Marjar
Man, remember when Pokémon actually tried? These games used to feel like an actual adventure with dungeon-esque sections and optional content that was cool to discover.
Game Freak will never top the moment in the gen 2 games where you surf to the right of New Bark Town and are told you stepped into Kanto. Then you realize you have 8 more badges to collect. You get to go through Kanto and see what has changed over the years. You also have stuff like the roaming legendary beasts, fighting Red, introduction of Pokémon breeding and shiny collecting, etc. It's kind of crazy how much new stuff this gen had.
Gen 2 was almost too ambitious because it just made gen 3 look lame in comparison. The taking out of features was almost an omen of things to come.
Game Freak will never top the moment in the gen 2 games where you surf to the right of New Bark Town and are told you stepped into Kanto. Then you realize you have 8 more badges to collect. You get to go through Kanto and see what has changed over the years. You also have stuff like the roaming legendary beasts, fighting Red, introduction of Pokémon breeding and shiny collecting, etc. It's kind of crazy how much new stuff this gen had.
Gen 2 was almost too ambitious because it just made gen 3 look lame in comparison. The taking out of features was almost an omen of things to come.
2024
The original Dragon’s Dogma is such an endearing yet strange and kind of clumsy open world game. The story is a bit messy, rushed, and has clearly cut content with somewhat unresolved storylines. Balance is out of whack with vocations. The whole romance system is incredibly silly and comes off as shoehorned in. The start of the game until you get to Gran Soren can be a massive filter, especially that ox cart escort mission. The world is small compared to a lot of other open world games, and yet traveling can be a bit of a slog sometimes.
Despite all that, despite all these glaring flaws, it’s still an incredibly fun and awesome game. Its combat may be the best and most satisfying in any open world game. There’s nothing more exhilarating than climbing up a cyclops and downing it by slashing at its eye. There’s nothing more cool than summoning a tornado and wreaking havoc on a group of bandits. It really is excellent, and you can tell Capcom worked hard on making combat rewarding.
There’s a bunch of other little things too that make it unique. How many games have incorporated the concept of a New Game Plus into their actual story? How many games have a fast travel system where you can physically pick up the actual fast travel points and move them to pretty much wherever you want them to be? How many games are brave enough to have important NPCs that can actually permanently die, or quests that fail if you’ve progressed the story too far before completing them? Sure, you can always beat them in NG+, but still, it’s an RPG with genuine consequences for your actions. Dragon’s Dogma, even ignoring the Dark Arisen stuff, is a one-of-a-kind game that truly feels special, warts and all.
Naturally, I was pretty excited for Dragon’s Dogma 2. Itsuno announced it with passionate glee, seeming to imply that this was going to be the game he really wanted to make. Surely, he won’t disappoint. I mean, DMC5 was a massive comeback after the DmC fiasco. Dude is on the top of his game! What could go wrong?
Well, apparently everything.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t feel like a sequel to Dragon’s Dogma. It doesn’t seem to improve on anything. Sure it looks prettier, and I guess the character creator is great, but everything else is either on par or worse than the original.
The combat is no longer snappy and satisfying like the first game. Slicing through an enemy with a sword no longer feels like you’re cutting through flesh and bone. It feels much more weightless with much less feedback. Enemies almost never seem to react to most of your attacks, however even the lowliest goblin can stunlock you for days. You really need to rely on your pawns to an annoying degree when there’s big groups of enemies because of how easily they can wombo combo you. Why is it that I can solo a cyclops or an ogre no problem, but a group of saurians with good timing can take turns slapping me around, getting me stuck in endless stun animations I can’t cancel out of?
I’m not a fan of the changes to movement. This is probably due to the switch to RE Engine, but everything you do feels more sluggish and floaty. I can’t say I’m a particularly big fan of the auto-climbing stuff too, because it often led to my character doing things on their own I didn’t intend to do. I’d rather have 100% complete control over my character than have the “convenience” of the character doing unintended actions for me. Other than the Mage/Sorcerer hover ability, there are no new movement abilities either. In fact, they took out a movement ability by getting rid of the double jump. The overall feel I get is that they went for a more realistic focus for movement, which is pretty lame.
For an open world game, Dragon’s Dogma 2 feels strangely constricted. There’s barely anywhere to truly explore other than caves, which aren’t worth the effort of going through due to the lack of any interesting loot. Very rarely did I ever find anything of note. Even if I did find a decent weapon or armor, it got outclassed by something I could just buy off a merchant soon after.
You can’t really go off the beaten path either because so much of the game has either massive cliffs or large bodies of water preventing you from going anywhere else. A lot of the game feels like going down glorified hallways. It didn’t take long for me to realize how little of the world was actually explorable. With that being said, I guess this was a blessing in disguise because of how much of a chore exploration turned out to be. Until you’re able to access more portcrystals and ferrystones, you’re going to be going down the same paths over and over again with no shortcuts, fighting the same enemies over and over again. It gets immensely tedious and boring pretty quickly. DD1 could sometimes feel like this too, but the much smaller world along with your much faster movement and less frequent enemy encounters made it less of a hassle.
Oxcarts are an option to quickly get places too, but they’re limited to only a few locations and can get destroyed by enemy ambushes, leaving you stranded to walk the rest of the way. You already have to pay to use the oxcarts, so why they needed to have some weird risk attached to it is beyond me. There’s a point where immersion goes too far, and you really need to just allow for there to be some convenience for the player so that the experience isn’t completely miserable.
