Godsdamnit.

Yeah, I bought the game. I offloaded a ton of Steam inventory to get there, so I only paid ten of my own dollars for it, but I still bought the game. And sixty hours later, my feeling is that Dragon’s Dogma II is indeed Dragon’s Dogma but II, and more in the sense that it’s Dragon’s Dogma times two instead of Dragon’s Dogma again but better. I’m not super happy about it, but I still enjoyed my time with it.

I’m pretty scatterbrained at the moment so I’m just going to start spitting takes. Also, no explicit spoilers, but I might spoil how you feel about it in the long run so there’s that to consider.

THE GOOD

The flaying and slaying feels as solid as ever, and definitely has more weight to it. I haven’t played all of the vocations yet, but the ones I have feel potent (for the most part – I’ll get to that) and intuitive, and their abilities have just the right amount of flash and punch so as to be satisfying. Warrior in particular has really benefitted from the way your attacks interact with foes, as the ability to pin, fling and smash smaller enemies makes greatswords and hammers feel as visceral as swinging around a slab of iron really ought to. Combat is the high point here just as it was in the first game, and balancing issues aside is one of the few places I can say Dragon’s Dogma II definitely made some marked improvements.

When Dragon’s Dogma’s systems work, they feel great. Very few things beat the raw thrill of staggering a cyclops upon a cliff’s edge, watching your pawn topple the hulking brute with a swift blow to its knee, and delivering the finishing blow by plunging your sword directly into its skull after a mighty leap. I pierced a hobgoblin with a running charge and stopped just shy of the river’s edge, sending the poor bastard flying into the briny depths. One time I wanted to slap a griffon in the face with my claymore but couldn’t quite reach it, so I stood on an oblivious ox to give myself that extra bit of height. Once the griffon was sufficiently weakened, I told my pawns to halt their attack while I leapt onto the beast’s back. It fled with me in tow, and it took me all the way back to its nest, whereupon I finished it off and looted the wealth of treasure it was hoarding. The captain of the guard entrusted me with a one-size-fits-all goal key and asked for it back once I was done. Which I happily obliged… After making a fully functional copy of it for my own purposes. The guards never bother to confiscate it from you when you get arrested so crimes are basically free. I then later used it to release somebody from their cell (who probably didn’t deserve to be freed but I just wanted to see what would happen). Didn’t feel like scaling a cliff one time so I just swan-dived unto the pavement and revived myself with a Wakestone. It works. You can sneak into at least one area in the game by disguising yourself with the correct clothing (and a handy face-mask). Even when it all works against you, I can still respect it. One time I got slapped around by an ogre and was bounced to and fro for so long I never even had the chance to recover before I died. It was brutal and it didn’t feel good, but I made extra sure never to put myself between an ogre and a hard place again. Or, you know, just watch this. And yes, I am a proponent of Dragonsplague. It’s fair that they’re looking to adjust how it works but the idea is cool as shit (and the ingame tooltip explaining it dulls that edge somewhat). There’s a lot of weird stuff in here, and a lot of opportunities to just try things and see if they stick, and it’s always satisfying when they do. Dragon’s Dogma doesn’t have as many of these moments as I would like, but it still has way more than other games of its ilk, which is part of why I love it. There are still places it could be improved, though, for sure (lots of invisible walls here, and the game reset my pawn’s position after I chucked him through the window of a locked house, which was dumb).

THE PRETTY AIGHT

Outside of cities, the game looks and runs great. Both Vermund and Battahl are filled to the brim with lovely scenery and I never felt bored just taking it all in. Character models and (most) animations are also well-made and the real-time cutscenes are of a very high quality. Also, the kit available looks awesome and my only complaint is that you can’t use dragonforging as a means of making lower level gear endgame-viable. Playing dressup would be a lot of fun so I hope they look into this for an update.

The way your stats work is definitely better compared to the first game for people who aren’t trying to min-max. The fact that your base stats are adjusted to suit the vocation you’re switching to means that even if you were a string bean sorcerer for the last fifty levels, you can still end up being a half-decent warrior in time. This is good, because it lets you stick with a favored vocation for longer without needing to drop it purely because you’re concerned about making future vocations unviable.

