[Game Director]
- Mounir Radi

[Senior Game Designer]
- Rèmi Boutin

[Combat Designer]
- Lucas Sachez
- Paul Bordeau
- Red Cochennec

[Level Designer]
- Bertrand Israel
- Yannick Patet
- Gregory Palvadeu
- Erwan Cochon
- Alvin Chambost
- Tom Guiraud
- Alberto Portero Ariza

Praise their names instead of Ubisoft.

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.

Admittedly haven't gotten around to a full replay, so take any comments on the game's structure with a grain of salt, but my recent tour of the super-bosses tells me that's where most of my enjoyment would come from, anyway. Each one manages to extract slightly different focuses from the combat system, but Gilgamesh in particular is genuinely excellent, with his constant use of Vendetta, Pain and Fog during staggers, and eventually Divider warranting consistently focused interaction from the player. My friend Godman has already discussed the basic appeal of this combat system, and that's all still the same here, but XIII-2 gets so much credit for not only its wider amount of great endgame content, but also the abundance of tiny fixes it makes as a whole. Quintessential example of life by a thousand band-aids, but even with all of these new refinements, the balance isn't broken: adjusting the focus of Paradigms is still done outside of combat and is therefore still based around planning. Changing characters mid-battle can be favorable depending on the situation, but Noel and Serah's AI otherwise still behave according to their given setups, and ultimate abilities are now only usable once per fight. Smaller skillsets makes manual menu use in combat more manageable, and they've also been re-organized in a much cleaner fashion (especially for Ravagers). The way that the endgame weapon selection is balanced is a little contentious, but I think it now creates a fundamental decision for each fight: 5 bars with a faster ATB rate, or sacrificing a bit of speed for the full 6.

The monster system is my main focus of suspicion, not for those mechanics themselves (though, after trying the full Goblin Chieftain and Cloudburst setups, I give myself permission to use save edits for any future endeavors), but for the effect they have on Serah and Noel. Gratned, they do have good balance between each other, but especially as far as the Synergist/Saboteur roles are concerned, things are maybe a little too scuffed. Their pool of options is pretty limited, and Serah's AoE debuffs are particularly more situational than Noel's AoE buffs, though even these still have notable trade-offs compared to single-target ones. I think my basic thought is that a monster should be more capable in its given role than either Noel or Serah, but probably not both of them combined. Part of my replay might involve adding in a few more of these classes' skills to them, just to test the waters and see if it breaks things too much...I don't think it should be that bad.

That aside, monsters and the overhauled Crystarium still allow for a bit more flexibility on replays, especially compared to how the original XIII's two-member story arcs put a hard limit on the amount of variety available in the early-game. This is not to mention the way that optional areas and content are dispersed more evenly across the whole romp, and the nonlinearity isn't overwhelming since the focus is on exploring different smaller zones individually as opposed to something larger-scale. In support of this, there are several ways to alter the enemy encounter rate, and later Fragment Skills help you further cut down on bloat, resulting in a relatively lean experience.

The integration of characters and concepts from the original game into the narrative is the weakest aspect for me (my joke is that they designed Lightning's outfit first before figuring out how to make it fit into the story), but Noel, Caius, and Yeul's narrative is still pretty good. Playing on PS3 also led to a handful of performance issues, but otherwise I find XIII-2 such a huge improvement over the original that I'm sometimes tempted to recommend going straight into it if you've ever been curious about the battle system more than anything else.

As rumors of a follow up to one of the greatest fighting games of the century began circulating, most of the original Under Night’s player base began to wonder how the developers may handle a numbered sequel. I think I can speak for most people when I say UNICLR felt pretty much perfect (at least structurally) and making a brand new game seemed unnecessary at best and worrying at worst. What might French Bread change? Would they bend the knee to casual players and broaden its appeal through simplifications of its systems? Would they go the Type Lumina route and remix things in a such way to not shift the series’ DNA entirely while still feeling completely alien next to Current Code?

As I wandered the EVO floor on that fateful Friday morning and heard the news that the fated successor to our darling Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] was just announced and playable at that very moment, my personal anticipation and anxiety rose to all new heights. Things seemed promising from the trailer, but it was hard to judge anything for sure until I got my hands on it. After a bit of waiting in line I finally got my hands on the game, and to my absolute delight there wasn’t anything that jumped out to me. To be clear, UNICLR was never a game I was particularly great at, and as such any small tweaks and balances that did exist surely passed me by, but the foundation felt extremely similar to what I had played in the past. Somehow, it seemed like FB did the one thing no one expected but everyone secretly hoped: they didn’t fuck with the formula.

