I never had a game actively fuck with me. Bro was speaking directly to me with some of my thoughts on the first game. I wanted more, and I got more, and somehow I feel punished for wanting more (in a good way). Why do I have to wait a real 2.5 hours to finish this little meta shit to finish the game? I know I said after playing the first one, "This is fine. I liked that it was simple". It's like he took that shit personally and went right at me.

Gameplay is vastly expanded with these perks and abilities that make the gameplay loop addicting. I played this nonstop two days straight off a full steam deck charge just to beat it. It's challenging at the right temp. I really digged this, sucks I'm never playing this again unless I hack that timer down.

man...this game is pretty boring.

I felt like most of my time was spent scrolling the map, running back and forth between rooms and item boxes to solve puzzles. The enemies weren't ever really a threat to me. I never really felt like I had to prepare for anything that could actually hurt me. By the time I finished, I was overstocked with ammo and healing items to carry me to the end. Though as I played it I just..like...didn't care at all about anything.

I'm reading these hieroglyphic ass notes, trying to piece together what the hell even happened while staring at an obviously gorgeous game. I can see the appeal aesthetically, it does some really cool things but...eh its a nothingburger.

A part of me was blown away from the expansive environments. The way the skyboxes just look otherworldly. How kinetic movement and combat feels. How engaging each exotic is and how they can drastically change your playstyle. The wonder of what the next game from the dudes that made Halo felt finally lived with this expansion. Bungie is at their best when they craft a semi-linear story experience. From the campaign, to watching the raid race, that led to this never before seen final event, like this was endgame or something was just cool as fuck.

Then another part of me remembers why I don't dedicate my entire life to this game like I thought I would when I was in 11th grade. The live service part of this. I always come back and play whatever the expansion is or at least check out every new season, but something about Destiny 2 doesn't slap as much as the first one. Even though abilities are way more impactful, and it truly feels like a RPG shooter that it was harped up to be back then. Especially with the new Prismatic class, which is what I've always wanted out of Destiny's power system since the start. I just can't truly dip all the way back in this game anymore.

There's a bigger story to tell that I decree on my soapbox for the eleventh time about MMOs and how that golden age of community will never exist again, but that's not what you're reading for. For the record, I genuinely tried to get back into Destiny 2 before Final Shape. I geared up, farmed some exotics, got some masterwork gear, got as much as I could from the thousands of legendary shards, stocked up bounties, did some raids, farmed dungeons for god rolls, joined LFGs and Sherpas on a nightly basis on anything anybody needed another body for.

I even did something taboo...put my headset on and talked with strangers on a regular basis. "You guys gotta mic?". Chilling I know...

But as I enjoyed my time playing the content and finally mastering the clusterfuck of a UI, I felt the looming elephant in the room. I just enjoyed playing with randoms, speculating on what the Final Shape raid is going to be, talking about what's going to happen with Destiny 3 or Marathon, reminiscing about doing Raids for the first time in Destiny 1 and the beta. Then I'd hear that one guy, "Bro what the hell is that roll on your Mousekatoole. Why are you even running that exotic bro what the hell that shit is D tier bro. Bro doesn't know the mechanics, oh my god"

I'm not one to usually have other people ruin my experience. This is coming from a guy that runs a War Rock deck in Yugioh. I'm just not a competitive player. Even when I do competitive things, I'll go off-meta or don't follow guides because I like discovering and theory crafting on my own. What's meta might not be my play style. I just do my own thing. So this is very off-putting for someone that's primary Destiny 1 group were the owns to sit down at the tower and talk about life, we would stop and smell the roses staring at Vex Architecture discussing what it all could mean. I was with the lore heads that loved to sit and talk about what's going on in the greater destiny mythos and how what we're doing correlated. I loved that because that's what I loved about Halo.

I was one of those kids that read the books. I sat with friends during sleepovers talking about what they'll adapt with the new Reach game while searching for out of bounds clips and secrets. Because I don't have a friend group that's down to jump into games like this, and the random match made player base won't be that way either, I'm just stuck in a limbo state. While I love collecting exotics and doing random missions, I don't like being rushed through it. Destiny 2 is a forever game, you're meant to be constantly doing something.

The treadmill is on like speed 7 with this game and as a filthy casual I can't keep up. I done broke my ankle falling off the ramp. Not to mention how obtuse the monetization has become, making it hard to get said friend group to even join to play with me through this experience, or else cough up like 90 bucks to start. I really did like Bungie ass Borderlands for what it did for real. I guess this is a more general review of Destiny as an entity, as this is the "finale" or whatever.

It sucks cause frfr if it really was just bungie ass borderlands, then this would be Destiny 3, and it would've hit like a bitch rn.

While I'm not necessarily a historical geek for WW2 specifically, this was super fun to play. The animations are so detailed that I didn't honestly expect from this title. The main standout point for me were the stealth missions. It's so cool to see the multiple approaches you can go with these missions, just giving you the objective and telling you to figure it out. The missions are linear once you get the general gist of it all, but it is still cool.

