It's upmost rare to stumble upon something so obnoxiously obtuse in a time of excessive signposting and way-finding, even more when such stubbornness is perfectly coherent with all the aspects of its own design.

Dragon's Dogma II is exactly that - unwilling to accommodate its structure to the modern demands, unapologetically stuck in its own idea of commitment and restrains, and unfathomably fascinating when all those things come together.

Fortunately, they all work together way better in this sequel than its original, and that's because of the egregious amount of polishing that the weakest factors of Dragon's Dogma got. The open world got by far the best treatment, delightfully explorable, even with climbing not being an option in the game, which restricts you to jumping and platforming. This alone marks an unquantifiable step forward from the original. Fetch quests are gone for good - they're replaced by more wisely paced events which you may stumble upon in the world - or may not. Escort quests are too part of a more authentic approach to the game's role-playing features. Main quests and sides quests - they are all true to the elegance of a better written world. Time-gating is here too - featured in less quests, but more involved, more cleverly designed, better written, and overall way more remarkable. One of those, which you may access to even in the most early stages of the game, involves you fighting one of the most fearsome bosses of the game. You may get onboard, do an hike comparable to the original's griffin run, get to the quest, and ultimately fail it. That still counts as completed.

Failure as a state is one of the many accepted outcomes in Dragon's Dogma II. It perfectly fits how much this game is willing to make you miss stuff, purposely hiding chunks of (in corporate speak) content, where other games would basically bend to you and pray "please, experience this thing and extend your playtime", even if at the cost of immersion. DDII is not expecting you to do so - it's simply designed this way. It does not care about you, in that regard. This game's indifference to the player's concerns befalls in every aspect of its journey. The best way to experience it, then, is to live it without fear.

Such is the world you're brought into. One of the first quotes from the game recites how you will come to learn and understand from it - so you might be able to banish all the evil there is in. Nothing was more true than that: explore, learn its ins and outs, understand its opportunities and its threats, find new paths, discover new places, and then backtrack your steps. The reality of transforming a journey from the discovery of the unknown to the sheer mastery of its terrain and what lies ahead only by the knowledge gained its unique to this game - thanks only to how much it conceals itself from the player. There's not bar, value, number or anything that may encompass this feel - it's all about you experiencing things.

Here the real journey in the world of DDII starts. It begins when you stop thinking about the game as checklist in order to experience the game as it is, when you decide to let the flow of things guide you, even if just a bit. You still have the agency you had in the original, but the deepened combat system, the physicality of it, the rag-doll, the environmental interactions, the AI, the game's structure, the depth of the quests and their outcomes - everything is tailor-made to suit curiosity and resourcefulness before all. The consequences of basically everything you may stumble upon are so much deeply rooted in your actions that you may as well recount your findings to a friend playing the game - chances are, he's gonna tell you a whole different story.

Story which is not only a far better suited tale for a game of the likes of DDII, but it's a blank slate of sorts for you ingenuity to manifest. Chosen one yes, but no one gives a shit about it. Hell, some (if not most) even despise you because of that. You'll have the time and the chances to build your affinity with other characters, get to know others, gift them presents, follow them in enormous and entirely missable quest-lines and more. The involvement and commitment you see in every aspect of the game does not fall short here. Instead, some of the strongest story beats and choices you're going to come across are not outspokenly announced by the game. DDII simply requires your attention on most of the times in order to make sense of things. On that, if you come from the original you surely have the upper-hand, but then again - I do, and yet I couldn't keep track of the numbers of times I was left surprised by the game's machinations.

On that regard, it's almost eye-watering how much DDII respects not only your time (even with the commitment required to only enable fast travel) but also your dedication to the game's world and its systems: it knows the player's not here to be hand-holded or to be scolded, but to witness the sheer audacity by which this game is dedicated, obsessively so, to its involvement in things. Keep in mind that there's been an egregious UX pass from the previous but, truth to be told, the updates in accessibility did not detriment the game design. Crazy, right?

On that note, challenge is not born out of the gameplay itself - that's not the point. Apart from the initial hours, the plateau of DDII's dynamic difficulty is quickly reached - and its hardships soon become a memory, apart from some specific outliers. The truest of the test to the player resides in how he undertakes the game's structure. Will he engage the game to the fullest of its extent, or will he fall behind because of the game's unwillingness to please every single soul in this world?