Flash forward five months, and now that I’ve had the full release of the game in my hands for the past few days I can finally confirm that this is functionally just an iterative sequel to the first game - think like how Street Fighter 4 handled its packaged versions back in the day. In fact, I’d almost liken it more to a glorified balance patch or brand new season than an entirely different game. While someone who casually messed with UNI back in the day may have yearned for more of a refresh to give the series another shot, I appreciate the restraint of the devs to understand the value of their game and not second guess themselves on old mechanics. They didn’t throw the baby out with the bath water, they didn’t make GRD easier to parse, they didn’t fix what wasn’t broken. “More of the same” is the highest compliment I can give to a game with Vorpal Cycles and Chain Shift in it.

To touch a bit on the adjustments more directly, each small new addition targets the GRD system and gives the player just a few more tools to work with and consider in a match. Things like the new forward roll aren’t terribly substantial on the face of it, but by adding more things to this towering stack of mechanics built off the same central resource, it leads to further complications in how to make the best choices in the heat of the moment. When to spend GRD for a force function, when to hold off and play defense, and when to take a chance on a shield to push the Cycle forward and build massive GRD at the risk of a Break are just a few strings of general choices you can make in a pinch, and this is only from the defending player’s perspective - this doesn’t consider how to play with GRD in neutral to even end up in these intense scrambles to begin with. For a modern comparison, in a game like Street Fighter 6 this type of complex decision-making already feels exhausting in the best ways with a lenient timer and an automatically generating central gauge to spend, so making these potentially higher risk gambles on an ever repeating 16 second timer in UNI2 feels just as if not more exciting in the heat of a match. Additions to the system could have run the risk of tipping the balance of an extremely well considered system, but at its core, UNI2 is still all about the captivating tug-of-war for GRD and the race to achieve Vorpal we all fell in love with before, just further touched up and refined in really intelligent ways.

The true meat of this package as a “sequel” really just comes in everything surrounding the game itself, which I don’t want to get too caught up in for the brevity of this blog, but it must be said that this is absolutely one of the most feature rich and complete fighting game packages ever made. Barring the exclusion of cross-play (forever and always, fuck Sony), no stone was left unturned and nothing was left behind. From intense training mode options to replay takeover functions, this game truly has every tool you could ever want and shit you probably didn’t even know you wanted, it makes you wonder how anyone can accept less complete packages from far more established developers in an era where fucking French Bread of all companies is dropping what’s unquestionably the most accessible and rich fighting game of the year.

This has always been a series I’ve held in high respects - never one I was particularly great at or could understand all the intricacies of beyond the the first layer or two, but always one I kept at the top of the stack when it came to my “casual” fighters. I’ve always been a player who loves obsessing over and gaining a strong understanding of game’s and their mechanics, so while I’m still willing to appreciate Fighting Games largely for their surface level “approachable” aspects, I always try to dig a bit deeper whenever possible. While there’s been many games over the years I’ve dreamt of attaining a greater understanding of, few have occupied as much space in my brain as Under Night. In the past it felt like a far off dream to understand the intricacies of the game, to understand something simultaneously complex and beautiful in its construction yet tragically hidden in the shadows behind passionate local communities bound by the shackles of delay-based hell. It felt impossible to slip in and catch up with everyone else in the moment, but now with the release of UNI2, I feel the spark to play and learn far more than I ever have before. For the first time in a while, the thought of going out to events big or small is alluring to me for a bit more than the usual communal aspects you tend to find with fighting games - as fun as it is to stumble into CoN5 without touching the game for months and hitting B-Tatsu in bracket without a care in the world, the drive to learn and improve for nothing more than the love of the game is something I haven’t felt as often as I’d like these days. It’s one of the many reasons I continue to show up for new fighters despite my adult life constricting the amount of time I can put into them, no other community driven games are gonna give you the same sensations as playing and learning with other community members, and that’s always a high I’ll continue to chase for the rest of my days. As much as I love falling back on old favorites, I’m so thankful companies like French Bread are still capable of lighting that spark of life within me for a new release like this. Even if you’re not into fighting games for the competitive glory or paltry prize pools of small tournaments, if you’re into the genre in literally any capacity at all, I hope this is a game that can light the spark for you too.

