Dragon's Dogma 2 is a pretty comfortable game. It's just pretty relaxing to explore a huge open world filled with dozens of dungeons and caves with your party. The pawn system is one of my favorite things about the game since not only you will be attached to your main pawn the entire time, but you will also run into tons of pawns out of the wild or summon them with a rift crystal.

The pawns can vary in all shapes and sizes and can be one out of six vocations (since the advanced vocations such as mystic sphere and magical archer are exclusive to the Arisen). They come in one of four core personalities with a dozen or so specializations, such as marking down materials or translating elven speak to help with the adventure. Their dialogue is pretty limited and after 10 hours it just becomes very repetitive, but I do like the idea of pawns talking to each other and guiding you to chests or campsites you haven't found yet. Adventuring just never feels stale with pawns even 90 hours in.

The vocation system is nice with plenty of jobs for combat variety. Even the basic vocations such as fighter and mage are fun to use. The only one I personally didn't enjoy was the trickster vocation due to the inability to directly do damage. But otherwise, despite how sloppy the combat can be due to no lock-on or dodge/block mechanics, the action combat stays fresh due to the amount of vocations you can use and thier skills you can use for each vocation as you level them up. Although I wish you had more than four skill slots because you get plenty of skills to choose from by the time you max out a vocation.

Dragon's Dogma 2 got the core idea of party-based action RPG down nicely but I am afraid I feel like there are a lot of cut corners as I play through the game. There is a huge lack of enemy and boss variety and fighting the 50th Orge or Cyclops becomes far less exciting. Also, the dungeons and caves are very repetitive in terms of design and visual presentation. On one hand, I enjoy the size of Dragon's Dogma 2 map but also I understand why some people thought the map was too huge due to the lack of content variation in the world.

The overall story and questing in Dragon's Dogma 2 is nothing groundbreaking either. That is to say, it's still a pretty serviceable, if not rather shockingly short main quest in proving you are the true Arisen to everyone and getting your heart back from the dragon that has taken it. However, I really think the whole concept of the post-game is a really nice mood changer and felt like it has taken inspiration from the World of Ruin from Final Fantasy VI as well as the Souls games as far gameplay becomes more difficult. I just wish the post-game ideas were longer or at least more integrated into the story earlier on.

However, my biggest complaint is player decisions for quests feel weightless. Choices in Dragon's Dogma 2 mostly affect what ending you will get for some side quests. No, you don't even get a choice on whether you want to romance Ulkira or Wilhelmina or not if you complete thier quest lines. The game forces romance at you with no say so and that bothers me if I have to be honest. That said, there are still quite a few side quests I enjoyed that fleshed out the sense of world-building more and will be useful to complete later on in the game despite the writing not being particularly outstanding.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is definitely rough on the edges as far as the ratio between the map and the amount of content variation inside the map, a not-too-amazing main story, and some really questionable decisions as far as questing. But at its core, it's an earnest action RPG that is satisfying to explore and engage in its combat and pawn mechanics. End of the day, while I enjoyed the game for the most part, with some polish, more variety and more involved writing with the main story, Dragon's Dogma 2 could be a very strong contender for GOTY.

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If Metal Gear Solid 2 was about escaping an all encompassing system, Metal Gear Solid 3 (aptly subtitled "Snake Eater”) is about being completely absorbed into it.

The theme of "Scene" permeates this game throughout the whole of its run time, entrenching characters in it, people expected to play their roles. Spy, lover, traitor, patriot, soldier. All of these are roles that people in the game take up to manipulate the main character, Naked Snake. Unlike Jack, the tragedy isn't in the total control the manipulators have, but rather in who the manipulators are and how they go about it.

Ocelot plays the role of an incompetent and brash child, but underneath all of that he's the exact same man we've known him as before. A cunning manipulator, never on any of the sides actively involved, his true allegiance being in the shadows.