True sovereignty of the world of DDII lies in using to its maximum extent every system that is given in game. You may come to a point when fast travel becomes not only a must - but also cheap and, in that regard, sustainable, even with a lot of upfront expenses to merchants. You can always sell stuff around - and there are small glimpses of an economy in the game, which you may use to your own advantage, such as some goods available only in specific countries of the game's world. You will find out how enhancing an item is not a do-and-done thing, but something with more depth and complexity than before. Camping starts as a luxury, for only to become one of the ways to maximize buffs for the upcoming boss fights. Nights start frightening - and then they become an opportunity to collect things you won't find elsewhere. Same goes for dungeons and bosses. You may find some items only if you visit such dungeons, and some monsters become a treat for your business as an Arisen. One of the vocations being literally the ultimate show of mastery of all of the move-sets of the game, alongside their abilities and spells. It really feels like a power climb of sorts, but in the best way possible. You're not asked to do so: you're doing this out of your own volition. On that, again - a game so coherent in and out of itself.

All of this ultimately became clear as day as soon as you stumble in the end-game. The original game holds nothing compared to this, and the way it's graciously intertwined with the game's world and narrative is just - chef kiss, really. All of this happens while the game unravels itself in the boldest way possible and, dare I say, unmatched even by the likes of other games which tried that thing before. All the systems you've got used to get turned around, and all the items which were collecting dust in your inventory have to be used, and extensively so. As if it wasn't enough, a spectacle which by itself alone eclipses the original Dragon's Dogma final stretch reveals itself right before your eyes. It's remarkable how much this game resonates and communicates with the original and its expansion in a way that, in my opinion, almost requires experiencing the full original game in order to truly taste the accomplishments performed here. I cannot delve more on this in fear of spoilers, but you won't be disappointed.

Some minor criticism can be done regarding the balancing of the vocations, with some really strong exceptions: nothing new if you come from the original game. Other minor things, truly nitpicks from my side, are the more streamlined systems (like the layered armor and dragon-forging) which are more straightforward in expense of... I dunno, flavor? The enemy variety is just a tad better than the original game, with some additions coming straight from Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen. Some iconic monsters of the original game are, instead, inexplicably missing from the sequel: they do have their replacement, though, in the form of new bosses. Dungeons are way more than before, some of these even bigger than before, but less remarkable from the ones of the first game, level-design and environment art wise. The music in the sequel is missing the electric guitar from the original. Again, I'm really trying to be a pain in the ass to an otherwise phenomenal game.

What would be an unadulterated experience is sadly only stained by micro-transactions, which serve no purpose and have no place here, and the performance, which is still bearable, but subpar in some specific moments of the game. I cannot stress enough how those things are, in my point of view, not detrimental at all to the game's experience. With or without those - the game's still here, and it'll have the same things which will make you either fall in love with it or absolutely despise it. This remains unchanged from the previous iteration of the series - since this game is basically an exponential increase of all the things you adored and loathed of the original. Take it or leave it, really.

In the end it truly is, and I cannot understate it, a case of you get exactly what you're looking for in this game. The more you delve into the game's intricacies', the more you will be rewarded, in a way no other game can achieve. Do take your time with this one - you'll be thanking your past self for that.

Dragon's Dogma II was never about just its gameplay, or its stubbornness in the game systems, or its loose writing - it was always about everything coming all together. The single writings on the wall may encompass only some the strongest or weakest sides of the project, but it's when they become whole that its magic is finally revealed. It's about the war stories of your battles, the tales of your journey from a place to another. It's the unexpected, the unpredictable, the unaccounted for.

And all of that is unique - remarkably so. You'll never find anything like this in any other game for the time being.

Must-Play.

In one of its previews, Hideaki Itsuno was deliberately evasive when asked about why Dragon’s Dogma II’s title screen initially lacks the II, saying only “nothing in this game is unintentional.” You can draw whatever conclusion you like from that, but I think I’ve a different interpretation from most – it’s less a signal that this is a reimagining or a remake or whatever else in disguise than a display of confidence in how well he and his team understand what makes it tick.