Vocations are a mixed bag, but ultimately are significantly less interesting than they were in the original. All of them are limited to one weapon. Primary and secondary weapons are no longer a thing, and experimenting with different builds with classes like the Assassin are gone. I’m assuming this was one way to counter balancing issues, yet the balance might be worse than the first game. Thief destroys everything with its Skull Splitter move, which might be the highest damaging attack in the game. As a Thief, you can also steal extremely useful items like wakestone shards and ferrystones from enemies. It’s also the only vocation in the game with an actual dodge move.
The other two classes that seem insanely powerful compared to the rest are Mystic Spearhand and Magic Archer. The former has a skill that straight up makes you temporarily invincible, has a fast cast rate, and costs barely any stamina to use. Magic Archer generally has pretty damn good DPS, but on top of that has a skill that can kill the final boss in one hit. Meanwhile, the normal Archer has to rely on consumables for damage even slightly comparable. Warrior is somewhat of an improvement over the first game due to having 4 instead of 3 active skills and being borderline impossible to knock down, but you’re so damn slow that it doesn’t really matter. Fighter is okay I guess, even if you no longer have 3 skills on both your sword and shield. Mage and Sorcerer feel like they got nerfed to oblivion. Mage was never necessarily great in the first game, but it still felt more powerful than it does here. Cast times for both classes feel insanely long for the relatively pitiful damage they often produce. Not to mention the fact that having only 4 skills instead of 6 really limits their potential.
Then there's Wayfarer and Trickster which don’t feel worth playing at all. Wayfarer only has 3 skills to choose from, since you’re always going to want to have Rearmament selected. The only real benefit you get with Wayfarer is that you can use any armor you want. I have no idea what the fuck you’re supposed to do with Trickster. Apparently, you can do some silly and fun stuff with it, but ultimately why bother with a class that can’t directly damage enemies when you could just go Thief and kill everything in seconds?
The game's story is strange. The first Dragon's Dogma isn't exactly a narrative masterpiece or anything, but it at least put enough effort into its cinematics and presentation to keep you invested. There are memorable moments like the opening where your fishing village gets attacked by the dragon, fending off the hydra at the encampment, first meeting the Dragonforged, sneaking into the castle and seeing the king go schizo and trying to kill the princess, and more. NPCs were a lot more memorable and unique, and despite not always being super fleshed out I still cared about what happened to them to a certain extent.
2 on the other hand is a whole lot of nothing. It starts off okay, but there’s a notable lack of presentation or even comprehensible plot throughout. Important details like the fact that you’re the true heir to the throne are just nonchalantly told to you in the generic NPC conversation. You’d think they’d try to make something like that a bit more of a big deal by dedicating a cutscene to it. I don’t even remember what really happens in the story. It feels like you sneak into the castle a few times for some reason, go to desert land for some reason, rebuild the Godsbane for some reason, fight a giant rock golem thing that you apparently don’t even need to fight because the NPCs kill it for you, then suddenly it’s time for the final boss. It’s like stuff is happening around you, but the game never really bothers to elaborate on what’s going on or why you should care. It’s just things happening.
Characters are basically nonexistent, lacking any and all personality. There were several characters in DD1 with their own quest lines that at least tried to develop them a little bit. I can’t recall a single notable thing about the DD2 characters, other than the fact that once I maxed out their affinity they kept asking me to escort them 2000 miles away to Bumfuck, New Mexico on foot.
Then there’s the post-game, where you’re timed and are supposed to evacuate a bunch of towns. Problem is that I couldn’t give a fuck. The NPCs themselves didn’t seem to care either because all of their dialog was no different than usual, other than the handful of quest giving NPCs. Oh yeah, the game just ends with an interactive cutscene as well. Sure I supposed the real final boss is the Dragon in the normal ending, but it’s pretty lame compared to the much more bombastic and cinematic finale of DD1.
The funny thing is, as negative as I sound, much of my disappointment comes less from me thinking the game is bad, and simply thinking it’s less good. There’s genuinely a lot of potential in this. You have the foundation for really interesting storylines and quests with there being prejudice about different races now that we have elves, dwarves, and the weird cat people that still have human ears for some reason. Yet they did nothing with it. Combat does have some interesting changes and could have been better if they didn’t change the feel of it. Could have helped having better enemy variety as well. Exploration could have been made better if the world design was more interesting and you had more maneuverability, but it just became more tedious. Ultimately, the game feels like a half-assed clone of the original that misunderstands what worked and what didn’t.
People were joking about Dragon’s Dogma 2 just being Dragon’s Dogma 1.5, but really it feels even less than that to me. I tried to enjoy it, I really did, but it left me feeling hollow. This was allegedly Itsuno’s vision, what Dragon’s Dogma was supposed to be. I come away from it feeling lied to, swindled even, especially considering the $70 price tag. What’s more frustrating is that I keep seeing people talk about, “oh don’t worry, Capcom will release a Dark Arisen-esque expansion that’ll really give us what we want!” Sorry, but I’m not shelling out another $20-$40 on an expansion to a $70 game for the unfounded belief that they’ll actually finish the game this time.
Despite all that, despite all these glaring flaws, it’s still an incredibly fun and awesome game. Its combat may be the best and most satisfying in any open world game. There’s nothing more exhilarating than climbing up a cyclops and downing it by slashing at its eye. There’s nothing more cool than summoning a tornado and wreaking havoc on a group of bandits. It really is excellent, and you can tell Capcom worked hard on making combat rewarding.
