Do you like music? Me too, man.

One of my favourite albums of all time is Devin Townsend’s legendary prog metal musical, Ziltoid the Omniscient. It came out on May 21st 2007 and it’s something of a marvel, being an album developed entirely by Devy himself. Instruments, recording, mixing, cuts, you name it, he did it. It’s really special to me, and I go back to it every other month. Clocking in at just under an hour - a rarity for prog albums - it has a peerless blend of chunky riffs, auditory storytelling, comedic timing and pacing. Before I gave up on tattoos (don’t have the skin for it - literally), I really wanted the Ziltoid logo on my upper arm.

7 years later, after much begging from fans and several other albums, Devin Townsend came back with Z², the sequel album. Boasting a fucking massive production posse, a much longer runtime and a whole other album packaged in, it’s… Fine. Despite everything being bigger and grander, it’s only a little better than the first album and lacks a lot of the zest which came from being a solo production. By no means a bad album, it’s upstaged by a solo project from 2007 in a lot of ways and for many people it revealed that the original album’s limitations might have bred a greater final product.

Dragon’s Dogma 1 came out in 2012 after a now-notoriously agonizing development process that resulted in a vast majority of their ideas being cut out to meet the deadline set by the suits and an ever-shrinking budget. Capcom really wanted DD1 to be the start of a big series, capitalising on the then-rising popularity of Western RPGs like Skyrim and The Witcher 2. Naturally, it was a flop and the ‘franchise’ was silently canned despite the game attaining cult classic status.

I have been playing DD1 for about 11~ years now. I own it on every single platform it was ever released on and on each of those platforms I have near-perfect saves with both the postgame and Bitterblack Isle cleared in their entirety. I’ve played that game so often that, if I were so inclined, I could do a full playthrough in my mind because I know the game world and quest flow off by heart. I have, and frequently do, give people directions around the world without any need to consult a map or a video or boot the game.

To potentially state the obvious: I am something of a Dragon’s Dogma megafan.

Among people like me, who’re so hungry for new morsels of DD content that we begrudgingly consumed (and loathed) the Netflix series, the hypothetical Original Version of DD1 has attained something of a mythological status. The idea of a ‘complete’ DD1 with Elf villages and beastmen and a whole other continent and the like is just so endlessly intoxicating to a group who’re already enamoured with the best-attempt game we already have.

Dragon’s Dogma 2, judging by the year of comments Hideaki Itsuno has been making about the game, is that mythical Original Version. Complete with Elves, Beastmen, other continents, and more! The prevailing sentiment among older fans was that, given a proper budget and all the technical prowess of the RE Engine and enough time, Itsuno would finally make a True Dragon’s Dogma successor!

Instead he… Kinda just made Dragon’s Dogma 1 again? But bigger, and naturally with the problems that come from increasing the scale and scope.

My first sight upon booting the game was the title screen which rather curiously calls the game “DRAGON’S DOGMA” without any numbers. This, sadly, turned out to be an omen.

I normally like to open with a game’s positives before I get into the issues, which is a problematic methodology to have with a game like this. I’m not going to get into it now, but a lot of what’s good about DD2 is also really really bad when viewed holistically.

On the combat front, it’s better than ever. It’s snappy and responsive and the addition of Vocation Actions (block for Fighters, dodge for Thieves, shoulder charge for Warriors, etc etc) adds a lot to the overall flow of combat. New core skills really help too; Sorcerer gets one to speed up cast timers in exchange for a huge stamina drain which I’m really fond of.
It is DD1’s combat, but better! Especially now that stagger is a mechanic and melee classes can now deal respectable damage without spamming either ‘the damage skill’ or mashing attack.

