CtheIronblooded
At this point in my life my time is too valuable to waste it playing games that I'm not having fun with. Gaming shouldn't be a chore, gaming shouldn't feel like a 2nd job. I should want to play your game because I actually enjoy it and have fun playing it. If I have to convince myself to even feel like playing your game, I'm just going to drop it all together.
However, I'm not a super picky person and do not consider myself a critic, I try to look for the best in everything so my ratings will still probably be higher than most people you'll see.
Been playing games since I was around 4 or 5. Fave game genres are RPGs of all kinds, but especially J-RPGs and Action RPGs, alongside metroidvanias, Hack and Slash/character action, horror and visual novels.
Feel free to follow me on Letterboxd and Rateyourmusic if you are interested in my film and music opinions as well.
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Also both The Xianzhou Luofu storyline and the Penacony storyline were a LOT more interesting than the Belobog one because one felt more distinctly rooted in Chinese mythology and the other was this surreal dreamscape sci-fi murder mystery and they both were much more unique compared to the opening Belobog story which was a pretty standard sci-fi civil war story I've seen many times before (I still liked the actual characters though)
There's tons of new content and game modes to explore coming back almost a year later as well, I'd say they've improved the game a lot. I do still wish the combat wasn't so simple, but even with how simple it is, I've been addicted enough to spend another 60+ hours on this game since I picked it back up, so I guess that should say something. It also helps that HSR might be one of the most generous gachas that I've ever played giving F2P users the chance to earn thousands of Stellar Jade (The currency you use for the gacha pulls) so you could easily save up 100s of pulls even as a F2P user.
At the end of the day I'm glad I picked Star Rail back up and have been enjoying my time with it a lot and will probably continue to play it on and off because now I'm pretty invested in the world and characters and I look forward to seeing the continuing adventures of the Astral Express crew.
You play as a chosen one known as the Arisen, you've been marked by a great dragon and it has stolen your heart, now you're on a hunt to fell the beast and reclaim what was stolen from you. The actual story is pretty simplistic and barebones but where the game makes up for that is in the world-building and lore that is fascinatingly detailed and in-depth alongside some solid optional quests that help flesh out the side characters more.
A unique thing Dragon's Dogma is known for is the Pawn system. Pawns are other-worldly beings that only the Arisen can summon and command, Pawns are AI controlled, but function like player controlled avatars and act as your travel companions and party members. Players get to create both their Arisen player avatar and their main Pawn which other players can summon thanks to a shared in-game lobby. While Dragon's Dogma is a completely single-player game, the Pawn system gives a sense of camaraderie comparable to that of a legit co-op game in a way no other game does knowing that the Pawns you're summoning were create by other real people.
The crowning jewel of Dragon's Dogma has always been its combat and much like the first game, combat is what carries Dragon's Dogma II as well. There's 10 different Vocations which act as your various classes that range from a sword and shield user known as a fighter to an archer, a dagger wielding thief or a spell-slinging mage among others making for tons of variety to suit nearly every playstyle. The combat in Dragon's Dogma II is more streamlined thanks to making each vocation only able to utilize one type of weapon and only 4 skills at a time, (I lament the loss of my Mystic Knight vocation and magic classes having far less spells as well) but the game makes up for the lack of complexity with polish because combat feels more weighty and satisfying than ever before and since each vocation only has one weapon type (Other than the newly added Warefarer) that allows for them to feel more fleshed out with deeper move-sets.
