2 reviews liked by DioMB
Everything you've heard? Completely true.
I liked it a lot when it first came out, but it hasn't held up particularly well in retrospect. It still has its moments, but I really don't think about the game itself much anymore, but rather think of it as the final signpost of Bioware's golden age before its precipitous decline. Certainly not their best game, but still much, much better than what was to come in its wake.
The writing is simultaneously its strongest point and one of its most fatal flaws. The game is at its best when making its biggest moves: Toying with the franchise's established lore in interesting and oftentimes revelatory ways that play off of and subvert expectations of the series' longtime fans. That stuff is killer throughout, and the DLC, in particular, was very good at this. The other side of the coin, however, is what I refer to as the "millenialization" of Bioware, as typified in the writing style of the much-maligned Mass Effect: Andromeda. Though it strays not nearly as far down that particular path as ME:A does, there is still a distinct air of quipiness, of cloying representation, and of the "You are the speshull guy chosen one!!!!!!" style of narrative that I think really really does the game a disservice when compared the its eldest sibling, DA: Origins.
Bioware REALLY tried to make every protagonist in their games "THE Commander Shepard" after the success of Mass Effect 2. You had to play some sort of famous/infamous/legendary/big fat HERO that everyone in the world knows the name/title of from the jump, and they would contort the narrative through any contrivance they had to to get there. They did it in DA 2 (Hawke being a semi-well-known mercenary after the prologue), they did it in ME: Andromeda (Ryder/Pathfinder being famous through... well, just nepotism, actually), and they do it here with THE HERALD OF ANDRASTE. It's not the worst it's been handled (See ME:A), but it's still a rather obvious contrivance, and it's a rather limiting one from a role-playing perspective. There can be little variance in, say, how character introductions can play out in a narrative when nearly every NPC already knows about who you are and what you are famous for. Maybe interesting to explore once (as in, say, the Mass Effect Trilogy, where it was mostly handled pretty well and made sense), and not in EVERY SINGLE ONE of your games thereafter.
Look, I'm all for thoughtful representation in games (not to get too specific, but some specific types of organic representation in games helped me figure out who I am, personally!) and honestly I DO think Inquisition pulls it off more than it fumbles, but I can't escape the sense that the game taking a few too many steps in the patronizing direction for my taste. Again, not nearly as bad as ME:A (which may as well just be the video game adaption of a coexist bumper sticker), but there are still moments that feel "Check-box"-y to me. "Oh, Dragon Age has never had a character specifically with this sexuality/ideology/perspective? Then we must MAKE SURE there's an important character just like that in this one!" Again, I think it hits more than it misses and I DO appreciate real, organic representation, but some of it does come off as manufactured in this game.
Finally, the quips. The sarcastic=cool and funny characterization trope. The Whedoning of a franchise that didn't really need it and probably shouldn't have had it. Okay, this wasn't Bioware's most egregious example of their attempted Marvelization of their dialogue (can you guess which game is though? Such a mystery! The answer will definitelynot surprise you!!), but its still pretty jarring when it does crop up. Like, Varric actually pulled it off pretty well in DA2, but now almost every character (except Varric most of the time, bizarrely) has to peel off at least one or two Tony Stark-esque hum-dingers over the course of the game (The first and hopefully last MCU reference you will ever see me make. God help me.) Juxtaposed with the somewhat grittier, darker nature of both the standard that Origins set and the broader DA lore, it falls very flat.
While I actually broadly enjoy the combat gameplay of Inquisition and think its art design is fantastic, the game often feels held back by by the MMO-ification of its worldspaces and non-combat gameplay loop. The areas CAN be beautiful, but they are mostly over-large and devoid of anything interesting to do in them. Mostly resource gathering and closing Rifts. The best areas of the game tend to be the smallest ones; the ones that lead you down a set singular path or choice of paths organically. The larger spaces tend to feel aimless, like the game just shrugging its shoulders and saying, "I dunno. You figure it out." Outside of the very well-designed combat arenas of Mass Effect 3, however, engaging gameplay spaces have always felt like something Bioware has struggled with. This ultimately makes Inquisition feel like yet another tentative step in a random direction from a company who has only ever taken timid steps in random directions when designing the actual play space of their games (with the exception of... you guessed it! Mass Effect Andr... oh wait, no, that had it, too. Oh, Anthem! Anthem was what felt like their first ever confident step into what they wanted the actual gameplay space of one of their games to be. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it was a very confident step off of a very confident fucking cliff. Whoops!). Bioware was, when at its best, incredible at world building, but never incredible at GAMEworld building. This one isn't terrible, but it isn't good. It's fine. At least it's pretty.
