This game is full of SOUL.

+ Stellar art direction
+ Stellar vibes
+ Stellar combat
+ Stellar Bosses
+ Stellar Soundtrack
+ Stellar presentation
+ Stellar performance and optimization
+ Fun dress up game tbh
+ Puzzle Variety
+ Rule of Cool the whole way through

- Fairly mediocre storytelling and characters, but the actual world and story is still cool in concept.
- One of the final boss options is pretty lame compared to the other, its also the only boss in the game that felt slightly buggy. Kinda weird. The other boss is SUUUUPER rad though.

Really fantastic realization of Granblue's scope and charm in stunning detail. Has some of my favorite ARPG combat that I've ever experienced, its similarities to Xenoblade made me realize that those systems are infinitely more engaging to me with full-on action combat as opposed to auto-attacking. It definitely helps a lot that it keeps up an extremely consistent flow to its combat, never feeling like it drones on or stalls too much. I haven't tried too many of the cast yet but Zeta was an absolute blast to play with how much airtime she gets with her combos. The sense of scope is helped even further by having some of the most stunning giant bosses this side of FFXVI, each one feels bigger and grander than the last. Story's not too much to write home about, it's basically the Granblue equivalent of a Shonen anime movie, which is fine as a standalone thing but a bit disappointing since I know that Granblue's capable of really engaging and gripping narratives. This probably being a lot of peoples' first impression of the cast doesn't help since it doesn't really showcase as much of what makes them so charming and likeable as the mobage does. (Lyria and Vryn are hit by this the hardest) Even so, a lot of Granblue's charm is still completely intact in here, so I can definitely see it drawing more people further after the fact. After beating its fairly brisk main story, I wanna keep playing to see everything the game has to offer. I guess I really have been itching for another Monster Hunter-like experience since I played 4U way back. Overall fantastic game, Cygames add Vira in a future update or all of this was for nothing.

100% achievements.

November 6th, 2023, marks the day I would begin my journey of playing Hellsinker. 5 months and a day to be exact. With interest spawning from a stray suggestion by a friend of mine, this would quickly result in an obsessive play-through which then graduated to an obsessive achievement hunt which would THEN go on infiltrate my personal life via absolutely wreaking havoc on my sleep schedule, even hijacking my dreams.

And I couldn't be more thankful.

Quite honestly, I'm not sure where to take this review, I'll let my fingers glide along the keyboard and post whatever crops up.

At 89.1 hours, Hellsinker sits comfortably at my #5 most played game on Steam. Despite this, I've only gone on to engage with the game in its entirety through the lens of 1 character. The game features 4 characters, 1 of which has 4 "Ordinance Packages" which change up their loadout. Essentially, this 1 character is 4 though their endings remain the same between loadouts. This leaves me with a staggering 1/7 true completion. In addition to this, each character does have a unique ending depending on their TLB progression, not viewable within the game's text sequence viewer. Though I've already gone ahead and watched a video showing their contents (SPOILERS (DUH!)), I'd still love to play the game to experience them firsthand.

Alright, what more is there left for me do? Surely after that I would have completed EVERYTHING there is to this game... right?

WRONG! THERE'S SO MUCH! THERE'S QUITE FRANKLY TOO MUCH! AND I THINK THE FUNNIEST PART HAS TO BE HOW ABSOLUTELY UNINTENDED MOST OF THE EXTRA STUFF IS!

I'll start by introducing this game's older sibling, Radio Zonde. Yes, I have played the game before, but I haven't really completed in a manner I find acceptable, so there's still this entire game for me to play. Much of the ideas regarding design both graphics and gameplay are very much seen within Hellsinker. 1CC for Radio Zonde TBD.

Following this game would then come Hellsinker but in the form of a demo, kinda? Colloquially the build is known as Hellsinker 0.95. This build is quite.... special. There's a bajillion changes from this version of the game to the Doujin and Steam releases and although I'd like to talk about them all day I'll spare this "review" the word count and cut to the main thing. This game, although presenting itself as a demo, actually holds within itself the entire game but more importantly the final stage(SPOILERS(AGAIN(DUH!))) accessible through dropping in some files graciously provided by the original poster. In a non-patched version, only stages 1-4 are playable. The cut special stages also feature 2 versions from what I understand looking at the channel. One version would then go on to become the Shrine seen in the Doujin and Steam release. The other version cut from the final releases feature something adjacent to a dungeon crawler style level (not spoilers).