Upon completing Lost Judgment, my immediate thought was that this was a video game made for me. While the original Judgment was its own enjoyable ride, I reached the end of the trek only to look back on a mixed journey, curbed by some mechanical imbalances but steady enough with an investing story and acceptable combat. The sequel doesn’t just address these issues, it looked at everything done well and said, “We can try to top that.” The result is a serious candidate for my favorite title played this year; a game that emphasizes Rya Ga Gotuku Studio’s understanding of asset reuse and their growth as developers. Yes, I am calling Lost Judgment a legitimate masterwork.

While character-driven narratives are a core aspect of the franchise, Lost Judgment’s story is billed from the opening screen to be a more delicate topical. Lost Judgment deals with the difficulties adolescent youth face - and the extenuating responsibilities and failures of the adult world to address them. To be upfront, it’s ultimately impossible for me to have what feels like a measured take of the writing here, given it’s a matter that is incredibly close to my personal and professional experiences. But I will say this: in media depictions reflective of everyday circumstances, children are often dismissed as inconveniences that adults have to indoctrinate into society - nobody tries to understand the inherent value of a relationship between youth and their mentors. Lost Judgment pulls zero punches as far as showing how hard it is to be a kid, between the struggles of finding self-identity to the traumatic mistreatment at the hands of bullying - the latter of which being an essential topic here. There’s a level of respect taken here that’s so endearing, and it’s more prevalent as far as how the adult roles are portrayed. Children actively impact adult lives and vice versa - Lost Judgment emphasizes how valuable your time as an adolescent is and how mentor figures matter here. Detective Takayuki Yagami was shown to be a book-smart, determined investigator with a drive for earnest humanity and truth in Judgment, but here, through the students of Seiryo High, we’re shown a man who can live vicariously to give the students the adolescent joys he didn’t get to while being someone who values, respects, and listens to them. Greater society is often indifferent to children, but the plot, whether it be through a miraculously-conceived antagonist or the aforementioned interactions with youth, demonstrates how institutions fail and can succeed with children. With complex moral questions added that really embody how change is needed without right answers being in sight, nothing feels meaningless in the grand scheme of the writing. I feel it’s unfair to compare this game’s story to its predecessor, namely that the priorities are so different, yet I can say they match each other for my money.

But where Lost Judgment blows away the original is in its combat. The original Judgment, to paraphrase, was a functional beat 'em up offset by some weaknesses, namely, how one of Yagami’s two styles was superior, and how encounter design relied upon mobs with some inconsistent superarmor than diverse variety. Lost Judgment is the game that Judgment could have been from a combat standpoint, taking all of Yagami’s movesets, adding new skills, and redefining old successes. I’ve read how many can call this game a culmination of RGG Studio’s lessons about making strong gameplay feedback loops and, while my experience is limited to only three games of the series, it certainly feels like this statement is the case.

Previously, Yagami’s crane style was useful for its speed and multi-targeting attacks, but it lacked core components that tiger style could on its own, namely catered around building meter and being able to guard break consistently. Now, crane is virtually unrecognizable from what it was prior: it maximizes Yagami’s agility to its max. The sky dancer ability gives an alternate dodge that introduces new aerial attacks, though successfully pulling off a perfect dodge adds speed buff to Yagami, turning him into a whirlwind flurry of arcing attacks smashing into entire crowds at mach speeds. Comparatively, tiger remains mostly the same, but this still caters to its strengths, being a more offensive approach. The emphasis upon chaining charge attacks and combo finishers is rewarded with an attack boost buff and there are more counters Yagami can launch off blocking - thereby making it the ideal one-on-one tool for aggressive players who want to deal damage. But Lost Judgment upps the ante with a third style, snake, which revolves entirely around grabs and parries. The RGG games are known for using grabs to some effect, but snake takes that to the next level: like tiger, snake emphasizes staying in proximity, but redirecting enemies into bad positions or throwing them into one another - a way to stay aggressive while being defensive. A perfect parry can buff Yagami with additional poise, making it harder to stagger, let alone drop, him. It says a lot that each of these styles feel distinct enough situationally, yet versatile enough that not a single one doesn’t have some answer for any scenario. It ultimately is up to player for how they weaponize each one - and the more skills unlocked, the more creative they can be. By the end, I could say not a single style actually felt better than another - and I think that was essential to nail down.