There’s a bunch of other little things too that make it unique. How many games have incorporated the concept of a New Game Plus into their actual story? How many games have a fast travel system where you can physically pick up the actual fast travel points and move them to pretty much wherever you want them to be? How many games are brave enough to have important NPCs that can actually permanently die, or quests that fail if you’ve progressed the story too far before completing them? Sure, you can always beat them in NG+, but still, it’s an RPG with genuine consequences for your actions. Dragon’s Dogma, even ignoring the Dark Arisen stuff, is a one-of-a-kind game that truly feels special, warts and all.
Naturally, I was pretty excited for Dragon’s Dogma 2. Itsuno announced it with passionate glee, seeming to imply that this was going to be the game he really wanted to make. Surely, he won’t disappoint. I mean, DMC5 was a massive comeback after the DmC fiasco. Dude is on the top of his game! What could go wrong?
Well, apparently everything.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t feel like a sequel to Dragon’s Dogma. It doesn’t seem to improve on anything. Sure it looks prettier, and I guess the character creator is great, but everything else is either on par or worse than the original.
The combat is no longer snappy and satisfying like the first game. Slicing through an enemy with a sword no longer feels like you’re cutting through flesh and bone. It feels much more weightless with much less feedback. Enemies almost never seem to react to most of your attacks, however even the lowliest goblin can stunlock you for days. You really need to rely on your pawns to an annoying degree when there’s big groups of enemies because of how easily they can wombo combo you. Why is it that I can solo a cyclops or an ogre no problem, but a group of saurians with good timing can take turns slapping me around, getting me stuck in endless stun animations I can’t cancel out of?
I’m not a fan of the changes to movement. This is probably due to the switch to RE Engine, but everything you do feels more sluggish and floaty. I can’t say I’m a particularly big fan of the auto-climbing stuff too, because it often led to my character doing things on their own I didn’t intend to do. I’d rather have 100% complete control over my character than have the “convenience” of the character doing unintended actions for me. Other than the Mage/Sorcerer hover ability, there are no new movement abilities either. In fact, they took out a movement ability by getting rid of the double jump. The overall feel I get is that they went for a more realistic focus for movement, which is pretty lame.
For an open world game, Dragon’s Dogma 2 feels strangely constricted. There’s barely anywhere to truly explore other than caves, which aren’t worth the effort of going through due to the lack of any interesting loot. Very rarely did I ever find anything of note. Even if I did find a decent weapon or armor, it got outclassed by something I could just buy off a merchant soon after.
You can’t really go off the beaten path either because so much of the game has either massive cliffs or large bodies of water preventing you from going anywhere else. A lot of the game feels like going down glorified hallways. It didn’t take long for me to realize how little of the world was actually explorable. With that being said, I guess this was a blessing in disguise because of how much of a chore exploration turned out to be. Until you’re able to access more portcrystals and ferrystones, you’re going to be going down the same paths over and over again with no shortcuts, fighting the same enemies over and over again. It gets immensely tedious and boring pretty quickly. DD1 could sometimes feel like this too, but the much smaller world along with your much faster movement and less frequent enemy encounters made it less of a hassle.
Oxcarts are an option to quickly get places too, but they’re limited to only a few locations and can get destroyed by enemy ambushes, leaving you stranded to walk the rest of the way. You already have to pay to use the oxcarts, so why they needed to have some weird risk attached to it is beyond me. There’s a point where immersion goes too far, and you really need to just allow for there to be some convenience for the player so that the experience isn’t completely miserable.
Vocations are a mixed bag, but ultimately are significantly less interesting than they were in the original. All of them are limited to one weapon. Primary and secondary weapons are no longer a thing, and experimenting with different builds with classes like the Assassin are gone. I’m assuming this was one way to counter balancing issues, yet the balance might be worse than the first game. Thief destroys everything with its Skull Splitter move, which might be the highest damaging attack in the game. As a Thief, you can also steal extremely useful items like wakestone shards and ferrystones from enemies. It’s also the only vocation in the game with an actual dodge move.
The other two classes that seem insanely powerful compared to the rest are Mystic Spearhand and Magic Archer. The former has a skill that straight up makes you temporarily invincible, has a fast cast rate, and costs barely any stamina to use. Magic Archer generally has pretty damn good DPS, but on top of that has a skill that can kill the final boss in one hit. Meanwhile, the normal Archer has to rely on consumables for damage even slightly comparable. Warrior is somewhat of an improvement over the first game due to having 4 instead of 3 active skills and being borderline impossible to knock down, but you’re so damn slow that it doesn’t really matter. Fighter is okay I guess, even if you no longer have 3 skills on both your sword and shield. Mage and Sorcerer feel like they got nerfed to oblivion. Mage was never necessarily great in the first game, but it still felt more powerful than it does here. Cast times for both classes feel insanely long for the relatively pitiful damage they often produce. Not to mention the fact that having only 4 skills instead of 6 really limits their potential.
Then there's Wayfarer and Trickster which don’t feel worth playing at all. Wayfarer only has 3 skills to choose from, since you’re always going to want to have Rearmament selected. The only real benefit you get with Wayfarer is that you can use any armor you want. I have no idea what the fuck you’re supposed to do with Trickster. Apparently, you can do some silly and fun stuff with it, but ultimately why bother with a class that can’t directly damage enemies when you could just go Thief and kill everything in seconds?
The game's story is strange. The first Dragon's Dogma isn't exactly a narrative masterpiece or anything, but it at least put enough effort into its cinematics and presentation to keep you invested. There are memorable moments like the opening where your fishing village gets attacked by the dragon, fending off the hydra at the encampment, first meeting the Dragonforged, sneaking into the castle and seeing the king go schizo and trying to kill the princess, and more. NPCs were a lot more memorable and unique, and despite not always being super fleshed out I still cared about what happened to them to a certain extent.
