticed her glowing red eyes every time, so I’m at a loss as to how it could blindside anybody. It vaguely reminds me of modern reactions to various aspects of the original Fallout; a game which you can reasonably beat in the span of an afternoon, designed to be played with a single hand, somehow commonly seen as unintuitive because it just is, okay? Abandon all delusions of levelheadedness: if a Fallout game with a timer were to release now, the world’s collective sharting would result in something similar to that universe’s Great War or, indeed, Dragon’s Dogma II’s own post-game.

For as many hours as I’ve poured into the Everfall and Bitterblack across two copies of the original, they’re not what I think of when I think of Dragon’s Dogma (or particularly interesting, in the former’s case), which is adventuring in its open world. In that regard, I can’t be convinced that II’s post-game isn’t far more substantial, comparatively rife with monsters either unique or which you’re very unlikely to encounter prior to it, changes to the world’s layout beyond a hole in the ground of one city, its own mechanics (one actually a bit reminiscent of Fallout’s timer), questlines and even setpieces. It’s got a kaiju fight between a Ray Harryhausen love letter and a demonic worm thing which, as of the time of writing, roughly 2% of players have discovered, and instead of being praised for the sheer restraint it must’ve taken to keep something like that so out of the way, it’s chastised for it?

I’m not sure any other game’s ever made me realise how divorced what I want out of games seems to be from the wider populace. So much of this is 1:1 aligned with my tastes that the only thing that feels potentially missing’s the relative lack of electric guitars, but even then I’d be a liar if I told you that Misshapen Eye, the dullahan’s theme, the griffin’s new track, the post-game’s somber piano keys or the true ending’s credits song among others haven’t gotten stuck in my head at some stage anyway or didn’t perfectly complement the action through dynamically changing. It manages this despite clearly not caring about what you or I or anyone else thinks or wants from it. It’s developed a will and conviction all of its own. It’s Dragon’s Dogma, too.

Dragon's Dogma II is basically just more of the first game, but with a bigger budget and more polish and in some ways it's better than the first, but in others it simply is not. If you're a Dragon's Dogma fan you know what you're getting, but if this is your first experience with the series here's a little bit of a run-down.

You play as a chosen one known as the Arisen, you've been marked by a great dragon and it has stolen your heart, now you're on a hunt to fell the beast and reclaim what was stolen from you. The actual story is pretty simplistic and barebones but where the game makes up for that is in the world-building and lore that is fascinatingly detailed and in-depth alongside some solid optional quests that help flesh out the side characters more.

A unique thing Dragon's Dogma is known for is the Pawn system. Pawns are other-worldly beings that only the Arisen can summon and command, Pawns are AI controlled, but function like player controlled avatars and act as your travel companions and party members. Players get to create both their Arisen player avatar and their main Pawn which other players can summon thanks to a shared in-game lobby. While Dragon's Dogma is a completely single-player game, the Pawn system gives a sense of camaraderie comparable to that of a legit co-op game in a way no other game does knowing that the Pawns you're summoning were create by other real people.

The crowning jewel of Dragon's Dogma has always been its combat and much like the first game, combat is what carries Dragon's Dogma II as well. There's 10 different Vocations which act as your various classes that range from a sword and shield user known as a fighter to an archer, a dagger wielding thief or a spell-slinging mage among others making for tons of variety to suit nearly every playstyle. The combat in Dragon's Dogma II is more streamlined thanks to making each vocation only able to utilize one type of weapon and only 4 skills at a time, (I lament the loss of my Mystic Knight vocation and magic classes having far less spells as well) but the game makes up for the lack of complexity with polish because combat feels more weighty and satisfying than ever before and since each vocation only has one weapon type (Other than the newly added Warefarer) that allows for them to feel more fleshed out with deeper move-sets.

Exploration is the other major focus of Dragon's Dogma and it does so in the least handholdy way possible akin to a Souls-like, so much so that I would say roughly 70% of the game is entirely missable from side quests to entire portions of the map especially if you were to just do the main story missions because the game incentivizes you to go out into its world, explore and create your own adventures. The level of freedom the game gives you even extends to quests making for a more authentic RPG experience allowing the player to complete most objectives in more than one way. Exploration itself was a double-edged sword for me because while it was one of my favorite things about the game because when it was good, it was GOOD and finding cool new areas like the Ancient Battleground, Misty Marshes, Mountain Shrine or Dragon's Breath Tower were some highlights of my playthrough but, it was also my least favorite seeing as how the map is 4X bigger than that of the OG Dragon's Dogma, but the amount of actual content in both is roughly the same and it certainly doesn't help that the map doesn't have enough variety and most of what you're going to be exploring is mountain sides and forests. Having such a massive map and limited fast travel just feels like unnecessary padding as far as I'm concerned and I would've preferred a smaller, more condensed map like the first game.

