Recent reviews by ThisRockIFound

While the combat can be fun at times, the Veilguard is a shallow, utterly sophormoric narrative experience. Despite recontextualizing some of the most fundamental elements of Thedas's cosmology, the decisions you make as Rook are so inconsequential that they feel meaningless. Regions and cultures in the setting that were originally cutthroat, fundamentalist, or outright amorally magocratic have been sanded down to unproblematic simulacra. While there are some difficult choices and dark themes in the plot, they are nowhere near as complex or challenging as those in past entries in the series. The characters are idiosyncratic and fun, but they come from factions and subgroups that had complex and spotty histories that are completely ignored and mitigated in order to appear personable and noninflammatory. I was elated to see Bioware's commitment to diversity that can be experienced both through vital non-player characters and from first-person as Rook, but the complete absence of real consequence in any other aspect of the story robs it of lasting value. The Veilguard fails to live up to the legacy of its predecessors, focusing more on style and quotability than substance.

The character creator alone is worth the price of admission. The developer went the extra mile and set up the game to store recently-used sprites in your Documents, allowing you to edit your characters manually and save them in an overwrite file. I've had so much fun picking apart the game's sprite sheets to put together my and my friends' favorite D&D characters, and there's a wealth of custom spritework made by the game's fans that range from sleek and stylish to comically horny. Though the gameplay isn't particularly complex and the build system is a bit obtuse, Bastard Bonds is a uniquely silly, fast paced, and fun experience well-worth the price point.

A lot of the game's content feels incomplete and the effectiveness of different builds are oceans apart, but there's an undeniable charm and wonder to charting a course to distant shores. Scraping through challenging encounters and weighing your party's combat effectiveness against maintaining your ship and crew manages to keep the experience engaging without feeling too constrictive. Do the fully-voiced story and dialogue trees feel like they traded breadth for presentation? Occasionally. Are the builds and rare/legendary weapons a little unbalanced? Frequently, yes. Do the character models look like action figures left a little too close to the heater? Maybe a little. But is the game fun? Absolutely.

This archaic MMO is stuffed with paywalls, microtransactions, and loot randomization, constantly holding satisfying challenges and rewards just beyond your reach. The expansions and optional content are surprisingly expensive (though free cash shop currency is obtainable in infrequent intervals) and build-crafting takes a fair bit of homework and loot-farming to perfect. The company running it also stingily withholds much of its lower- and mid-level content to use in annual free content packages to draw in waves of new players, preventing casual players discovering the game on their own from seeing the best of what it has to offer. While it has seriously improved over time in style and functionality, it's still visually and mechanically decades behind its contemporaries. Though the game's authenticity and charm are undeniable, its greedy mechanics and obtuse design choices make it an ultimately unfulfilling experience.

Though I experienced severe crashes and laughable performance on hardware above minimum requirements, a recent upgrade and minor performance patch resolved most of the issues I experienced immediately after launch. Unfortunately, I still find the game lacking compared to its predecessor.
Exploration and combat are engaging but repetitive, pushing the player through samey encounters and indistinct points of interest for lackluster rewards. Monster and quest variety lags up to the game's finale, only showing its most enjoyable and impressive bosses in a painfully finite post game. While the vocations present are enjoyable and stylish, only a handful spark the imagination the way those in DD1 or the short-lived Dragon's Dogma MMO did. The expanded plot and performance are hampered by awkward writing and undeveloped plot elements. The side quests are stellar, but little else in the experience stands out besides walking atop monsters and getting ragdolled at terminal velocity.
Overall, Dragon's Dogma II does much to expand upon the game that came before it, but its cautious adherence to classical fantasy keeps it from feeling truly special. It's a good game to pick up on sale or check out in the event of a Dark Arisen-style expansion, but what you get isn't worth 70 bucks.

It's a little disappointing that a game with such stylish designs has such a bland character creator. While you can create varied body proportions, it's difficult to make a character that isn't all traps and shoulders without looking lumpy in most clothing items. CAC's look out of place next to named cast characters, and World Tour NPC's only have a pool of fifteen or so faces. These are minor complaints for gameplay this good, but they're worth mentioning.