2 on the other hand is a whole lot of nothing. It starts off okay, but there’s a notable lack of presentation or even comprehensible plot throughout. Important details like the fact that you’re the true heir to the throne are just nonchalantly told to you in the generic NPC conversation. You’d think they’d try to make something like that a bit more of a big deal by dedicating a cutscene to it. I don’t even remember what really happens in the story. It feels like you sneak into the castle a few times for some reason, go to desert land for some reason, rebuild the Godsbane for some reason, fight a giant rock golem thing that you apparently don’t even need to fight because the NPCs kill it for you, then suddenly it’s time for the final boss. It’s like stuff is happening around you, but the game never really bothers to elaborate on what’s going on or why you should care. It’s just things happening.
Characters are basically nonexistent, lacking any and all personality. There were several characters in DD1 with their own quest lines that at least tried to develop them a little bit. I can’t recall a single notable thing about the DD2 characters, other than the fact that once I maxed out their affinity they kept asking me to escort them 2000 miles away to Bumfuck, New Mexico on foot.
Then there’s the post-game, where you’re timed and are supposed to evacuate a bunch of towns. Problem is that I couldn’t give a fuck. The NPCs themselves didn’t seem to care either because all of their dialog was no different than usual, other than the handful of quest giving NPCs. Oh yeah, the game just ends with an interactive cutscene as well. Sure I supposed the real final boss is the Dragon in the normal ending, but it’s pretty lame compared to the much more bombastic and cinematic finale of DD1.
The funny thing is, as negative as I sound, much of my disappointment comes less from me thinking the game is bad, and simply thinking it’s less good. There’s genuinely a lot of potential in this. You have the foundation for really interesting storylines and quests with there being prejudice about different races now that we have elves, dwarves, and the weird cat people that still have human ears for some reason. Yet they did nothing with it. Combat does have some interesting changes and could have been better if they didn’t change the feel of it. Could have helped having better enemy variety as well. Exploration could have been made better if the world design was more interesting and you had more maneuverability, but it just became more tedious. Ultimately, the game feels like a half-assed clone of the original that misunderstands what worked and what didn’t.
People were joking about Dragon’s Dogma 2 just being Dragon’s Dogma 1.5, but really it feels even less than that to me. I tried to enjoy it, I really did, but it left me feeling hollow. This was allegedly Itsuno’s vision, what Dragon’s Dogma was supposed to be. I come away from it feeling lied to, swindled even, especially considering the $70 price tag. What’s more frustrating is that I keep seeing people talk about, “oh don’t worry, Capcom will release a Dark Arisen-esque expansion that’ll really give us what we want!” Sorry, but I’m not shelling out another $20-$40 on an expansion to a $70 game for the unfounded belief that they’ll actually finish the game this time.
2001
One of the weirdest games Nintendo has developed, and by far the best Wario Land game. Great controls, fantastic level design all around, fun secrets, and multiple difficulties with some pretty insane time limits for replayability. Not to mention the incredibly weird and unique OST that no other game has replicated.
Still praying that Wario frees himself from Wario Ware hell and gets an actual new platformer game. If we can get a TTYD remake, anything is possible in my book.
Still praying that Wario frees himself from Wario Ware hell and gets an actual new platformer game. If we can get a TTYD remake, anything is possible in my book.
2023
How I learned to stop worrying and love Pizza Tower.
Seriously though, despite being a bit disappointed in my first playthrough, I kept coming back to it eventually in some way. The Noise update gave me another reason to do a full playthrough since he is a pretty different character, and I think that was enough to convince me that this game is actually pretty great. As much as I want to hate it due to its Ohio rizz band kid zoomer fanbase, I really can't. It really is an exceptional game. There's a lot of charm and genuine soul put into this that's very rare these days. I even went for a few P ranks and was surprised by how addicting it was. Definitely don't have the patience to P rank the whole game, but I finally get what people love about this game.
It's still not as good as Wario Land 4 though.
Seriously though, despite being a bit disappointed in my first playthrough, I kept coming back to it eventually in some way. The Noise update gave me another reason to do a full playthrough since he is a pretty different character, and I think that was enough to convince me that this game is actually pretty great. As much as I want to hate it due to its Ohio rizz band kid zoomer fanbase, I really can't. It really is an exceptional game. There's a lot of charm and genuine soul put into this that's very rare these days. I even went for a few P ranks and was surprised by how addicting it was. Definitely don't have the patience to P rank the whole game, but I finally get what people love about this game.
It's still not as good as Wario Land 4 though.
Well damn, didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did, but for once Game Freak did something right.
I think what made this game work so well for me and made it so addicting is just the fact that the actual act of catching Pokemon is way more fun. Something that I never went out of my way to do in any past Pokemon game is, oddly enough, catching them all. It generally feels like a chore, and the RNG aspect of it can be frustrating. Having more direct control over the process of catching Pokemon makes it a lot more fun and interesting. I also enjoyed the different objectives to fill out the Pokedex entries too. Made you feel much more like an actual researcher.
I'm normally not into survival crafting games, but they make it work here. All the crafting is pretty much focused on creating items that make the Pokemon catching process easier and more efficient (especially for Alpha Pokemon). It's simple enough to never get annoying, and it constantly incentivizes you to keep exploring for materials.
The battles are a little weird with the Agile/Strong mechanics, and I spent most of the game barely utilizing it. I mainly used Agile moves so that my moves would be weak enough to not defeat wild Pokemon so I could catch them. Turn priority is also strange and I felt like I never completely understood it. They're definitely on to something with these new mechanics, but they come off as a bit undercooked.
