I have put off re-reviewing this for months. Partly because I dont have the words to express the hold this game has over me, and partly because every time I start thinking about it I get too excited. I havent felt this way about something in a long time, likely since I was a girl in the height of my infatuation with Ace Attorney.

This game is just absolutely astounding, from all angles. There is nothing it does poorly and nothing I would change. I didnt really understand the draw of roleplaying till now, which was the downfall of my first experience, but it is absolutely incredible the things you can learn about yourself pretending to be someone else. Thats not something I can say about any other game, ever. And I can only feel just so grateful, because it's given me so much joy over the past 3 months. Its barely left my mind at all, which feels like an issue at times. I dont know if I'll have an experience like that ever again, after all I created the perfect character and ran through the campaign as him, twice. More or less doing the same thing because I just enjoyed what I had made so much. It grieves me that I kind of have to let go of it, its one of those games that was painful to finish because I just got so attached. It feels like mine, and its one of those autistic things where I cant stand it when anyone else brings it up cause you and I definitley dont see it the way, like a dog hyperaggressive over its food. Specifically dark urge, which feels like it was tailor made for me. Its all so special and I care about it very, very much.

Everyone who worked on bg3 is immensely talented. It's kind of staggering just how talented everyone is. There is not a single voice actor that preformed poorly or out of place, the text is immaculate, nearly every single decision one could make is neatly planned for and has a script. It is just perfect and I could marvel at it forever, cause it really is a feat of human accomplishment to me. The driving force behind my love for this game though is of course the cast. I adore absolutely everyone (minus you Minthara I will always kill you and take your clothes), there are so few games that manage to pull it off, that take you through a journey so long and so profound that you feel a sense of family. Withers' after party is the perfect amalgamation of all this, the joy I felt seeing everyone happy, finally grtting to live their lives was unmatched. Going through the letters of the people you met along the way and seeing that theyre all alright. Astarion specifically holds special meaning to me but I cant talk about that I get too protective. It never fails to make me tear up thinking about it and always makes me feel so grateful that this is in the world and that I got to experience it.

Immensely love all my friends and Scratch and Owlbear and that one weird ox I didnt get to see in act 3 because it glitched out. I will think about you all forever, an autistic girl's promise

Crusader Kings 2 was shat out into the world about 12 years ago. By the time its successor came out it'd developed a reputation as a game that was barebones without any DLC but was a gripping and indepth time-abyss if you had most/all of it.

Crusader Kings 3 decides to iterate on its predecessor by being a game that's barebones without any DLC, and still barebones even with all the extortionately overpriced DLC.

It is an inevitability in first-party Paradox titles that the player will eventually stumble into a period of empty space where all they're doing is advancing time at 5x speed until some events pop up and let you do something. Even Stellaris, the game that most often has you actively doing things, tends to fall into it at some point.

CK3 is sadly the worst for it, in part due to numerous under-the-hood changes that at first seem beneficial but in reality seem drab. Paradox's approach this time round involves dissuading players from attempting to colour the map as in past games and instead focus on a small corner of the world - whether it be a kingdom or an Empire, they don't want you playing with adult colouring books this time.

Instead the focus this time is on roleplay and/or kingdom management, with hefty penalties to expansion and harsh limits on how much you as an individual can control directly before needing to shove things onto your vassals. The game, including its tutorials, not-so-subtly nudge you into grabbing hold of a title and clinging to it. New and reworked mechanics like culture/religion/councils/language and more with DLCs all add to this; the focus of this game is in finding a place and staying there.

Unfortunately this focus results in a lot of waiting, as almost all of the mechanics up above boil down to clicking a button and waiting for a scheme to resolve. The much-praised Tours & Tournaments and Royal Court DLCs are much the same despite their praise, simply offering you more buttons before the wait begins rather than just one. It's all rather at odds with the intent to make you more actively partake in your realm's management, because in practice it's all very passive.
Further dulling matters is that many events often boil down to very static, very predictable stat checks. Oh, someone's trying to murder your son - who is 9th in line to the throne and has more defects than limbs? It's just a passive intrigue and scheme power check. Duelling? Martial and Prowess stats.
Much of these additional stats like Prowess were added to make the game less binary, but given how they scale it's relatively easy to stack the deck in your favour unless you gimp yourself...