THE EH

Dragon’s Dogma II’s open world is as big as ever and is still a lot of fun to traverse but the lack of friction the tied in systems provide definitely undermines its staying power. The Loss Gauge is an interesting inclusion and would, in theory, reduce the amount of time you can spend out in the open before you start putting your party in a dangerous position. However, in practice, this really isn’t a problem. Campsites are easy to find, an upgraded camping kit isn’t too hard to come by and barely weighs its carrier down, and while the game constantly warns of potential monster attacks I think I had it happen to me a single time throughout my entire playthrough. Never mind that you can make camp in any kind of weather. Weight management feels less important in general, at least partly due to the fact there are no objectives centering around it or tools that you need to carry in your pack to do stuff (where’s the pickaxes?). Otherwise, there are very few “survival” type mechanics or punishments for coming to a fight unprepared. Curatives are easy to stock up on and the more insidious status effects like poison can be trivialized with a pile of antidotes (or a mage). Petrifaction is like quicksand – the game had me convinced it would be a way bigger problem for how often it’s mentioned, but to the best of my knowledge there’s a single enemy type that can inflict it so you might not ever need to worry about it. And where’s torpor at? Where’s the drama? Where’s the lamb sauce? What if you needed to dress for certain kinds of environments to avoid penalties? What if there was a hunger mechanic and you needed to loot and hunt to stay in good health, or at least drop some coin at your local tavern? I know a lot of people are probably dog tired of these types of mechanics being shoehorned into every possible game these days, but I think they would complement a game like Dragon’s Dogma really well – one where the threat isn’t just in the monsters you face, but also in the environment. The world does not feel nearly as harsh and unforgiving as it should.

Speaking of the open-world, encounter design is sorely lacking with regards to making the world feel organic. First of all, the idea of “the main road is safer” is a load of crap. You’re going to encounter a ton of enemies no matter where you go, so the idea of having a quiet stroll through the woods just isn’t going to happen unless you’ve already cut a path through recently. This definitely makes it a bit hard to appreciate “the journey” at times because you can’t hardly go more than a minute or two without combat. And what’s more, you’re going to start becoming acutely aware of when a fight is about to break out because enemies seem to spawn in mostly the same spots with little (if any) variance. This is something that was true of the first game as well, but it’s more noteworthy here given the seeming emphasis placed on making the overworld feel more natural in design. All of these interesting little nooks and vantage points end up feeling like very intentionally constructed setpieces where monsters are supposed to go. Spots that might initially feel like clever ambushes will lead to you approaching it the fifth or sixth time with your shield up and a sigh in your chest. Good luck getting the achievement for using a cyclops like a bridge without encountering one of the few points that were obviously made to facilitate it. Remember when the trailers showed off those spots where you could bust open a dam and knock over enemies with it? There's like three of those in the game, the first one shows up in the tutorial and the game actively draws your attention to it. It all feels very artificial and can suck you out of what could easily have been one of the more immersive open worlds out there.

Pawns are just not as charming or cannily competent as they seemed to be in the first game. This is at least partly due to the system they’re tied to, which I’ll talk about soon, but there’s a bit more going on here. They’ll point out chests and riftstones (and ladders), offer to lead your way on quests and do their utmost to assist you when you’re in danger during a battle. But the constant nudging to head here or there when you have a clear goal in mind or are simply trying to take in the landscape without distractions gets grating fast – never mind the inclusion of a map and quest markers largely erases the need for any kind of guidance. They draw from a remarkably shallow pool of dialogue and very rarely have anything of interest or import to say with regards your circumstances or the world around them. Question: How many times did you leave town without a camping kit after swapping out pawns? I know my forgetful ass did more than once. What if one of them chimed in with a simple “ought we depart without a means to make camp?” if we hit the road without one in our inventory? It’s a handy reminder and leads to them feeling like they are aware and looking out for things you might not be. Maybe they could warn of an impending ambush and offer an alternative route or make note of landmarks as you pass. Maybe they could tell stories hinting at the locations of quests or make purchase recommendations (“I espied a rather handsome bow at the smithy, Master”). I mean, just anything to make them feel more alive. The pawns are intended to be somewhat hollow because lore and blah blah blah but that doesn’t mean you have to make them uninteresting. I also take issue with how the AI hasn’t improved much in ways that matter – can’t tell you how annoying it is to have an archer in your party that doesn’t prioritize flying enemies, for starters – but more on that later. I will also note that the ability to take direct control of a pawn, even if it needed to be unlocked or had some other kind of caveat, would have been a great addition for when you need them to do something that you can’t contextually command them to do. But at least you can give them high-fives…