Exploration is the other major focus of Dragon's Dogma and it does so in the least handholdy way possible akin to a Souls-like, so much so that I would say roughly 70% of the game is entirely missable from side quests to entire portions of the map especially if you were to just do the main story missions because the game incentivizes you to go out into its world, explore and create your own adventures. The level of freedom the game gives you even extends to quests making for a more authentic RPG experience allowing the player to complete most objectives in more than one way. Exploration itself was a double-edged sword for me because while it was one of my favorite things about the game because when it was good, it was GOOD and finding cool new areas like the Ancient Battleground, Misty Marshes, Mountain Shrine or Dragon's Breath Tower were some highlights of my playthrough but, it was also my least favorite seeing as how the map is 4X bigger than that of the OG Dragon's Dogma, but the amount of actual content in both is roughly the same and it certainly doesn't help that the map doesn't have enough variety and most of what you're going to be exploring is mountain sides and forests. Having such a massive map and limited fast travel just feels like unnecessary padding as far as I'm concerned and I would've preferred a smaller, more condensed map like the first game.
The actual locations and unique dungeons are spread so far and between that a huge part of the map is just empty space to be filled with tedious combat encounters and sometimes they just get too repetitive especially when most of what you're going to be fighting is just goblins and wolves. Even fighting massive creatures like the griffin or cyclops starts to lose its luster later in the game when you've fought them 50 times each, I just think the game could've done with more enemy variety to spice things up and it's disappointing neither the Hydra nor the Cocatrice made a comeback from the first game and special enemies like Medusa or the Sphinx can only be found in one location in the entire game.
I also want to make a special mention to the endgame/post-game content being very lackluster basically turning the game into a pseudo rogue-lite and doing the Majora's Mask 'If you don't compete this in so many days, the game ends' thing. There's only a couple optional bosses and there's not really anything new to explore either despite some new parts of the map opening up, it's just more empty space. The 'Unmoored World' is a cool concept and works well with the lore and narrative, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired and the fact once you finish the game you just immediately get thrown into NG+ kinda sucks too.
Despite it's lack of enemy variety, slightly empty world at times and rushed 3rd act, Dragon's Dogma II more than makes up for its flaws by being a game with a fun and polished combat system that has plenty of variety and depth to suit all kinds of playstyles, tons of small details to really immerse you into its world, a fantastic sense of freedom that let's you play however you want and a truly top notch sense of adventure and exploration at times. Dragon's Dogma II much like its predecessor is a very flawed game, but it's also a great one with tons of undeniable heart and soul behind it and is easily one of the best open-world RPGs in years right alongside Elden Ring and the Witcher 3.
Yakuza 6 takes place directly after the events of Yakuza 5 and opens with a bang because following the aftermath of Yakuza 5, Kazuma Kiryu once again faces a prison sentence, this time for 3 years with the hope that this will be the final prison sentence he'll have to serve and when he gets out he will be able to live a happy and normal life as a civilian with his adopted daughter Haruka and all the other orphans at the Morning Glory orphanage he runs. Naturally nothing can ever be so simple because the only thing Kiryu comes back to after 3 years is the disappearance of Haruka which leads him on a search to find his daughter at all costs and in doing so he gets wrapped up in yet another gang war for control of Kamurocho that involves many factions from the Tojo Clan, the Chinese triad, the Korean mafia and even extends its reaches to Hiroshima. The narrative of Yakuza 6 is a slow burn and doesn't really pick up until the 2nd half of the game, but the whole 1st half serves to build up all the new characters that are introduced. I think that's one of my only minor complaints about the narrative because while I liked the new characters a lot by the end, it feels weird to focus more on a bunch of new characters and turn series regulars into nothing more than simple cameos when this is meant to be the climatic finale to Kiryu's saga.
If Yakuza 5 was all about following your dream no matter the cost even if it means sacrificing family, Yakuza 6 is about the complete opposite with themes of family bonds and parenthood and just how far someone would be willing to go for their family and their children and this is seen through parallels of various characters and their motivations throughout the game. I think Yakuza 6 has one of the best narratives in the series and also one of the best explorations of parenthood in gaming in general with so much thematic depth which really gives you a lot to think about while telling a compelling, emotional ending that's fitting for the tale of Kiryu as it's a very personal narrative that serves to give Kiryu even more development and growth as a character because that's one thing Kiryu has never done is stop growing and developing as a character, even at the very end of his story.