(Note that there is a style behind DLC that I have not played with called “Boxer”.)

What takes all of this to the next level is that you can switch between any style whenever you want, even mid-combo. While the juggling tech in Judgment was resigned to a small assortment of combos, numerous new launchers allow players to keep enemies locked in beatdowns for extended periods more than ever. Juggling isn’t necessarily even the main approach for handling enemies - and finding those moves to make and maintain them raises the skill ceiling. What’s even better is that the aforementioned buffs each style gets can carry over as the player style switches once fully upgraded, thereby leading to even more chains players can use to beat down enemies. That’s the thing that gets me about Lost Judgment’s combat: everything has some benefit on its own, but the synergy between it all leads to a constant stream of momentum. The only real change I’d make is allowing players to customize the order they let Yagami switch styles but this feels like an obsolete nitpick because switching styles mid-combat pauses the entire screen until the switch is done.

The enemy design has also received a change or two: While many of the key tenets of RGG’s foes still show here - vulnerable to all tools, have some grabs, variety, open to environmental collisions - the most noticeable addition is the sheer size of the mob battles. While Judgment was no stranger to numerous foes swarming the rooms, Lost Judgment ups the ante regardless of how the room layout because Yagami’s improved defense and mobility means he can afford to take on - and blow through - more of them. This means the game is willing to include mini-bosses to try and make you work for victory. At least, they aren’t bloated HP sponges with inconsistent superarmor like Judgment had. Certain moves can still and will break superarmor down for regular moves to work - you just have to pay attention to which finishers in your combos can pull that off. Deadly attacks return, only they’re given a counter done by a well-timed dodge to turn the tide, but only in proximity and at the risk of a game over if you don’t pay attention. Just hope these sturdier enemies don’t have firearms - because you can’t grapple away weapons from them for some reason.

I think the point on boss-like thugs being supported with lackeys being better still runs the risk of falling into an issue I had with Judgment: at some point, bosses accompanied by regular enemies either bloats the encounter into a messy affair or are hiding how the boss lacks an interesting moveset - especially if the boss is an HP-sponge. Fortunately, Lost Judgment, while still having some recurring leftover habits here, does away with this by making major fights either solo affairs and having more fleshed out moves than ever. From the grab-centric physicality of Akutsu to the angry overhand swings of Detective Watanabe, the bosses become more distinct with their movesets, but, if they are accompanied by mobs, it’s noticeably not the cluster that led you to fall into unescapable attacks. Moreover, the bosses that are in 1v1 settings are the peak of the game and, fortunately, the two standouts of the game, Soma and Kuwana, play into everything an RGG boss should be. Soma’s defensive, parry-based style reinforces creative offense from players more than just about any other opponent in the game. I’ll, comparatively, keep details on Kuwana to myself, but he may well be the best mechanical boss the series has produced at this point.

There’s really only one debatable thing Judgment rivals Lost Judgment on - and it’s its final boss quality, but otherwise, there’s no contest on which game’s combat works more. The latter is one of the best I’ve played of any action game release in the last five years, period.

The fact that there’s still all of the available side content is just an added bonus, but side activities feel more rewarding. Minigames are spaced between genres through the many school-associated clubs Yagami investigates in a side plot, ranging from rhythm dancing to a surprisingly-fleshed out boxing-based versus mode. You don’t have to do any of these and some are better than others - the robotics club is catered towards players who like strategy and builds - but you have to appreciate the sheer amount of variety at play. Narratively-speaking, because some of Yagami’s characterization is built into enriching the lives of the students he interacts with, there’s ultimately no better way to do it than interacting with these clubs and solving their problems - further reinforcing how yes, youth do have relevant issues that adults can help with. And even then, the same side missions are available in some excess, ranging from the bizarrely chivalrous to the most roundabout-absurdity, there’s a lot to do between Kamurocho and Ijincho.

