i feel like i would ramble on for ages if i started to write paragraphs of text for this game, so i'll go with a List Format This Time.

so here are the top [however many things i end up listing] reasons why this game felt laser-focused to appeal to me:
- a realm-spanning, grounded narrative with actual honest-to-god focus on geopolitics, tough choices and tastefully done magical and fantastical elements, with zero late-game surprise demon king shit to ruin it
- a big, well-rounded cast of characters that not only have interesting and fun personal stories unto themselves, but whose ideals are well examined through the game, and who work as effective lens in interrogating, contrasting and comparing the mechanisms of the various societal systems of the three states of norzelia
- dialogue and character writing that hits a very good balance of dry and serious, and human and humorous, with very well done economical script. just a bit more of joe abercrombie-like sassiness would not have been amiss, but overall very good and fitting for the game
- tactically rigorous gameplay design that moves the focus significantly from out-of-battle preparation and character building to in-battle decision making, which makes the fights themselves feel much more balanced and fair and, most of all, FUN
-- as a bit of a sidenote, i must say that i've always looooved sprawling and involved character progression systems where you can break the game wide open with some good planning and execution, but i've also come to realize that i like them specifically in crpgs and your more standard jrpgs with quick battles and lots of trash mobs to sic your busted ass party at, with trpgs i massively prefer the more chess-like approach that tristrat has
- combat system that gives you all the information you would ever need to plan out your tactics, with basically no bullshit surprises. again, kinda like chess!
- the overall progression philosophy: you're always making at least some in-game progression, even when you face complete defeat, and you never LOSE shit, there's no character permadeath or anything of the sort. in truth the retained experience and kudos from lost fights didn't make a very big impact on the pacing of the game for me (because there were only a few battles i ended up losing once or twice before i emerged victorious), but the psychological effect of knowing you'll always progress in some ways even if you fuck up royally cannot be understated for me--i take more risks, i try out more varied strategies, i generally poke the systems more and as a result, tend to have a lot more fun with the game. with a harsher save/checkpoint system, i tend to play much more conservatively, which always has a negative effect on my enjoyment.
- if it wasn't obvious from the above point, i've never clicked with games that derive a lot of their difficulty or challenge from long-term attrition of resources, so let me just say that i fucking LOVE the tp system. the item system being your standard fare was a good balancing weight for the tp system (though, again, i supremely appreciated the fact that you get used items back if you lose a fight)
- the 3d diorama presentation of the exploration and combat scenarios was just absolutely adorable

all that said, there were certainly a few things i was hoping to see. MORE LISTS!
- a bit more variety across the board would have been appreciated. a few more enemy types and some optional (hard) bonus objectives per fight would have gone a loong way for me. right now the 35 hours i spent with the game feels just right, as much as i'd like to know how the golden route goes, i don't think starting ng+ right away is a good idea. maybe in a year or two, though.
- almost all of the positive status effects feel bizarrely weak compared to the negative ones. proccing immobility or paralysis in particular on a key enemy unit remained incredibly exhilarating all the way to the end, and i really wish positive effects were as impactful.
- some of the scales of justice decisions could have been harder. the setup of every option starting out with equal amount of supporters avoids the potential issue of the game accidentally implying some options are better or more desirable than the others, but i got my will in every one and it felt just a tad too easy.
- while i adored the presentation overall, i'm not a big fan of the super contrasty colors of the 2d-hd games. you definitely get used to it, though, and playing the pc version with higher res and framerate than on the switch made the graphics more palatable for me.
- the material and character skill "tree" systems felt a bit tacked on, the vast majority of upgrades you could get seemed pretty inconsequential. would have preferred less materials overall (and the game being stingier with them) and tighter skill trees with just the skills that make a genuine difference--you get the tiny stat boosts from level ups.