But even then, this game's biggest problem is that it's easy. Metagaming is no longer required to stack ridiculous bonuses in your court, especially given the relative prominence of random lowborn courtiers with insane stat spreads. CK3 tries its damndest to have consequences for this, but what use is a hit to your legitimacy when you can pump out children that're functionally immune to rebellion, assassination, or the perils of inbreeding?
The DLCs just make this worse, as most of them are nearly consequence-free. Tours & Tournaments is a series of easy resource/stat boosts for relatively low risk, Royal Court is the same and both of them make socializing so much easier. Northern Lords supercharges a lot of the northern factions, and-

You know, CK2 had a bit of a problem with Eurocentrism, to the point where most non-European factions needed a paid DLC to be playable. Even then, it was almost always the titular Crusader King nations/cultures that got all of the updates and boosts.

CK3 seemingly averts this by having everyone on the map be playable, but it doesn't take a genius to notice that the non-European factions feel distinctly undercooked. Muslims can't even observe Ramadan. As expected from a CK title, Paradox sell the fixes back to you via Fate of Iberia and Legacy of Persia, but even these feel half-hearted and empty compared to equivalent CK2 packs. Go even further East and it's like wading into unfinished content.

I think what really broke this game for me is the lack of impact anything has. The first time a council member blackmails you with your own incest/kinslaying, it seems like a grand obstacle to be surmounted, but oftentimes it's a total non-issue. In my most recent game, everyone and their mum tried to expose me for pulling a Habsburg on my bloodline, but the end result was a few minor opinion penalties that were easily swept away by holding a Grand Wedding. It feels a lot like playing a mod for CK2 that's perpetually in beta; wowed by all the options available until they fire and you realize that you've functionally just skipped a stone across bathwater.

...Also I realized halfway into my conquest of Britannia as the Irish that the devs had forced a Legitimacy mechanic on me and that I couldn't meaningfully engage with it without forking out money for the recent Legends Of The Dead pack. Hurray!

The best way to experience this game is to read people's (probably made up) campaign stories on Reddit, for much of this game's remaining appeal is in doing stupid shit like banging the pope, and for once that's attainable without touching the game.

It's been four years and CK3 still feels as hollow and unfulfilling as it did when it came out.

How do you follow up a game that took 139 hours of your life to complete? Big Bumpin' babyyyyyyy wooo hell yeag they put wWhopper in a bumpber cart !!

I am suffering from acute Final Fantasy VII Rebirth dissociative disorder. The idea of playing any video game right now sounds dreadful, but I have a backlog full of games and I gotta stick to that grind, so I had to find something I could stomach. The Burger King Trilogy seemed like as good a choice as any. Each of these three games are short and require little skill, and frankly, they're all on par with some of the minigames in Rebirth. Sounded like a real smooth transition to me, like checking myself into the gaming equivalent of a methadone clinic. Dr. Drew is here, and he's going to ensure I don't get better for maximum profitability.

The last time I played Big Bumpin', or any of the Burger King games for that matter, was back in 2006 when they came out. A real banner year for me and the Xbox. I had these three games and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), and then my console red ringed a few months later when I rented Chrome Hounds. I was, however, at the right age for BK's bizarre "wake up with the king" campaign, and I was not impervious to its ill-effects. I bought all three of these when they released and tossed them years later, only to have one errant thought about the King waking up in some poor soul's bed which resulted in me grabbing them all again. It might surprise you to know you can easily find boxes full of unopened copies of Big Bumpin' behind Goodwills and on the side of freeways.

Big Bumpin' is a largely inoffensive collection of bumper car minigames, most of which play totally fine but offer very little whether played solo or with friends. Look, nobody had any expectations for this game when it came out, and its most notable qualities are being one of three Xbox/360 hybrid discs, a celebration of a very weird and very specific moment in fast food marketing and having the worst hockey minigame I've ever played. The standard hot potato, destruction derby, and keep-away modes are serviceable if dry, but that hockey game... I don't think a single point was scored that didn't come from the AI or myself knocking the puck into our own goal. I was drunk and listening to Loveline, I don't know what their excuse is.

"How do you guys kill yourselves over there in Korea," Adam asked Minka as I was running a clinic on Brooke Burke and a gigantic man-chicken with a gut full of grain alcohol at 1 in the god damned morning. I don't know the answer to that, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to go out from overconsumption of minigames. I want The King to lower my casket into the cold embrace of the Earth by pushing it in with a bumper car. It's what I deserve.

Marked as "mastered," even though having owned two copies of this game proves I have no willpower and am the master of nothing.

club LOL, streetpass homes, multiplayer island minigames, villagers with developing personalities and personal arcs, secondhand shop, nook homes, the best soundtrack in the series, the amiibo update, the entire mall strip that grew and expanded along with your town

hundreds of hours. stuck with me throughout the worst years of my teenage life. spent multiple solitary holidays and lonely new years' with this. i never even paid off my house.

it doesn't feel the same going back to play it now. it's got its issues, but i'm tired of acting like Animal Crossing didn't peak here. i'm tired of lamenting the Animal Crossing I used to love and trying and failing to rekindle that with New Horizons. instead i'm going to forever cherish the time i had with it. it's now a time capsule to me, a reminder of some comfort that i always had during my worst years. i will always get emotional remembering my time with this game.