I'm mixed on the trainer battles because while I appreciate that this game isn't afraid to kick your ass a bit, some of them just turn into trading one-hit KOs with each other. It often felt like wild and trainer Pokemon were significantly stronger than yours, regardless of level. Thankfully, this is far from the focus of the game, and trainer battles barely happen. Pokemon's general battle mechanics are so strong, that it's difficult to make it not work.
I really enjoyed exploring the world and completing side quests. The side quests are simple, but add a lot of flavor to the game, really making you feel like you're helping a community understand these strange creatures more. Ride Pokemon are also awesome in this, especially with how seamlessly you can switch between them. If there's anything that modern Game Freak should be applauded for, it's getting rid of HMs and replacing them with something much more interesting.
If there's anything I'm not so keen on, it's the boss battles. I appreciate the attempt at making Pokemon more action oriented, but this clunky dodge-roll-to-win shit is not what I want from a Pokemon game. Most of the battles really aren't that bad, but the Arcanine and Avalugg ones felt like you could get easily screwed over by RNG due to the small and awkwardly shaped arenas. At least you can basically brute force your way through these eventually with the continue option if you really suck at them.
What can I say, Game Freak did good here. I'm pleasantly surprised. Maybe this is a sign that there still is some talent left at Game Freak. Maybe they'll listen to the criticisms of Violet/Scarlet and improve on the next iteration. I'm not completely convinced, but at least there's still a small smidgen of hope.
I think what made this game work so well for me and made it so addicting is just the fact that the actual act of catching Pokemon is way more fun. Something that I never went out of my way to do in any past Pokemon game is, oddly enough, catching them all. It generally feels like a chore, and the RNG aspect of it can be frustrating. Having more direct control over the process of catching Pokemon makes it a lot more fun and interesting. I also enjoyed the different objectives to fill out the Pokedex entries too. Made you feel much more like an actual researcher.
I'm normally not into survival crafting games, but they make it work here. All the crafting is pretty much focused on creating items that make the Pokemon catching process easier and more efficient (especially for Alpha Pokemon). It's simple enough to never get annoying, and it constantly incentivizes you to keep exploring for materials.
The battles are a little weird with the Agile/Strong mechanics, and I spent most of the game barely utilizing it. I mainly used Agile moves so that my moves would be weak enough to not defeat wild Pokemon so I could catch them. Turn priority is also strange and I felt like I never completely understood it. They're definitely on to something with these new mechanics, but they come off as a bit undercooked.
I'm mixed on the trainer battles because while I appreciate that this game isn't afraid to kick your ass a bit, some of them just turn into trading one-hit KOs with each other. It often felt like wild and trainer Pokemon were significantly stronger than yours, regardless of level. Thankfully, this is far from the focus of the game, and trainer battles barely happen. Pokemon's general battle mechanics are so strong, that it's difficult to make it not work.
I really enjoyed exploring the world and completing side quests. The side quests are simple, but add a lot of flavor to the game, really making you feel like you're helping a community understand these strange creatures more. Ride Pokemon are also awesome in this, especially with how seamlessly you can switch between them. If there's anything that modern Game Freak should be applauded for, it's getting rid of HMs and replacing them with something much more interesting.
If there's anything I'm not so keen on, it's the boss battles. I appreciate the attempt at making Pokemon more action oriented, but this clunky dodge-roll-to-win shit is not what I want from a Pokemon game. Most of the battles really aren't that bad, but the Arcanine and Avalugg ones felt like you could get easily screwed over by RNG due to the small and awkwardly shaped arenas. At least you can basically brute force your way through these eventually with the continue option if you really suck at them.
What can I say, Game Freak did good here. I'm pleasantly surprised. Maybe this is a sign that there still is some talent left at Game Freak. Maybe they'll listen to the criticisms of Violet/Scarlet and improve on the next iteration. I'm not completely convinced, but at least there's still a small smidgen of hope.
I wish I could say I enjoyed my time with this game, but I mostly found this to be a slog to get through. There’s definitely some passion and effort put into this, but the parts I enjoyed are so few and far between that it became a struggle to push myself through this game.
This game suffers from a lot of the same issues that turned me away from Sony’s exclusives. A significant amount of time is dedicated to these very slow walk-and-talk segments, ducking under debris, shimmying between walls, and other cinematic gameplay stuff that pretty much amounts to holding up on the control stick. I get that a lot of these are masked loading screens, but it got to the point where I wanted to uninstall the game every time I saw one of those blue arrows on the ground signaling it was time to spend the next 30 seconds shuffling down a narrow hallway.
Even ignoring that, a lot of this game really does feel like filler. Parts of the original that were short and sweet are extended to tedious lengths. The giant robot arm puzzles in the tunnels and escaping from the Turks at the church, along with the following sequence walking across the rooftops with Aerith, are prime examples of this. Most of your time is spent walking down barely disguised hallways or going up and down ladders until you reach the next enemy encounter. Midgar in FF7 was linear, but it was designed in such a way that you could suspend your disbelief and easily imagine it as a big city despite the PS1’s limitations. The pacing was brisk and there never was a dull moment. Remake in comparison stretches things out too much and adds way too much fluff that doesn’t really need to be there. I really didn’t need that train graveyard segment with the ghosts, nor did I need to chase a little monster guy through the sewers to help this twink who got cucked by Don Corneo.