As much as I’ll never wrap my head around how they got the first Dragon’s Dogma running on 7th gen hardware (albeit just about), I would’ve said it was impossible not to feel how much more II has going on under the hood in even the briefest, most hasty of encounters if it weren’t being so undersold in this respect. While my favourite addition is that enemies’ individual body parts can now be dragged or shoved to throw them off balance, tying into both this new world’s more angular design and how they can be stunned by banging their head off of its geometry, yours might be something else entirely with how many other new toys there are to play with. One particularly big one’s that you and your pawns can retain access to your standard movesets while clinging to larger enemies if you manage to mantle onto them from the appropriate angle, but you’ve gotta watch out for the newly implemented ragdoll physics while doing so, since the damage received from getting bucked off now varies wildly depending on your position at the time and the nearby environment as a result of them. Successive strikes create new avenues of offence akin to Nioh’s grapples, pressuring you to get as much damage in as you can before letting one loose and taking your target out of its disadvantage state, while also enabling you to keep them in a loop if you’re able to manipulate their stun values well enough. Layers of interaction just keep unravelling further as you play – controlling the arc you throw enemies or objects in, tackling smaller enemies by grabbing them mid-air, corpses or unconscious bodies of bosses now being tangible things you can stand on top of instead of ethereal loot pinatas… I would’ve taken any one of these in isolation. To have them all, plus more, every one being wholly complementary and faithful to the scrambly, dynamic, improvisational core of Dragon’s Dogma’s combat? It’s i n s a n e to me that someone can undergo even a confused few minutes of exposure to any of this and reduce it to “more of the first” or what have you.

Your means of approaching enemies or general scenarios which return from the first game’re further changed by II’s more specialised vocations. Having spent most of my time with Warrior in both titles, I love what’s been done with it in particular. They’ve taken the concept of timing certain skills and applied it to almost every move, anything from your standard swings to its final unlockable skill becoming faster and faster as you time successive inputs correctly – this is only the slow, basic version of the latter and I still feel bad for whatever I batter with it – with chargeable skills now also doubling as a parry for attacks they collide with, similar to DMC5’s clashing mechanic. It’s emblematic of the devs’ approach to vocations in general; Archer’s relatively lacking melee options and litany of flippy, full-on Legolas nonsense encourages keepaway where its four predecessors were all slightly differing flavours of “does everything”, Thief trades access to assault rifle-like bows and invites stubbiness for being able to navigate this world’s much rockier terrain like it’s a platformer, Fighter no longer has to waste skill slots to hit anything slightly above your head and has more versatile means of defence in exchange for melee combat being more punishing in general, etc. It’s to the extent that choosing between any two vocations feels like I’m switching genres, man. In a landscape where people are demonstrably content with having no means of interacting with big monsters other than smacking their ankles, how is even a pretty simple interaction like this not supposed to feel like a game from the future?

On simple interactions, much of this would be lessened if it weren’t for the loss gauge in tandem with the camping system and how these accentuate the sense of adventure which the first game built. The persistent thoughts of “how do I get there?” are retained, but only being able to fully recuperate your health via downtime with the lads and/or ladesses fills every step of the way toward the answer with that much more trepidation, bolstered further by the aforementioned verticality and on the more presentational side of things by how your pawns actually talk to each other now. It leads to some very memorable, emergent experiences which are personal purely to you – one I’m especially fond of involved resting after killing a drake, having my camp ambushed in the middle of the night by knackers who were too high up for me to exercise my k-word pass and having to trek all the way back to Bakbattahl with barely a third of my maximum health as my party continually chattered about how freaky the dark is. I take back the suggestion I made regarding potential changes to the healing system in my review of the first game, because even superfans (or, maybe, especially superfans) can, and do, think too small.

I realise in retrospect that even I, on some level, was wanting certain aspects of Dragon’s Dogma to be like other games instead of taking it on its own merits, something II’s seemingly suffered from all the more with how much gaming has grown since the original’s release, the average player’s tolerance for anything deviating from the norm and, presumably, frame of reference growing ever smaller. Look no further than broad reactions to dragonsplague and its effects (which I won’t spoil) being only the second or third most embarrassing instance of misinformed kneejerk hostility disguised as principled scepticism which enveloped this game’s release to the point you’d swear Todd Howard was attached to it – we want consequences that matter, but not like that! Even if you aren’t onboard with this being the coolest, ballsiest thing an RPG has bothered and will bother to do since before I was born, how can you not at least get a kick out of starting up your own homegrown Dragonsplague Removal Service? You thought you could escape the great spring cleaning, Thomyris, you silly billy? I’m oblivious like you wouldn’t believe, had her wearing an ornate sallet by the time she’d first contracted it and still noticed her glowing red eyes every time, so I’m at a loss as to how it could blindside anybody. It vaguely reminds me of modern reactions to various aspects of the original Fallout; a game which you can reasonably beat in the span of an afternoon, designed to be played with a single hand, somehow commonly seen as unintuitive because it just is, okay? Abandon all delusions of levelheadedness: if a Fallout game with a timer were to release now, the world’s collective sharting would result in something similar to that universe’s Great War or, indeed, Dragon’s Dogma II’s own post-game.