As to NPCs – whatever they’re doing is not nearly interesting enough to justify the performance hit in cities heavily populated areas. Given the game seems to perform quite well otherwise, I can’t even begin to imagine how they’re tanking framerates the way that they are. Capcom says they’re looking into it, but I have my doubts. This seems like the kind of problem that nobody caught after a year of development and now it’s just baked in.

Treasure and gear! Where is it? Never mind that variety isn’t that great, but there’s not much sense in hunting for it either. You can definitely get armor and weapons as drops on rare occasions. However, it was probably only once or twice where I actually found something out in the field that was better than what I was carrying, let alone better than what the latest vendor had to offer. Even as I reached the endgame, the shops seemed to always have the best gear available. Maybe I simply haven’t played enough and have missed a few things, but while this does make gearing up a fair bit less grindy and RNG-based, the cool factor of digging a badass magic sword out of a cave that’s miles better than what you got from the local smithy just isn’t there. Maybe not everybody will care about this, but I certainly do.

Heck, as long as we’re talking about gear, how about the upgrade system? Having different upgrade “paths” is kind of neat, but I do miss the ability to skip stages if you already have the materials required. It was a fun little shortcut. I also don’t like how dragonforging works in this game, as even though it’s sensible and more consistent, it just doesn’t feel nearly as cool. Not to mention you can’t use it to potentially improve an entire set of fresh gear just by fighting dragons. I mean, if you could just fight dragons all day long to skip the material grind, wouldn’t you?

Really, items in general are kind of underwhelming. It feels like there’s less of them compared to the first game and less possibilities for crafting. That’s before getting into simple stuff like throwable pocket rocks and what have you that you could use as distractions or at least to screw around. There isn’t enough weird junk in this game to play around with.

Leveling happens way too fast, likely as a result of how many combat encounters there are. You’ll rapidly outpace what Vermund has to offer, turning most of your fights into facerolls, until you finally reach Battahl and then maybe find fights a bit more difficult until it happens again. An optional hard mode or similar probably wouldn’t have been a bad choice, especially since the OG had one.

Oh, and not being able to disable the overhead NPC subtitles without disabling subtitles altogether is dumb. It was distracting in The Witcher 3 and it’s distracting here, too. Get rid of it!

THE REALLY NOT SO GREAT

Enemy variety in DDII is absolutely not where it should be for a sequel. If you’ve been following this game’s release at all, you’re assuredly already familiar, but I’ll reiterate the sentiment: I really hope you like fighting goblins, saurians, bandits, wolves and harpies because that’s going to encompass the bulk of your gameplay. Even once you step across the border, you can look forward to more of the same, just stronger and considerably more annoying. While the list of bigger monsters has changed somewhat, you’ll rarely ever encounter some of the new additions, as they’re either hard to find in the first place or unique (or both). Not to mention how frequent boss encounters seem to be in general. Thus, look forward to getting those cyclops and ogre medals without too much trouble. It’s already sad enough that anything was taken out at all (farewell to cockatrices and hydras), but the fact that you’ll be seeing the same foes over and over again really just dampens the excitement of encountering them. At least they’re still just as fun to knock over as before.

Dungeon design. Caves caves caves caves caves. So many caves. Rather organic in design, but still caves. Not a whole lot of “constructed” locations as per the first game, like Bluemoon Tower or the Watergod’s Altar, and especially not like the Everfall. This is decidedly lame and really puts a sour taste in exploration, as there just aren’t too many locales I discovered that actually wowed me. Very much a quantity over quality type of thing going on here.

