D2 is a Dreamcast survival horror kind of RPG game that has nothing to do with the original D and is the third game in the series.

Set in Canadian snowy mountains, you play as Laura (but different Laura from D) just trying to survive as people turn into weird plant monsters.

The game is a 4-disc behemoth and feels very inspired by Metal Gear Solid. In fact, I'd say it has more cutscenes than MGS. Whereas MGS used codec for a lot of it dialogue, D2 REALLY wants to be cinematic, featuring a lot of unique animations just for picking up things. It really didn't need that, and while it's unfortunate that it didn't sell well, I wonder if it even could sell enough for being a dreamcast exclusive considering how much money likely went into it.

The story is strange. Just the first 5 minutes of the game feature an evil wizard, a magic mirror, terrorism, and a meteor. It doesn't get much saner after. Most of the game is spent with characters and their motivations and thoughts, and while the voice acting is alright, the writing leaves a lot to be desired. For every interesting and touching scene there's at least one that feels like a cheap imitation of "can love bloom on the battlefield?" from MGS or a scene where characters suddenly become 10 times dumber.

There's something about this game that feels like Silent Hill titles. Not in terms of depth or scares, but in the fact that characters often talk past each other and everything feels very dream-like. The first person you meet traumadumps on you immediately and decides you're friends for life while Laura says absolutely nothing. In fact, you might get the impression that Laura is mute. She isn't. It's not a big reveal or anything, she just doesn't talk for 90% of the game, and knowing now that she COULD talk makes every cutscene even weirder in retrospect.

Just like the original D, the game tries to deal with heavy topics such as drug abuse, sexual violence, and others, but feels very unfocused. At times the game feels like it's really into enviromentalism, but it never commits. It also feels like sexual themes are there just for shock value, but they end up being really funny when a man just decides to act like a rapist for no reason or when you shoot what's literally a robot vulva in one of the boss fights. Weirdly enough there's nothing as shocking as the final flashback cutscene from the original D.

As for the gameplay, it's a weird mix of genres from point-and-click to RPG and I'd say nothing feels really that great. The biggest issue with the game is that it loves to waste your time. Each disc features fairly open maps, but progress is very convoluted, sometimes involving immediately going back or talking to one character 4 or 5 times (even as they fall asleep which I'd think would signify the end of dialogue tree). Random battles aren't scary and consist of you standing and shooting at monsters in first person, but I will say that the music and general vibe of the world work well.

Is it worth playing? I'd say no. Is it worth checking out through the magic of Youtube? Yeah. D2 is a weird game, often unintentionally funny, but charming nonetheless.

I really feel like I should hate this for its frequent, sometimes long and always self-indulgent cutscenes that tell the most batshit plot I've ever seen, as well as for its slow and repetitive gameplay, but there's something so charming about it that kept me hooked till the end. Exploring the snowy landscapes, hunting animals and blasting away at The Thing-lookin' ass monsters in surprisingly functional combat sequences all has sort of a relaxing quality, and the characters are actually pretty interesting despite their places in whatever the fuck this story's supposed to be. I'm not sure if I'd ever play it again, but I'm glad I finally gave it at least one go.

Strong contender for the best game ever made. It's crafted with so much love and care that it's easy to overlook its many flaws, and its central message just propels it to an impossible level of achievement. Why this isn't as celebrated as some other, similarly off-kilter and narratively rich games I don't know.

My one major gripe with this game is the voice dubbing. It actually sucks. Like the dubbing is really, really bad. Except for Laura's english voice actor, she does a fine job (granted, she has like, two lines in the game).

The gameplay really works with me. The gameplay is a combination of on-rails shooting, jrpg random encounters, third-person exploration, hunting simulation, point and click adventure segments, puzzle solving, and resource management. This all sounds like a lot, but it's honestly pretty easy to get the hang of.

Of course, the main draw of the game is the story. It's a strange, slow paced, high stakes horror that takes inspiration from the works of Lovecraft, John Carpenter (mainly The Thing), and David Lynch. And it ends with one of the most hopeful, yet sobering endings I have ever seen. Overall, I highly recommend this, but it may take some time to adjust to the game's slow pace.

Happy New Year 2000.

This game is nuts.

Not in a bad kind of way. Not necessarily in a good way either. But most definitely in an interesting way.

I hit the end game screen around two days after I began and it was the only game I played during that time. I only wanted to take a peak and my attention was stolen simply because I had no on earthly idea what I would encounter next in all aspects. The structure of the piece drip feeds something weird in intervals just short enough to keep you interested.

You are a plane crasher survivor waking up to people turning into body horror monsters after getting infected by something from a dystopian big pharma company. And there are also wizards. You are chosen by a Goddess to save the world with your machine gun you found in the cabinet and your business suit and high heels. There are clones. A child melts into a puddle crying for help while it happens.

You control your character with Resident Evil "tank controls" for no discernable reason. When you are indoors the game becomes something akin to a point and click adventure. Combat comes in the form of random battles out in the field like a JRPG. The fights aren't turn based but an on-rail arcade shooter. Defeat the monster and get XP to level up. Leveling up gives you more HP and increases your "skill" skill. I never found out what it was for. There are arcade shooter-esque boss fights. You can hunt rabbits for food.

Just to be clear, I don't think this game succeeds at anything particular it is trying to do. There really is not a reason to recommend somebody go out of their way to find a way to play this. Despite that caveat, what I most appreciate about the game and think is worth talking about is that the designers were absolutely swinging for the fences with this experience.

Each cutscene feels hand crafted. There is some very strong cinematography and editing on display in my opinion. The writing is interested in deep characters with very real and present demons. The themes want you to think about your place in this world. And the gameplay tries out some very unique elements to tie the player experience to the character's experience. On top of that the game also really wants to be a John Carpenter movie. (Mostly The Thing (1982)) So interesting.