For as many hours as I’ve poured into the Everfall and Bitterblack across two copies of the original, they’re not what I think of when I think of Dragon’s Dogma (or particularly interesting, in the former’s case), which is adventuring in its open world. In that regard, I can’t be convinced that II’s post-game isn’t far more substantial, comparatively rife with monsters either unique or which you’re very unlikely to encounter prior to it, changes to the world’s layout beyond a hole in the ground of one city, its own mechanics (one actually a bit reminiscent of Fallout’s timer), questlines and even setpieces. It’s got a kaiju fight between a Ray Harryhausen love letter and a demonic worm thing which, as of the time of writing, roughly 2% of players have discovered, and instead of being praised for the sheer restraint it must’ve taken to keep something like that so out of the way, it’s chastised for it?

I’m not sure any other game’s ever made me realise how divorced what I want out of games seems to be from the wider populace. So much of this is 1:1 aligned with my tastes that the only thing that feels potentially missing’s the relative lack of electric guitars, but even then I’d be a liar if I told you that Misshapen Eye, the dullahan’s theme, the griffin’s new track, the post-game’s somber piano keys or the true ending’s credits song among others haven’t gotten stuck in my head at some stage anyway or didn’t perfectly complement the action through dynamically changing. It manages this despite clearly not caring about what you or I or anyone else thinks or wants from it. It’s developed a will and conviction all of its own. It’s Dragon’s Dogma, too.

The game is good, but the card acquisition system and the aggressive mobile gaming monetization model are complete ass. Things have improved a bit since its first few months, but it's not enough. Not to mention the bots you find (especially in lower ranks), it's rare to face a real player. They do this so that you win more often and are compelled to keep playing instead of giving up and uninstalling the game. It's predatory and quite unethical, even if the gameplay is unique.
I tried to get into it again but I've given up.

Went into a cave that seemed to go on forever, in the pitch black feeling my way around. While trying not to aggro saurians I went in a room that opened up in a suspicious way, so I stuck to the edge wall to go around just in case. My pawn, however, didn't get the memo: at some point a saurian had caught sight of someone in my party so they were in full attack mode, running straight into the middle of the room. about 5 seconds later I see a huge blue light silhouetting a goats head and a massive health bar appears. I have never run out of a room so fast.

Dragons Dogma 2 feels like the world I used to imagine while reading fantasy books as a kid. The cozy open world freedom combined with fantastic combat & an addictive loot/ upgrade system. Going off the deep end in post-game to divine other worldly levels alongside some superb dungeon crawling encounters. It's got a much nicer after taste than other superb but frontloaded RPGs. There’s something about the atmosphere of Dragons Dogma, the perfect darkness, the physical things, such as having to use a lantern after nightfall or getting hit with shock DMG if soaked in water, the wizards and warriors casting a skill for almost 30 seconds straight... it just feels very real & old school. Going on a quest at sundown, surviving a hard fought night, watching the sun come up as you reach the final destination. DD2 might have best magic system in any rpg , prolly the most visually appealing magic in video games, the melee combat is also great. Basically it's a setting I like and the combat seemed like a more appealing dark souls. One of my all time favorites, if not the favorite RPG. The pawn system as a party shtick that I love in stuff like Goblin slayer and berserk & other peak fantasy media. Long hands give + attack range with swords, heavy characters are knocked around less & can pin down enemies (large/small), small characters consume less stamina when climbing enemies, long legs gives +movement speed, etc. so peak. Rant over. Play Dragonsdogma

Jak II is a fascinating case study in the attempt to satisfy multiple audiences all at once. In order to best understand Jak II, it's best to view the game within the context of the time it was made.

GTA 3 exploded onto the scene, reverberating throughout the entire industry, causing everyone to go into a frenzy. Open world sandbox games were fresh and interesting, giving the player a means to doing seemingly anything they could ever want. Games like GTA, Halo and Metal Gear Solid 2 showed that games could not only be dark and serious, but could also be mature.

Jak, the series, was not this. Like, God, not at all.

Naughty Dog had just started a new IP that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The tailend of the era of 3D platformers was here, and Jak 1 was one of the last ones out. So instead of leaning more into their current audience of mostly younger kids, they changed course with the sequel. Jak II would become a serious game, that's dark, brooding, cool, and most importantly, for mature gamers. Naughty Dog took the effort to become as appealing to this demographic of preteens, teens and inbetweens as much as humanly possible, injecting every facet of Jak 2 with any gaming trend to have ever graced the mid-2000's.