I did like how they handled most of the characters, and despite all the awkward anime grunts, I do think the English voice acting is surprisingly great. Most of the story that was in OG FF7 is done faithfully, and some parts like Wall Market are fantastic. However, all the meta elements with the plot ghosts and Sephiroth really don’t sit right with me. Pretty much every scene involving them comes off as stupid and silly, especially the part before the final boss when Aerith starts spouting some vague Kingdom Hearts-tier nonsense about fate and all that. Regardless, at least the most important parts of the story are done well.
Combat is where I’m most ambivalent about, because while I get what they’re going for, it never really gelled with me. As an action game, it felt unsatisfying and kind of clunky due to little things like your attacks having little to no hitstun when hitting enemies, lack of clear tells for enemy attacks, being unable to cancel out of an attack animation to block, and so on. I get that this isn’t supposed to be an action game and you aren’t supposed to play it like one, and trust me I do know how you’re supposed to play this game, it just never really felt all that satisfying to me. A lot of it is just mashing basic attack to build up your ATB gauge, selecting a skill or magic, then switching to the next character while the other character’s attack animation is playing out. It gets monotonous pretty quickly.
The stagger system is also strange because in regular battles it barely mattered because most enemies will die too quickly to really take advantage of it. Meanwhile, in boss battles, by the time you stagger a boss, it’ll shift into the next phase and the stagger will go away. It does start to matter more for some bosses, but something about it makes almost every boss feel samey. Also, this is a very minor thing, but I feel like you barely get to use limits in this game. I think I used Barret’s limit maybe once or twice in my entire playthrough. Every time I saw the Limit option on the ATB menu, I thought to myself, “oh yeah, limits are in this game.”
There are definitely things I do like a lot, like how they handled the materia system and getting skills from weapons. They did a good job incentivizing you to switch up your gear and try different skills. I wish that some of the higher tier spells didn’t cost so much though, because they never felt worth using due to how little mana you get. Fighting as Tifa is probably my favorite part of the game. Her dodge is by far the best, and she felt the closest to playing an actual action game. Summons are also really cool and probably the most interesting implementation of them I’ve seen in a Final Fantasy game, although I do wish you could use them more. Locking them only to boss fights under specific conditions is pretty lame.
All in all, I think my main problem more than anything is that the game left me feeling bored half of the time. Playing this made me want to just go back and replay the original FF7 instead. What I’ve seen of Rebirth does look somewhat more interesting, if only because it looks like there’s a lot more variety and a lot more freedom. I can see myself possibly giving that a shot in the future, and maybe even having a change of heart with Remake. As for now though, Square Enix’s modern take on FF7 has failed to capture me.
This game suffers from a lot of the same issues that turned me away from Sony’s exclusives. A significant amount of time is dedicated to these very slow walk-and-talk segments, ducking under debris, shimmying between walls, and other cinematic gameplay stuff that pretty much amounts to holding up on the control stick. I get that a lot of these are masked loading screens, but it got to the point where I wanted to uninstall the game every time I saw one of those blue arrows on the ground signaling it was time to spend the next 30 seconds shuffling down a narrow hallway.
Even ignoring that, a lot of this game really does feel like filler. Parts of the original that were short and sweet are extended to tedious lengths. The giant robot arm puzzles in the tunnels and escaping from the Turks at the church, along with the following sequence walking across the rooftops with Aerith, are prime examples of this. Most of your time is spent walking down barely disguised hallways or going up and down ladders until you reach the next enemy encounter. Midgar in FF7 was linear, but it was designed in such a way that you could suspend your disbelief and easily imagine it as a big city despite the PS1’s limitations. The pacing was brisk and there never was a dull moment. Remake in comparison stretches things out too much and adds way too much fluff that doesn’t really need to be there. I really didn’t need that train graveyard segment with the ghosts, nor did I need to chase a little monster guy through the sewers to help this twink who got cucked by Don Corneo.
I did like how they handled most of the characters, and despite all the awkward anime grunts, I do think the English voice acting is surprisingly great. Most of the story that was in OG FF7 is done faithfully, and some parts like Wall Market are fantastic. However, all the meta elements with the plot ghosts and Sephiroth really don’t sit right with me. Pretty much every scene involving them comes off as stupid and silly, especially the part before the final boss when Aerith starts spouting some vague Kingdom Hearts-tier nonsense about fate and all that. Regardless, at least the most important parts of the story are done well.
Combat is where I’m most ambivalent about, because while I get what they’re going for, it never really gelled with me. As an action game, it felt unsatisfying and kind of clunky due to little things like your attacks having little to no hitstun when hitting enemies, lack of clear tells for enemy attacks, being unable to cancel out of an attack animation to block, and so on. I get that this isn’t supposed to be an action game and you aren’t supposed to play it like one, and trust me I do know how you’re supposed to play this game, it just never really felt all that satisfying to me. A lot of it is just mashing basic attack to build up your ATB gauge, selecting a skill or magic, then switching to the next character while the other character’s attack animation is playing out. It gets monotonous pretty quickly.
The stagger system is also strange because in regular battles it barely mattered because most enemies will die too quickly to really take advantage of it. Meanwhile, in boss battles, by the time you stagger a boss, it’ll shift into the next phase and the stagger will go away. It does start to matter more for some bosses, but something about it makes almost every boss feel samey. Also, this is a very minor thing, but I feel like you barely get to use limits in this game. I think I used Barret’s limit maybe once or twice in my entire playthrough. Every time I saw the Limit option on the ATB menu, I thought to myself, “oh yeah, limits are in this game.”