(4/9/24)
thank you for being there for me.

TLDR: A great JRPG that seamlessly incorporates farming mechanics into the genre, but starts slow and feels strangely tight on budget for its starting 60$ price tag.

Personally, I loved this game; my own enjoyment was above 4 stars, but I think its really something where your mileage is going to wildly vary. I definitely didn't love it at first, mostly because I went through every single townfolk quest ASAP, which is where the game's worst parts show; low number of character animations, NPC models, lack of voiced dialogue, and lots of reused music. I still found myself excited to keep playing though, egged on by new recipes to make, plants to farm, characters to meet, all that. The slowest part of the game is also when you're recruiting your party, and each new member additionally brings a new job for you to use. I'm sure people aren't clamoring for another JRPG that starts slow and feels great by the end, but I'll spend the rest of this review explaining why this game was good, I promise.
I alluded to this earlier, but the farming is a consistent high point in the game. Its simple, of course, but still gratifying; everything you do on the farm feeds into combat, like how you make all your own items to use during combat.
I liked the cast, and all of the 2D art and character designs are fantastic. I mentioned the townfolk quests earlier, but all of the character quests were great- much more interesting storylines that also teach you about the game's world, and are also just in shorter, more digestible conversations than the townfolk dialogues. Overall, the game was pretty, though sometimes the seemingly low budget shines through. The music was another high point for me, even despite tracks getting reused often. I don't have many games I've played to compare this game's combat to, but I didn't feel any particular way about it. I'll take any JRPG where enemy encounters are seamlessly integrated into the world you're exploring, but perhaps that's a low bar nowadays.
The story goes places. The game is presented as typical fantasy, but I should warn you that it veers into sci-fi a fair amount. I was drawn in by it, and found it uplifting at times; it's pretty anime, though, and I could see some people reading it as trite.

At the end of the day, I'm going to reccomend this to JRPG fans, especially those who have played life sims before as well or just enjoy some simple pleasures. I don't think this game stands as some staple, but it does feel a little bit like an underappreciated title, and it's had good sales in the past.

"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.

I love the way exploration works here; the refusal to budge on fast travel save for diegetic ox carts, snatching back dark arisen's infinite ferrystone, and stretching the landmass both horizontally and (especially) vertically is wonderful. in many, many ways it's a bigger, slower, denser game, and they did it all while focusing on the most mundane environments devoid of giant theme park attractions bulging from every flat surface

likewise I love the idea of elaborating on the sense of traversal and moving toward a holistic spirit of adventure. deteriorating health ceilings aid attrition and help answer the inherent slime of menu heals, and having campfire rests operate as something of a risk/reward mechanism goes a long way toward giving each journey a greater heft and substance

even something as transparently gamey as designing the map as a network of funnels and chokepoints stippled with smaller threats and crosshatched with bigger ones was very clever; it's all just nouns crashing against nouns as they fire down chutes, but when coupled with the meaty physicality of the game's interactivity it goes a long way toward building up those Big Moments

but the consequence of trash mobs operating as speedbumps means moment-to-moment encounters operate more as filler than anything you could consider independently engaging scenarios. it also means that despite the map being several times larger than gransys it ends up feeling a lot more suffocating due to all the overlapping nouns slamming and interrupting each other without end

I just about luxuriated in the rare opportunities to enjoy brief spells of negative space; I savoured it like one of those FMV steaks. I'd kill for more moments like the arbor or the battleground where I was able to inhabit the world as a pilgrim or wanderer rather than serial wolf slaughterer or battahl sanitation expert, but they're very few and far between

there's no escaping the impenetrable walls of goblins, wolves, harpies, and saurians polluting every inch of the world. the already slender DD bestiary's been ported over nearly 1:1 with about as many additions as subtractions, and between the absurd density and massive landmass the variety ends up looking and feeling significantly worse than it did when it was first pilloried twelve years ago in a notoriously incomplete game

when the Big Moments do happen they're often spectacular, and it's easy to see why the chaotic intersection of AI, systems, and mechanics was prioritized so heavily and centered as the focal point of the entire experience. early on every bridge that breaks behind you, every ogre leaping from city walls, and every gryphon that crushes your ox cart feels huge and spellbinding; the game's at its best when all the moving parts align just right to achieve dynamic simulacrum, leveraging unpredictability to carry encounters well above their station