---

i have never played a game that made me feel more like i was playing an epic fantasy novel trilogy. it is in many ways the trpg genre absolutely perfected for my particular tastes. it's not the very best in every single thing--when i want to enjoy some of the most colorful dialogue of the genre i'll boot up fft or to:luct, and when i want a different kind of satisfaction found in building gamebreaking characters i'll boot up troubleshooter (or, tbf, fft or to:luct lol), etc.--but as a whole package, it is one of the best trpgs i've ever played and likely my overall favorite. just an incredible game through and through and god do i hope we get a triangle strategy 2 some day, that takes place in the same world but maybe 100 years in the future--the ending i got certainly made it clear norzelia is just entering a new era of true innovation, so there's a lot of potential there.

four and a half difficult multifaceted realm-changing decisions forced to be made out of sheer necessity out of five

"The world once shaped by the great will has come to an end.
It was a foregone conclusion. All is preordained.

If in spite of this you still have the will to fight, now is your chance to prove it."

This is a particularly difficult game for me to write about because I want to greedily compare and contrast every ballhair with the first title’s, just so I can diagnose exactly where my issues with it lie - why a game that is functionally so similar in DNA to one of my all-timers doesn’t hit the mark. Personally speakin, the long & short of it is that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is something of a sidegrade to the original title that distances itself too much from what I found spectacular about it to begin with.

Possibly my favourite element of Dragon’s Dogma 2 is one that could be felt from the moment you first gain control of your character. There’s a palpable heft to character locomotion, complimented by the multilayered textuality of the land itself & the threats of wrong turns into the unknown or slipping off a slick cliffside to your untimely demise - it leans wonderfully far into the concept of traversal being a battle unto itself. As was the case with DD1, being tasked to travel from safety to a marker deep into the fog of war is never a simple request. Goblins, ogres, harpies, and whoever else decides to grace you with their presence are waiting in the bushes to act as regular speedbumps to be carefully considered and planned for accordingly.

Where DD2 slips at this for me is in how little it reciprocates for what it demands. This is a sequel that has ballooned itself in scale to a dizzying near 5x the original map’s size, but hasn’t developed the enemy roster nor the environmental design acumen to make use of it. Take for instance that DD2 has fifty caves strewn around its tectonic world map, and I don’t think a single one is as impressive as one that could be found in DD1. Where the caves/dungeons in DD1 were concerned, there would be special objectives relevant to the overall story, a person you were going there on behalf of who represented a town or group, they would unlock shortcuts for faster world traversal and upon repeat visits you’d notice the location’s role in the world change for the denizens. They would be densely designed so that every corner was worth being scanned to the best of your ability for pickups, shortcuts, levers, climbing points - lending to the almost DnD-esque adventure core followed passionately by the game’s design. Hell, the locales would generally sound and look different too, built to purpose so as to become plausible enough to justify their utility in the world and lend credence to exploring them.

Compared to that, DD2 has shockingly little of this. Its myriad nondescript caves wallhugging the world could scarcely be five prefab rooms tied into a loop to house a few potions, or some equipment you could find at a store. No unique gimmicks or trials, only populated by a handful of gobbos and maybe a midboss as a treat. I feel that Dragonsbreath Tower was supposed to act as something of a callback to Bluemoon Tower from DD1 - it being a perilous journey across a handful of biomes towards a crumbling hanging dungeon that houses a flying peril, but it’s so bereft of pomp and confidence. A truly memetic core routine that made me think less of adventures and more of waypoints and upgrade materials. I want to use a Neuralyzer to remove BotW shrines from the face of the earth. And god why is none of the new music good.

DD2 implies at a big story, but to me it felt like nothing came together. I had no idea who anyone was supposed to be beyond Brant, Sven and Wilhelmina. DD1’s progression from Wyrmhunt -> Investigate the Cult -> Kill Grigori -> Deal with the Everfall -> Confront the Seneschal was great, and throughout all of that you kept up with characters like the King and got to see his downfall. The writing and delivery of the cult leader and Grigori himself far surpasses anything in DD2, despite having very similar subjects. Outpaced by DD1 in setpieces and pop-offs and thematics. There's barely any antagonistic people in the game and once you get to Battahl it feels as though the game trails off like it’s got dementia.

