Captivating and horrifying, worth playing for the story and atmosphere alone given that it's not a massive time commitment. That being said, I found the actual gameplay segments to be the weakest part of the game beyond the first 90 minutes, as fighting waves of the same handful of enemies and repeating variations of the same awkward visual puzzles became super repetitive. It works in some cases, but I found the set pieces and narrative to be hands down the best aspects of the game.

More engaging and intuitive puzzles with more enemy and combat variety will guarantee the sequel to be a home run, assuming it can match this game's narrative strengths.

Well, I'm converted! This was my first Dragon Quest game, and I can safely say that I regret not giving these games more attention sooner! Dragon Quest's strongest and most enduring quality is that it doesn't try to be anything other than the most quintessential JRPG, and it is only striving to refine and perfect that tried and true formula.

While i can totally see people writing this off as overly vanilla, it's anything but. Everything about this game is so endearing, it's almost intoxicating. Rab and Sylvando are absolute MVPs.

Clocking in at 81 hours upon defeating the Act 3 boss and obtaining the true ending, at no point did I ever feel the game was dragging along, which says a lot about a JRPG as this genre is packed with games that end up bring glorified endurance tests. With additional playthroughs, I will most likely be bumping this up to 5 stars.

Everyone has games they would play until the end of time yet would never in good conscience recommend anyone else ever touch. For me, DW2 is the poster child for that kind of game. My love of the early seasons of the anime as a middle schooler and patience for grindy mechanics allowed me to slog through the game. It wasn't until I graduated high school nearly 8 years after its release did I finally beat it.

The leveling and gameplay loops can ultimately only come to be described as parasitic in every sense of the word. The in-game playtime tracker stops at 99 hours and 59 minutes, which is a point most people would be hitting well before reaching the halfway point in the main story alone. Even then, I'm a sucker for the earlier era of this franchise and can't deny the charm that it -does- have.

Rapture is amazing as always, though the "been there, done that" feeling can't really be shaken, as the initial awe of taking the place in can't be replicated. The combat improvements, while very noticeable and more than welcome, weren't enough to keep me going at the pace of the original due to the story not being as engaging.

This game -needed-Minerva's Den, while the original is absolute kino as is. In any event, if you think Rapture is the coolest setting ever, there's no reason to not enjoy more of it!

This is -the- lightning in a bottle video game of my lifetime. I'm not an MMORPG fan at my core, but my love of the Warcraft universe and the accessibility this game provided gave me a clear on-ramp to my most played game of all time.

Truth be told, I spent almost all of my time chronically leveling and re-leveling as opposed to throwing myself at the endgame hamster wheel that has characterized the game for the better half of two decades at this point, and not once did I ever feel I was missing out on anything. Vanilla WoW will always hit different.