It is admittedly cliché to recommend a game to someone by calling it an "experience" that you "need to play for yourself to understand."

That being said; I think Dragon's Dogma II is an experience you need to play to understand. I rarely find myself inspired with such joy and creativity when I enjoy a game, but Dragon's Dogma's sophomore title achieves this synthesis by carefully balancing a satisfying core gameplay loop that evolves from its predecessor through quality over quantity of refinements that make each playstyle interesting and rewarding to play. This is achieved while retaining yet many of the same charming qualities in art direction, quest design, enemy reactivity and map layout that made the original such an investing title, all the while adding on top of what we're already familiar with through a more involved storyline, a larger and more ecologically diverse map, as well as a breath of new factions, cultures and cities to explore which truly put into perspective how compact that original world seemed to be. Yet despite what a surface level glance may lead you to believe, Dragon's Dogma II is a sequel of quality over quantity that looks towards daringly experimental mechanics and design decisions over a tried and true "more of the same" experience. Part of what makes this true is the minute attention to detail with every interaction you make with the world. The game's mechanics encourage the player to sleep regularly, purchase a home, find love, confront the dangers lurking in the pitch black darkness, learn foreign languages, use public transportation, resolve conflicts in multiple ways and live through an epic world-spanning adventure through their actions in play, rather than the scripting of the quests. What results is a game rife with emergent storytelling that allows the player to feel fully immersed in the act of playing the game and making unique memories out of both small treks and long journeys. It is a game that's as comfortable and homey as a game of dungeons and dragons; party of friends included. After all, thanks to the improvements in scripting, voice acting and AI added to the pawn system, a mechanic built around function over form takes an entirely new personality that lets you bring along a merry band of your friends' allies or charming strangers to your party that create new opportunities to form connections with the game and its world through the gameplay opportunities that arise. Digging even deeper below the surface, it is also fascinating to see the game evolve its meta-fiction from the original Dragon's Dogma and take greater risks with a story whose overarching message jumps off from its predecessor and delivers a powerful sentiment that's intimate to the 12 year gap between now and the series' inception.

But, to return to the beginning and bring my thoughts together. Dragon's Dogma means many things to many people, and it is a series that redefines Action Role-Playing through its insistence in creating wonderful experiences that can only be played to be experienced. Rather than a replacement to the original experience found in Dark Arisen, I am more pleased than ever to see Dragon's Dogma II provide an entirely new heartfelt journey that I was sad to see go, but happy to have played through nonetheless. Though, like with the first game, your mileage may continue to vary as to how much you may appreciate the game's eccentricities, I have no doubt that they will be remembered more than any of this game's contemporaries. Dragon's Dogma may not have made a splash when it arrived in 2012, but over the years, and even now, it manages to create unique and intimate experiences that can only be built by this wonderful medium where you are actor, director and audience all at the same time.

Oh right, and I guess this game is a mess of performance on PC too. I'd still recommend if your rig can run it. Honestly, I wouldn't hold much faith in either this or the console versions ever having stable performance unless you can somehow brute force it with enough horsepower, which not even high end machines can achieve somehow. That is all to say that, one way or the other, the game is just too good to pass up just because of performance woes.

Gungrave G.O.R.E is frustrating. Not because I didn't enjoy the game, quite the contrary, I think its the most fun game I've played all year. It is frustrating because of how much I fundamentally disagree with the common consensus while simultaneously understanding where those frustrations are coming from.

I think this game is a painfully misunderstood gem that highlights an era and style of game design that we never see a lot of these days, now that every game is polished to a mirror sheen and asks so little of its players. It is precisely because of how much Gungrave G.O.R.E asks of its players that I feel the game is misunderstood. Because the game has a steep difficulty and an even steeper learning curve. But at the same time, it is the mastery of that learning curve and skill that makes the game so satisfying.

Not only that, but it is a lost art to see a game that is designed solely in favor of a satisfying gameplay loop and takes a scorched earth approach to any of the bells and whistles we've all come to expect from modern action games. Gungrave G.O.R.E has no dazzling cinematic sequences or environmental storytelling. What you see is what you get, which is a solidly designed hybrid between a shooter and a character action game. And for what its worth, the designers of the game have gone through a lot of effort, both during development and after through patches, to ensure that the basic gameplay loop of shooting and maintaining high scores is as satisfying as it can be.

Contrary to popular belief, the level design, enemy design and combat design is built to make those moment to moment gameplay decisions challenging and satisfying. Experienced players that can master the game's mechanics will find a rewarding experience in ways that many recent games have not been able to quite match up to.

But despite my praise to the game's core design and skillfully implemented core mechanics, I cannot deny that there is a massive lack of consistency in the quality of the level-to-level, moment-to-moment design of the game. Some parts are amazing at testing your skill while simultaneously giving you a good time. Some parts just feel like they weren't play-tested in any capacity. Still, with recent patches, I see that Iggymob has done the best job they can to smooth out the rough edges of development and ensure that the player experience is as rewarding as could be.

Knowing the development history of this game, I can't help but root for Iggymob at the end of the day. They made one of the most unique games released in the past year and a true love letter to this genre and era of game design, all the while struggling to set up shop in a place where its even more difficult to secure funding while at the same time working with a very niche IP. The fact that the game is as polished as it is compared to more expensive AAA releases really says something about their passion.

And despite all the parts that weren't fun to play, I've still played Gungrave G.O.R.E many times over because the good of what they gave us I think far outshines the few moments where it perhaps took me more time than I'd like to in order to adapt to the more difficult and downright unfair sections.

But that does come with the territory. At the end of the day, I'd rather have a game that's this satisfying on a sheer mechanical level that has a handful of frustrating levels or portions, than a game that is polished to a mirror sheen and has nothing unique to say or offer.

So I leave my review with this. If everything you hear and see about Gungrave G.O.R.E sounds appalling, if you would be instantly turned off by a game with a simple and repetitive gameplay loop because it doesn't have enough variety to satisfy you, if the game's lack of budget for cinematic sequences makes you bored, and if a game with intense difficulty frustrates you; then yeah, Gungrave G.O.R.E is probably not for you. You should probably not buy the game.

If you like a game full of soul however and you have a strong interest in this genre, then go ahead and give it a try. I promise that it will be quite rewarding.