Recent reviews by Sjark

I genuinely believe Dragon's Dogma 2 could have been one of the greatest fantasy RPGs of the decade, had Itsuno been given the time & money he needed and deserved to craft the game.
But Capcom never had faith, and it shows in how rushed and unfinished it is.
It's fantasy slop with some meta ideas on a poorly made foundation. Something regular people will talk about the month it came out and never again.

If you haven't played the first Dragon's Dogma, buy it on sale and ignore this game. Why am I being so harsh despite the many hours played?
Because I've never played a sequel as regressive as this game. It's a massive disappointment from the potential it could have had, given the proper opportunity.

Lets get one thing out of the way before continuing.
For anyone who paid attention to social media etc on the release, there was a lot of debacle about DD2's MTXs.
This was massively overblown, and the least of the game's issues. It's just a handful of dlcs with minor benefits and a one-time purchase that won't change your game experience much. Compare that to any of the other Capcom games, like Resident Evil where you can buy "pay 2 win" dlcs that trivialises higher difficulties.

Lets talk about the actual game now.

On first impressions, the game will probably please most people. It doesn't look bad, and overall feels satisfying to play.
The classes, or vocations, look interesting and you'll feel like there's a lot to explore and discover with the game.
But after a while you start to wonder when you'll get to experience new enemies, or why every cave look so similar, or why NPCs keep fading in and out in the towns, or why quest NPCs so quickly fall in love with you.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is incredibly shallow. On the surface it looks pretty, but it's just a puddle in depth.
As an example, there are no memorable dungeons, they all blur into the same and can even be occasionally confusing to navigate because everything looks the same. Meanwhile everyone will know exactly what dungeons you talk about by naming them in DD: Dark Arisen.
NPCs are less memorable as well for that matter.

You have less skills & weapons to use in combat (in DD: Dark Arisen you have two weapons equipped for the most part and more skills to use). So combat will see you regularly just using the same skills over and over.
The balance of the skills is also really bad, and you can easily cheese most fights as Thief with just a skill that auto-dodges and another skill that is very explosive. This holds true even in late end-game fights.
This lack of skills also makes being a caster less exciting, and really strangles your options when picking spells/skills. (utility vs pure dmg etc)

The vocations are worse than DD:DA, made even worse with the fact that two of the vocations are really bad or even worthless.
Wayfarer on paper sounds great, until you realise that your equipped skills don't change depending on what weapon you pick, and your skill selection is already bad enough with just 1 weapon available.
Trickster is the "support class" where you blow smoke and pray that your pawns actually do something - its augmentions are even so bad that there's no merit in levelling it up to use on other vocations.

There's worse enemy variety, and monsters are much less of a threat than ever before. Just by standing still you can dodge the ogre's attacks for too long, and even if he hits you with a special move, he'll wait around for ages before even initiating another attack.

The world is less reactive, you can go crazy and kill people in the city and people won't really care beyond squealing a little. The guards don't care much either.
There are "stealth" quests in the game, but you can just walk in without a disguise or anything and nobody will give a damn. If you do get arrested, you can just leave your cell, throw the nearest guard into a wall and walk away unscathed. There are basically zero consequences to your actions.

Some might argue that this is for "meta" reasons, knowing the first game, but DD2's foundation is not strong enough to justify such lacklustre reasons. The game just feels empty and meaningless.

The story, despite initially threading the exact same ground as the first game, manages to be worse in every aspect. Everything comes off as poorly thought through, and you're never really given a good reason to care what's even happening to you.
Supposedly there's a Dragon Plague or something that afflicts your pawns, but the pawns are so bad at pathing that they frequently drowned/died and never became an issue for me.

It just feels like a poorly assembled mess, hastily made due to realisation that the little budget was blown on trying to learning how to use the RE engine or something.

Even when you enter the "real" sequel part of DD2, it doesn't get that much better.

Everything about the game feels undercooked, and underwhelming. We waited 12 years for this, and it's barely anything. It's not even an upgrade, at best it's a "side-grade" and at worst a downgrade.

I was initially exploring as much as I could, and levelling up my vocations to experiment, but it's just so unsatisfying. Maybe one day I'll return to the game, and try to finish it, but it won't be any time soon because it's all so disappointing.

If I knew that this is exactly the sequel we would get, I'd rather we hadn't gotten it all. This sequel has ruined all future hope for Dragon's Dogma. I am still upset after a whole year, MH Wilds reminded me of this disappointment, because that game also released too early and around the same time of year (right before Capcom's fiscal year ends).

Dragon's Dogma 2 could have become one of Capcom's pillar games, but it was never given the opportunity and now it is lost forever. I'll be shocked if we get any substantial update to it.

I just hope that Itsuno's future will get brighter, and that he will release some new cool game without a company pushing it forward just so shareholders can get their short term gain & happiness.

