Endwalker is something that I approached with a lot of hesitation, doubting that it had much left of its story to tell, much left of its characters to explore, much left of its world to expand. And in a way, I was right, but Endwalker’s aim isn’t to just be another stepping stone for the overarching narrative. It is as most would say a “culmination”, and it is in this idea where I feel Endwalker once again repurposes that same cognition that made Shadowbringers feel so special.

In this instance acknowledging the titular “End” which this expansion represents, both philosophically and literally. While the former is the one many find the most interest in, and deservedly so, it’s the latter which really came off to me as profound. There’s something special about XIV’s meta storytelling, Ishikawa helmed expansions in particular, that really moves me. It’s not as if these expansions intend to muse upon the nature of the relationship between game and player, or the twisted morality of typical game mechanics, rather it’s an acknowledgement of us, the players, the heroes. A self-aware recognition of the long and arduous journey we have walked, and an assurance that our journey is not over yet.

Following this notion we find in Endwalker’s deep embrace, is a trend of solemn reflection amongst its character. Ruminations on their pasts, beliefs, adventures, echoing the voice of its creators, a voice which extends the same question to us. Has our journey been good? Has it been worthwhile? Amongst the aggregate, a single answer is nigh impossible, each and every soul will provide their own story.

Yet it is this anthology that XIV champions. Each story portraying the never-ending quest of another who has braved the infinite, who continued to walk forward, and at journey’s end found an answer they can call their own.

“Was this life a gift or a burden?
Did you find fulfillment?”

Dragon's Dogma 2 types of enemies
Dragon's Dogma 2 FPS in cities
Dragon's Dogma 2 voice lines for pawns
Dragon's Dogma 2 hours of content padded by 28 hours of walking
Dragon's Dogma 2.99€ to buy a fast travel item
Dragon's Dogma 2 times they've made the exact same mistakes because they've learned nothing at all

A good game held back by some of the absolute worst game writing and quest design I've ever seen.

There are some new elements that are a step forward on what the first game offered, but what Dark Arisen and DDO perfected, DD2 seems content to take two steps backwards and trip on it's shoelaces.

The open world is much bigger and there's much more satisfaction to be had in wandering around with your pawns and seeing the sights, but it's strongly hampered by a lack of enemy variety and severely reduced mobility options. There is no more long jump, double jump, or dodge rolling; meaning your only option avoiding damage and traversing terrains is a pathetic bunny hop. The hitboxes of bosses are surprisingly forgiving to compensate, but this just sacrifices the good game feel that came from navigating ledges and leaping out of the way of big attacks.

Returning classes are universally nerfed and the couple of new additions are underwhelming at best. The Trickster is an intriguing idea for a class in a game such as this, but the environmental hazards are not as common as the trailers would have you believe. Most of my time using it I spent waiting for my pawns to to most of the work. Getting your enemies to jump to their death seems to be the best use of it, but you can't deploy your illusory double from any major distance away from you. All you can do is hope that one of your pawns can push them off when they run up to a ledge. The one time I did use it to some effect of luring a cyclops out of the city and into a ditch, it spontaneously teleported back into the city. It feels more like a class designed for challenge runners to post meme runs and compilations on youtube with. Wayfarer is similarly disappointing, in that it does not allow for more than three skills across any weapon type in the game, and requires two additional button presses to activate them.

Lastly, the writing and quest design is an absolute mess. The game will routinely waste your time, accidentally skip over important information with cutscene triggers, and sometimes straight up change the rules on you.

For example, in one quest, you need to give an NPC some items for a trip, and the game explains that they'll need enough items of sufficient quality to make it back safely. I give them two items that I think will do the trick, but there's a third slot and I have nothing to give them. Normally you can hand in two items and come back with a third in situations like this, but on this occasion, after backing out of the dialogue, the quest proceeds without giving me a chance to say yes or no. You're given the chance to go and save the NPC, but he got pounded into the dirt by goblins the second I showed up. Again, there's usually an out in scenarios like this. Dead NPCs are supposed to go to a morgue where you can revive them with a wakestone. Not this one apparently!

For a better example of poor game writing, that isn't a personal fuck up, we can look at the quest where you have to rescue the elf girl from an ogre. The elves talk about the Ogre with phrases like "Even our strongest are no match for it." which is all well and good for if this were introducing the Ogre as a boss, but it's highly unlikely that the player hasn't already killed or at the very least seen an Ogre up until now, and they aren't the toughest of foes to begin with. But the real cognitive-ludonarrative-buzzprefix-dissonance comes when you fight and a completely different Ogre en route to the cave, accompanied by the Elf escorting you there in the first place. Like hey guys, Ogres aren't actually that tough, just bring more than three people and you're fine.

Other small little things like this crop up routinely. Due to the close up nature of the camera, you can pass near key game triggers without realizing you're supposed to be interacting with them, but the game will stop you in your tracks for an NPC to announce themselves as though you sought out them deliberately. Special shoutout to the old woman who proclaimed it took special intuition to find her from behind a wall while I was randomly jumping around a rooftop, and didn't actually see until after I fell off the roof and spent another two minutes trying to find again.

For a sequel to come out 12 years after it's predecessor, one would hope they had enough time to playtest more than one full playthrough.

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Can I borrow 50,000 yen

"My Estelle...you shine like the sun"

JRPG is my favorite videogame genre, but the big thing that gets me down about them in general is that:

Most of them present the mechanics and almost everything that you will see during the game in terms of gameplay in the first hours, and proceed to abuse everything to the limit, presenting few new elements.

And most of all, they lack consistency. I'm not even talking about pace, but that often the best passages are given in the first hours or halfway through, and the quality declines as the game progresses. And this is something even more serious when it's a genre where you can easily find games with more than 50 hours of main story alone.

Fortunately, Trails in the Sky SC goes against the grain of these things, being not only one of the most consistent I've played but having perhaps the best second half I've experienced in any game.

The plot improves with each passage of the game, the characters' arcs are all closed in a satisfactory way, the bosses and events of the final stretch are very memorable and the elements of customizing your party and combat progressively evolve over time. It really fails to use the exact same map as the previous game, which is kind of bland and diminishes the potential of what could have been the experience.

Truly a great game and an example of how to make a direct sequel.

A marked improvement on Cold Steel 1 in many ways, primarily due to this game being way more gameplay focused instead of the filler that dragged CS1 down. For the most part I like the new designs for the characters, and it is an interesting direction this game takes in comparison to the standard Trails formula. That being said, the Epilogue drags this game down quite a bit as it just feels pointless.

You hit the finale and then have to play for 10 more hours beyond that (not complaining about the chapter in between the Finale and Epilogue, that was sick). Combat feels better and more challenging at times, the plot has actual substance, and the plot twists are fantastic as usual. If the music was better and this game had better pacing, it would be as good as the top Trails titles, but it was clear this game needed to wrap up what Cold Steel 1 started and setup new plot devices for the journey into western Erebonia.

I’m on RPG burnout now, I’m glad this was a good game after the disappointment of the first game, hopefully I hit CS3 before the end of the year.

EDIT: I lied, jumped into CS3 straight away