where that stuff loses me most is in the complete lack of friction. for a game with so many well considered means of drawing tension out of discovery it manages to render most of them meaningless when you're never being properly threatened enough to let them kick in. camping, eating, crafting, consumables, ambushes, and setpieces all take a significant blow from the chronic lack of bite, and it's frustrating to see so much potential go to waste when everything's already set up unbelievably well for success

even if you choose to go it alone, or do as I did and run with a party of two (ida + ozma: wily beastren + weakest creature), it only does so much when every corner of the map has CAPCOM Co., Ltd superpawns and npcs popping out of the ground to aid you unbidden and monsters are all mâché sculptures begging to be stunlocked. where's hard mode? why does it feel like everything DDDA did right got ignored? we just don't know

I'd have been happy if the game yanked a bit of control back with some kinda endgame/post-game dungeon, but there isn't one; there aren't really dungeons in general. in opting for quantity (50+!!) over quality we end up with none of them feeling particularly curated, and none of them having the scope or menace of the everfall, let alone bitterblack. no ur-dragon either, which is just baffling. the entire run from endgame to post-game is a gaping hole where something oughta be but certainly isn't

when I hit credits I felt almost confused, like I'd just been tricked into playing a remake or reboot of the original dragon's dogma that somehow had less material stretched even thinner. I enjoyed what I played for the most part, but the more thought I put into it the more it feels compromised and unfinished in all the exact ways itsuno promised over and over it wouldn't be this time around

there's a lot to love here: stuff like fucked up modular teeth, the sphinx, seeker coin platforming, pawn bullshitting, the dragonsplague, cyclops ragdolls, opaque sidequests, intentional tedium, and routinely bizarre interactions. much of what was good in the past remains good, and even bits that stumble backward generally land someplace close to decent regardless. some of the vocation/gear downgrades aren't to my liking, and there's an odd shallowness that hangs over the experience, but I think I liked it?

I just don't really get it

uuuuuUUUUUUUUUUUUGH

This is not really a review, just an opportunity for me to rant - because the gaming industry is currently at an absolute low in some ways and I'm sort of reaching a boiling point about it.

So I love the original Dragon's Dogma. It is, to me, the perfect game that just happens to be woefully imperfect. I love its worldbuilding, I love its gameplay concepts, I love its open world. I love so many things about it, but almost every aspect of it that I enjoy comes with a big ol' asterisk that prevents me from being able to give it the bright shiny gold star that I so desperately want to confer. Unfortunately, it languished in that lukewarm spot between "cult classic" and "abject mediocrity" that had me resigned to the sentiment that it would never get a re-release, let alone a sequel.

Of course, my fears ultimately ended up being unfounded, with the game receiving a fantastic PC port in 2016 and a sequel being officially announced a few years later. Seldom in my life have I ever been so excited for a release, and you'd better believe I was there each time Capcom finally loosed new details on the game. And now it's here!

The prevailing sentiment amongst those who have played Dragon's Dogma II seems to be that it is very much the original experience with some nips and tucks. To some, that might be massively disappointing - but to me, that is an absolute godsend. As far as I was concerned, the OG was a rock-solid concept that simply needed some careful polishing. The idea that Dragon's Dogma II could be loosely described as "Dragon's Dogma but better" is the very definition of a perfect sequel for me. As such, my excitement since its release has absolutely rocketed through the roof... Or that's really what I want to say, but the truth is Capcom's really managed to hurt my feelings this time around.

I'm not as flummoxed by these practices as I think some are because I was there when Capcom was shipping games with characters already on the disc that you had to pay extra to unlock. They were very much trendsetters in the hellscape that is the world of in-game purchases, and as a result their more recent monetization practices seem almost amusingly mild by comparison. In the case of DDII, it seemed to me that at the extra purchasable content was purely to "skip the line" with regards to features that already exist in-game, and thus were simply of the bog-standard "baiting the impatient" flavor. Note that I'm not blaming the "impatient" in this equation - I totally understand how irritating it can be when things such as character modification are arbitrarily gated off, and dangling an opportunity to unlock it at any time in exchange for a few extra bucks is unquestionably a dick move. However, it's not being excised from the base game altogether to be sold to you, so at least in that respect you have the option of ignoring it and simply working your way around it. To me, that's much more benign, even for as lame as it is at the end of the day.