Vocations, too, have seen a tweak. Realizing just how redundant most of them became in DD1, hybrid vocations were binned and now everyone uses just one weapon - which might seem bad at first but everything is so much more fleshed out and roles more clearly defined. It’s easy to miss Assassin for a bit until you sink your teeth into Thief and realise it’s still there, baby.
Archer and Thief both benefit the most; no longer awkwardly fused to two other vocations they’re now allowed to shine and they’re honestly phenomenal. Warrior meanwhile has had a near-total rework into a more tanky DPS class (rather than the weird and seemingly unfinished mess it was in DD1) which comes with tasty charge attacks, a timing mechanic for faster hits and lots of juicy interactions with the game’s stagger mechanics.
And god, the unlockable vocations are a dream. Thief capitalises on the more gamey world design to allow some utterly amazing stuff with lures and traps, Mystic Spearhand is an intravascular injection of Devil May Cry into the game, Magick Archer is mostly untouched from DD1 and is still a blast, and Warfarer is a joy just for having a high skill ceiling compared to every other vocation - also it lets you wear basically anything which is great for the fashion obsessed.

Likewise, the world design is excellent. It’s very, very gamey; the entire thing is a series of ambush spots, winding paths, sharp turns to hide enemies, precarious ledges and unsubtle platforming spots. It is, somewhat ironically, a better fusion of FromSoft level design philosophy and open world design trends than FromSoft’s own attempts on that front.
Traversing it is a joy both because it’s beautiful and because there’s a decent amount of pacing to the environment that stops excessive amounts of holding forward + sprint. Not to mention the distribution of side stuff. I noticed more than a few places and distractions that were hidden on the way towards something, but clear as day while backtracking. That’s good world design right there.

Pawn AI might be the biggest improvement though; they’re not geniuses, but they’re no longer actively suicidal and grossly negligent. They use curatives, have defined priorities based on their (NOW IMMUTABLE, CONCRETE) inclination, are much less likely to use charge-up skills against an enemy that dances around constantly, and for enemies like Golems they’ll bother to target weak spots. Hurrah!

And, above all else, I need to admire Itsuno’s commitment to his vision for a bit. This is a decidedly old-school RPG, I’d honestly argue it has more in common with Wizardry and Ultima or whatever tickles your fancy. The Eternal Ferrystone is gone, even as a reward. You get oxcarts for diegetic ‘fast travel’, Ferrystones are lootable and Portcrystals are doled out sparingly to give you some fast travel points. Otherwise, you’re walking everywhere. Every bit of damage you take slightly reduces your max healable HP, meaning that even effortlessly stomping trash mobs on the overworld will gradually wear you down, necessitating resting at campfires - using consumable camp kits that’re at risk of being broken.

For the first few hours and much of the first reason, none of these were issues.

Which, in itself, became an issue.

Much of my earliest time in DD2 was defined by me saying just how much they kept from DD1! The encounter placement, the stuff tucked away, the way every NPC speaks in that weird faux-medieval theatrical cadence, the way quests unfold and silent tutorials are dotted around the land…

My later hours in DD2 were defined by me realizing that the game, in most respects, is just DD1 again but bigger.

Just like last time you start in a near-wilderness and go to an encampment where you get one diversionary quest and your main pawn. Soon after you make your way to a big city where 10-15 quests pop up in the first 15 minutes and then no more. After a lot of exploring, some of which involves a shrouded forest and a hidden village and some politicking at capital, you’re shunted off elsewhere because the plot demands it and fuckery is afoot.

The problems start to arise when one considers the scale of this game. I can forgive a lot of the above in DD1 because it’s a very compact experience. Like I said before, the world map was comparatively tiny.

DD2’s is huge, but the content density hasn’t changed at all, which makes the game feel like a ghost town? When you first arrive in Vernworth you get a lot of quests immediately, which might imply the game is a lot denser than its predecessor, but the ones that aren’t “go here, come back” are mere fetch quests that occasionally have a boss enemy at the end. Not a unique one, either, but ones you’ll likely have already found by exploring or even on the way there.
NPCs are… Basically the exact same, too? I wasn’t expecting in-depth CRPG-esque interactions with them, but nothing has changed from DD1. They dispense a quest and, when done, return to being random voices among the crowd of their home turf.