To level set again, I would describe the execution of the above ideas as just kinda mostly bad in a "so bad its good" kinda way. The unintentional laughs are abundant and honestly what kept me going to the end. But even after all the nonsense and the extremely sobering final moments it kept me thinking all the way through the credits and to eventually sit down and write about it.

There are moments that really feel like the designers are trying to communicate something very complicated visually, narratively and in gameplay. The characters often don't make much sense but when they bare their soul you can feel a genuine emotion in there somewhere. Just enough to get you to think. Even if it didn't all come together the way the designers hoped, I do appreciate and enjoy the authorship and intention of the piece.

I would recommend playing Disc 1(out of 4!!!) at least. It should take around 3ish hours and will have plenty of WTFs for you. From there you'll know if you are going to finish it or not.

Enjoy D2.

D was a strange FMV based game for PlayStation that didn’t get much attention or very good reviews. D-2 is a spiritual successor of that game with more gameplay and stunning visuals, but still has a fair share of issues. This is by far one of the strangest games I have ever played, and for being my first Dreamcast game, it helped put the system into perspective.

You play as a woman named Laura Parton who is a flight attendant and is on a plane that crashes in northern Canada in a remote area and wakes up in a cabin to discover strange creatures that “blossom” and use humans as hosts. The game’s intro is well done with combat and navigation being introduced as a tutorial which was kind of rare back in the day (we had manuals back then). The game is a first-person light gun shooter mixed with a first-person adventure game and a third person tank game like Resident Evil. I wouldn’t really call his survival horror as it didn’t feel like it. When you’re inside buildings you can only turn to objects you can interact with like adventure games back in the late ’80s and early 90’s on PC. When you’re shooting enemies you can turn in a square pattern using the face buttons and aim with the analog stick. It’s really strange, but I have to commend WARP for trying to use the Dreamcast’s weaknesses in its favor and making this game work control wise.

The third person adventure part is the weakest part of the game as it’s literally just a mode of transportation between random JRPG style battles and buildings. There’s a lot of boring walking along just white endless tundra. You can use a rifle to hunt animals and use them for health so you don’t use up your first aid sprays, but hunting is a real pain and only the hares are worth shooting as they give you 2 meat. The scope is incredibly shaky and most of the time I always missed. Outside of the hunting I just ran back and forth between cut scenes as that’s really all you’re doing. There is probably a good 2-3 hours of cut scenes in this game so it’s only for the most patient gamers.

Combat consists of shooting a gun at these creatures that can attack you as much as three at a time. They start out easy but towards the end of the game I died a lot, but part of this was the strange design of the combat system. Face buttons flash on screen when an enemy is nearby and pressing that button makes Laura turn towards the enemy and the analog stick is used to aim. The aiming is really sensitive and there’s no way to dodge or block so you take damage no matter how fast you are swinging around trying to kill everything. I had to strategize filling up my health by leveling up versus wasting health items. You gain experience from combat but it only increases your health and that’s literally it. You also have unlimited ammo for your machine guns, but your handgun and shotgun are limited. The handgun is literally limited to 6 bullets in the entire game as far as I could see. I used the gun once and it was done. The shotgun ammo is hard to find and I saved it for bosses, but the bosses usually only are beatable with the machine guns as you need rapid fire to shoot everything they throw at you. The same goes for grenades that are useless against bosses because they move around so much.

Outside of combat the story just makes zero sense. Each disc feels like its own story with one of the weirdest endings to a game I’ve ever seen. So, there’s an apocalypse coming as the game is playing off the Y2K scare and it’s supposed to be the same one that wiped out the dinosaurs. There are so many plot holes that you can literally separate each part of the story and just ask yourself, “WHAT?!” There’s a man named David that is never explained and he whispers to Laura at the end of each disc, there’s this plant parasite thing that is explained in disc 3 and makes a little sense, but then there’s a weird priest that randomly has the power of the apocalypse then there’s Jannie who is a little girl and we have no idea what her connection to anyone is and is a pointless character. You then can be resurrected every time you die as you’re some sort of “chosen one” and that is also never explained. Then at the end of the game, time rewinds back to 1999 and you meet David and then there are 10 minutes of white text on a black screen of statistics about various issues the planet is facing from the late ’90s and before that was footage of wars and various world events. What does that have to do with the rest of the game?! It made no sense and thankfully the game was only about 6-8 hours long.

Various elements of the game just slow everything down such as a cut-scene for picking up items, a cut-scene for opening and closing a door, laying down in bed, examining simple objects, all of this adds up to maybe 30 minutes of time just being burned, and the constant backtracking to pick up a key at this house, walk all the way across the map to this house to talk to this person, walk all the way back across the map to then trigger another event, and in between all of this there are dozens of random battles that also slow down the game. After the first hour combat just isn’t enjoyable and becomes a nuisance. I have to give WARP credit for the amazing monster designs and some incredibly disturbing images that weren’t really common on the Dreamcast or anywhere back then outside of Silent Hill. The animations are well done and the bosses are the best part of the game combat wise as they make the most sense with this combat system in place.

The game itself looks amazing with great lighting effects and everything is rendered in real time instead of pre-rendered backgrounds like Resident Evil. The voice acting is even passable without being really cringy and laughable. Overall, the game has a lot of good elements that are just not tied very well together. It’s playable and aged fairly well, but it’s incredibly slow and cut-scene heavy with flawed combat and a story that makes zero sense. It’s an obscure title that shows how unique the Dreamcast was, and it one of the rarest games to find for the system, but if you have the patience give it a chance.