There’s genuinely so much more to say about this one, but I’d say, in encapsulation, that seeing Lost Judgment as an extension and improvement of its predecessor is all that really needs to be emphasized. It’s rare to find many developers who take the care to craft a product with experimental aspects balanced by feedback they receive from players, but that’s something Rya Ga Gotuku Studio continually does. Lost Judgment is a fantastic game, now among one of my favorites, and I really could go on about how it is a title, from intriguing start to an all-timer endgame, that I’ll remember so much that I can’t wait to replay.

Completely dumbfounded at how this is one of the first rogue games ever made? Beneath Apple Manor and, uh, Rogue both predated E.T. by a few years each, but for many, this was surely their exposure to the genre - I know it was for me, anyway. Assuming you don’t manipulate your RNG and lock in the positions of the phone pieces (and presumably the zones, I’m not sure) in advance by holding the fire button on startup, each reset should essentially result in a completely unique playthrough. For a time where most games didn’t even have an ending, let alone such variable factors to consider in each run, this is a pretty impressive piece of shit, I gotta say. It’s not all glamorous of course, people have torn this game apart for years (and repeatedly recited the same factoids about its history to a more exhausting degree than even the development of Super Mario Bros. 2) and I’m obviously not blind to its faults. Still, I think people can be pretty uncharitable towards it all the same.

First, if you’ve ever belabored that the game is too confusing or doesn’t make sense or whatever, you have to consider that all the game’s mechanics were actually broken down in the manual. No stone is left unturned, it even explains how the scoring system works (or how it’s supposed to work, apparently the way your point total gets tallied during the ending is kinda fucked up). Pits are the mechanic that have seen the most criticism at this point, and while they can certainly be frustrating, they’re not glitched or broken or whatever. People have even pointed towards the collision being the culprit, which isn’t true either. In fact, they work completely perfectly. The real problem is that the collision is too good. E.T. and his sprite is so accurate that it’s incredibly easy to clip the pits while navigating, on top of easily falling back in once you get out. While this can be alleviating beforehand by improving your steering, or afterward by leaving the bottom part of the pit rather than the top, it’s still a mechanic that could have seen some brushing up with some hindsight - shrinking your hurtbox slightly should theoretically fix the issue entirely.

Once you have a grasp of world navigation, finding the phone parts and scraping the map for zones is actually pretty fun. And I hate to say it, but scrambling for and getting to the “go the fuck away” zone icons in-between scuffles with the government agents can actually provide very small bursts of excitement during the game. Getting grabbed by an agent sucks, but since the game is over in three minutes and a fresh start is a reset away, the pace is genuinely kind of electric. Where it does fall apart for me is actually in the home stretch of the game - while placing the Phone Home zone on one single unique spot of the map is a natural evolution of the preexisting rogue mechanics, it’s pretty obnoxious blindly running around each of the game’s five major screens looking for the correct spot while avoiding the rest of the hazards. Oftentimes I’d get all the phone parts, fumble around for the last zone, get caught, and then just reroll the system for better odds. Again, while the game can get away with these weird bumps due to its length, this one in particular feels the most cheap to me - it’s not enough to ruin the game, but definitely holds it back from being something I’ll want to replay often.

If you’re not 5 years old and refuse to read an instruction manual, there’s really no reason to be so vehemently against this one I feel, especially on a system like the Atari 2600 which, in retrospect, wasn’t pumping out the finest of the medium. It’s not high art, and surely there’s a lesson to be gained from how its launch window was handled (not just for this game, but other games launching around the same time), but gimme a break lmao. With 40 years of hindsight, I think it’s fair to say this is easily the 2nd best piece of E.T material that’s ever been made.

I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t the most keen on God of War (2018). While I respect any developer for attempting changes and I think the title itself offers some intrigue as far as an action game could have, I have to admit I’ve tried to enjoy that game more than I actually have. This wasn’t to say that I found the game in a negative light, merely that it had many aspects that aren’t to my tastes. I respected that the game built an interesting character-focused dynamic between a remorseful Kratos, once deconstructed as an archetype of Greek mythos, and his naive, developing son and how they played off of another, but the plot had an enormous amount of meandering that hurt my interest. The core combat, while decent behind juggling mechanics, equally didn’t succeed in holding my attention outside of a few encounters. Enemy design in particular felt offset by the game’s RPG mechanics - said RPG customizations felt more arbitrary additions than engaging decision making - and became repetitive. While the clashes with Baldur, Thor’s sons, and the superboss fight against the Valkyrie Queen Sigrun were thrilling, I finished each of my experiences feeling disappointment.