Is that enough stream-of-conscious word vomit for me to wrap this thing up? Okay, cool.
I liked it a lot when it first came out, but it hasn't held up particularly well in retrospect. It still has its moments, but I really don't think about the game itself much anymore, but rather think of it as the final signpost of Bioware's golden age before its precipitous decline. Certainly not their best game, but still much, much better than what was to come in its wake.
The writing is simultaneously its strongest point and one of its most fatal flaws. The game is at its best when making its biggest moves: Toying with the franchise's established lore in interesting and oftentimes revelatory ways that play off of and subvert expectations of the series' longtime fans. That stuff is killer throughout, and the DLC, in particular, was very good at this. The other side of the coin, however, is what I refer to as the "millenialization" of Bioware, as typified in the writing style of the much-maligned Mass Effect: Andromeda. Though it strays not nearly as far down that particular path as ME:A does, there is still a distinct air of quipiness, of cloying representation, and of the "You are the speshull guy chosen one!!!!!!" style of narrative that I think really really does the game a disservice when compared the its eldest sibling, DA: Origins.
Bioware REALLY tried to make every protagonist in their games "THE Commander Shepard" after the success of Mass Effect 2. You had to play some sort of famous/infamous/legendary/big fat HERO that everyone in the world knows the name/title of from the jump, and they would contort the narrative through any contrivance they had to to get there. They did it in DA 2 (Hawke being a semi-well-known mercenary after the prologue), they did it in ME: Andromeda (Ryder/Pathfinder being famous through... well, just nepotism, actually), and they do it here with THE HERALD OF ANDRASTE. It's not the worst it's been handled (See ME:A), but it's still a rather obvious contrivance, and it's a rather limiting one from a role-playing perspective. There can be little variance in, say, how character introductions can play out in a narrative when nearly every NPC already knows about who you are and what you are famous for. Maybe interesting to explore once (as in, say, the Mass Effect Trilogy, where it was mostly handled pretty well and made sense), and not in EVERY SINGLE ONE of your games thereafter.
Look, I'm all for thoughtful representation in games (not to get too specific, but some specific types of organic representation in games helped me figure out who I am, personally!) and honestly I DO think Inquisition pulls it off more than it fumbles, but I can't escape the sense that the game taking a few too many steps in the patronizing direction for my taste. Again, not nearly as bad as ME:A (which may as well just be the video game adaption of a coexist bumper sticker), but there are still moments that feel "Check-box"-y to me. "Oh, Dragon Age has never had a character specifically with this sexuality/ideology/perspective? Then we must MAKE SURE there's an important character just like that in this one!" Again, I think it hits more than it misses and I DO appreciate real, organic representation, but some of it does come off as manufactured in this game.
Finally, the quips. The sarcastic=cool and funny characterization trope. The Whedoning of a franchise that didn't really need it and probably shouldn't have had it. Okay, this wasn't Bioware's most egregious example of their attempted Marvelization of their dialogue (can you guess which game is though? Such a mystery! The answer will definitely
While I actually broadly enjoy the combat gameplay of Inquisition and think its art design is fantastic, the game often feels held back by by the MMO-ification of its worldspaces and non-combat gameplay loop. The areas CAN be beautiful, but they are mostly over-large and devoid of anything interesting to do in them. Mostly resource gathering and closing Rifts. The best areas of the game tend to be the smallest ones; the ones that lead you down a set singular path or choice of paths organically. The larger spaces tend to feel aimless, like the game just shrugging its shoulders and saying, "I dunno. You figure it out." Outside of the very well-designed combat arenas of Mass Effect 3, however, engaging gameplay spaces have always felt like something Bioware has struggled with. This ultimately makes Inquisition feel like yet another tentative step in a random direction from a company who has only ever taken timid steps in random directions when designing the actual play space of their games (with the exception of... you guessed it! Mass Effect Andr... oh wait, no, that had it, too. Oh, Anthem! Anthem was what felt like their first ever confident step into what they wanted the actual gameplay space of one of their games to be. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it was a very confident step off of a very confident fucking cliff. Whoops!). Bioware was, when at its best, incredible at world building, but never incredible at GAMEworld building. This one isn't terrible, but it isn't good. It's fine. At least it's pretty.
Is that enough stream-of-conscious word vomit for me to wrap this thing up? Okay, cool.