Beyond just the main narrative of Yakuza 6 another thing I loved was the world-building. The world-building of this series just gets better and better with every entry. Yakuza 6 definitely feels like the climatic ending of Kiryu's journey because it manages to bring back and reference so many things from Kiryu's past both in the main story and in the side stories as well and it truly rewards the player for playing all the games in Kiryu's saga. I also love how the world of Yakuza is ever evolving and growing just like the real world and Yakuza 6 really tackles themes of traditionalism vs modernism and just how much has changed in the 3 years Kiryu was gone, how the Yakuza of old and the beliefs he was raised on are dying out and being replaced with (arguably) much worse people and ideologies that just don't have the code of honor he's used to.
If you're a fan of the Yakuza series then you already know it is known for having plenty of sub-stories/side quests and Yakuza 6 is no different having over 50 of them. I think Yakuza 6 has some of my favorite sub-stories in the game since there's a lot that harken back to previous stories in the series which is fitting for Kiryu's final chapter. There are also a lot of funny and wacky side quests that show how much technology has advanced in Kiryu's absence from Kamurocho and how he's learning to adapt to it.
A thing I was quite disappointed with when it comes to Yakuza 6 is the lack of side content because coming off Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 5 which had the most amount of side activities and mini-games in the series to date, Yakuza 6 is surprisingly very bare bones. There are still the staples of karaoke and darts and a handful of Sega arcade games, but gone are so many of the best side activities of previous games like gambling, the colosseum or even bowling and pool and the new activities that have replaced these classic ones just aren't as interesting. The two biggest side activities being the Clan Creator which serves as an RTS style mini-game where you take on gangs in the streets from a top down view while ordering different units just has little depth to the strategy and offers even less difficulty and the baseball team side activity is boring because it plays itself and only lets the player actually interact a couple times each match.
Another major disappointment for me with Yakuza 6 was the combat itself. Once again Yakuza 6 has the unfortunate task of being the follow-up to two of the best games in the series with the biggest amount of variety and diversity in the gameplay and compared to Yakuza 0 or Yakuza 5, Yakuza 6 is just so bare-bones and repetitive. Yakuza 6 is the first game since Yakuza 3 from 7 years prior to where the only playable character is Kazuma Kiryu and beyond that there are no different combat styles either, so it just leaves your options in the combat department very lacking and I felt I was mostly using the same combos and the same moves for almost every situation which got a bit stale by the end of the game and when there are not many side activities to break up the monotony of the combat that just makes how repetitive the combat is even more apparent.
However Yakuza 6 was the first game to feature the newly implemented Dragon Engine and I think testing out the new engine (which would be vastly upgraded and perfected with future games) is the biggest reason the game lacks in so many areas, but the Dragon Engine also improves the game in just as many areas like making the world more seamless because now battle encounters don't have a loading screen before hand and you can enter buildings without loading as well which means if a brawl occurs on the street it can now even continue in the local convenience store. Besides making battles and the world more seamless than ever, the Dragon Engine is also just beautiful making the world of Kamurocho look the most lively, realistic and gritty that it has ever to this point in the series. It's hard to believe Yakuza 6 is a game from 2016 because graphically it easily stands toe-to-toe with most modern games.
Yakuza 6 to me is similar to Yakuza 3 in many ways. Both focus primarily on building up Kiryu's relationship with new characters, both take Kiryu to a new town, both have similar themes of parenthood and most importantly both are fantastic narratives that are trapped in less than fantastic games. Yakuza 6 offers tons of depth in its narrative, character development, themes and world-building, especially for those who have followed Kiryu's story from the beginning making Yakuza 6 one of the absolute best stories in the series, but unfortunately every other aspect of the game from the combat to the side activities are sorely lacking in depth or variety compared to previous entries making the climatic finale of Kiryu's saga more than worth experiencing, but far from the masterpiece it could've been and deserved to be.