Mindless fun... segmented-rogue-lite(?)

(I honestly don't know what we call these? The gamewide upgrade system is like a rouge-lite. But instead of a full game run, MythForce is split into levels that themselves are self contained mini-runs where you start with nothing and RNG into the perks that help you.)

Early on with little upgrades, the Mythic difficulties feel weirdly balanced (most enemies pose the same threat as on normal, but some enemies can 1-hit KO). But this might be because the game doesn't expect higher difficulties to be touched until the game is fully complete on Normal? (Which itself has been pretty simple, hence the trial of higher difficulties.)

Played this solo, I will most likely only touch this again as a MP experience.

There is a pretty neat game loop trapped in this game.

If you manage to get it on sale and pay no attention to the narrative (especially if you liked the Arkham games) this game (on controller) is a great "podcast game".

Captain Boomerang teleporting around the map air-juggling is pretty satisfying. This gameplay with a completely different narrative wrapper would have gone off.

How the hell do you make wizard FPS this boring?!

I will bet $1000 that some EA producer said "In our focus testing, we found players didn't understand how to play the game." Which resulted in the worst tutorial since shooters from the genres dark-age of 2007.

EA apparently spent $40mil USD on marketing for this game. They literally blew so much money on marketing, that it was too scared to risk letting the devs make something actually fun. Now all those devs have lost their jobs and the earth has been salted so thoroughly that I will never get a Doctor Strange shooter.

This is all too sad. My hearts go out to the devs who clearly wanted to make something cool, and were held back in the most blatant example of publisher meddling I've seen in the last 10 years. Because not one creative that works in this industry could possibly have wanted to let this happen.

I should finally get around to finishing Amid Evil...

All other "open-world" games are made for and by cowards.

DD2 is one of the coolest games I've ever played. There are things this game does that are so wonderfully spikey, it make perfect sense how many people bounce off it. The spikiness of game design results in some of the most extreme emotional reactions to gameplay I have both felt and witnessed since Morrowind. Both in valleys so deep that the unseasoned game players will be trapped in despair and swear the game off as "unplayable", and peaks so high that very few games will ever dare attempt to match, resulting in all future open-world game being judged against Dragon's Dogma 2.

DD2 is one of the few AAA games that makes full use of its budget to push the medium forward. I think everyone who cares about open-world games and/or action-RPGs, owes it to themselves to finish Dragon's Dogma 2.

Hell, the dev hours put into things that only 10% of players will see is in of itself astounding and worthy of praise.

Satisfying 3d platforming, also other stuff.

I don't think I'm feeling this as much as I should? I dig the core mechanics, but the rest of the game feels like it's getting in the way. I like how the game feels like you can sequence break with smart platforming. However I only say "feels like" because the sign-posting isn't great. I spent most my time with no clue if I was actually making any progress, and the lack of obvious landmarks made navigation more of a chore than it should have been.

I might get back to this someday, because core movement feels great. But I do wish I had any clue where I was moving to? (I'm either almost finished the game, or barely started, I have no clue which.)