i get mad harsh on this game because it makes me think of two types of people: those who say this is "the thinking man's fps" and those who think alyx vance is "a good female character"

i think the marine grunts in half-life 1 are overrated but they still run rings around the combine in this game, if only for the fact that them marines are built absolutely truck-tough and therefore get to do a few cool things before they die.

tons of very nice visual design in this game, i'll concede that, but ultimately for me the game is simply a fairly long string of gimmicks and none of the gimmicks are things i actually enjoy.

there's something unimaginably beautiful about games that feel just like when i'm really tired with a drawing and i just decide to do whatever and put it out into the world, then i see so many wrong things with it that could have been fixed with time but then again i'm very tired so in no way i'm touching it again. makes me think how human work will forever be valuable, we're able to develop apathy for imperfections due to fatigue and that's honestly beautiful.

excluding the obvious deadline constraints the team had to put up with, this kind of ambitious, large scale, unpredictable, weird, aggravating, difficult, time consuming, tiring, agressive, livable world barely has any space in the sanitized UX focused world but yet here we are, yet after all the misinformation efforts by 20 year-certified dumbass Stephanie Sterling here we are experiencing what is probably one of the most feverish mainstream gaming efforts done by a big studio in the last decade. this is probably the most important game Capcom has released in a lot of years and i'm all here for it, because if you play the game you end up realizing the boxart is extremely funny and there are simply no other games that do this kind of thing anymore. like, my bf missed seeing a major scene with a character around the last part of the game because he never got any of the optional quests involving him how is this not pure art.

also gotta love the genre of games that you could easily swap a "thank you for playing" at the end with "fuck you for playing!!" and it would still make perfect sense. they're dear in my heart and i will protect them always

É um pouco chocante pra mim abrir essa página do backloggd e ler algumas coisas sobre Dragon's Dogma. É muito colocar-a-mão-no-queixo-e-fechar-os-olhos-em-desaprovação da minha parte, mas vocês precisam entender: eu amo esse jogo como um filho.

Quando se fala de Dragon's Dogma, é comum que se fale com asteriscos, poréns e ressalvas. É comum que se comente a ambição que o jogo tinha em contraste com o que ele foi. Eu consigo entender esse receio, consigo ver razão nas palavras, mas cada vez mais me encontro pensando em como todas essas coisas parecem trabalhar para engrandecer a obra final.

É absolutamente maravilhoso que o jogo não te conte sobre todos os sistemas que acontecem por detrás dos panos. Tem amor por trás dessa decisão. O resultado pode até surpreender, mas é inegavelmente resultado das suas ações.

Você tomou cuidado ao redor desse NPC? Você se dedicou a resolver os problemas particulares dessa pessoa? Um dragão ameaçava a existência da vida no ducado e você ainda tirou tempo pra resgatar essa vendedora trambiqueira e levá-la em segurança até um lugar seguro. Você não sacou seu arco ao redor dela para que ela não se sentisse intimidada ou ameaçada. Cuidado e dedicação é uma forma de demonstrar amor. Seu beloved foi o Feste? Bom... você certamente se dedicou de alguma forma pra isso. Colha sua recompensa, aproveite a cena, amar é bom demais.

Você comprou a casa de um capitalista infeliz em prol de deixar que a família que morava lá de aluguel continuasse a morar? Perfeito. Tenho certeza que foi a melhor decisão. No fim, acidentes acontecem, ninguém pode prever terremotos. Não é culpa sua.

Gransys é toda polvilhada de momentos assim. Suas ações tem repercussões óbvias, imediatas, e consequências mais difíceis de prever, tal como a vida. Raramente as suas decisões não são pintadas em tons de cinza, raramente os desfechos são completamente justos.

E é nessas arestas ásperas, nesses momentos onde algo foi esquecido e deixado pra trás em definitivo, nessa tradução entre o que o jogo tinha ambição de ser e no que ele foi de fato, é que se encontra a joia bruta que é Dragon's Dogma. Suas imperfeições trabalham ativamente para tornar esse jogo ainda mais interessante de se desbravar, se descobrir e se compreender. E na dedicação de lapidar a sua história em Gransys, Dragon's Dogma brilha ainda mais. Não como um mero adorno, feito por outro para quem quiser usar. Mas como o seu trabalho, impresso nesse mundo. Único.

12 years on from the strange, incomplete original, DD2 is more of the same, uneasily sitting between the uncompromising Souls series & more conventional narrative ARPGs. At times evoking a desolate offline MMO, DD2 is at its best when out in the wilds, the sun setting at your back & two or more beasts landing on the path ahead, all Arising out of dynamic systems.

The main questline unfortunately does not play to these strengths, with much of Act I confined to the capital & some really dull writing. Fortunately, writing does not maketh a game, and side-quests that take you out into the unreasonably huge map are much more interesting, and really need to be sought out in the crowds and corners of the world. Keeping track of these with the bizarre quest tracker is uneven and obtuse: you’re either reading the landscape and tracing clues or just beating your head against a wall figuring out what the game requires of you.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is singular, not quite fully realised, a beautifully rendered physics-heavy oddity. The art direction is profoundly generic, but so deceptively understated it at times resembles a Ray Harryhausen film, full of weight, movement and character. DD2 makes you feel like you have friends, albeit stupid friends, who'd throw themselves off a cliff for a view of yonder.

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

as vezes a gente nem percebe que as raízes são fortes... dragon's dogma, em 2012, junto com dark souls deve ter afetado a maneira que meu cérebro funciona ao jogar video game de formas irreparáveis. eu não estava armado nessa época, eu não tinha vocabulário, eu não sabia o que pensar durante o jogo além de "diversão" e as percepções básicas. dark souls me acompanhou a vida toda depois disso - a primeira vez que eu escrevi foi justamente dele! mas dragon's dogma ficou lá no cantinho escondido -não joguei dark arisen!- passei 200 horas nele e sendo sincero nunca pensei a fundo no porquê.

e agora depois de uma jornada de 68 horas e 139 dias (in-game) eu entendo tudo, é óbvio que DD foi feito pra mim, todas as Decisões que eu sou obcecado são feitas com a maior confiança do mundo, eu amo jogo de andar por aí, de se planejar e sair numa caminhada que só deus sabe o que vai acontecer, eu amo gerenciamento de recursos como o poder de teleportar, eu amo limites de tempo e quando achei que não iria criar um vínculo com a história "principal" (não conte para o pessoal da página do jogo que a verdadeira história principal são momentos que acontecem enquanto você está caminhando) ela também é uma história que brinca com meus temas favoritos. agora vou descansar por uns meses, deixar marinar e jogar o dark arisen sabendo que dessa vez estou armado com as palavras certas pra dar o carinho que ele merece.