Having never played the first Dragon's Dogma, I was relatively surprised to see the buzz Dragon's Dogma 2 was receiving on social media up to and after its release. In addition to the normal marketing materials, users that had bought and played the game were almost uniformly glowing in their assessment of the title. Twitter was abound with clips of their exciting battles and exploits, and the phrase "Game of the Year" had been bandied about. Now, recency bias is a potent thing, but I was certainly intrigued by this reception. So, after making the conscious effort to temper my expectations, I bought the game and dove in.

There's a lot of elements to Dragon's Dogma 2 that impress. Chief among them is that the game has a complete and total commitment to immersion. Going through the quests, both side and main, demands an approach in which the player views them as events coherent with the world as if it was a real environment and not a complete work of artifice. The game leaves things up to the player's common sense to suss out, which is much more satisfying than endless prompts and quest markers that have become standard in open world games over the past couple of decades.

This is an attitude that permeates much of the game's design. Fast travel, while possible, is minimized in an effort to make players immerse themselves in the world. At times inconvenient mechanics such as encumbrance and the effort needed to make a safe campfire for resting are real concerns of would-be adventurers that other titles regularly choose to gloss over. Monsters aren't drones lurking in designated places doing nothing until activated by the player. Instead they are convincingly wild in the ways they show up unexpectedly in would-be "safe" areas such as towns, or they are much stronger and larger than the player could ever hope to be at the time of their chance encounter.

There's many more examples one could list, but when playing Dragon's Dogma 2 you feel like an adventurer in a fantasy world with all of the responsibilities that would entail. It's not always easy or glamorous, but that's why it's an adventure and not a theme park.

This approach to design is so respectable that it breaks my heart that the moment-to-moment gameplay of Dragon's Dogma 2 has been so utterly fumbled.

Combat is an integral part of the experience that no player could possibly hope to avoid, and yet it is so bland. Physical attacks carry no weight in their hits, magic barely registers as connecting, and monster health pools can be so large that encounters regularly feel like slogs. The pawns one can hire have the potential to carry the player even while below their level, thereby removing any feeling of contributing to a fight at all.

While problematic on its own, this flaw is doubly severe in how it compounds the issues Dragon's Dogma 2 already has. With players not having so many fast travel options, at least in the early game, they will be traveling on foot quite often. This, in turn, means they will be getting into many combat encounters. Exploration is thereby discouraged, as excursions out into the wild bring with them the drudgery of combat. In turn, viewing monsters as boring instead of threatening shatters the immersion the fast travel decision was supposed to promote in the first place.

This is not the only example of poor game design clashing with the mission statement of the game. Pawns, as a system, are a baffling choice to me. The developers want players to feel engrossed in their world, but the pawn system is one of the most grossly artificial I could conceive of. While there are in-universe explanations for their existence, the amount of player-made mommies I encountered with immersion breaking names scuttled that meager effort almost instantly.

It's not only the intrusion of other players' inclinations into my fantasy world that makes the pawn system a poor design choice. The adventuring party, as a concept, has been central to the RPG genre all the way back to early titles like the first Final Fantasy. The appeal of the party as a mechanic is two fold: In terms of gameplay, one can balance their approach with characters of different specializations. In terms of story, many players enjoy growing alongside and getting to know their certain characters over a game's runtime. The pawn system of Dragon's Dogma 2 executes the first premise decently enough, though it's not so necessary when the player can change their own class so easily, but it actively bungles the second.

With half of my party so blatantly being temporary, man-made golems instead of anything resembling a character it is so hard to accept the party as a legitimate, in-world construction. If I am constantly going to be reminded that most of the people on screen come from the world of XxDickSucker420xX, how in the world is a restricted amount of fast travel going to draw me into the world of the game?

And boy, one will be reminded of that often. The pawns in this game chatter incessantly. They chat about elements of mild import to the player, such as locations of items, and they also chat about absolutely nothing often to comedic effect. The former has its uses, though I still would prefer it toned down in frequency, but the latter is incredibly misguided. For party chatter to be interesting, the party needs to have personality. Pawns, by design, have no personality.

The artificiality of it all cannot be ignored. Even the name, pawn, drives home the point that these are beings with no humanity. So then, why is the game so insistent on contradicting that with attempts at endearment to the player?