The actual locations and unique dungeons are spread so far and between that a huge part of the map is just empty space to be filled with tedious combat encounters and sometimes they just get too repetitive especially when most of what you're going to be fighting is just goblins and wolves. Even fighting massive creatures like the griffin or cyclops starts to lose its luster later in the game when you've fought them 50 times each, I just think the game could've done with more enemy variety to spice things up and it's disappointing neither the Hydra nor the Cocatrice made a comeback from the first game and special enemies like Medusa or the Sphinx can only be found in one location in the entire game.

I also want to make a special mention to the endgame/post-game content being very lackluster basically turning the game into a pseudo rogue-lite and doing the Majora's Mask 'If you don't compete this in so many days, the game ends' thing. There's only a couple optional bosses and there's not really anything new to explore either despite some new parts of the map opening up, it's just more empty space. The 'Unmoored World' is a cool concept and works well with the lore and narrative, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired and the fact once you finish the game you just immediately get thrown into NG+ kinda sucks too.

Despite it's lack of enemy variety, slightly empty world at times and rushed 3rd act, Dragon's Dogma II more than makes up for its flaws by being a game with a fun and polished combat system that has plenty of variety and depth to suit all kinds of playstyles, tons of small details to really immerse you into its world, a fantastic sense of freedom that let's you play however you want and a truly top notch sense of adventure and exploration at times. Dragon's Dogma II much like its predecessor is a very flawed game, but it's also a great one with tons of undeniable heart and soul behind it and is easily one of the best open-world RPGs in years right alongside Elden Ring and the Witcher 3.

Dragon's Dogma 2's greatest asset is it's overwhelming sense of physicality. Combat and exploration in DD2 force you to consider you and your enemy's relation to the environment far more than any other similar game I have played. The player and enemies alike are able to use their physical strength, size and environmental positioning to gain advantages or impose disadvantages on their opponents. The player also faces many large enemies which often encourage or require climbing onto them to hit weakspots, adding a new layer of tension as your character holds on for dear life on the back of a rampaging minotaur or other similarly sized monster. The combat and exploration are absolutely wonderful in this game in large part due to this reason but the game fails to be interesting in any other avenue. The story is hard to follow and rather uninteresting, the setting is generic, and the open world itself is lacking in points of interest outside of major settlements. The post-game also feels very lacking and extremely easy, with the only real "challenging" content being 2 fights against a worm and 2 fights against a drake all of which I was able to complete without breaking a sweat. All in all, DD2 has an amazing base but struggles to build up from it to create something truly memorable. I can only hope that an extensive DLC cycle will help build this game up into what it could be (a masterpiece).

"Terraria is a land of adventure! A land of mystery! A land that's yours to shape, to defend and to enjoy. Your options in Terraria are limitless, are you an action gamer with an itchy trigger finger? A master builder? A collector? An explorer? There's something for everyone here."

I took this directly from the Terraria wiki, since we spent almost the entire game with it open; I thought it best to consult it first. This brief introduction defines well what Terraria is and what you can expect from the game. Terraria is easily one of my favorite indie games, I'm not sure where it would rank in my list, but it would definitely be among the top five I like the most. But what makes this game incredible?

Terraria emerged at a time when Minetrash was starting to gain popularity, meaning comparisons between the two are inevitable, but the similarities are limited to just the basic concepts: procedurally generated worlds, mining, and the crafting workbench. However, Terraria has undergone many more changes over the years and has received almost a decade of free updates. This demonstrates the care that the developers have for the game.

At first glance, Terraria may not seem very appealing; it is visually simple and can easily be mistaken for just another generic sandbox title. But as you explore the landscape, it becomes evident how creative the game is. It goes beyond mere building and ore collection, delving much deeper into the basic mechanics of a sandbox. Here, there is a genuine reason to construct things, not just for aesthetic purposes; it is crucial for the game's progression. Yes, there is indeed a progression in the game, along with an overwhelming amount of content such as bosses, events, NPCs, tons of weapons, accessories, and many other items that will aid you on your journey – over 5000 items at your disposal. The game's progression is measured by the bosses you defeat, and by doing so, you gain access to new items like stronger pickaxes, allowing you to gather new resources and become even more formidable to face the next boss.

Overall, Terraria offers an extremely satisfying experience and deserves all the praise it receives. Obviously, this is just a simplistic view in the face of the grandeur that the game represents. Each generated world is a unique experience, after all, being a sandbox, the way you explore the world, build structures, or defeat the bosses is entirely up to the player.