But it IS lame. And so is the $70 price tag, and the shitty PC performance, and Capcom's usual shrugging off of player's complaints, and the fact that I have to reckon with all of these things if I want to play this game that I have eagerly been awaiting for years. I just moved to a new house - a life event that I am very glad for, but also one that is unquestionably a drain on one's finances. I'm really not in a position where I can go tossing every spare cent I have at the next big shiny thing, which already makes my primary hobby a very difficult one to entertain in 2024. However, more and more I'm running into the issue that even if I was the kind of person that could afford to pick up every new release, I don't know that any of these companies actually deserve it. Sony and Microsoft are selling $500 Netflix machines with barely any software to actually justify their existence. Nintendo is out here knocking over emulators and fan projects as if it's ever going to prevent people from pirating their games. Rockstar's assuredly going to ride off of Shark Cards from Grand Theft Auto 6 until I'm in a retirement home, CD Projekt Red is doing their best to pretend like they didn't sell lies to a whole generation of gamers based almost wholly on their Witcher 3 clout, Todd Howard found a way to resell Skyrim another time by dressing it up as a space sim, Konami is proving they will abuse their IPs as many times as it continues to make them money - and yeah, it's still making them all money! People are still buying the games! Day one! Repeatedly! Knowing full damn well it's probably not going to be worth it! And yet, the reason why I'm so miffed about this is because for once I feel like it absolutely would be worth it - because Dragon's Dogma II really does seem like it's the game I've wished for, but does that mean I should be dumping my wallet out for Capcom yet again? I don't know that I should. I know that if I buy the game in its current state, no matter how much I ultimately may enjoy it, it's going to make me feel dirty. And I hate that. I love games and I hate this. It makes me want to tear my hair out.

I can't roast anybody who has purchased the game and is having a good time with it right now. Life's hard enough and damn, if you're having a fun enough time that it makes your 70 bones feel like they were well-spent, who am I to deny you that pleasure? But just once - just once - I wish everybody would be willing to throw their hands up and say "I don't care if this game is the next coming of Digital Jesus, I want you to quit jerking me around". Because I'm tired of getting jerked around. I have massive respect for the people who worked a bajillion hours to make this game match the vision they had in mind for it. I know this isn't their fault. I want to reward them for their hard work by making this game a success, and I know my dumb ass is probably still going to buy the game once I can afford to (and once the game isn't melting people's CPUs). But another year of this and I'm likely to start writing off modern gaming as a whole in favor of diving into the "good old days" - because even if I feel like an old codger for saying it, there was at least a time when I didn't have to feel like a jackass for being excited about my hobby.

Alright, I think this game is in a good enough place for me to review it.

When this game first debuted in EA I played about an hour of it and promptly uninstalled. Not out of malice, anger or disappointment but because it was rough. Rougher than I expect from EA launches. It was very obviously just "Synthetik 1 but jury-rigged into a 3D format" and there were a ton of issues with that. Mostly in regards to weapon firing, line of sight, and all that.

Well fast forward to 2024 and now it's so much better. Good lord. Feels like an actual game now.

The most immediately noticeable improvements from Synthetik 1 are that the game is infinitely less of a rocket tag experience (translation: you don't die in two-three hits most of the time) while still retaining its edge. Individual stray shots won't knock off 60% of your health bar, but if you stand still too often you'll still die in a few seconds flat. Striking a balance between aimed shots and run 'n' gunning is still important, but fucking up the rhythm isn't an immediate death sentence, hurrah.

Classes feel meaningfully different this time, with them having entirely different playstyles rather than just being alternate kits. Chrono Interceptor, Breacher and Riot Guard seem identical at first, but Interceptor is focused on crowd control by default whereas Breacher has huge AoE clear and Riot Guard is more about engaging in slugfests through survivability. Recon Sniper slows you down in exchange for making you deathly accurate, Heavy Gunner is all about putting more firepower downrange than enemies have health, Commando is a melee assassin, Demolisher is exactly what you think it is, Machine Hunter is centered on ambushes, and Eliminator is the archetypal glass cannon.

Some adjustments can be made to starting kits prior to each mission, including alternate primary weapons (thank god) and various unlockable alternate abilities, but generally speaking the classes don't deviate much from their role.

Items are, on the whole, much more balanced. Granted, I did reinstall shortly after a huge rework for them specifically. There aren't any obvious shitters or hyper-situational ones and pretty much all of them have some use now. The catch is that there are less items which will ~win~ a run, but this is a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

Also, while I felt Synthetik 1 played better on controller, this game feels delightful on either option.

Bosses still suck though. That first boss, the jet? Good luck if you're a melee build, because it's eternally out of the arena. They're not great, but still doable.