The pawn dialogue highlights a separate issue: the writing. The outmoded form of English chosen for the game's dialogue is incredibly jarring. Other series of games and certainly other works from other mediums have certainly gone down this road before; "old English" is nothing new to people who have been around the block. But Dragon's Dogma 2 sticks out as uniquely weird in its phrasing. Rather than sounding natural the dialogue reads as a deliberate attempt at old English.

I'm not particularly interested in discussions of the accuracy of the words themselves. Art exists as a deliberate work by, and as such it is graded on the impressions of legitimacy, taste, and sense it leaves rather than its actual accuracy. Maybe people really did run around saying "yon chest", but in this game it comes across as ham-fisted.

Doubly jarring is the disconnect between this localization and the game's native Japanese. I played with English subtitles to a Japanese dub. I speak both languages. The dub had no attempt at using an archaic, period form of Japanese. To state the obvious, such a thing does exist and has been used for period pieces in the past. Localization discussions are simultaneously outside of my interest and above my pay grade, so all I'll say is that when a script constantly makes me incredulously cock an eyebrow, I am once again being drawn out of the game's world rather than the reverse.

There are other, smaller issues with Dragon's Dogma 2. The design of the monochromatic minimap is not at all a wise choice for dense areas such as towns; spell targeting is finicky at best; and the camera draws in too close during combat to properly see enemies. These, however, are not glaring flaws. No game is perfect, and most foibles are easily forgotten.

The reason I find Dragon's Dogma 2 to be so disappointing is that there is a clear indication of what the developers wanted to do with their game and how they wanted the player to experience it. The clashing of that intent with various mechanical decisions is a death knell, and a good example for others on how games must be coherent packages if they are to rise to the top of their field.

people often naively complain about the state of the game industry and how overly saturated it is with generic, cookie-cutter garbage - then in the same breath they'll start panning and ignoring the actual cutting-edge titles that most push the envelope with innovative ideas

enter breakdown - a wildly misunderstood first-person genre mishmash with addicting combat, kickass powers, and a totally off-the-rails storyline. open your mind to its unconventional control schemes and you'll be met with one of the most creative, peculiar, and downright fun games you'll have played in years

the infamous final stretch also isn't that bad. it was doable on hard (albeit with a lot of trial and error) so i can't imagine normal being too tough considering how much softer the enemies hit

So far for the duration of time that I have been on this website, I have talked about a handful of the good Sonic games, some of them that many consider to be some of the greatest of all time not just in the series, but of all time. Even if I haven’t been extremely positive about a particular game in this series so far, it hasn’t really been too negative either, just more so indifferent about the kind of game that it was (cough, Spinball, cough). But you know what, I think it is about time that I stop being nice to this spikey cracked-out rat, and it’s finally time I start being mean to him and his series. It was only inevitable, because as many Sonic fans know, for all of the good Sonic games that were available from this series, there are five more shitty ones just around the corner. However, I don’t feel like picking on one of the obvious targets like Sonic Drift or Sonic Labyrinth… not right now, anyway. Instead, I wanna go after another forgotten title in the series that most Sonic fans aren’t aware of: SegaSonic the Hedgehog.

This was a Sonic game that was released pretty early in the series’ lifespan exclusively in Japan for the arcades, and one that I have been wanting to try out for a very long time. I do remember playing on the actual machine of the game at one point whenever I went to the Galloping Ghost Arcade (which by the way, if you haven’t been there, do yourself a favor and go there ASAP, because it is the best modern arcade I have ever been to. Tell them that Mega sent ya), and from what I remembered, I liked it enough, even if I was annoyed by some certain aspects about the game. It has been a long time since I played it there, so I decided to check it out on the Mame emulator, and once I did play it, I came to a very stunning revelation… it fucking sucks! Granted, there are plenty of admirable qualities that the game has, and I do like a lot of the things it is trying out, but it manages to trip and fall right on its face when it comes to its execution, and becomes an annoying chore to sit through.