And weapon variety. Not great. Lots of stuff left on the table. Actually, yeah, a general lack of variety is easily one of Dragon’s Dogma II’s biggest weaknesses.

Balancing is rough. Take it with a grain of salt, because as previously mentioned I haven’t played every vocation in the game yet, but if nothing else some vocations just flat out feel more potent and useful than others. Archer and rogue are probably the biggest offenders here, as the split to diminish the strength and versatility of the first game’s strider vocation doesn’t solve how the individual classes are still very powerful in their own right. Rogues can still do insane single-target damage with their knives and they have an ability that can utterly trivialize most encounters. Meanwhile, archers can quickly down anything with a weak point with little risk to themselves and can effortlessly keep bosses reeling with explosive arrows. Compare with the fighter and warrior, who – while still strong in their own right – don’t have nearly as much stopping power as you would expect, especially in the case of warriors who still have very poor damage output relative to their lack of utility and the compromising positions they must place themselves in. Mages and sorcerers have had some of their more potent abilities nerfed, but they do have access to ice magic, which might be just a smidge too effective at freezing crowds of enemies and even bosses on the spot. IN all, a lot of the vocations really lack that “oomph” and feel rather compromised in overall efficacy. The biggest question mark for me might be the trickster vocation, which is very interesting in theory but relies on too many different factors (like party composition, AI behavior and beneficial terrain) to be worth playing. It feels like it was designed for a different game entirely. Maybe if you could play with other people… But oh well.

Characterizations and interactions are about as dull and shallow as they’ve ever been. There are a few more “in-depth” optional character quests that have cutscenes and all that good stuff but they’re about as involved or interesting as they were in the first game. This is with the return of the “Beloved” system which is also completely unchanged. You can give NPCs gifts and do quests for them or generally just not try to murder them and they’ll start to like you more, and eventually they’ll blush when they see you and they might feature in your story at another point or what have you. But again, it’s not at all explained and making buddies with NPCs serves basically no purpose unless they’re a vendor. You’re seldom going to unlock any unique items or services or sidequests or cutscenes by going around making friends with anybody. And much like in the first game, what hurts the most is I actually quite like a lot of these characters with regards to their designs, backstories, what have you, but you’ll never get the chance to explore them. This is your story; everybody else is just an accessory to it.

And before I forget, what is going on with those facial animations? Not in cutscenes, but in gameplay. It’s usually not a problem but when NPCs are particularly pleased with you, their visage will contort into the most cartoonishly grotesque grin you’ve ever seen. Come late game I had a horde of fans following me around and their ear-to-ear grimaces frankly freaked me out. Surely somebody had to have realized how creepy they look.


THE BAAAAAAAAAAAAD

So this is going to sound a bit strange given how many seem to feel this was one place where the first game struggled the hardest, but Dragon’s Dogma II is weaker in the story department. Much, much weaker. Compared to the first game, though, this has a lot less to do with what’s there as opposed to what isn’t. While things obviously got a bit more convoluted further on and especially towards the end, the original Dragon’s Dogma had a very simple and potent motivator for the player. You fought a dragon, the dragon stole your heart and dared you to take it back. This makes you Arisen, and your destiny is to slay the dragon and bring peace to the land. But while the why of it might be of interest to some, the real conflict was between the player and that ruby-scaled force of nature. Travel the world, grow stronger through your battles and eventually become a warrior worthy of your charge. You’re urged on by the dragon himself, who regularly reminds you that he is awaiting your challenge. You frankly didn’t need much more than that to make things interesting, but there is another plot wrapped around it that is enthralling at the best of times but also very messy and undercooked at its worst. In Dragon’s Dogma II, you start out as an amnesiac. Never a good sign, but never fear, for your destiny is revealed to you in less than an hour of gameplay. Yes, you are once again Arisen, and your “crowning” moment happens much the same as it does in the first game. Only problem: The dragon is pretty much completely sidelined in favor of a hilariously shallow game of political intrigue, which – if you make a pointed effort of running through the main story quests – is resolved as quickly as it is begun. What follows, then, is an endgame with a semi-hard limit on how long you can play it and a conclusion that really only manages to convolute the lore behind the world of Dragon’s Dogma. The lack of the dragon’s presence throughout your journey makes your inevitable showdown feel hollow and underwhelming, and that’s a huge disappointment itself. But even the “true” ending is not nearly as poignant or emotional as the original’s, and that definitely stings as well.