Okay so. That's it right? Nothing more? There couldn't possibly be more?

But there is! All of these are from the game's Doujin release era (so like 2007-2011?) I'll tally up everything here:
>Doujin release (PURCHASED)
>Completion of said Doujin release (unsure if I'll do all characters TLB but I'll cross that bridge when I get there)
>Buying the fanzines (warning the page probably has some Not Safe For Work Ads so please use an adblocker <3 ) and then reading said fanzines (currently studying Japanese primarily for that)
>A 3D Hellsinker Railshooter fangame (Completed)
>A Puyo Puyo styled Hellsinker puzzle game (Completed)
>Another Hellsinker fangame though I don't really know what to compare this one to, check the IGDB page for more info (Completed)

...and that's it. At that point, I'll have fully exhausted myself on every possible official and unofficial expression of love for this game. Have I made it obvious enough how much I love this game?

I'm currently in ownership of pretty much every version of the game out there with their fan-patches in addition to the fan-games so if you'd like any of that please contact my either on Twitter or Discord @strawhatcanti. Thank you for reading. Until the next "review" goes up,

Keep your dignity.

I never expected any gacha to actually get me, but it appears even I can be fallible. Has an incredibly charming fantasy world that has something for basically everybody to enjoy. Starts off as a very early One Piece-y fantasy RPG adventure and allows itself to branch off into so many other directions at a scale that fills me with absolute wonder and amazement. Gameplay was kinda mind-numbing early on but the later parts really gripped me with how much variety you get in builds and team composition, though I still have a lot to learn about what the hell a grid is. Also been having a very smooth F2P experience personally, though I probably should owe a lot of that to good timing with fully diving in during the 10th Anni celebration. Cagliostro is literally me.

Dragon's Dogma II is a smoother but somehow a less full experience than Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

I've been thinking of how to "review" this game for at least 8 hours now, and it's all because whenever I think of something DD2 does good I remember that Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen did it equally well or even better which I know I shouldn't do because technically this isn't a sequel to Dark Arisen but a reimagination of the original Dragon's Dogma, but you can't just get the original anymore so I can only do a comparison to Dark Arisen.

What did DD2 bring to the table compared to DDDA: a better more interesting map, exploration is mostly fun, a vastly improved warrior vocation, overall combat feels smoother, 3¹ new races, better enemy and pawn² AI/pathfinding, neat pawn interactions like high-fives after battle and commenting of what other players who hired them did, some unique creatures like the Sphinx³, an ending that made me go "absolute cinema" at my screen, some very good-looking armors⁴, item use shortcuts, open-world being actually open meaning you can grab onto a griffin and just go flying and better⁵ graphics... I think that's it

What DD2 threw away from the table: Combat despite being smoother is less varied thanks to limiting vocations to only 4 skill slots instead of 3 per weapon, reduced vocations from bow & dagger users (strider, assassin & ranger) into dagger or bow (thief and archer), different arrows are only usable if a specific arrow skill is chosen for archer, sorcerers have fewer spells with no area debilitation spells like lassitude or miasma, dark and holy attributes are pretty much gone (supposedly a couple mage spells can do holy), 3 new vocations with 1 being a neat idea but useless (trickster), 1 being a mediocre melee with range (mystic spearhand) and 1 just to make the number bigger compared to DDDA (warfarer), ¹only 1 of the races is playable (beastren), ²While pawns seem smarter overall it feels like they don't really learn anything which is not helped by the fact that you choose your pawns' inclination from the creation screen with only 4 choices available, ³cool idea but very underutilized and unsatisfying end, ⁴armor got simplified into 4 slots because they didn't want all people to run same armors, yet it still happens thanks to there being 1 obviously better than rest option, post-game is very disappointing, and it's time-limited, ⁵thanks to TAA, DLSS and whatever else modern not native rendering tricks everything is either blurry or has ghosting...
AND TO TOP IT ALL OFF: the absolutely PATHETIC item, combining and tool systems. Did you know that in DDDA you could fill a flask with oil and either fill your lantern or equip it and throw it at an enemy causing them to get the tarred debilitation which causes it to take double fire damage and catching fire instantly or how you could combine items into a throwblast equip it and throw it at enemies to do big damage OR at an ore deposit so it breaks all the ore off, and you can pick up the ores without mining? What about combining rotten meat and foreign knife to get backfat oil that restores 600 stamina? Magick medal + ancient ore into monk's periapt?! The only tools that remain are grimoires and lesser versions of periapts that don't seem to stack. I was shocked and stared at my screen with my mouth open for at least 5 minutes when I first tried to equip lantern oil to throw at an enemy and there was... nothing... what downgrade.