The story is pretty damn average, where Dr. Robotnik kidnaps not only Sonic, but also newcomers Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel, and entraps them on an island, so it is up to the three of them to escape before Robotnik can take them out, which is a fine enough premise that I can get behind, because from everything else the game has, the story would be the least of my concern. The graphics are really damn good, having plenty of cartoony and wonderful animations for all of the characters, accompanied by wonderful environments, which make the game much more fun to look at then play, the music is pretty good, having plenty of great tracks for all of the levels, which also made the game much more fun to listen to then to play, the control is… well, I’ll get into that later, and the gameplay is somewhat inventive for the series, and I do like what they try with it, but not only could it have been done a lot better, but… sigh, goddammit…

The game is a 3D platformer of some kind, where you take control of either Sonic, Mighty, or Ray, go through a set of seven treacherous, yet very short levels, run through at the speed of sound while avoiding certain death at every turn from gaps, obstacles, or otherwise, jump around and break things when you need to so you can proceed forward and avoid death, and stop playing the game, go find a cabinet of Sonic the Fighters, and play that instead so that you can enjoy life. For what we got here, again, a lot of it is very interesting on paper, and I do like a lot of the things that are going on here, but the way that it was presented makes it way more frustrating to play then anything else, and by the end of the game, I was giving Sonic and co. the middle finger in response to their collective thumbs up.

I wouldn’t even necessarily call this game a “platformer” per se, even if there are platforming elements seen throughout, because it is more so a long, multi-segmented obstacle course. For every single level, you will primarily just be running down a bunch of long paths, avoiding whatever obstacles come your way, grab whatever rings you can, and hoping to reach the end. There are no enemies to fight, no bosses to take on, no additional collectables or power-ups to get, nothing. It is just one straight shot from the start to the end, and hey, that can be pretty fun at times. The constant energy the game gives off really does make going through some of these much more enjoyable, which is also helped by the colorful graphics, animations, and the new characters Mighty and Ray, who were pretty neat to finally see in action…. you know, before they would be thrown into the vault for the foreseeable future, only being let back out on a few occasions.

However, then you actually try playing the game for yourself, and you find it is an aggravating trainwreck for most of the journey. For most of the game, you are constantly being chased or hounded by something, whether it be falling spikes from the ceiling, a wave of lava, a falling bridge or whatever, so you have to constantly keep running forward at all times, which is pretty hard to do considering all the different traps and obstacles that you only have a split-second to avoid, and needless to say, you won’t be avoiding most of them. A lot of the problems with the obstacles can be attributed to the game itself most of the time, but then this gets into the one thing that is probably the game’s biggest setback… the control.

Unlike most Sonic games, this game uses a trackball controller, where you will be constantly spinning the ball around to make Sonic and co. go in a specific direction, while also having a separate button to use to jump, and once again, in theory, this COULD work… but then you think about it more and see it in action, and you find out that isn’t necessarily the case. Given how fast Sonic is, you will be zipping around the areas you go through so goddamn much, and given how most of these areas have pits everywhere, you will have a hard time keeping track of yourself most of the time without falling off a ledge, especially in some of the later levels with very precarious bits. Of course, a lot of that is attributed to me using the arrow keys to control this game, but even back when I was playing this in the arcade, I remember struggling with it, since Sonic himself is a little too fast, and also, may I remind you, you have to CONSTANTLY be moving because something will always be hounding your ass!

Overall, despite the wonderful presentation and charm that is oozing out of every corner of this game, when you go to play it yourself, it then proves that under that lovely coat of paint is something that is just unbearably annoying, having very little variety in what you do throughout all the stages, being unforgiving with many of its obstacles, and having a control scheme that just doesn’t work out in the player’s favor. I would only recommend this for those of you who are huge Sonic fans, and you haven’t had the chance to play it for yourself, because if you haven’t, then by all means, give it a shot. You may just end up loving it, but as for me, I would much rather watch it then play it ever again. Also, what kind of name is SegaSonic the Hedgehog, anyway? We all know that Sega made Sonic, you don’t need to remind us of that. What’s next, are they gonna make SegaShinobi, or SegaChuChu Rocket, or SegaHouse of the Dead?......... also, rip Mighty and Ray, because they are probably never gonna be coming back after Sonic Mania Plus.

Game #549

Digital Devil Saga doesn't reach the mechanical or narrative heights of other Shin Megami Tensei games, but it's a super consistently enjoyable game. I adore the game's early 2000s techno aesthetic, which is bolstered by the game's excellent soundtrack which is some of Shoji Meguro's best work.

I'm not sure what it is, though, but I'm not really sold on playing a second game's worth of Digital Devil Saga. I feel like I've already gotten what I want out of the duology despite only playing the first entry. I liked the narrative and characters well enough, but they didn't really capture my interest beyond a simple "oh, this is cool". I'll get around to playing it one day, though.

Also, the English opening is dope as fuck.

Full analysis of the game on my YT if you'd like to support my efforts there!