I'm a sucker for behind the scenes and extra content, so completing the game and seeing the history behind the levels and little world building elements was pretty cool.

Being one of the two games I bought when I first started collecting all those years ago, this game fell into the backlog abyss because of the other title (Persona 3 FES). I've always loved the style and the art direction of this game, though I think for me and a lot of people the D-Counter system scares everyone off.

Once I learned about D-Charging to one shot pretty much everything that's an obstacle, the game became pretty easy. The real fun was when I was treating the SOL system like a rougelike. Slowly building up my Party XP bank, and investing in my Ant Colony to passively make me money to buy those super weapons were fun to grind for. On my first run, I got to the boss right before the final dungeon. On my second run, I got to the third to last boss before maxing out. Understanding the systems in place and how to exploit them is built into the design of Dragon Quarter. You are meant to learn about how to abuse the Dragon Form to get past road blocks. You are supposed to master layouts and trap placements to quickly navigate dungeons. You're supposed to overlevel yourself with your Party XP to blitz through early environments.

My final run I did in one sitting after grinding took about 3.5 hours to do. My equipment was amazing, I had the right skills to kill anything that stood in my way. I had only 7% at the boss that ended my run the first time, allowing me to use my Dragon form to obliterate the final dungeon. It's a feeling that only a game like this can achieve after burying yourself into mastering its systems.

When I talked about this game, I used this head ass term "osmosis of confusion", which a lot of people probably went through in the early hours of this game. Trying to figure out "Do I restart each time, is this a rougelike, what carries over". If there are any tips I can give you while playing this game is: The SOL System is New Game+ as a mechanic, treat it as such. Just like with NG+ with any other game, you get reworked dungeons, loot, enemies, and minibosses that now spawn. New story segments that better explain the narrative are only shown if you interact with this system.

After finishing this game last night, I breathe a sigh of relief. This game truly challenged me to think more than I usually would with a JRPG. The world is beautiful. The art design is at its best during the cutscenes. I didn't expect these characters to be so animated, specifically with their facial expressions. I knew the exact emotions the cast were feeling without the annoying trope of outright explaining it out loud. These characters are quite introspective and that omission of telling the player what to feel, makes this narrative more compelling. Does Ryu come to terms with this being a doomed quest? What other horrors have the council orchestrated? It's all a bit weird, but it pays off at the end with a gorgeous ending.


Yada yada ~battles could be faster, there could be more varied level design~

Though I feel the battle system fits the world of this game. This world is cold. They live underground, with monsters as their main source of food and energy. Everything fits is what I'm trying to say, and the more uncomfortable you are with a certain idea, the more it makes sense once you master that aspect.

There's a lot to unpack when it comes to this game. From a gameplay perspective, having a "Slay The Spire-Like" where you manage an entire JRPG party is cool. Every run is fun because of how broken you can make each character depending on the upgrades and cards you combo. Quickly exploring the stages and building your super team is the most fun I have with this game. There are so many characters, each with their own play style, which is fun for the theory crafter in me to mess around with.

But this story is fucking weird. It's just not for me. Where I can see the appeal, my visual novel days are over and sitting through these awkward friendship bonding conversations in between levels just feels out of place to me. The more intriguing concepts introduced after each death/run were far more entertaining than the majority of dialogue I read.

There are other issues such as the lackluster UI design or the Flash game looking overworld sprites that bother me, but I kinda forget about them once I'm actually playing the game. Yet I don't feel compelled to do a daily run or dive further than needed to be other than a one-off run now. I kinda got everything I would get out of this game

This game is good as hell when you don't got a bitch in your ear telling you it's bad. Bro you blow up the White House! Like this shit is cool as hell!

Yeah the PS3 port is pretty bad, but...so was everything released on PS3 in 2008. So what the game is short, there wasn't really much more needed to be told story wise. It is a weird gateway between the more deliberate cover based first-person shooters with iron sights that we would get post-modern warfare and the classic Medal of Honor style of gameplay.

I just can't get over how cool this game is and how well it executes on its premise. One of the best openings to a game I've played since Prey 2006. It sucks you right into the war and gets you ready to kill Nazis and save New York. I didn't really find it all that difficult, as you can run and gun your way through the entire game. Especially with the Human shield mechanic, its almost like a first person Dead to Rights...minus the dog and the slow mo.

A charming and unexpected dungeon crawler. There's a flow state you enter by the third town where you spend your time diving into the dungeon slowing accruing power and town pieces and coming back to the town building. It's ahead of its time for a PS2 launch title.

It's a very punishing game if you do not prepare yourself accordingly. Dark Cloud rewards you for experimentation and diversifying your power between your party members. Though there's a spike in difficulty towards the later half, making grinding annoying to do, I enjoyed my play through enough.