There is a pretty known claim that the original Dragons's Dogma was barely what it was fully planned to be [https://imgur.com/a/h4nMo] and I truly feel like Dragon's Dogma II has experienced the exact same thing despite Itsuno claiming that his vision has been realized and if this game ever gets an expansion you know he was straight up lying.
So while the game isn't awful, it has really tough competition at its $70 price while its earlier entry exists fully playable, has more stuff, feels overall more complete and is almost always on sale for only 5 DOLLARS.

Everything wrong (or right) with Dragon's Dogma 2:

Fashion's Dogma is dead: Under-armor is completely gone (both the chest and legs slot) and so are the gloves. Instead, all you get are a slim number of accessories that you can wear in tandem with your helmet. The cloaks are also unusually large, but their ineffectiveness makes them the most interchangeable slot. The excuse we got was that there would be more armors to choose from, so did we? Hardly, the original game had 68 chest pieces for instance, while this one has 90. But when you include the under-armor, you have 124 pieces to choose from. Now let's include the 70 glove pieces, that's 194 chest options. See what I mean? This game has 68 pieces of the leg armor and the original had 79, when you include under-armor, you have 111. Helmets are comparable in quantity, there's 88 in the original and and 82 here, 97 if you include accessories. Clearly, armor choice is a massive downgrade this time around and it's unjustifiable.

Vocations are disappointing: They just had to restrict this system as well. Is it really okay to only have ten unlockable skills, (plus one mastery skill), when we can't even use two weapons anymore? Especially with so many skills returning, it's a real shame they couldn't come up with more. You only get to unlock 5 augments per class as well; down from six, most of which are useless. Like dealing 5% more damage when hitting a target's vitals or reducing the time it takes to revive a Pawn by 1 second. Not to mention, the game won't even tell you what the values are (that applies to rings as well). The archer is especially affected, since four of the skills require their respective arrow types when they used to require none. You can no longer equip arrows to use on any skill anymore, nor are there status inflicting skills like Invasive Arrow. Mages used to be able to aim their spells and pinpoint a location on the ground, now it's forcibly automatic. When it comes to new classes, trickster makes a jarring addition to the roster because they can't deal any damage. Why isn't this a pawn class? You're going to be much more effective at dealing damage than any pawn. Wayfarer is much worse than the comparable assassin and should have been an opportunity to combine weapons. Instead, you have the ability to switch between two or three vocations, but you only get three ability slots and worse stats. At least the Mystic Spearhand was incredibly unique and fun to play, it's really the only worthwhile addition. I've also got to point out that all the hybrid vocations involve magic, the thief got nothing to mix with.

The gameplay is excellent: Existing skills have been given additional flair and the physics engine will ensure that you can launch your foes straight into the stratosphere. It's very satisfying and fun, especially thanks to the improved AI. Enemies are much more aggressive, have better tracking, quickly gap close, can stunlock you to death, and will chase you to the ends of the earth. They can be genuinely terrifying and you will need your pawns to survive. Going solo is no longer a viable option, especially when most of the classes don't have a basic dodge. Maybe every single hit shouldn't stagger you though, you can only mitigate knockdowns. Most important of all, they fixed leveling stats. They're tied exclusively to your vocation, so there's no overlap. The max level is no longer 200 as well, now it's 999; which would have been cool if there were high level monsters.