The best part of 2, though, is modifiers. There are 6 options (at the time of writing) for each run that allow the player to tune the game however they want.
Do you hate shooting on the move and wish it was less punishing? Turn on Arcade Mode to go faster and shoot better.
Do you like the soft Tactical Shooter elements and wish they were harsher? Turn on SWAT Mode for more damage both ways and harsher headshot damage.
Do you struggle to hit reloads and hate the deviation mechanic? Turn on simple mode.
Do you just want an easier time? Relaxed mode.
Do you want to play Synthetik 1? Synthetik 1 mode.

"But what is Synthetik?" You may ask.

The Synthetik series are top-down roguelites with an emphasis on gunplay, positioning and reloading. The first game is a 2D 100% topdown game, while this is 3D and somewhat isometric.

If I just explain it to you, it'll sound boring: You go through randomly arranged cyberpunk levels picking up loot, shooting enemies and buying stuff at the store while fighting a boss every few floors.

Synthetik has two major factors that make it stand out compared to its peers.

First off, sound design. Playing this game feels like an auditory dream. Weapon sounds are punchy, loud and impactful. Going full auto with any weapon sounds like opening a brief portal to hell.
Reloading mag-fed weapons has a tasty clunk to it, and reloading shotguns has that same stock sound effect that every fictional shotgun uses, but it's beautiful all the same.
Class abilities occupy a wide spectrum from the zippy doop-woop of the Chrono Interceptor's time powers or the explosive roar of the Breacher's charges.
And the crit sound, my god. It's a high pitched but impactful PING that signifies you've just devoured a chunk of an enemy's health. The only sound more beautiful than Synthetik's crit sound is that thing trans women do where they laugh so hard their boy voice comes back for a bit.

The second is a little harder to describe.

Everything about this game carries a weight to it, and in gameplay terms this results in a game that looks like a twitchy shooter from an outside perspective, but in the moment-to-moment it's a tactical experience where options have to be weighed carefully.

Sure, you can fire weapons full auto and enjoy the soundscape, but there are three things that need to be considered here: Recoil, heat and jamming. Like in real life, weapons can veer wildly off target when fired on full and will inevitably heat up.
Furthermore, they can jam with repeated use. You can account for everything but jams are random, and while they only need a few taps of the reload key to clear, it's still an unexpected variable that's best kept in the back of one's mind during a firefight.

More importantly, though, is the mere act of reloading.

I've always been a little sad that Gears of War's legacy was the cover system, and not Active Reloading. In GoW, you tap the reload and then can tap it again at a specific frame to speed it up and/or buff the next shot.
Synthetik takes that system wholesale and adds another wrinkle: The keys for ejecting magazines and reloading are entirely separate.
This might not seem like much, but Synthetik's entire shtick is throwing wrenches in your carefully laid approaches. It's easy to hit E then R then R again while out of a fight, but doing it in the heat of battle (possibly while 4 missile pods are crushing your framerate) is a whole skill to learn.

The end result of all this is a game that looks fast and certainly is, but in reality has enough tactical shooter DNA in it that everything becomes a careful balancing act. Wearing the mask of a twinstick shooter doesn't change the fact that Synthetik is harsh, but it is fair and if you engage with it's silent lessons, it will treat you right.

Until you get a high-caliber sniper rifle and blow your head off because the bullets riccochet.

If you want any extra praise from me: I'm very harsh on roguelites/roguelikes and will often quit out of them if they don't justify why I'd ever want to do more than one run. It's a huge part of why I hold such venom for Hades.

I play Synthetik for the joy of it. I don't care what comes after, I only care about its beautiful neon present.

Oh, and the soundtrack bangs.

gaslighting's everest. megafreaks convincing me this was the series peak had me telling everyone I knew how bad mega man sucked for two decades. I've already done more damage to the mega man brand than inafune ever could, and I was primed to do even more before I tried some of the other ones

sure, the robot master stages are mostly solid, but you'd need the most hexed, jinxed, and cursed grey matter on the planet to convince yourself normal people want to experience wily's castle in any capacity. the creases in your brain need to have been carved by unnaturally odious forces to sit there recommending this with a grin on your face while knowing sniper armours exist

boobeam comes up in conversation and MM2 guys go silent at the dinner table, start pushing their peas around the plate, and ask to be excused

if you love it so much then why don't you marry it

at first glance, functionally the same game as Horizon 3. same cars, same driving mechanics, same stunning visuals. what's not to like? "what, do you hate fun?" i had to remind myself. but you know what, maybe I kind of do.

there's like three main differences I found to be a devolution from Horizon 3.