And the world itself… You know, the word ‘friction’ comes up a lot in discussions around this game and rightly so. It’s very obvious from the get-go that even the mere act of exploration is meant to induce friction. Enemies gradually wear you down on the world map, necessitating avoidance of some fights if you can help it due to finite resources, and the world is structured to make detours risky due to deliberately awful lines of sight.

The problem is that there still isn’t any friction because the game is comically easy.

Even before getting into the actual gameplay, camp sites are scattered around the world with reckless abandon which allows for nearly unlimited free healing and buffs so long as you have a camp kit & meat. Much of the hypothetical friction dissolves once this becomes apparent and it completely annihilates any feeling of being ‘lost in the wilderness’ that DD1 sometimes had.

All the changes and buffs to combat up above mean that the player and their pawns are more powerful than ever. There are plenty of panic buttons, fast-casting nukes, evasive options and counters alongside a relatively high amount of free gear.
But what’s really worse is the enhancement system. Each culture has its own smithing style: Vermundian is balanced, Battahli is Strength/Defense focused, and Elven is Magick/Magick Defense oriented. There are two others, or one if you discount dragonforging.
This seems cool on paper, but what it really does is cause a serious amount of stat bloat. Weapons only use one stat for damage, meaning it’s easy to just hop off to the appropriate merchant and get +100~ damage for a pittance of effort and money.
Money, too, is surprisingly commonplace. Simple expeditions into the wild or even A-B-C-A trips would see me coming home with full coffers, which in turn meant mass gear purchases and upgrades.

Together, nothing can pose a challenge. It’s trivial, with even a modest time investment, to reach 500~ or so in your offensive stat by the midgame and hell, compared to the first game it’s actually a smart idea to kit out your hired pawns rather than cycling them - money is just that commonplace.

A lot of these can be considered the developers ‘fixing’ perceived issues with the first game, especially when one considers that vocations now come with their own base stats to prevent accidental softlocks, but in ‘fixing’ these non-issues they’ve made the game a joke.

My first Drake kill wasn’t triumphant or cool. I rolled up to it and killed it in about 5 minutes. End of the Struggle - this franchise’s fantastic ‘YOU’RE ALMOST THERE!’ theme - barely got to peak before it dropped dead. I dread how they’d balance any DLC.

The enemy roster is near-entirely pulled from the first game and its expansion, with many of the ‘new’ enemies being simple reskins of existing enemies, meaning you’ll get tired of Harpy/Bandit/Saurian/Goblin variants that permeate the world. It was harrowing to get to the last region and find out that my ‘new’ threats were Saurians but red and Harpies but black.

As for boss and miniboss enemies… God they could’ve used some sub-variants or something. The Volcanic Island, this game’s final region, still throws Ogres/Minotaurs/Chimeras/Cyclopes at you. The relative lack of variety leads to the game and its exploration rapidly becoming exhausting, because it’s a gigantic swimming pool but the bag of tricks meant to fill it is the size of a teacup.
I praise Bitterblack Isle a lot despite it being a combat gauntlet because there is so much going on there, and so many enemies. Even its reskins add new layers to the fight - like my beloved Gorecyclops. DD2’s brand-new enemies are cool, and your first fight with them will usually be a treat, but after that they become rote. Speedbumps, not triumphs.

Dungeons are basically gone now, too. Nothing like the Everfall, Gran Soren’s Catacombs, the Greatwall, or the Mountain Waycastle. Just caves and mines, caves and mines, caves and mines… caves… mines… the odd ruin… Fuck. There’s so many. It’s like Skyrim but with worse design, somehow.

As I trudged through DD2’s main story, I found myself longing for the postgame. I’m really fond of The Everfall and Bitterblack Isle for being steep hurdles designed for more devoted players to test their builds and equipment on, but… There isn’t one? Postgame has some new boss fights but there’s no final dungeon experience or final exam. The world state change isn’t as intense as DD1’s either.