The world is epic! Exploration is hollow: It's massive and sprawling, you'll really feel like you're on some sort of grand adventure; but it's landscapes are realistic to a fault; detrimental to the real meat of the game. For instance, every single dungeon is cave and only a handful of them are going to take you a significant amount of time to explore. You're not going to find anything like Bluemoon Tower, the Catacombs, or Watergod's Altar. Puzzles are gone, levers are gone, anything that could have made the locations district is largely missing. You can even see it in their names: "Strange Corridor", "Hidden Cavern", "Forgotten Tunnel" to name a few. Once more, they're not so rewarding either. There are chests absolutely everywhere, but more often than not, you're going to find a wakestone shard or an item you can already buy at the region's blacksmith. There are duplicates of several weapons and armors as well, why? Notable exceptions exist, but they're few and far between. If there were more armor slots to play with, this wouldn't have been a problem. Maybe focus on filling the world with quality content instead of simply making it large, Skyrim was 12 years ago. To make matters worse, enemy variety is about the same as the first game, just spread across a greater distance. If you were hoping for new additions, all you really get are variants of existing ones, slimes, and one-off bosses. Considering an encounter happens about every 15 seconds, it can get pretty exhausting.

Travelling could have been great: The addition of oxcarts is a welcome one, it's so nice to have more options beyond walking and ferrystones. However, the cart moves so slowly that I'm always opting to "doze off", which usually involves an enemy encounter along the way. Problem is, oxcarts are very destructible; I don't even think it's viable to take them without the time skip, because there are so many enemy encounters along the way. The addition of camping is great because you don't have to walk back to an inn whenever night arises. I do think their spread is too generous though, you'll have an easy time finding one when the need arises. Riftstones are everywhere too, so losing a pawn is hardly detrimental. What really bothers me are the portcrystals. Why are there only two naturally occurring ones in the entire game? Here are the places that should have one but don't: Melve, Bakbattahl, Rest Town, Sacred Arbor, Volcanic Island Camp. It's ridiculous, not to mention the non-existence of an eternal ferrystone, which was probably an excuse to fill up chests. Oh, and there's a portcrystal DLC, maybe that's why Bakbattahl doesn't have one.

Questing is better, but the quests aren't good: Quests are no longer tied to stages in the story, so you don't have to worry about automatically failing them. Timed quests will explicitly tell you in the UI, but I'd appreciate having a day counter. Failure was touted as a possibility, but it's not really something to worry about. They're usually started by encounters (you'll run into an NPC or they'll walk up to you) making them feel like a natural occurrence in the world. I appreciate how cryptic they can be, but sometimes the descriptors are unhelpful and you'll have to rely on a pawn's knowledge. Where they falter is in interest, because there aren't any exciting locations to unlock or exclusive rewards. I couldn't tell you a single memorable one, they all felt like a chore.

The plot is dreadful: The main story might just be the laziest I've ever seen in an RPG. It's even more of an afterthought than the first game. All that intrigue and buildup about the false sovran (which is really just a bunch of half-baked stealth missions) is squandered because of some Godsway MacGuffin. Which I thought was just the beginning of the story, turns out it's actually the half-way point. Your search for answers leads you to Bakbattahl, but the actual region is irrelevant to the plot. You'll head to an alter that raises from the sea, but it isn't a dungeon, just a cave with an elevator... Once you reach Moonglint Tower, it's just an elevator again. They seriously couldn't put a single fucking dungeon in this game to save their lives. Once you reach the top, bootleg Jafar accidentally summons the wrong dragon and it ends about the same way as the first game. Only this time, the post-game sucks bigtime. We're talking time limits, zero saves, three main quests, an obsession with the color red, and no dungeons. But don't worry, it's all doable in under 4 hours and the ending is just a hint at future DLC.

I have a very hard time accepting that this was Itsuno's true vision for Dragon's Dogma because it's worse than Dark Arisen. Not only does it fail to adequately improve on the original's shortcomings, in many ways it has doubled down on them. Meanwhile, its best aspects have been stripped away. Yet again, there's a great system buried beneath a pile of trash, only this time they took more pages from Ubisoft instead of lighting the book on fire. It's emblematic of everything wrong with modern gaming and this massive open world trend needs to stop already.