1. the map. the UK setting is actually quite stunning tbh. although I didn't find it as rapturing as Australia. way less visually diverse, no distinct biomes interconnecting. in its place, there is the season system. which is fine but just seems like an instance where they couldn't over the obstacle of having having snow be part of the rotating dynamic weather. most of my problems with the map are the roads themselves. the Aussie roads are wide and straight. the UK are ones are thin and narrow. to accommodate this, they feature tons more rolling hills and elevated ranges. they pump up the destructibility so you can plough through more obstacles such as trees and stone walls. this gives way to Horizon 4 being way more focused on rough and tumble off-road racing. it features way more here than Horizon 3's Australia. as such, I found my playing time tied way more into enjoying 4wd's and off-road vehicles; way more time soaring in the air off large hills and crashing back and drifting across mud through various checkpoint markers. that's all good and fun but after a while I was thinking about the dissonance between this still being a hypercar fixated racer with the fact that it wanted to be played like an off-road version of Split/Second. I felt like a kid playing with his Hot Wheels or something. cool but like devoid of identity.

2. the progression. it just felt so lacking compared to 3. the wheelspins are godawful. just give me credits. why am I spinning now to win shoes, emotes and car horns? worthless, time-wasting junk. or even if I win a car, like cool. it takes away from any enjoyment of actually researching what to buy and how to upgrade it. i don't really mind that in the moment - it's fun getting cars for sure - but l don't love the feeling of charity this game gives out. then there's the story progression. Horizon 3 barely had any but the idea was more streamlined - you race and participate in events in an area, expand the festival to new locations, eventually work towards to a big showcase event, then repeat until the final event. roll credits. Horizon 4 it's like I have no idea what I am building towards. it's just 4 event types with some interesting side story stuff but none of that is properly advertised in game. eventually you unlock showcase events, but the last one the game advertises to you is a Halo related one for some reason, and then the final Delta Plane one just pops up randomly with no explanation. just feels so haphazard and careless. apparently if you get to level 20 in street races, you unlock a Goliath race that features the entire map, but that's such a long ass grind I am not going to do that. maybe in a world where this is the only game I have left to play, but otherwise, nah. the pacing is just bad.

3. the presentation. it's not remarkably different to the presentation in Horizon 3. it's equally obnoxious, garbage influencer... influenced. but at least 3 had some minimalism in the rewards screens and the garage screens. 4 has more menus and the rewards screens are just obnoxious. all the voice acting is and, the characters non-existent. the only thing feels even more corporate-sponsored and soulless. surely someone could figure out how to give this series some genuine personality and gravitas by now. it's so inoffensive as to be bland. which on its own isn't a terrible thing but it's lacking any conviction or strengths. it's like playing pretend with some kindergarten kids. just give me something more to work with other than being so proud about how much time it wants me to waste inside of it.

it's a good game. I don't even dislike. but it could better and it's lacking compared to Horizon 3. maybe it wasn't to be played as a series but as a game independent to itself. if it's the only Forza or Forza Horizon, it's probably better off for that.

Ok, well, the drive AC Valhalla was installed on died and I Can Not be bothered to re-download 150 gigs for this fuckin' game so I guess it's time to try and sum up my thoughts on this one, huh. Spoiler alert: I think it's bad!

I like to indulge in some big dumb open world game from time to time and have put many many hours into both AC Origins and Odyssey, so I was actually looking forward to Valhalla! Another one of these big dumb games for me to use to stave off depression but this time it's got a vikings and Norse mythology coat of paint? Sure! Sign me up! But! Alas! It sucks!

This game is so chock full of design choices that I think are potentially very interesting or compelling but then they only ever commit halfway to them which results in this largely frictionless and uninteresting game. A big example of this is how they've structured the main plot of the game. They give you a choice in which region's questline you'll do next. At first I thought this meant that you would pick one region to ally yourself with and that would result in another region becoming an enemy and then there'd be some conflict later but, no, it's just literally the order you do them in because you will end up doing all of them eventually! And also! The individual regions don't really matter because there is zero interaction between any of them. People of one region really have no thoughts or feelings about the guy who just took over the region next door? Really? Nothing at all? Yeah, okay, sure Valhalla, whatever you say.

Speaking of those individual regions: they make the main plot of the game mostly feel like this collection of short stories. Which, again, I think is potentially interesting! Getting to learn about the core cast of characters by putting them in a variety of Situations is very compelling! But all the short stories suck ass and have zero interesting things going on and Eivor doesn't really do or say anything particularly notable. It's all just the most boring version of this idea!