Oh, and the pawn system. They streamlined it. Man, did they ever streamline it. Originally, pawn inclination was broken down across a whole bunch of different aspects of behavior but would boil down to a primary and secondary inclination. Pawns would react to your playstyle and commands and would change their behavior over time, giving the illusion that they were learning from their experiences. How much influence any of these systems ultimately had on your pawn’s decision making and viability is, at best, fuzzy to me. I also know a lot of people found it annoying that you would eventually need to sit them down and readjust their mannerisms once they grew out of your preferred inclination. However, it did a lot to add character to the pawns and made the overall system feel much more dynamic. The right choice would have been to expand upon this system and make it more granular while also demystifying it a bit and giving the player more ways to influence it. But that does sound hard, so obviously they instead opted to simply make four different inclinations which you can freely choose from and never change on their own, and gave you an insultingly limited list of secondary attributes that you can assign to your pawn. Boring! If streamlining the system is the way they’re going to go, then at the very least they could have given us more options. But no, you get the four inclinations and the six “specializations”, one of which enables pawns to do something they should be able to do to begin with (Chirurgeon), one that should not require a pawn for the player to utilize (Woodland Wordsmith), and one that could have just been an option in the game settings (Aphonite). For how integral the pawn system is to the overall Dragon’s Dogma experience, and how much they market your relationship with your pawn in gameplay, the fact that they regressed it instead of advancing it is a major letdown.

THE UGLY UGLY UGLY UGLY UGLY

The soundtrack of Dragon’s Dogma II is pathetic. I can’t really mince words on this one. I am sitting here now a few dozen hours of gameplay later and realizing that I cannot remember a single track from the game besides the title theme, and I don’t even particularly care to remember that one. Seriously, what happened? If there was anything about the OG Dragon’s Dogma that I would have said was indisputably upper-tier, it was that OST full of dramatic and forceful orchestral pieces accented by a hearty helping of shredding electric guitar. By comparison, Dragon’s Dogma II’s music, when it’s even present, is just… Music. It’s completely uninspired and more to the point, doesn’t inspire me to get out and do some crazy Arisen shit. You barely even need to look any further than the very start of the game – simply compare and contrast the character creation music from the first game with that of the second. Hell, even the best tracks in the game are ripped whole cloth from the first, and then the instrumentation is far weaker! I can only assume the original sound team must have departed the company or was otherwise disposed (and I can imagine Inon Zur’s schedule being pretty packed, at the absolute least), but the fact that not a one of the original composers returned for this project is criminal. If there’s any full black mark on Dragon’s Dogma II, it’s this. I also couldn’t help but notice there’s paid DLC that lets you insert certain tracks from the first game into the second… Yeaaaaah.

THE WHAT WHY

Alright – lore implications aside, is there any particular reason why you didn’t ask David Lodge to voice the dragon this time around? Not saying Grahame Fox didn’t do a solid job, but c’mon, everybody who played the first game adores Lodge’s performance. His absence was most definitely felt.

You can’t get the armor on the box art in-game. Seriously. The helm doesn’t exist and the rest seems to be cobbled together from other bits of pieces that are available. That is… Very strange.

Can’t sell items from storage in towns. At least not without jumping through a square-shaped hoop. Makes no sense whatsoever.

Still using needlessly obtuse descriptions for augments and ring effects and the like. Probably for the best, because everything I’ve read suggests some of the bonuses these augments give are pretty damn pathetic. A balance patch is sorely needed.