It's a completely different kind of design that, sure, encourages player freedom - but communicates it in this really loose way that I just don't care about. I spent much of my playthrough having no idea what I was doing besides wiping off the blank smudges of world map. What expounds this problem is that quest discoverability is astonishingly low here, oftentimes made worse by restricting itself to AI astrology, time of day, relationship levels (??). The duke could stand to commission a farcking quest board imo!!! I won’t kid myself and say that the quests in DD1 were even a bronze standard, but they worked and communicated exactly what they needed to do while also leaving open ends available for interpretation. But in DD2, they’re just awful, I absolutely hated the experience of trying to clear up Vermund’s quests before pushing Main Story progression and at this point I wish I cared as little as the game does. What need is there for almost all of them to have a “return to me in a few days” component in a game with such limited fast travel, do you want me to throw you into the brine? Frankly the game is never as interesting as when you're doing Sphinx riddles.

Combat’s good enough, I do enjoy how the interplay of systems would present the player with all sorts of unique situations, but even these can and do begin to feel samey when a very slim enemy pool on shuffle. What makes these emergent conflicts even less impressive to me is how I can't help but feel as though the ogres, trolls and chimeras in particular have had their difficulties neutered. The hardest time I had with the chimera was during a sidequest where you had to get the poison-lover to be doused in chimeric snake venom. They're barely a threat otherwise, and can either be chain stunlocked with well-placed shots or slashes, or get too lost in their own attack animations to really hit anyone. Comparing these enemies to DD1 where climbing was far more effective at dealing damage encouraged the player to get real up close to them and it felt like their AI knew how to deal with that. Like when I fought the Medusa it felt like they didn't have any idea where the party even was. I think if the hardest encounters the game has to offer is Too Many Goblins we have a problem. (Dullahan is very cool though)

I’m not miffed no matter how miffed I sound. When do people like me ever get sequels to games they love? I’ll tell u dear reader it’s Never. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is full of wonder & delight and I think anyone less fatigued by SCALE and SANDBOX than me has a home in it. I feel a little left behind, having spent 12 years wasting away in the waiting room rotating in my head the concepts DD1 confidently wields, and its further potential as a foundation for a sequel. A game that was absolutely 'for me', course correcting into sick-of-this-already airspace. I’ll be excited to see whatever news, expansions or the like the future holds for DD2. Right now, though? I think DD1 has a stronger jawline.

It's a very good game in so many ways with clever and fun obstacle courses, but what holds it back from being as highly regarded by myself is that I don't like Galaxy physics as much as 64, Sunshine, or Odyssey. There is a lot of air drag that makes it too floaty for my liking and there is a weird quirk where you are much faster going backwards that I find incredibly odd, not that intuitive, nor that fun to try to make the most of. This is on top of your moveset feeling so much slower especially since you dont have anything like dives or roll to speed up ground movement.

feeling blessed on this day.

i like juggling short run-based roguelites/likes with my big games and isaac has for a very long time been my go-to, but i've been playing it a LOT in the last 6 months so i was starting to feel just a bit burned out, and just as i was thinking i'd have to focus solely on the big ass big games, balatro enters my life.

digital crack. there's your review. i'm afraid my yakuza 8 playthrough will actually go on ice because of this, the one that was supposed to be the secondary game when i'm too tired to focus on the primary one.

oh well, it's not like i'm on a time limit here or anything. now then... back to being the jokah, baby. or whatever. release serotonin, please.

holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, why are video games so GOOD

I haven't played any of the other games in the King's Field metaseries (yet). I got here mostly because a lot of people were going around recommending it to everyone who liked Lunacid, last year's really good indie tribute to them. The influence is impossible to miss, but Lunacid is still going for quite a different mood from the source material; Shadow Tower: Abyss is a lot less friendly and nostalgic, and it's even more atmospheric and mysterious--perhaps the most so of any game I've ever played.