If you want some strong examples of what I've talked about, I highly recommend checking out Nihil0.0, who shows good examples of the reality of the game, without inflating it and making it seem better than it is (like Punk Duck did with his "fake game" video).

Failed to GRIP me, despite the exciting premise.

I just felt bored playing a game where you drive at "high speed", fire bullets & missiles at other vehicles, and driving on the walls and roofs of the maps. The game looks more impressive on paper than it plays.

Sound effects, music and even something small as how the vehicle collide with other objects just felt underwhelming. Your missiles can even "friendly fire" you instead, and just throw you off, ruining your chances of success.

You might have some fun with this game, but I just didn't feel anything hooking me. Last thing I did before stopping was try the painting, which felt limited but okay, and then I looked at the sparse amount of online sessions available.

I bought this game along with a few other racing games, and just for comparison, I played Distance for 90 minutes straight. Only reason I stopped was because I finished the first adventure mode.

The lack of control, and having to just sit around doing nothing because you have no coins doesn't make for an enjoyable experience. Exploring only made me find things that cost even more coins.

Losing your base and crown, because all the archers decided to all be on the right side of the base, instead of spreading out isn't particularly a fun way of losing. Because it's all out of your control, and I have no idea what I need to prioritise, and if upgrading my base only makes the enemies stronger or if that's something that happens automatically with the passing of time.

Don't buy any games that Marty Stratton has been part of, until he changes his ways (i.e. never).
Mick Gordon deserved better.

Game's fine, but I find it overrated in the gameplay.
I completed it, tried doing a new game+ and got overwhelmed with tedium.

If you want a different doom experience, check out the MyHouse.wad that can be played with GZDoom.

Great game.

Years ago I added Ace Combat 7 to my wish list, because I was reminded the franchise existed and felt nostalgic from having played Ace Combat 1 on the PlayStation. Then I watched a review of Project Wingman, thought "damn, that seemed really cool."

Promptly forgot about everything for 1+ years. Deluded myself into thinking that the ending of Project Wingman was about AC7, bought AC7 and had fun with that game. Realised I was dumb, and finally got this game.

Highly recommend, but it was a struggle to get accustomed to its controls after having experienced the glory of Ace Combat 7.

Considering the origin of Project Wingman, it's quite the impressive end result.

Positives:
- Having a voiced WSO felt like a nice touch, and feel Ace Combat could benefit from it if done well
- Story was cool, despite kinda knowing what was coming, I felt shocked by the intensity
- Conquest is a really cool idea to give you reasons to play more, and wish AC would do something similar
- The way the game announced the arrival of special enemies was great. The first time I was so panicked, when I realised how badly out of my depths was, as I was using a really slow airplane.

My only "real" complaints about the game are:

- No checkpoints, this was really painful when I was still struggling to understand how to properly play, and during difficult missions
- Too few aircrafts that are two-seater
Around the halfway point, I had gotten my last two seater, and I was determined to have Prez along for my first time
- Unguided bombs feel so incredibly unsatisfying to use. Because of that & my 2-seater problem, I stopped using bombs and just used the F/D-14 for almost my entire run with the HISM + MLAA + MLAA. Which was a bit of an annoyance when doing missions with boats, but I overcame it all - even the final boss.

Minor gripes:
- Generally being in menus were annoying with controller.
- Exiting the game was annoying, as there was no "quit to desktop" option, without hopping through 2+ menus and landing at the start menu

I think I'm done with the game for now, but chances are that I'll return some other time. Saw some comments about a 2.0, but apparently the ETA is "WHO KNOWS???"

It's a decent Vampire Survivors "clone".
You are more actively playing by having to aim, which helped me keep my engagement up. It's been a while since I touched Vampire Survivors itself, but that game started putting me to sleep because gameplay is just WASD.

I felt done with the game around the 21 hour mark, but I decided to just get all the achievements for the hell of it.
I haven't touched the other game modes though.

My only complaint(s) about this game, is that I feel there are certain things missing and lack of actual choices.
You got permanent upgrades in a "sword" and "shield" category, but some options are are just so much better than the others, so I barely changed my choices at all regardless of what I played as, this got worse the higher ranked the options were.

On the maps, I mostly missed pick-up items like "gather all exp drops" or something.
With the items, I feel there isn't enough variation/synergies to make this be a game to return to for the fun of it.
Music is okay, but I turned it off after 10-15 hours so I could listen to my own stuff.

Good value for what you pay.

You'll end up with this DLC anyway, and being nearly 10 years late I doubt many will see this.

The big problem with this DLC is the 3 missions you get. Everything else is great.
So TL;DR is: Skip Gangplank mission, it breaks the game and will wreck your troops if you are unprepared.
If you are playing Long War, it could be worth the risk... maybe.

The missions are tough, the first two are doable with some planning. But the 3rd mission completely breaks everything.
When you get the missions you are maybe in month 2 of your playthrough, barely dipped your toe into the story.