Dragon's Dogma II
2024
This is going to be a weird review, simply because I will hardly be explaining elements of Dragon's Dogma II itself (which honestly feels thematically consistent with the game, in terms of the framing of game-as-sequel DD2 finds itself in), and rather talking mostly about myself. Let me preface this by saying I have nearly 500 hours on the Steam release of Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, as well as countless hours on both the original release and the DA release on Xbox 360 before that. I will also say that it is a shame about the performance issues of the game and that the microtransactions are a complete and utter nonissue, and I will not be addressing any of the controversy beyond that. On with the review.
This is among my favorite games I've ever played, and one of the major reasons for that is that it did one thing that I don't think I've ever seen a game really do: It treated itself as a true sequel, and did so with a massive budget. What I mean by that is that the game made zero concessions on itself or gated itself in any way to be friendly to people new to the series, instead honoring the intelligence and time investment of its longtime fans. This game was made to be the ultimate cult game sequel. It is the perfect dream that many people, like myself, thought would never happen. It took all of the weirdness of the systems, all the thematic elements, and all of the ramifications of the lore from the first game and doubled down on them in a way that felt the most intelligent and consistent of any sequel of anything I think I've seen across art and media... ever. And everything that DID have a more dramatic change made was changed in a way that made perfect sense. It's astonishing.
It felt like a game made for ME, specifically, which is something I've never experienced before. If you have a deep love of the first game like I do, then this is... perfect. There was not a single iota of disappointment I held for this game other than the very unfortunate performance issues it has launched with, of course. That has also never happened to me with a sequel or spiritual successor to anything before; There's always some niggling doubt about a system or gameplay change, or a writing or thematic inconsistency, or just SOMETHING that makes a sequel feel slightly uncanny compared to what came before it (a perfect example would be something like Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2. RPG Military Star Trek turns into edgy space military shooter with RPG elements. Don't get me wrong, I love the entire OG Mass Effect trilogy, but it was incredibly tonally and thematically all-over-the-place from game to game).
Everything that did undergo a major change makes PERFECT sense. As an example, the deeper layer of the pawn system in the first game (With all the different inclinations, how your playstyle would/could eventually change the inclinations in real-time, etc.) was... kind of a mess. You were more often fighting AGAINST it rather than letting it play out naturally, and that's if you even knew the system was there AT ALL. It was often more advantageous to alter your own playstyle to keep your pawn from going off the rails than to let your pawn's inclination change. While the revamped Pawn system in DD2 is, essentially, a simplification from DD1, I would personally in no way qualify it as a "dumbing-down"; rather an intelligent streamlining of an unwieldy feature. That's one of the few instances of where things were simplified from the first game, and I think in every single place where something similar was done, it was the correct, consistent choice. Dragon's Dogma was a complex, and at times, obfuscated and confusing game. DD2 is no less complex, but it IS a good bit less obfuscated and confusing.
This game nails EVERYTHING about what a true sequel to Dragon's Dogma should be, and, in doing so, it truly feels like the game was made for ME. And if you at all felt the same way I did about the original DD, then this game was made for YOU. Not the mainstream audience, not Capcom corporate (who still nevertheless did its best to f**k with it), not fans of other open world Action RPGs... YOU.
I played my favorite game (Final Fantasy Tactics) ever for the first time 21 years ago, and I've replayed it annually since. It has had an effect on my life in more ways than I could probably even comprehend, let alone articulate (check out my review on here to get a peek into it). No matter what games I've played since (and some that have certainly made a huge impact on me), no game has ever even made me entertain the IDEA that it could dethrone FFT, even whilst playing the game for the first time or in direct aftermath of completing a life-altering game. It just never happened. Any amazing game that I've played since then, even at their emotional apex of my interactions with it, has never even so much as made me consider that it was in the same stratosphere as Final Fantasy Tactics. FFT is so far ahead of my second favorite game of all time, Persona 4, that it may as well be on its own list entirely. The very moment when I realized I was deeply, madly in love with Persona 4, it was already a given that all it had done, all it could do, is take the spot of my second favorite game of all time. Every game since FFT has only been able to fight for the No. 2 position. There was simply no room at the top. The list of my favorite games may as well just start with P4 and go from there, while FFT sits alone in its own heavenly golden palace, never even interacting with the other games. Orders of magnitude beyond anything else I've experienced. It's on that high of a pedestal for me.
Dragon's Dogma II just stormed the palace.