Yeah yeah the meat looks pretty but this is also coming from the company with the other Big Monster Slayer franchise and they already invested in making their digital meats look mouthwatering. You can’t fool me, Itsuno. Where’d the meat money go? (Also, did you talk to the Monster Hunter guys at all while working on this? I think they probably could have given some good advice in a few places)

--

I reckon I could keep going but… I think I’m just out of steam. I started a new game right after the credits rolled, as one does with Dragon’s Dogma, and was still enjoying running to and fro and swapping vocations and slaying beasts. But it really is the raw strength of that core gameplay loop that grabs me, and nothing else about the sequel. This game feels like a sidegrade at absolute best; some aspects of it are better, but some are definitely worse, and it doesn’t shift far enough in either direction to allow me a firm decision on which game is superior. However, I will say this: The game ain’t worth 70 dollars when you can play the original for at most a third of the price. Dragon’s Dogma II is not the complete package, something that will be painfully obvious to anybody that plays it. There’s just so much empty space anywhere that you look. With that in mind, I’m once again left with this hollow feeling that after about a decade of waiting we haven’t gotten anywhere. If this is Itsuno’s complete vision, then I have to question if he really knows what makes Dragon’s Dogma worthy of a second chance. This game has not gotten the love it deserves. And even if it has its “Dark Arisen” moment and gets a heaping pile of updates and paid expansions (which I think it certainly will given it seems to be doing numbers), I can’t say with any degree of certainty that it will be enough. Capcom was given another chance to make an absolute masterwork and slipped up once more.

It's actually weirdly appropriate given the core themes of Dragon’s Dogma. A story about destiny, strength of will, conviction, existentialism, entropy, and the futility of an existence dedicated to resisting change. There was so much potential here, but every player followed their part to the letter and so we are left exactly where we started. Not to get needlessly metatextual about it, but this game made no attempt to break the cycle, and for that I fear it is doomed to be forgotten. And as much as it pains me to say it, it may not be until this cycle’s next turn that we finally cast off the yoke of fate and find meaning in the struggle.

Maybe Dragon’s Dogma III will hit the mark. If I LIVE THAT LONG

Gonna be straight up with you: I'm leaving a rating, but this isn't so much a review as it is a fuzzy-brained retrospective from somebody who hasn't touched this game since high school. There's a fire in my heart that demands to be unleashed, so I will now talk about WarioWare D.I.Y. for a few paragraphs.

WarioWare and the Nintendo DS are two things that I personally consider to be "peak Nintendo". Both are the company and its developers at their absolute best: A conglomeration of a bunch of weird, out-there ideas that somehow manage to blend into a unique and delicious smoothie. I'll hold off on gushing about the Nintendo DS for today - perhaps on another game's page (or the system proper if they ever add pages for hardware), but the original WarioWare effortlessly won my heart when I first played it on my GBA way back when. The concept of "microgames" - effectively minigames but mini-er, generally with a runtime of mere seconds - being the focus of an entire game might have seemed strange at first blush. And it is. But Nintendo knew what they were doing, and the full collection of over-in-a-flash trials melded together into a chaotic mess of increasing speed and anxiety that was accessible to anybody. Complemented by brain-bending narratives and visuals, sweet tunes, and a handful of proper minigames for good measure, the OG was and still is one of the most iconic titles for the Game Boy Advance. For a short while there, the WarioWare series would be used as a sort of benchmark for Nintendo’s new hardware, demonstrating every possible gimmick through their new catalog of microgames. And not only was it a (mostly) successful experiment in its own right, but it also managed to breathe new life into the Wario franchise, giving Mario’s yellow-clad rival a brand new world of his own complete with a full new cast of characters. Since adding “money-grubbing game dev” to his resume, Wario has gained more infamy than ever, and he’s been cemented as the primary face of the “weird” side of Nintendo (a title Waluigi might claim for himself if they ever threw the poor purple bastard a bone).