To speak on plot for a bit, I feel it occupies a really unfortunate place. If you’ve played DD1, you know what’s going on. There’s no real surprises here. If you haven’t played DD1, then you’ll be surprised to find a plot that’s underbaked and somewhat anticlimactic, driven more by excuses than anything of substance.

I think about Pookykun’s Baldur’s Gate 3 review a lot when it comes to RPGs, and doubly so while playing this game.

There are moments in this game that’re outright magical, immersive without peer. All of them are quiet moments with unsheated weapons: Traversing Battahli roads at sundown and seeing the vast temples of Bakbattahl pierce the skyline. Stumbling upon the Ancient Battleground and poking through wrecks from a cataclysmic event long before my time. Seeing the glimmer of a campfire stick out from the trees that dot Vermund’s many forests. Oceanside strolls through the Volcanic Island.
I'm especially fond of the road to the Arbor, which was the first time the game really wowed me and made me excited for the game ahead.

They are phenomenal, a testament to the team’s ability to craft a world, and… I hate them. I really hate them.

Because, without fail, they’re always pierced by another repetitive combat encounter. The 50th Chimera, the 10000th Goblin, the next of a million Harpies. Over and over, I am reminded that I do not exist in this world to explore it, I exist to kill everything in it as though I were American.
My quests are nothing of the sort, for they might as well be called bounty targets.
Other people will likely praise how reactive this game is, and its propensity for ‘randomness’. I would argue that, as all the ‘randomness’ is purely centred on killing, there isn’t actually much the game can do to surprise you - especially considering the enemy roster. It’s neat to see goblins and cyclopes invade a town the first time, but afterwards it’s just more free XP and a slight obstacle in the way of you spending 60k gold on new shoes.
There's an irony to be found in just how badly the world feels claustrophobic. There are always mooks around every corner, and you're never more than a minute away from a fight. Looking out into the distance from a vantage point betrays an endless hamster wheel of caves, mobs, chests and seeker tokens.

All of these complaints might seem quaint, and any DD oldheads in the audience might be wondering why I’m lambasting it for things the first game is guilty of.

The issue is twofold.

First, I try not to have expectations for games. I don’t fuck with trailers or press releases and avoid streams or whatever. It helps keep me grounded, and I think stops me from hating games based purely on them not meeting my hype - Metal Gear Solid V taught me that.

With DD2, I faltered. I was excited, and I lapped up everything about it. Articles, streams, trailers, you name it.

But I don’t really think the issue stems from the game not meeting my hype. Rather, I think it’s because the game was sold on a very specific vision, the one I mentioned up above: This was meant to be “DD but for real this time”, and in reality it’s just the first game but stretched far too thin.

Secondly, I don’t think every sequel has to be a grand, innovative experience. I play musous and Yakuza games after all. But I do expect there to be some iterative improvement, some signs that the developers have grown and improved at their craft. In simpler terms: Sequels should be a step forward, even if it’s a miniscule one.

DD2 is sort of an awkward step to the side. Could’ve came out ten years ago as a mission pack sequel and been lauded for it.

I don’t like to be prescriptive with my critique, I really don’t, but if this game was 1/4th the size and half the length I think I’d be a lot kinder to it. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed about 2/3rds of my time with it, but I can’t really recommend DD2 specifically because a lot of what I enjoyed is just stuff that DD1 not only did 12 years ago but does better.

In the end, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is Z². It’s by no means bad, and for many people this will likely radically alter their preferences for fantasy RPGs. Hell, I still think it’s amazing this game even got made, and a lot of what I think is bad or problematic still runs rings against most of its peers - this is the closest you’ll get to a modern Wizardry game.