There are definitely things I do like a lot, like how they handled the materia system and getting skills from weapons. They did a good job incentivizing you to switch up your gear and try different skills. I wish that some of the higher tier spells didn’t cost so much though, because they never felt worth using due to how little mana you get. Fighting as Tifa is probably my favorite part of the game. Her dodge is by far the best, and she felt the closest to playing an actual action game. Summons are also really cool and probably the most interesting implementation of them I’ve seen in a Final Fantasy game, although I do wish you could use them more. Locking them only to boss fights under specific conditions is pretty lame.
All in all, I think my main problem more than anything is that the game left me feeling bored half of the time. Playing this made me want to just go back and replay the original FF7 instead. What I’ve seen of Rebirth does look somewhat more interesting, if only because it looks like there’s a lot more variety and a lot more freedom. I can see myself possibly giving that a shot in the future, and maybe even having a change of heart with Remake. As for now though, Square Enix’s modern take on FF7 has failed to capture me.
On one hand, I'm glad that Nintendo is diving deeper into their more niche games from their past and bringing them back in some form. However, I felt pretty done with this game after the Trace Memory part, and the direction the Journey Into Lost Memories half goes in just came off as kind of dumb to me. Lots of weird sci-fi anime bullshit that ends up as sappy and failing to grip me emotionally unlike the first half. Also could have used some editing too, because Jesus Christ do some of the later chapters go full Kojima and just shove exposition down your throat. It also has this whole band drama aspect to it that felt like filler more than anything and doesn't really pay off all that well.
With that said, I wouldn't say it isn't worth playing. The story is mostly interesting and the mysteries are fun to unravel. Puzzles are pretty basic, although I'll fully admit I did have to use the in-game hint system for one that I think was pretty stupid, but I probably could have solved it by myself if I wasn't being impatient. Apparently, a lot of the more interesting aspects of the DS and Wii versions were removed here due to not having those respective consoles' controller gimmicks, which is a shame.
I'm glad I finally got to play this pair of games in some way, especially since one of them never was localized to America. Overall though, it's just okay at best. If you want to play a good pair of story heavy adventure games on the Switch, I'd honestly recommend the Famicom Detective Club remakes over this.
With that said, I wouldn't say it isn't worth playing. The story is mostly interesting and the mysteries are fun to unravel. Puzzles are pretty basic, although I'll fully admit I did have to use the in-game hint system for one that I think was pretty stupid, but I probably could have solved it by myself if I wasn't being impatient. Apparently, a lot of the more interesting aspects of the DS and Wii versions were removed here due to not having those respective consoles' controller gimmicks, which is a shame.
I'm glad I finally got to play this pair of games in some way, especially since one of them never was localized to America. Overall though, it's just okay at best. If you want to play a good pair of story heavy adventure games on the Switch, I'd honestly recommend the Famicom Detective Club remakes over this.
2017
Fairly good remake/reimagining with some questionable design decisions here and there. I've never really liked when games do the whole multiple endings thing unless it's like a visual novel or something, and here it's especially annoying since you have to get all the items to unlock it. The sequels definitely do a better job at this.
I'll say this though, no other game has used the HD rumble of the Switch better than this game. It genuinely adds a lot to it.
I'll say this though, no other game has used the HD rumble of the Switch better than this game. It genuinely adds a lot to it.
2011
You know what? Fuck it, this game is great. I've played it numerous times now, and while it doesn't do anything nearly as interesting as stuff like Mario 64 or Odyssey, it's just as addicting and fun as any other 3D Mario game.
Use to think that the people who preferred this over 3D World were crazy, but the more I replay both games, the more I begin to understand where they're coming from. They're still wrong, but I get it.
Use to think that the people who preferred this over 3D World were crazy, but the more I replay both games, the more I begin to understand where they're coming from. They're still wrong, but I get it.
Decided to skip 4 and go straight to this since I played a lot of 4 as a kid. BN5 has the least amount of padding, an incredibly good chip selection, and fairly well design boss fights, but falls short in the story and scenario department. Things like the different locations and exploration are relatively forgettable as well.
Liberation missions are neat, mainly due to being able to use other Navis, but they can be frustrating due to RNG. Sometimes, the game just refuses to give you the chips you need to beat a group of enemies in three turns. Sure you can attribute that to having a poorly made chip folder, but I still feel like RNG can screw you over. Overall though, they're surprisingly well done.
Most of the boss fights are actually pretty good this time, but god that final boss is just awful. Due to how the final boss is designed, at least half of my chip folder was rendered useless, so I had to reload and completely remake the folder I had been using for most of the game. Having a gimmicky final boss that forces you to use a specific set of chips is just awful design in a game like this.
Oh yeah there's also that "defeat 100 samurai" minigame that's required to progress. It only took me a few tries, but Jesus Christ what the fuck Capcom?
Regardless, still a pretty good game. Think I still like BN3 slightly more, but this is definitely worth playing. Glad I could finally finish this after getting filtered by Cloudman as a 12-year-old.
Liberation missions are neat, mainly due to being able to use other Navis, but they can be frustrating due to RNG. Sometimes, the game just refuses to give you the chips you need to beat a group of enemies in three turns. Sure you can attribute that to having a poorly made chip folder, but I still feel like RNG can screw you over. Overall though, they're surprisingly well done.
Most of the boss fights are actually pretty good this time, but god that final boss is just awful. Due to how the final boss is designed, at least half of my chip folder was rendered useless, so I had to reload and completely remake the folder I had been using for most of the game. Having a gimmicky final boss that forces you to use a specific set of chips is just awful design in a game like this.
Oh yeah there's also that "defeat 100 samurai" minigame that's required to progress. It only took me a few tries, but Jesus Christ what the fuck Capcom?