But at one point Nintendo decided that simply letting people play the games wasn't good enough. In 2009, they released WarioWare D.I.Y., a game where Wario introduced players to the world of unpaid internships firsthand. While still containing its own curated selection of microgames for you to play, here they existed mostly to fill an obligation and to demonstrate what you’d be capable of once the reins were handed over to you. For included with D.I.Y. was a full suite of creation tools – not only for programming the games, but for creating the art and music as well. And you know it works, because all of the microgames included by default were created by the developers themselves, using the same tools. Along with a full interactive tutorial to help you understand the fundamentals, a great job was done on the staff’s end to demonstrate exactly what they wanted you to get out of D.I.Y. But just as they wanted you to get inspired by their own creations, there isn’t much sense in making games that only you will ever play. Thus, there was also included an online catalog hosted by Nintendo themselves, where you could upload your creations and share them with the rest of the world. They even incentivized it by holding themed contests, challenging players to fit the proposed prompt with the promise that any stand-outs would be spotlighted for all to see. Thus you have your task, and your inspiration – so get to creating!

The D.I.Y. experience is a straightforward and streamlined one, both with regards to the way you create microgames and the ways in which you can play them. The game follows a very simple object-oriented programming style that lets you set behaviors, variables and triggers for the entities you create. At the same time, you’d draw out the graphics with your stylus and create music in a composer not unlike the all-time classic featured in Mario Paint. In this way, D.I.Y. condensed the game development process much in the same way as the broader series has the very act of playing games. Making a game isn't so daunting when it's only going to be played for eight seconds at the most! However, you can't reach the level of complexity of games featured in the likes of Touched! purely because of the limitations of the engine provided and the fact that your inputs are limited to just taps. This low ceiling definitely trims back the possibilities of what you can pull off in your games... But it speaks volumes to the ingenuity behind D.I.Y. and the people that played it that plenty of impressive little projects were made regardless. Ones that manage to make an impression through their art, music or even mastery of the simple tools provided (and some that have gained infamy for other reasons, but let’s not talk about that here). Plenty of people have documented their favorites, either self-made or from others, in places like Youtube. And of course, you can still pick up a used copy today to experience it all for yourself, and there might even be a few creations left behind from the previous owner if you’re really lucky. D.I.Y. did a fantastic job of translating multiple aspects of the game dev experience to something that was understandable and accessible to just about anybody, and did so while maintaining all of the goofy charm you would anticipate with the WarioWare brand.

Oh, and it has Body Rock.

Sadly, however, Nintendo shut down their Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service in 2014, ending any sort of online communication and hosting for their Wii and DS games. No more visits to friend's towns in Animal Crossing: City Folk, no more online battles in Pokémon Black/White, and no more submissions to WarioWare D.I.Y.'s online catalog. The march of time is inexorable, and all these things and more now belong to the past, living on only in our memories - no more to be enjoyed as they were once meant to be.

... Except I LIED

Naturally, because people are absolutely nuts and will preserve anything and everything, you can still browse and play games made in D.I.Y. via the Internet. Not only can you still share your games by various means, and of course play ones others have shared as well, you can even browse and play them right in your browser! When I first discovered the DoujinSoft site, I wasn't surprised so much as just thrilled that somebody cared enough to go to all this trouble for wee little D.I.Y. Hell, their efforts to preserve the microgames from yore were so thorough I even found a game I made and submitted to one of Nintendo's contests! If you want to talk about some heady nostalgia, very few things have hit me quite as hard as seeing - and playing - something I created that I thought I was lost to time. In short, WarioWare is cool, and people are cool too.

There's very few games out there like WarioWare D.I.Y., and as desperately as I crave some kind of follow up, the time for it is long past - it was already on the perfect handheld for creators, and the other perfect one has also long since been put out to pasture. Would I have preferred an overdue WarioWare D.I.Y. 2 over the likes of Game Builder Garage? Perhaps, but I know deep in my soul that it wouldn’t have hit the same. D.I.Y. was a perfect storm at the perfect time, a simple but charming jewel that inspired creativity in myself and many others. Perhaps it isn’t as prolific or well-remembered or ambitious as others of its kind, but it was one that clearly understood the innate joys of making, and for that it will always have my love and respect.

Oh, I guess I didn’t mention Warioware D.I.Y. Showcase. It exists.

One of the best games that I never want to play again!

