Dragon's Dogma 2 constantly switches between being the greatest adventure of all time and the jankiest game you can find. It offers a unique experience while struggles with some bad design choices.

The open world

The world design is the best part of the game. The player is constantly presented with options, caves to explore, enemies to fight or quests to solve. There are also only a few fixed spawn points, which means you an always be suprised by one or two giant enemies, which will lead to a lot of action and fun while exploring!

The vocations

The vocations are the job system here. There is one for everyone: Heavy hitting fighters, fast rogues, mages and sorcerers, spear wielders and tricksters. The gameplay of each one feels unique and fun and you get passive abilities that you can transfer to your character when changing the vocation which allows some build variety for every character.

The Pawn system

At the very start of the journey you get to creat one pawn, an NPC that journeys with you all the time and fights with you. Furthermore you can hire 2 more pawns, which are created by other players. Here you can mix and match your group so that it reflects your play and fighting style. The Pawn AI ranges from great assists to "i jump down this cliff and die!" - but in combat they are generally super useful. The biggest issue is that the Pawns repeat the same 5 voice lines over and over again, which can be daunting in a 50+ hour journey.

The Fast Travel

One of the biggest discussion points in the game! There is no fast travel as we know it from almost all other open world titles. Bigger cities are connected with Ox Carts that you can use to travel around, but there are no points to fast travel to otherwise. You do need a Portcrystal and a Ferrystone. Portcrystals are extremely rare and hard to find, but when you aquire one you can place it anywhere you are and travel to that location - as long as you use and have a Ferrystone (which are also rather rare but you can also buy them from some merchants). I personally did enjoy the system as it encourages exploration but it can get tedious aswell.

Auto Save

The save system however is a big design flaw. There are no manual saves. There is an auto save system that saves regularly, or you sleep at an inn to save. However what can happen: You will get stuck on the map > your auto save is at the stuck place > you have to load the Inn save instead > you lose hours of gameplay (maybe). Happened to me and the only solution is to have a ferrystone with you all the time to port away then. No manual saves however are just a bad design choice if you can get stuck rather easily on some areas.

Story and characters

For me, the weakest part. The story feels like the most basic and generic medieval plot and while there is moer to it, the mains tory never grabbed me.
Same goes for the characters. Basically no memorable characters and all of them are rather bland. No real stand outs unfortunately.


If you are looking for an amazing adventure and fun exploration, which is presented in a unique way, DD2 is definitely a game for you!

Rise of the Ronin is the newest game by Team Ninja and their first project set in an open world and with a bigger story. Unfortunately it does feel like Team Ninja tried to get everything right - combat, open world, story - but in the end all parts are just decent.

The open world
While the game does look nice overall, especially the cities which are fun to go through, the art style does get bland rather fast in the wide spaces. While the mobility with horse and glider is great, the world offers very little adventure and suprise. All activities are check list based (collect this, defeat X amount of enemies there) and way too many of them exist. It feels like a never ending check list to finish that just gets boring really fast unfortunately.

The story
Here it depends a lot on your interest. If you are interested in the story of the 19th century Japan, the game automatically is much more relevant for you, as it does show that era pretty well and offers a nice view of the events (while clearly fictional aswell)
The characters are unfortunately rather bland, due to the basic voice acting and writing, but there is a lot of interesting conflict here that could have been presented much better.

The comabt
As for all of Team Ninjas games the combat is the shining star. This one is heavily based on the counterspark, a parry mechanic. You basically dance with your enemies, waiting for them to attack > counter > drop your attackes on them. There are multiple combat styles that work like rock/paper/scissor and you pick the one that fits best.

That said: The combat is still better than 90% of action games - but the weakest by Team Ninja so far. For the Team Ninja fans a comparison:

Weapons dont feel that different as they dont have unique weapon skill trees (Nioh) or special abilities (Wo Long). You have a Ki Pulse, but it is just R1 after your attacks, without timing required for a better outcome. You have no stances as the fighting styles are just rock/paper/scissor. The parry counterspark is also an attack, so if you miss, you get insanely punished. While in Nioh you can dodge/parry/block and everything is valid, here only parrying is the proper method in almost all scenarios. Your big devil trigger (living weapon/Yokai form) is just a mode where you have endless stamina and do a bit more damage. There is no build variety cause the stats do not exist as before + the skill tree is irrelevant cause you get enough points to level everything anyway. While there are still set bonuses on armor, they feel way less relevant to actually make a good build. So instead most of the time you just pick "bigger number item" and move on.

So as a big Team Ninja fan, I am extremely disappointed. I do not think this is the right way for the studio and they should focus on the clutch, amazing combat they used to deliver before. I really hope we will see a Nioh 3 next that is not so simplified and streamlined.

Unicorn Overlord is an amazing strategy RPG that shines with its gameplay, art style and writing.

The gameplay is the star of this game. You get up to 10 groups with 5 characters each. The units reach from infantry to cavalry - mages and archers - wyvern riders and shamans. The variety is absolutely insane and you can switch and change those up as you want. For each character you can set Gambits - when to use what ability under which condition, for active and passive skills. When attacking an enemy army, those play out in an auto battle form.

The gambit system is so deep and so much fun that you can experiment and change things up for hours. Problems in a fight? Rearrange your units, change the gambits and attacks and the outcome will be in your favour. You also have the Valor system - skills you can use out of battle to increase your attack, your EXP, do damage before the fight or special movement skills like teleport - plus hundreds of items that can be used before a batte starts.

There is an open world that you can travel around in, with multiple towns and cities that you can rebuild to get rewards. Main and side missions are on the map and will be played out on parts of the map. None of the missions are too long, all of them are crafted beautifully and each one offers different ways to tackle it due to the map design.

The art style is absolutely fantastic, every character has so much charm to them and the animations are beautiful. The music is also great and ranges from peaceful overworld tunes to great battle music.

The weakest part is the story. It is not bad, however it clearly is just the frame for the gameplay itself. You play as Alaine, the prince that got robbed of his homeland, trying to claim it back from the evil forces. Very basic, no big twist and turns, straight forward story that is still fun to follow due to the great writing and localization.

Same applies for the characters. In my 70h playthrough I got 50+ characters that all have their small, great stories + bonding events between most of them. But a lot of them fall flat because there are just too many characters for the time you have with them.

Overall Unicorn Overlord has become my favourite SRPG and I highly recommend it for every fan of the genre and anyone who wants to try a SRPG for the first time as it is super beginner friendly aswell!