EVA builds Snake up in her manipulation, so he can be knocked right back down at the end of it all. It doesn't matter that she failed, what mattered was that she took Snake's emotions and crushed them. She shaped herself and her story in ways to appear alluring or sympathetic to him, all because she desired the Legacy. Her manipulations are such that every line she says has to be brought into question. Was her story about learning of other countries real? Was her name real? Was her love real? The game never answers any of these in the moment, leaving her as a player that joined the stage out of nowhere, and left the stage just as suddenly.

The biggest manipulator however, was The Boss. She speaks in riddles to Snake, forcing him to decide between nationalism and the people he loves, ultimately pushing him to killing her. She unequivocally betrays him in this entry, leaving him truly alone. "There can be only one Boss."

Two of these three manipulators were also meant to be Snake's allies. ADAM and EVA, allies to the Snake. But, both manipulate him and each other, while he remains oblivious until the credits roll, an inverse of Genesis (as EVA states in her ending monologue). He is the first protagonist to be manipulated and then never confront those controlling him. He doesn't get to hear the Secretary of Defense explain what's happening, he doesn't have a long sit down with the Patriots, both before the concluding battle. He finds out and is left only able to mourn.

This isn't where SCENE ends though. I've only touched on the manipulation aspect, but the theme permeates nearly every aspect of the game, the game becoming almost playable theater. Zero and Para-Medic will constantly allude to films relevant to Metal Gear as a series- espionage films and monster films. Musical motifs are lifted from films of this variety, the cinematography leans heavily into more "cinematic" language (a constant throughout the Big Boss games for good reason), Ocelot will challenge you to a classic Western inspired Mexican Standoff in the middle of your duel.

But, this theme goes beyond references, and bleeds into the narrative. Your manipulators are actors, as are the other characters in this narrative, albeit unwittingly. It's fitting that this is the first "Solid" game to have a torture sequence that you don't get to play- why would you? It's all theatre, you don't mash the play button when James Bond gets tortured, do you?

The ultimate revelation in this theme is that nothing Naked Snake did was in his control. He played exactly to the system's commands, and he is speechless (literally) when he learns of just a hint of the manipulations. The Philosophers stand in for the Patriots, and Naked Snake constructs a "Solid Snake Simulation" program in the heart of Russia- one designed to create a new "Boss". The allusions to Metal Gear Solid 2 right from the opening ("Virtual mission?") almost tell you immediately what's going to happen.

The idea of the game projecting ideas to you immediately exists beyond there though. It plays with your expectations, but if you controlled them every twist would be incredibly obvious. Just because Ocelot is younger doesn't mean he can't be just as devious- he's here for a reason. EVA is suspicious, but the game gets you caught up in this comfy 60s spy thriller feeling, never letting go, so her over the top sex appeal flows right past the player. Of course The Boss is a bad guy, I mean, didn't Big Boss betray us only a few decades after this? But, Big Boss kept his antagonism in the shadows, while The Boss both demands better of you, as well as questions your own judgement.

The truly bitter note the game ends on though, is the scrolling text before the credits. Brought back after Metal Gear Solid 2 discarded it, we receive some additional history lessons, but this time they're on the history of Metal Gear rather than our own world. In it, we get to glimpse the events that occurred after Metal Gear Solid 3. The Philosophers become The Patriots, SIGINT joins ARPA, Para-Medic goes further into the medical field, Zero disbands FOX. But, after that, we get FOXHOUND, and the game ends on the beginning of the Les Enfants Terribles project, a project that would go on to echo the tragedy of The Boss and the Snake, where a new Snake is sent by his government to take down the war criminal, Big Boss.

A new stage for the same show.

It's not revolutionary, but Forgotten Land is a good time. The level design is pretty nice, it's similar to Mario 3D World with how it uses the camera angles to hide secrets and each level feels pretty fun to explore. It has all the great power-ups and they are evolved in creative ways. The waddle-dee town is cute and has great side content as well. Unfortunately, the game leans pretty heavily towards being a collect-a-thon especially later on. It starts suffering from diminishing returns as it goes on and the rewards feel less and less substantial. I didn't even bother with finishing the extra levels or getting the impossibly hard times on the star levels. At least the game caps off with a very enjoyable final boss run, there's just not much reason to keep playing it after that. Still a pretty fun and refreshing entry though, with potential for more.