At the height of maritime trade in the Atlantic, an English craft dubbed the "Obra Dinn" sets out for the Cape of Good Hope with sixty people aboard. However, it never makes landfall at its destination, and it is assumed lost to the depths after a year without contact. Some four years later, the ship miraculously returns off the shore of its home port... With not a single member of its crew to be seen. You play the role of an insurance investigator working on behalf of the East India Company, who has been tasked with recording what might have happened to the unfortunate vessel. A less-than-enviable charge for just about anybody. Blessedly, a mysterious individual by the name of Henry Evans has given you a significant boon: A magicked timepiece called the Memento Mortem, which grants you the ability to witness visions of a person's final moments. In exchange, Evans has asked only that you remain steadfast in your investigation and not rest until you have unveiled the full truth of the Obra Dinn's grim fate.

Return of the Obra Dinn managed to do something not many games can pull off these days, which is make me refuse to budge from my seat until I had seen it to its conclusion. Granted it ended up being pretty much the perfect length for it, at least in my case - it's a runtime that I'm sure varies wildly depending on one's powers of observation and deduction. However, I think that is exactly where the bulk of Return's strength lies. It introduces the concept and the concern, slaps a journal and a cool pocketwatch into your hands and says "don't step off this boat until you've puzzled it out". The singular tool at your disposal would be any homicide detective's dream come true, but where such a powerful artifact would lead to a breezy day of work at Scotland Yard, here you are responsible for discerning the fate of sixty individuals. A daunting mystery, to be sure, but one that does compel: Just how does a crowd of that size disappear, and moreover, how does their ship make it home without them? Thus you will go to your task with that burning question in your chest, and will scour every inch and ponder every angle as you unravel this nautical whodunit. The lack of hand-holding and thoughtful design results in a riddle of logic that is deeply satisfying to solve, and you can rest assured knowing that each eureka moment you arrive at is well-earned.

Concerns? Well, the way each new scene is introduced did start to grate after a bit, permitting you to wander around your newly discovered "momento mortis" for a limited amount of time before kicking you back out to present day. Oftentimes this felt like an arbitrary imposition, as I would usually want to jump back in right away to continue taking notes. The soundtrack, while by no means bad and perfect for the setting, felt just a bit too same-y across the board with no real stand-outs. The retro computing-inspired visuals, which I'm sure will hold plenty of appeal for some, wore out their welcome for me by the end - if for no other reason than its monochrome palette not being a great choice for a game centered around careful observation of your surroundings. I admittedly cheated a smidge at one point just because I was completely lost on what to do next, only to realize the clue I needed was pretty much staring me in the face. If only I could see it! And while I know it's all in the name of establishing a sense of progression, the fact that the book will periodically confirm your findings for you feels a bit... Cowardly? A part of me wishes the game would force you to fill everything out and submit it with no way of knowing you were correct until the end, but that's probably just the masochist in me speaking. When I think about it, I doubt I would have been willing to go back through the full game just to correct one or two mistakes. This is the kind of experience that only hits with full force the first time around. To its credit, though, this mystery does have a bit of open-endedness in how you can resolve it, so that may be a bit of a draw for those seeking to dive back in.

I think if there's anything that truly hurts the experience in the long run, it's that the narrative at the center of it all, for all of the fantastical elements surrounding it, ultimately feels rather mundane. This didn't need to be a problem, mind; I would argue that the more grounded elements of the story are what lends it the gravity and intrigue that it does have. The failure, then, is making the more out-there aspects seem a bit shoehorned and unimaginative by comparison. I won't pick it apart here in case you intend to play it, and hopefully your opinion of the tale of the Obra Dinn will be brighter than mine. I simply felt that the conclusion arrived at was a little lackluster given the setup.

All in all, Return of the Obra Dinn is an excellent adventure in deduction that trims away a lot of the fluff typically associated with other games of its ilk. It knows the story it wants to tell and drops you right into the center of it, leaving it up to you to fill in the blanks. While I don't know that the ending will satisfy everyone, I think this is definitely one situation where the journey is more important than the destination. Hopefully I'll be able to give Lucas Pope's other claim to fame a proper shake in due time.