Regardless, still a pretty good game. Think I still like BN3 slightly more, but this is definitely worth playing. Glad I could finally finish this after getting filtered by Cloudman as a 12-year-old.
I remember being an awkward middle schooler playing either this or Sonic Rush on the bus ride to and from school. It's pretty good, but I'd probably put it below pretty much every 2D Mario game that isn't part of the NSMB series.
Playing this after Mario Wonder really makes me appreciate how much creativity they stuffed in that game. The only thing this game really has are the mega and mini mushrooms, the former of which barely even matters outside of a couple levels.
Playing this after Mario Wonder really makes me appreciate how much creativity they stuffed in that game. The only thing this game really has are the mega and mini mushrooms, the former of which barely even matters outside of a couple levels.
Dragon's Dogma is honestly kind of messy. Certain vocations are pretty blatantly better than others, pawn AI is questionable at best, and you can definitely feel the rushed nature of the game at times, mainly in its story and quests. Everything involving Aelinore and the whole beloved system is a prime example of that. However, despite that, the game is just a blast to play.
Combat is great, as expected coming from the current director of the DMC games. Climbing on enemies and beating the shit out of them is always fun. This is also one of the few games I can think of where playing as a magic caster is pretty badass, as you're able to do things like summon meteors and tornados. I also appreciate how willing this game is to completely kick your ass. This game will throw enemies at you at points where it's pretty clear that it's better to just run away and try fighting them later.
The open world isn't amazing by any means, but the game's endless new game plus and the way it handles traveling is pretty cool. Instead of just being able to fast travel to locations you've found, you find crystals that you can lay down almost anywhere on the map and create your own fast travel locations. There's a limited amount of them, but in new game plus, those crystals remain, and new ones spawn where the places you originally find them. In short, the more you play the game, the more places you can set as a fast travel point, and thus the more efficiently you can get through the game on repeat playthroughs. Definitely more unique than most open world games I can think of.
Hoping that the sequel is a bit more than just more of the same, and that Capcom gave them the time and budget to make the game what they wanted the first game to be. Please continue that redemption arc.
Combat is great, as expected coming from the current director of the DMC games. Climbing on enemies and beating the shit out of them is always fun. This is also one of the few games I can think of where playing as a magic caster is pretty badass, as you're able to do things like summon meteors and tornados. I also appreciate how willing this game is to completely kick your ass. This game will throw enemies at you at points where it's pretty clear that it's better to just run away and try fighting them later.
The open world isn't amazing by any means, but the game's endless new game plus and the way it handles traveling is pretty cool. Instead of just being able to fast travel to locations you've found, you find crystals that you can lay down almost anywhere on the map and create your own fast travel locations. There's a limited amount of them, but in new game plus, those crystals remain, and new ones spawn where the places you originally find them. In short, the more you play the game, the more places you can set as a fast travel point, and thus the more efficiently you can get through the game on repeat playthroughs. Definitely more unique than most open world games I can think of.
Hoping that the sequel is a bit more than just more of the same, and that Capcom gave them the time and budget to make the game what they wanted the first game to be. Please continue that redemption arc.
2007
I love having a job that allows me to bing bing wahoo during work hours.
Definitely not as good as kid me thought it was, but still significantly better than the first 2 games.
Chips are better, bosses are generally a lot more fun (barring Bubbleman and Drillman, fuck those two), and the story is a lot more well written and consistent in quality. The net is also a lot less obnoxious to explore, although having to use the Press mechanic constantly kind of ruins the point of the NaviCust system. You may as well just keep Press equipped for most of the game.
Biggest issue the game has is that it ends up having the same issue BN2 had where the last chunk of the game really slows to a crawl and becomes a chore to complete. You have to find a bunch of viruses in the Undernet to fight, then you have to find ranked Navis to fight or do some dumb fetch quest for. The hints they give to find the next one can be ridiculously vague, and I just ended up looking up a walkthrough because I was already tired of the game at this point. It's just way too much blatant padding.
Oh also fuck Bass and Alpha. Pretty awful boss fights to end the game on. At least the ending itself is worth it.
Chips are better, bosses are generally a lot more fun (barring Bubbleman and Drillman, fuck those two), and the story is a lot more well written and consistent in quality. The net is also a lot less obnoxious to explore, although having to use the Press mechanic constantly kind of ruins the point of the NaviCust system. You may as well just keep Press equipped for most of the game.
Biggest issue the game has is that it ends up having the same issue BN2 had where the last chunk of the game really slows to a crawl and becomes a chore to complete. You have to find a bunch of viruses in the Undernet to fight, then you have to find ranked Navis to fight or do some dumb fetch quest for. The hints they give to find the next one can be ridiculously vague, and I just ended up looking up a walkthrough because I was already tired of the game at this point. It's just way too much blatant padding.
Oh also fuck Bass and Alpha. Pretty awful boss fights to end the game on. At least the ending itself is worth it.
2019
This isn't bad, but man if you're not even halfway through a game and feel like you've seen everything the game has to offer, that's not the best sign.
I'm gonna put this on the backburner for now, and will probably return to it some other time, but I can't help but feel like this is just a slightly less clunky version of the original game. There's definitely a lot of effort put into this, especially the production values, but that doesn't really matter if the game itself is just kind of a slog.
I'm gonna put this on the backburner for now, and will probably return to it some other time, but I can't help but feel like this is just a slightly less clunky version of the original game. There's definitely a lot of effort put into this, especially the production values, but that doesn't really matter if the game itself is just kind of a slog.