But I look back to the past, to Dark Arisen sitting in my library, and I think about all the limits imposed on that game. All the rough edges, the flaws, the executive meddling and the cut content, and all I can think is…

Ziltoid was the better album.

"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.

as spoiler free as possible

When I started Dragon's Dogma II, I fucking hated it. I was sitting at like an internal score of like a 3 or 4. I thought that it was too obtuse, or difficult to understand. If it came out on Friday, I probably felt that way until Monday. Monday was when I went back to work and I could sit and think and read about the game in order to better parse what my experience was missing. I read countless articles and tweets about various facets of the game, voraciously reading bits and pieces about how certain mechanics were supposed to function or what the intended feeling is. I managed to keep myself pretty unspoiled as well.

It was only after then that I really started to understand how the game ticks. And every day I played this past week, I enjoyed it a little more. and more. and more. Until I finally started to hit a point this weekend where I began to overlook its flaws in the pursuit of the bigger picture.

Dragon's Dogma II is a sequel to a game very similar in nature. I didn't play the original or Dark Arisen, but I'm aware that there are certain feelings that all these games elicit.

Despite the fact that DD1 came out years ago, Dragon's Dogma II feels like a direct response to the nature of open world games today. It falls into a lot of the same trappings, but has better responses when it comes to player agency and the desire to explore. Above all, it has an amazing yet very spoilery response to the nature of it being a sequel at all, with an endgame/end sequence I'm never going to forget. I don't even have it in me to discuss certain mechanics or flaws the game has (I'll sneak in one - this game needs optimized!), but that's just because everything really comes together by the end of the game. Everything collides and meshes to create an open world game that has just actually blown my mind when it comes to how these games should be constructed.

I want to continue/finish speaking in general terms, mostly because I don't want anyone to come into the game with certain expectations about different mechanics. At a certain point, I think a lot of how the game interacts with the player is a part of the experience that should not be divulged. They should not have even advertised the certain interaction that Cyclops monsters have with gaps (I'll let this one slide since it was shown before the game came out). I think if anyone is reading this and you feel frustrated, or really put out by the game - by all means, just stop playing. But, if you really try to meet it at its level, and meet it at its expectations of realism, then I think you will also come to the realization that open world games should probably not be the same after this game. Masterpiece.

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.

Shinichi Shimomura is a man who directed 3 Kirby games (technically 4 but Nightmare in Dreamland is a remake so I digress), Dreamland 2, Dreamlan 3, and this one here. He introduced concepts such as Animal Helpers, Broom Kirby, Gooey, Adeleine, and of course Dark Matter/Zero. This is what led to his 3 games being referred to in the fanbase as the Dark Matter Trilogy. This final game in the Dark Matter Trilogy is one I highly recommend. Combining copy abilities is such an interesting and fun mechanic I'm legitimately shocked they haven't tried to do it to this capacity again. It adds so much to combat and puzzle solving, and it's just interesting to see what kind of weird concoctions you can make. The music is great, but it's a Kirby game of course the music is going to slap. For Kirby's first leap into 3D the game has aged insanely gracefully visually. I believe Shimomura is also to accredit to the beginning of intense lore within Kirby games, without spoiling too much. The story is simplistic but still interesting and engaging. The only flaw I have with the game is collecting all the Crystal Shards is more trouble than it's worth (The game is called Kirby 64 and yet they have 74 shards???). Other than that, I think this game definitely deserves more praise and attention as one of the most creative and interesting Kirby games, and we have Shimomura to thank. Oddly enough, Shimomura disappeared without a trace in 2002. No pictures of the man exist online, and no official obituary was released leading to believe that he couldn't have died. HAL and Nintendo stopped using all of Shimomura's creations in Kirby games after his disappearance, most likely out of respect for him. Gone were the Animal Helpers, Gooey, Adeleine, and of course Dark Matter/Zero. This of course was changed in 2018 when Kirby Star Allies was released, featuring some of these characters. So who knows? Maybe they'll revisit these concepts in a future game sometime.