As a result, Jak II is a mish-mash of multiple ideas stapled together and crumpled up into a tiny ball. It's a GTA clone! It's a platformer! It's a third person shooter! It's a racer! It's a Tony Hawk clone? What?

The GTA style gameplay loop of driving around a city and having cops chase after you is very prevelant, albeit loosely implemented. The game pays lip service to GTA without ever really understanding the basics of why GTA works so well. A simple example: in GTA, roads function as you would expect in a densely packed Metropolitan area. In Jak II, this very simple element becomes lost in translation due to navigating around this futuristic dystopian world. Driving itself becomes counter-intuitive when there's numerous denizens walking in the middle of the road, airway congestion blocking you from above, every route and pathway feeling cramped, coalescing within every claustrophobic wall and tight corner this city provides.

This city is just simply not a fun place to drive in. There's so many dead ends, corners, traffic, with no real straight shots of any kind. The reason for this is simple. Everything is bundled to the world design, matching exactly how a dysfunctional dystopia would be. Dilapidated houses, roads with holes carved out by the many bomb blasts that have previously been bombarding the city. Wonky wooden pier pathways that creep out into the murky waters housing the equally wonkily built slum houses. Areas divided with electronic barriers to keep the slums from infecting the higher class areas. The world is built as an interesting backdrop first and a functionally fun place to drive around last.

Jak II has made me realize that I've taken for granted the systems and mechanics that GTA has set in place. Within the wanted system of GTA, there's a push and pull with how a chase begins, proceeds, and ends. When you begin, you're contemplating on whether or not the risk of obtaining a new car is worth potentially having the cops come after you. Is the coast clear? Are there any witnesses? Which car should I steal? If I need to get someplace fast, should I just steal any car? As you proceed with your car jacking proclivities, you obtain a wanted level. This level increases as you rack up more and more violations. Your choices from here are to either drive away avoiding the many cops blocking your escape route, or blasting them away, causing that pesky wanted rating to potentially rise more. The more your level goes up, the more artillery the cops begin to bust out to stop you, making your escape much harder. To end the madness, you have to hide until the heat dies down, or enter a safe house. Then, you can return to your normal state of being. Alternatively, you could also potentially die or get arrested by the police, causing you to either pay out with bail, or pay out your medical bills. This brings you back to the beginning, where you determine the next time if it's worth the risk to enter into the loop once again, potentially losing a valuable resource if you die/get caught. It's a fundamentally solid risk vs reward system.

Jak 2 does, uh... Very little of anything I just described.

Guards out on patrol absolutely do not care if you steal someone's car. They don't even care if you mow down civilians with your car! See, these asshole only care if you hit any of THEIR cars, or what's more likely, accidentally rammed into one of them while you were trying to dodge all the flying cars that clutter the screen. The reason why they're so indifferent is the same reason as before; this universe we're violently kicked into is an authoritarian oppressive NIGHTMARE, with a government that makes normal citizens lick their boots before they stomp them into the ground. In-universe explanation be damned — as a mechanic, it just doesn't work here. There's no real consequences to your actions, there's no real push or pull. Death just means restarting the mission at worst and respawning nearby where you died at best. The system is brainless in how you approach the threat, and there's no such thing as planning your next step ahead.

Can you have fun with this system? Sure. You can wrangle fun out of just about any system. But the main issue that arises though from this lackluster wanted system, as well as the atrocious level design, is that the GTA style of missions become a mind numbing slog to even be reached. Every mission is just running back and forth between different key locations, remixing previous level design for a new type of mission. Escorts missions, turret missions, kill this many enemies, skateboarding to do this or that, go do a race, then do it all again in the next few missions. New spins to those types of missions happen, and they're welcomed, but every mission is then hampered by extremely limiting checkpoints that'll make you repeat the mission over and over until you eventually manage to survive the entire mission in a single go.

These missions are at the very least helped by the combat feeling satisfying. Hitting a dude with a melee attack and seeing Jak and Daxter squash and stretch is immensely pleasing to view. Running, jumping, spinning, shooting, all of the actions feel nice and weighty to perform. Same with their spin attack.

But the you start adding weapons into the mix.