I’m happy to say that its sequel, God of War Ragnarok, was a substantially more rewarding time for me. The idea behind Ragnarok is best deemed escalation - that is, more of everything. The story is built more into the action - and said action manifests in events, encounters, and a genuinely improved, fantastic combat system.

While I’m never going to be keen on how the Norse duology has handled its camera, the amount of things you can do has increased. The axe in God of War (2018) had its uses between heavy attacks and wall pins, but newfound ways to activate permafrost buffs and grabs are vastly superior to a weapon that previously felt mostly as a heavy weapon beforehand. The blades’ tethering runic ability becoming a regular tool to launch enemies to and from Kratos is one of the greatest boons to the system, substantially involving crowd control in ways the Greek trilogy nurtured. The newest melee weapon, the spear, is the perfect poise breaker and a fantastic launch tool (it can even absorb enemy statuses), whilst offering ranged, high-velocity utility in ways the other weapons never did. The types of shields Kratos can equip play into his defensive options to conduct greater initiative on the offensive. While some, like the shatter star, end up becoming more practical, each shield has a different strength, whether it be a focus on guard breaks, easier timing for parries, et cetera - you have your options. The weapon-switching is noticeably faster than the original, allowing for transitions between weapons on the regular, albeit with the caveat that you’re quick enough when stunlocking the enemy or in the right position to use do so. Kratos’ berserk mode in Spartan Rage returns, but the game adds two variations: Valor, which can be used to restore health, or wrath, where Kratos uses his equipped weapon for a devastating blow to enemy vitality. While the runics don’t remain my favorite implementation of power attacks with cooldowns, I can at least understand their recovery is tied to dealing significant damage or offering temporary invincibility at the player’s discretion.

One of the greatest improvements lies in how playing creativity is incentivized and balanced with an upgrade on encounter design. I brought up some such as tethering with the blades, but the environmental layouts compared to God of War (2018) is night-and-day. Adding verticality for players to get out of dodge or jump back into the fray with a leaping power attack off a jump makes the combat more dynamic than before. Ringouts and wallsplats are equally viable for isolating threatening enemies and beating them down.

Speaking of enemies, while the previous entry’s rogue gallery makes returns to benefit from the better combat, newer foes up the ante. Einherjar are the particular standouts, weaponizing status abilities of their own - via bifrost - and offering threats in just about any phase of the fight. With arena changes leads to greater demands and these enemies demonstrate that at its best. The best mobs of this game involve the Einherjar and some of those encounters I found myself having comparable fun to the better ones in the God of Wars of old. The rest of the game’s bestiary doesn’t quite match them in my view, though I do enjoy how enemies like grims use the newfound verticality themselves. My only real issue with the enemy design is how some enemies, such as captains, travelers, or ogres, end up being sturdy-superarmor chip-damage sponges that hurt their own interactivity (i.e. the traveler has a reflective shield, why is he so opposed to hitstun?). It’s even stranger to me when you consider how the bosses handle being staggered - more on that in a bit. At least with certain sturdy enemies, I can understand why they’re tough to force you into using ranged tools to wear down their stun gauge or avoid their elemental attacks - I may well be missing something with them, but I can’t say.

I digress, God of War is a series known for its multi-staged boss battles, usually a mixture of puzzle-solving gimmicks or intense action that stands with the best of the genre. While I can admit that the 2018 release had some good ones (not the trolls, don’t worry), I found myself wanting more. I’m happy to say Ragnarok more than delivered this, each bout feeling unique and engaging. While there are some optional bouts that incorporate superarmored buffed enemies that I’d call less than enjoyable, the mandatory story battles and the postgame challenges I have faced so far have been thrilling to say the least. Humanoid bosses don’t stagger from every hit, rather, they have set openings where countering them (i.e. parrying or attacking after dodging) allows you to combo them. Even then, Ragnarok has several attacks that will guarantee a stagger on them regardless as your opponents launch mixups of their own to keep you attentive. Thor sets a strong impression early by teaching you how they work - he even has a moveset inspired to work like Kratos with the axe - his patterns changing whether or not his weapon is handy or not. Non-humanoid bosses tend to have more scripted patterns, but they aren’t simply spectacle - Garm in particular makes you think about attacking selective weak spots or considering stepping in on his chain slams. Giant bosses will even temporarily be open to being combo’d themselves if you time a select move carefully or deal enough damage to break their poise. The game saves the best for last with its finale fight - whereupon all the above rules apply, but the boss in question forces you to make use of your full arsenal and initiative. At the end of the day, I’d ascertain Ragnarok did the series proud with its boss design.