It'll be a long time before I can untangle all of my thoughts to be able to determine whether there is, in fact, a new ass on the throne. But the fact that I'm even CONSIDERING it has shaken me to my core. Never in 21 years. Not a single shred of doubt. But I do know one thing for certain: In the two 14-hour marathon days I pulled prior to beating the game's true ending today, there was a singular thought that I just couldn't shake from my head: This is the greatest game I've ever played.
This is among my favorite games I've ever played, and one of the major reasons for that is that it did one thing that I don't think I've ever seen a game really do: It treated itself as a true sequel, and did so with a massive budget. What I mean by that is that the game made zero concessions on itself or gated itself in any way to be friendly to people new to the series, instead honoring the intelligence and time investment of its longtime fans. This game was made to be the ultimate cult game sequel. It is the perfect dream that many people, like myself, thought would never happen. It took all of the weirdness of the systems, all the thematic elements, and all of the ramifications of the lore from the first game and doubled down on them in a way that felt the most intelligent and consistent of any sequel of anything I think I've seen across art and media... ever. And everything that DID have a more dramatic change made was changed in a way that made perfect sense. It's astonishing.
It felt like a game made for ME, specifically, which is something I've never experienced before. If you have a deep love of the first game like I do, then this is... perfect. There was not a single iota of disappointment I held for this game other than the very unfortunate performance issues it has launched with, of course. That has also never happened to me with a sequel or spiritual successor to anything before; There's always some niggling doubt about a system or gameplay change, or a writing or thematic inconsistency, or just SOMETHING that makes a sequel feel slightly uncanny compared to what came before it (a perfect example would be something like Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2. RPG Military Star Trek turns into edgy space military shooter with RPG elements. Don't get me wrong, I love the entire OG Mass Effect trilogy, but it was incredibly tonally and thematically all-over-the-place from game to game).
Everything that did undergo a major change makes PERFECT sense. As an example, the deeper layer of the pawn system in the first game (With all the different inclinations, how your playstyle would/could eventually change the inclinations in real-time, etc.) was... kind of a mess. You were more often fighting AGAINST it rather than letting it play out naturally, and that's if you even knew the system was there AT ALL. It was often more advantageous to alter your own playstyle to keep your pawn from going off the rails than to let your pawn's inclination change. While the revamped Pawn system in DD2 is, essentially, a simplification from DD1, I would personally in no way qualify it as a "dumbing-down"; rather an intelligent streamlining of an unwieldy feature. That's one of the few instances of where things were simplified from the first game, and I think in every single place where something similar was done, it was the correct, consistent choice. Dragon's Dogma was a complex, and at times, obfuscated and confusing game. DD2 is no less complex, but it IS a good bit less obfuscated and confusing.
This game nails EVERYTHING about what a true sequel to Dragon's Dogma should be, and, in doing so, it truly feels like the game was made for ME. And if you at all felt the same way I did about the original DD, then this game was made for YOU. Not the mainstream audience, not Capcom corporate (who still nevertheless did its best to f**k with it), not fans of other open world Action RPGs... YOU.
I played my favorite game (Final Fantasy Tactics) ever for the first time 21 years ago, and I've replayed it annually since. It has had an effect on my life in more ways than I could probably even comprehend, let alone articulate (check out my review on here to get a peek into it). No matter what games I've played since (and some that have certainly made a huge impact on me), no game has ever even made me entertain the IDEA that it could dethrone FFT, even whilst playing the game for the first time or in direct aftermath of completing a life-altering game. It just never happened. Any amazing game that I've played since then, even at their emotional apex of my interactions with it, has never even so much as made me consider that it was in the same stratosphere as Final Fantasy Tactics. FFT is so far ahead of my second favorite game of all time, Persona 4, that it may as well be on its own list entirely. The very moment when I realized I was deeply, madly in love with Persona 4, it was already a given that all it had done, all it could do, is take the spot of my second favorite game of all time. Every game since FFT has only been able to fight for the No. 2 position. There was simply no room at the top. The list of my favorite games may as well just start with P4 and go from there, while FFT sits alone in its own heavenly golden palace, never even interacting with the other games. Orders of magnitude beyond anything else I've experienced. It's on that high of a pedestal for me.
Dragon's Dogma II just stormed the palace.
It'll be a long time before I can untangle all of my thoughts to be able to determine whether there is, in fact, a new ass on the throne. But the fact that I'm even CONSIDERING it has shaken me to my core. Never in 21 years. Not a single shred of doubt. But I do know one thing for certain: In the two 14-hour marathon days I pulled prior to beating the game's true ending today, there was a singular thought that I just couldn't shake from my head: This is the greatest game I've ever played.