It's kind of amazing just how strong of a case it makes for art direction over graphical fidelity, and that's coming from someone who's been playing that tune faithfully for decades. Fromsoft was still dealing in the low budget range in the PS2 era, but even by their standards... let's just say you could show me quite a few screenshots of this game telling me it was on the PS1 before I got suspicious. It's not even like it's a really early PS2 game, 2003 was around the middle of the console's lifespan.

And yet, however angular the models and crispy the textures, and despite its world and inhabitants often being deliberately grotesque, Abyss's overall effect manages to be hauntingly beautiful. The environments are highly varied, but I don't think I'll ever get the sort of main hub area out of my mind. You walk around on earthy platforms suspended high in a vast, pitch-dark cavern, lit neon green by sources clearly neither natural nor manmade, populated by bizarre creatures that just stare at you with obvious distrust and speak to you either in cryptic, just-short-of-hostile sentence fragments or not at all, and all the time you'll periodically hear strange, loud noises that seem to come from everywhere and nowhere. Like Jesus CHRIST, guys, leave some cool spooky vibes for literally every other game in the world! There are poor Metroidvanias starving in the Epic Store!

But the enigma of this game goes beyond the aching need to see more of its fucked up world. I finished it, and there are very few questions I could possibly answer about its core RPG mechanics. The controls and UI are, affectionately, riddled with retrojank and nothing in the game explains itself even a little beyond item descriptions that spare maybe five words for the purpose. There's no map aside from the occasional crude one scrawled on a wall, and the level design gets labrynthine. You can full heal by sacrificing a piece of equipment at certain spots, and you repair equipment by sacrificing some of your health at others. There are items I picked up that I never figured out any use for at all. What the hell kind of stat is Solvent? What's the difference between Mind and Mentality? What do these status effects actually do? Okay, you have a carrying weight capacity and if you go over it it slows you down, that's perfectly basic, but I can't seem to drop items so I guess I'm just in slow-mo until I get back to the little shop node and pawn some things off, might as well keep picking up looh my god I'm moving even slower now and TAKING A SHITLOAD OF DAMAGE OVER TIME WHAT--

I'm not usually a "don't use a guide" kind of girl, but seriously, don't try to use a guide. I'm not convinced you'll find one that answers a lot of these questions, anyway. The game is honestly, and surprisingly, not super hard as long as you stock up on healing potions and watch the extremely fragile durability of your gear. You don't need to optimize, and it's more unnerving and intriguing than frustrating to get lost in these levels. Combat is extremely basic aside from a cool dismemberment mechanic (most enemies will not necessarily die if you cut off their heads, fun detail!), but that's because it's not the main draw. The game is also pretty short, maybe a ten hour joint or so.

Play Shadow Tower: Abyss. I can be cagey about actually universally recommending games since my tastes can run to the esoteric and janky, and that's extremely the case here, but I don't think that does anything but enhance the experience. If you have literally any interest in dungeon crawlers or surreal, dark fantasy as a genre or aesthetic, play it. You deserve to give this game a serious try as much as the game deserves to be a household name.

During the first minutes of playing this game I was very excited, delighting in the idea of exploring an infinite maze and learning about the people who once travelled through it, knowing that I enjoyed this concept in other works like Borges' The Library of Babel or even the Submachine game series. And by showcasing real works of art in all of its rooms it could also almost serve as a virtual musem tour.

But in the process of learning the labyrinth's rules I quickly started seeing how this idea was limited by its own tech. There are invisible ticking clocks that will limit your exploration, cutting off access to previous rooms or stopping you from visiting new ones, and by this alone the dream of wandering endless halls and wondering about who created and nurtured them is shattered; you are only there because you have a purpose, and you are not allowed to consider your surroundings very much.

And the random nature with which the same objects or backgrounds are found in different rooms, making them feel like copies of each other even though you only visit a few amount of them in each run, takes some charm away from it too.
In the end, while exploring some minor leads and very deliberately ignoring the Main One, regardless I was thrown onto the ending with no way of going back (as you can't really tell what the consequences of your actions will be), and while I could restart the game and explore more I chose to leave it there.