The roundabout way of saying this is, yes, I was fairly pleased with how much more fun and rewarding this one felt to play.

I have to be frank though: Ragnarok’s greatest problem is that it’s also very much in trend with modern gaming. That is, it includes aspects that I fundamentally do not believe should be in a game without some caveat. I’m of course, referring to the numerous, lengthy walk-and-talk sections. While its prequel pulled the same feature, it’s far worse here. The Ironwood section in particular, by my estimate, only held maybe a half-hour of actual gameplay between forced, unskippable interactive walking sections in a two-hour period. And there’s many others, albeit not as egregious. I understand the desire to immerse players in the story and there’s almost certainly an audience that will like these moments, but this simply isn’t the way to do it, especially because many are here for the action-centric gameplay and these sections completely undermine the pacing and replay value with their abundance and excessiveness. To summarize, in a game that’s average length is potentially forty hours, these sorts of things bloat the experience into a disengaging slog - and that goes double for people who want to get right into the actual playing.

I admittedly find myself torn on how to talk about Ragnarok’s narrative because the issues I’ve found or that others have expressed are a by-product of God of War (2018)’s own approach. 2018, you see, chose a character relationship-focused narrative as its core, which meant that the story wasn’t a dynamic one. Note that this isn’t principally a bad idea, but it meant that, even with some worldbuilding done throughout, the onus was on Ragnarok to pick up those pieces. As for whether or not it did deliver, I’ve come to believe that’s contingent upon your preferences. Therefore, I’ll speak from my own sentiments:

In regards to developing Kratos and Atreus as characters, Ragnarok at the very least crafts ways they’ve bonded with another and their views of the world around them in organic fashion. Other members of the cast feel hit-or-miss to me depending upon who we’re talking about, but I have a particular fondness for Odin’s manipulative, yet subtly pathetic portrayal of a man who has it all, but doesn’t feel it's ever enough. I do believe there’s not really a major character whose presence feels obsolete as far as contributing to the plot. That said, I’m not too sure what to make of the story’s pacing because, while it's a byproduct of God of War (2018) like I said, I think it shares a similar issue I had to that game’s story - just from a different directionality.

I’ve read accounts from people who believe the Norse saga should have been a trilogy because too much has to be put in Ragnarok, resulting in rushed pacing, yet I’m honestly of the opposite opinion: I personally believe Ragnarok’s narrative has an enormous amount of repetition in its conversations as some contrivances periodically appear. Part of that ties into the aforementioned bloated structure of the gameplay, yet it's noticeable just how much time is traveling between locations without things happening. I think the indecisiveness of the cast is understandable as far as reflecting the thematics of maintaining agency regardless of prophecy, yet I couldn’t shake my feeling throughout that, even when the action ramped up, it sometimes felt artificial or that it was often being crafted for the sake of moments than actual developments. I want to be clear though, I do find the plot decently written, but, like the gameplay, I think its problem therein lies in the pacing - because, make no mistake, I think the good is exactly that, yet there’s just an amount of meandering enough that I was left wanting more. Even the finale, which was stellar on all levels, gave me a moment where I was scratching my head for a bit. There’s a point that I’m being unfair - I probably am - but I just have to be honest.

There’s a number of other things about this game that carries over as problems that weren’t really fixed from 2018, such as the RPG system still feeling arbitrary (albeit I do think it’s better because I didn’t notice the level imbalance nearly to the same extent) or puzzles becoming handheld kindergarten activities between exploration that I find mostly superfluous. However, I can safely sit here and, for the first time in awhile, confess that I had a great time with a newer God of War game. I wrote earlier on that God of War Ragnarok was an escalation - and that manifests quite a bit. It is certifiably a better game than the last one, in spite of being its own worst enemy by doubling down on some of the same bad habits. I wish I wasn’t burnt out enough to play around with the postgame content; on the other hand, maybe I’ll give it a go sooner than later.