Mega Man Legends is a game that managed to surprise me in what it was going for. For years I'd heard comparisons to other 3D games of its time (even those it technically predates) and hearing pretty unfavorable comparisons while people would praise the charm the game absolutely exudes from just looking at it. Playing it for myself after all these years has left me in total awe. This whole package clicks together a lot of things that I just fuck with and appreciate in games in general.

Like that art direction man, the fuckin Ghibli/Nadia Secret of the Blue Water ass aesthetic, that Tatsuro Yamashita For You album cover art summertime aesthetic, the vibes, THE VIBES, they're all there man. This game, these character models, everything about the visuals is peak 90's PS1 aestheticism to me. I never even played this game as a child yet looking at it just fills me with a kind of warm nostalgia that's just really nice to sit in.

Gliding around this island, exploring its depths and mysteries hidden within it, learning more about both Mega Man and Kattleox as a place, meshing with the people of the island and getting closer to them as ya help em out with their day to day problems. By the end of the game I came to adore Kattleox, slowly becoming one of my favorite locations in a game due to how much focus and attention every inch of it gets. It ends up feeling alive in ways that feel so great to just be in, characters running around doing their thang while you're doing your own thang, climbing buildings, going on dates, hanging out, running the news station, working on their own artistic masterpieces. None of them are waiting for you to come back to them, they're all just living their lives.

The characters too, oh my GOD the characters. Data, that little dancing friend, just such a wonderful little companion/save point for ya. The Bonnes and their Team Rocket-esque goofiness that Mega Man has to reign in every now and then, Mega Man's dumb goofy energy, Roll and Gramps laid back and inquisitive yet caring demeanors. The whole cast just hits the neurons really well for me here, especially the Bonnes who were a treat every single time they appeared.

The only rough spot I majorly had with this game was just the gameplay is a little rough, part of that from age but I honestly think the encounter design in this game just isn't the best. The lock on can be a total mess in any fight with more than 2 enemies, jumping and shooting doesn't feel the best. Thankfully though if something ever bumps ya on the head a bit harder than ya'd like ya can just go and upgrade your shit which is at least nice as a kind of trade off but I really do hope Tron Bonne and Legends 2 fix that a bit.

Such a beautiful experience that I cherished quite deeply by the end, honestly reminds me of when I first finished Trails in the Sky FC, I was just in total awe there as well. I'm gonna miss Kattleox and I really hope to go back someday soon.

Why didn't they just roll with calling him Rock in the US release of this one! Mega Man doesn't make no damn sense as a name you'd call someone on the regular! I'm sorry is that Mega Man heresy? Oh no they're beating down my do-

DeAndre Cortez Way’s 2009 critique of Braid is well known for how it pioneered games analysis on Youtube, but it’s even more famous for its assertion that the game lacked central purpose. While entertainment is generally associated with some degree of pointlessness, there’s also expected to be some degree of enrichment, whether that be through the merit of competition, mastering challenge, or constructive escapism. If the audience is left without a lasting impression, the experience may as well have never happened, so it’s important for games to construct purposefulness, regardless of how artificial it is.

I started reevaluating this concept when Roll called me up as I exited a dungeon, mentioning that I must be getting hungry, and that I could have a slice of the apricot pie she baked as soon as I got back to the ship. The line is completely pointless. The subject never comes up again, it doesn’t build into any new characterization, and the game would be functionally identical without it, but even so, they went to the trouble of writing and recording a voice line for it. Similarly, while Roll is established as your mechanic, she’s not the person who saves your game and heals you, it’s a small robotic monkey that constantly does The Monkey like Johnny Bravo, and I can’t fathom why. That is to say, I can’t fathom why it’s constantly dancing and I also can’t fathom why it was included in the game at all, but there it is. The more I looked for it, the more I noticed how Legends is completely saturated with pointlessness, including its plot. The stakes are incredibly low, you’re simply trying to find a treasure before the Bonne Family Pirates do, but they’re such a loving family of good-natured criminals that you wouldn’t mind them winning. In multiple cutscenes, MegaMan seems like he wants to communicate to the Bonnes that there’s no real reason to fight, but they keep doing it because they love it. Details like these give the game a totally unique atmosphere of joyous pointlessness, like the developers themselves were building the game in ways that made them laugh, regardless of how much sense their design actually made. The game feels like a celebration of doing things entirely for their own sake, and not getting too caught up in finding a grand purpose. I wouldn’t exactly call it The Myth of Sisyphus for kids or anything, but at the very least it’s a perfect example of how pleasant it can be that there ain’t no point to the game.