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.

Like a Dragon Gaiden is a spin-off of the mainline Yakuza/Like a Dragon series. Taking place alongside the events of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Gaiden brings back the old-school beat 'em up combat style and follows the series original protagonist Kazuma Kiryu after the events of Yakuza 6 when he disappeared from the world and signed a pact with the secret organization the "Daidoji faction". Now under the codename "Joryu" Kiryu operates as one of the Daidoji's secret agents from the shadows until a mysterious figure who seems to know Kiryu's past draws him out of hiding and into a whole new conflict.

Gaiden is the shortest Yakuza game taking me merely 30 hours (As according to the in-game time counter) to not only beat the game, but to 100% it and get the platinum trophy as well. However due to being so short it's also one of the most focused and tightly paced Yakuza games in the whole series featuring some of the best moments in the whole series including the best final boss and best antagonist as well with some great twists too.

Gaiden is also the best Kiryu has ever felt to play in the entire series running on the Dragon Engine and giving him 2 styles similar to Yagami in Judgment and feeling very fast, fluid and stylish. On top of his standard Yakuza style which incorporates many different moves from all Kiryu's past styles in previous games and serves as the heavy style to be used on one-on-one fights and bosses, Kiryu now has the Agent style which allows him to fight with advanced techniques he learned from the Daidoji based on martial arts from all over the world alongside various spy-like gadgets like a grappling gun, exploding cigarettes and even jet powered shoes the agent style is tons of fun and acts as the crowd control style Kiryu uses when up against waves of enemies.

Gaiden also brings back a fan favorite system from Yakuza 0 allowing you to purchase skills with money, but it combines that with a similar SP system that the Judgment games have as well. You earn SP by completing challenges and side missions for Sotenbori's jack-of-all-trades Akame. There's also gear and stat increases similar to Like a Dragon. In a way Gaiden acts as a jack-of-all-trades itself and combines parts of systems from all past Yakuza games. I also have to mention that I enjoy how most sub-stories have something to do with Kiryu's past.

While Gaiden may be the shortest Yakuza game it still has just as many side activities and mini-games to do like the classics such as pool, darts, karaoke, gambling, Majong, Shogi and even the return of the fan favorite...Pocket Circuit! There's also a colosseum where you can partake in both one-on-one battles and clan battles where you can fight with a group of NPC characters you recruit and the colosseum even lets you play as other characters besides Kiryu as well.

Overall Gaiden is a short, but fantastic companion piece to Yakuza 7 giving Kiryu even more development and a new side to his character as he works as a secret agent with no name while fleshing out his side of the events that happened in Yakuza 7. There are plenty of memorable sub-stories, side activities and good fan service moments for those who have experienced Kiryu's journey from the beginning and the combat is the best the mainline Yakuza series has ever felt. The antagonist and final boss, their motivations and the themes have so much depth to think about and I would easily count them among the series absolute best as well and even if we never get another Yakuza game in the classic beat 'em up style I can think of no more fitting way for it to go out than Gaiden's incredible finale.