You start off with a shotgun, which is meant to clear out enemies within it's radius. The blast takes about 2-3 bullets to take out a bad guy. This would be fine, but your melee hits do the same amount of damage. Your spin attack is about as equally effective too. They try and swarm you with many enemies at once to justify the use of the shotgun, but it isn't very satisfying to use when it's only purpose is for a slightly larger crowd control. This in turn means that the shotgun is repetitive to the combat loop, at least more towards the beginning. The second gun you get, the Blaster, is much more enjoyable to use. It's a single bolt shot, but if you melee followed by shoot, you can perform an extra move that shoots 3-4 shots. Spinning shoots out in any direction, hitting anything in it's path. Why the shotgun doesn't have this type of role is beyond me. Next is your equivalent to a chaingun, which can be fun to mow down guys with, but ultimately chows down too many bullets far too quickly to be a go-to weapon. Same with the final gun, the Peace Maker, of which has very limited ammo but has a massive blast radius. I feel the need to hoard my ammo with these like a tiny little muskrat, since they feel slightly rarer to drop. The blaster is just way too versatile to use, making it the best gun in the entire game, which overshadows all of the other weapons dramatically. This makes combat somewhat satisfying, but also quite mindless. Spinning while shooting does the job quite aptly... until it doesn't and you randomly get hit. There's no real aiming with these weapons, they're all auto aiming at a nearby target, which in turn becomes difficult for the player to point directly at an enemy in the distance. The designers only occasionally pull this nasty trick on you on purpose, but in more open sections, this becomes an unintended side effect of the limitations of this shooting system. It's clunkily held together by duct tape and glue, but combat does have it's moments.

Playing Jak II has been a bizarre experience. Not entirely for it's story corrupting a relatively family friendly kid's game and inserting causality loops and dark authoritarian dystopians into it. It has moreso to do with my perspective changing from when I initially first played the game. Jak II was the first PlayStation 2 game that I ever owned, and was THE reason I wanted a PS2. That's right, I was that demographic. The game served as a more age appropriate approach towards GTA gameplay, and was my first real exposure to the type of formula. In a way, there's a certain affinity for the game that still remains. Even through all the frustration I've felt from this game, there's something distinctively intriguing about it's tone and design. Which doesn't mean that it's necessarily a good video game, but at the very least, it's an fascinating disaster. Jak II is a tried and failed method of attempting to cram in as many mechanics together as possible, becoming a jack of all trades, master of none. The more you look at Jak II, the more the game begins to break apart at the seams, and yet, the more I'm enraptured by the game. None of it really works for me, but there's still something there. A spark of life. A hint of soul. I love when you've entered a vehicle, the music transitions to a more upbeat drum backing it. I love the environments to the game, there's an incredible sense of atmosphere to these bleak fantastical world. I love how dorky and lame it is to have Jak become some weirdo edge lord who wields a gun. I love that this is directly responsible for Shadow The Hedgehog existing.

If Jak II was scaled back and had refocused itself on one or two gameplay styles, it may have been a better game. At the same time though, I'm not entirely sure it would have been as interesting. It'd be less ambitious, less absurd, and less of what makes Jak II irresistible to watch.

I don't think Jak II is very good, but I do think Jak II is an interesting game. Not all media can say that. And personally, I'd rather be remembered for failing spectacularly than to be completely forgotten from sheer and utter mediocrity.

Notes for my series replay:
-Right off the bat, most drastic upgrade in the series in terms of presentation imo
- Mini-remake of FE1 cooked into the game, honestly a really solid way to play Marth's first game.
-Gaiden systems and story left in the dust in favor of the familiar, but systems of FE3 radically overhauled for the better. This game sets the precedent for how the trading system works in the series to come and felt like a dream come true after the first game.
- Music is honestly gorgeous for a game of this time, was blown away by "Legend of the Divine Dragon (B)" and "Holy War" as those tracks go absolutely fucking crazy.
-Fliers are still absolutely fucking busted for no reason with very few draw backs. FE3 tries to nerf fliers by forcing dismounts in inside spaces with stat penalties, which is an interesting idea, but then simply puts them on par with footlocked units in most cases.
-Star shard system for book 2 unit building is super fucking awesome. Getting 20's across the board on your fave units is really fun.
-Easiest game so far, but has some really interesting map design, and feels really well tested. Only poorly aged map imo is the final map being three separate parts with no hard saves.
-Story and lore of Archanea has been better defined and expanded from the first game, and honestly handles the villains a little bit better.

First game thus far that I would whole heartedly recommend if you're not doing a series replay like me.