And Eivor... I need to talk about Eivor. If you know me then you'd probably expect me to feel Very Normal about Eivor. I adored Kassandra and Eivor at first seemed like she might be another run at that character type. Strong powerful woman in kind of a mainstream generic hero way... like, sure it's kind of basic but also I can be kind of a basic bitch. But Eivor is so boring! She's supposed to be the quiet, stoic badass but it means she just sort of ends up standing around in every cutscene and occasionally grunting. If that's how your protagonist is going to be then you need to have some good characters around her to bounce off of. And unfortunately! The main plot does not have that! The absolute best of Eivor is in the dlc(?) add-on when Eivor heads to some island and meets up with Kassandra because Kassandra keeps trying to be her charismatic, jokey self but Eivor is always no-selling her attempts at humor and the dynamic works really well! But after four or five hours, that island is done and Kassandra leaves forever and it's back to Eivor and her boring viking pals all being dull and wooden together and it makes every cutscene a fucking slog.

(That bit when Kassandra comes back is fun. Sure, it's partially because I love her but also I think it's fun to have a functionally immortal character that could pop up anywhere in your big dumb franchise! What a goofy thing to add in a series chock full of goofy shit.)

The world is SO big and SO empty!! The majority of things are densely packed into the handful of cities and so most of the landmass is just empty fields and forest. I use the horse auto-pilot mechanic waaay more in this game than in AC:O or AC:O. I had frequent stretches of just riding across hillsides for, like, two minutes where nothing happens. No interesting terrain or landmarks, no combat, no collectable to grab. No nothing! It's so big and empty and boring!

And the thing is, this kind of feels like it's the developers trying to respond to the criticism/memes about "Ubisoft open world game map icon vomit". Like, they want the map to not be so cluttered with icons and so if there's big stretches of empty land, that technically addresses the issue but not in a good or satisfying way! There's still tons of shit to do it's just all concentrated in a handful of smaller areas. Why bother with such a big world!!

(There's also another aspect that feels like them trying to address that criticism and missing the mark: The icons are (partially) gone! They show up as a little colored dot that is kinda hard to see until you get close to it and then it reveals the icon. It's just annoying! Let me know what dumb collectible I'm heading towards before I get there! Why make this more tedious when this isn't going to actually make people happy!

But maybe none of that matters because most of the stuff you pick up is worthless! I ended up with way more of every material type than I could reasonable use (to the point that I started upgrading whatever extra armor or weapons just to unlock their higher level forms as cosmetics). So there came a point where I just started ignoring most of the icons on the map because I didn't need anything from them.

The Ireland DLC was pretty good! I think the added set of mechanics around capturing resource generators and then trading those resources for stuff is neat! It really feels like they're testing things and exploring possible mechanics for other/future AC games and I think that's alright. The rewards you get for trading things aren't particularly useful (some armor but mostly boat cosmetics) but I think because the materials are passively generated while you're off doing video game bullshit, it makes the lack of meaningful reward feel not as bad. The story is at least better than the main game's (a low bar, but still worth noting) mostly because they have some characters that are actually mildly compelling. I am not Irish but I have a feeling that the representation of Ireland and of Irish people that is presented here is probably not great!

And then there's the mythology DLC. I think between Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, Odyssey really struck a sweet spot with balancing history and mythology. There's enough of it spread out through that game that it feels ever-present but there's never too much to be oversaturated with it. But with Valhalla they seem to have gone back closer to Origin where there isn't a whole lot of it (until you get to the DLC that is entirely mythology). So for a lot of the game it's just boring old historical(ish) England.

I am a long time Norse mythology enjoyer (not in a weird way, I promise!! I just think mythology is cool!!) but the DLC really didn't land with me. It mostly just feels like More but with a new coat of paint. More maps to run around, more enemies to kill, more resources to gather. More more more. They do add another unique mechanic here: Eivor can now suck off enemies to gain special abilities! It's used for some puzzle solving and can theoretically be used for traversal or combat but I never found myself ever really thinking about it or using it very much. The puzzles are either dead simple and obvious or way too obtuse with very little in between. The combat isn't really something I needed any more tools for because the ability list is already so vast. And the world isn't so much different from any other location that being able to move around it different is very meaningful. It's just way too much of a new coat of paint on a game that there is already Way Too Much of!

I didn't get a chance to check out the France DLC because by the time I was high enough level to do it, I was feeling very burnt out on the game and was trying to focus on the main story but didn't even manage to finish that all the way through!

TOO MUCH VIDEO GAME. I was just over 100 hours in and wasn't even done with the main story! I probably had at least a dozen more hours to go!! What the hell! Maybe someday I'll go back and see the last chunk of story and go "wow this wasn't worth it" and then I'll treat myself to murdering a bunch of French people. But for now I'm done with this game. And, y'know what? I think this might've cured me of my "Ubisoft open world enjoyer" disease. I know there's another AC out at this point and I don't know that I'm really interested in checking it out at all! It'd be nice if it were good but I'm just not sure I have faith that it would be!