Yet the 3rd mission introduces an endgame enemy, which proceeds with breaking every previously established rule.
So it appears without any reason, it doesn't trigger an introduction, it moves and attacks on the turn it appears, it doesn't trigger the assault's "Close Combat Specialist" trait and will just obliterate any soldier being unfortunate enough to be attacked - due to being an end game enemy in month 2 of the game. This is the only instance in the entire game where you will experience something like this.

And even then, should you decide to risk it all and complete the mission? Congratulations, you have now completely broken the flow of the game for rest of the story. Because the rewards are so obscenely useful and plentiful, that this mission has zero merit in being so early in the game. This would have made for rewards LATE GAME.

What the f were the developers thinking... Also it introduces the only character in the game with a backstory, why on earth they didn't make more characters like that is baffling.

I love the fighting in this game. I want to improve and have fun with the game, but the real money aspect of the game just puts me off so much.

I hate how they've monetised this game. Just let me buy the characters and costumes straight up, without having to pay the scam currency first.

This game convinced me that it should be illegal to have an in-game currency that can only be bought with real money, because they are being so incredibly greedy with this game. To buy the costumes you have to buy 2 stacks of the scam currency, to obtain 1 costume. To add insult to injury, this scam currency you are buying? It only lasts 180 days.

So not only are they forcing you to buy too much currency if you want a costume, they are putting a short expiration date on it, so that you'll feel forced to buy even more crap to make the numbers even out.

I hate the modern game world.

It's a great stealth game. Definitely recommended, especially if you get it on sale.

I love that I can in and out of locations without anyone being any wiser, a true ghost. Something happened inside this building, but nobody knows how.

The powers are alright, writing is so-so.
Being an older game. loading times are near instant.

My only real complaint about the game, other than what the engine prevents it from doing, is that you're too overpowered for this to be an actual true stealth game.
But at the end of the day, you control the buttons you press.

If you're doing challenge runs, there's a mod you can install that tells if you've been spotted etc, which makes ghost runs etc incredibly less frustrating.

Decent replay value, though it would be nice if there were less forced cutscenes that can't be skipped.

For first time playthrough, I highly recommend just doing whatever you feel like. Get familiar with the game before you decide on a challenge run. Knowing the maps will make that a lot less frustrating, and replaying when you actually know what to do can be a speedy experience.

When I did my Ghost, No Kill, No Power run, it started feeling like a speedrun. Because I would just routinely ignore almost the entire map, since I didn't need any extra rewards for the most part.

Great game, if it runs properly.

It's a cheeky "stealth" game, but in reality it's an action game where you are only "jokingly" punished for failing to sneak. You can certainly try, but you don't get much other than maybe an achievement and an npc going "nice" from succeeding at sneaking through a stealth section.

The highs are high with glorious music blasting, and the lows are insanely low.

Before investing too much time into the game, make sure it is properly running. I played the game for way too long before I realised, "oh it's not that I'm really trash at this game, it's just not running properly and that's why I miss almost every single block/parry."

I ended up having to install several fixes, play the game in windowed mode, install a program that makes windowed into fullscreen windowed, and I also installed a mod to skip the splash screens. Even after all that, if I try to play in normal fullscreen, the game becomes incredibly sluggish.

When combat is smooth, this is a fantastic game where you slice, parry, counter, combo, dash and even run on rockets.

When it is not smooth, you'll have the camera flipping away from enemies and into a wall, being permanently stunned by enemies while you desperately try to do use movement on the controller to get out of the stun / grapple without any success.

When I experienced my lows with this game, it was worse than any experience I've had with any video games, I've had my fair share of frustrating moments in the Souls games, but nothing close to this.
Because there I am, doing exactly what the game is telling me to do, and nothing is happening and I'm being punished. Infuriating beyond belief.

I initially completed the game on normal with the bugged experience, only getting everything fixed because I got stuck on the final boss. Afterwards I somehow felt motivated to play on Hard, and had a much better experience since gameplay actually worked like it should. Well, most of it.

There's a ridiculous amount of things to unlock, discover, and challenges to do if you are inclined for such. So despite the game's short story run, there's plenty replay value for those looking for it.

Also if you are unsure about how to do certain moves, go into the menu when in a mission and pick "Help". I didn't realise the moves for actions was there, as "Help" is usually something else in my experience. I didn't know how to do the defensive move where you dodge before 4 hours into the game, and only because I looked at a steam guide, because the game won't tell you in the customization menu how to do moves.

I do wish the tutorial missions in the beginning were more useful, instead it mostly feels like it wastes your time.

Anyway, great music and cool fights. But I am done with this now.

Also I still don't like the Monsoon fight, even if it is a good "did you learn to parry/block" fight.
A certain grenade is wonderful for that though.