Recent reviews by ✟DEUS✟ Quercus

Player agency is non existent, I don't feel like I've had a sliver of an opportunity to RP, or develop my character at all. I have no idea who this man is, nor do do I feel like I'm genuinely apart of the world, a feeling elevated by the fact that the characters all blur together into a singular lifeless, banal entity. Everything feels like a set, frequently you're plopped into scenes at an arbitrary pace with no chance to explore. There has genuinely never been another game in the series that has felt so completely off rails and adverse in allowing the player to actually interact with it. And the dialogue. Oh the Maker! Not even just the player's, which is abysmal, but the dialogue holistically is written so astonishingly atrociously that it boggles the mind. Characters incessantly repeat themselves in a carousel of repetition, like you're too addled to have heard them the first time. Here is an example of what I mean (paraphrased but the gist is there):

Character A: We’re searching for the Nadas Dirthalan! It’s an archive spirit.
Character B: Nadas Dirthalan?
Character A: Yes! It’s a spirit that can tell us all about the ancient elves history!

A few minutes later

Character A: We’re close to the Archive Spirit! I have so many questions to ask it.

Another few minutes later, we encounter the anticipated Spirit, it disappears.

Character B: Well it’s broken like all the other artifacts here.
Character A: it’s not just any artifact! It’s the Nadas Dirthalan! The Archive Spirit! I have so many questions to ask it!

*fade to black, teleported to a new location*

Character A: blah blah something something Nadas Dirthalan.
Character C: Wait! You met the Nadas Dirthalan? The Archive Spirit? We could ask it about the ancient Elven Gods!

If they aren't repeating exposition or objectives at you, they're using the most corny and predictable filler dialogue. How many times have you heard "It's quiet here... TOO QUIET." repetitively voiced by NPC's throughout various games, because that exact phrase also exists in Veilguard. I wouldn't be overly astonished to hear a "He's standing right behind me isn't he" or a bland "Well that just happened." Yet this is what we're left with when EA decides to fire their best writers for the series and publicly execute anyone with a shred of ingenuity in this loathsome, wretched, bog ridden company.

I am an hour in and I remain unable to concoct anything worthwhile about these characters beyond vague, lacklustre and vapid one or two word descriptions. I could list a fact or two about each character, but these facts are devoid of any substance and personality. Everything feels contrived, as though it was churned out of a box ticking vat and designed solely to adhere to a corporate quota, as opposed to being written by genuine zest brimming impassioned developers. The only character with a shred of personality is wholly due to the talent of the voice actress portraying her, whose voice acting is commendable and worthy of a Grammy award when placed in juxtaposition to the urine streaked script.

And that is omitting the rampant political pandering, that is plucked from the writers innermost, zealous gripes with society and used to batter and maul the player into agony stricken capitulation with. I remain bewildered as to why the lead writers to Dragon Age Veilguard would feel compelled to impose modern day ideologies and terminology into a fantasy setting, rife with eldritch machinations of cataclysmic and calamitous woe. An immediate example, that I can recall derives from an obligatory cutscene featuring a dinner betwixt the Qunari companion Taash, her mother and yourself. During this dinner scene, Taash immediately informs her mother that she is a non binary transgender, and at her mother desire in attempting to rationalise her daughter's perceived identity, Taash lashes out and lambasts her mother for not stringently kowtowing to her arguably ludicrous approach to the conversation. Later on in the story, another cutscene, occurring under coercion, emerges where a bronze pigmented swashbuckler named Isabela, publicly flagellates herself afore the party and performs a number of pushups, whilst all in attendance indifferently observe. This self flagellating ritual of humiliation is prompted because Isabela erroneously refers to Taash as a female, which she is. Naturally, these two scenarios featured above are inherently ridiculous and detract from any semblance of credibility in the story for two reasons.

Firstly, these cutscenes, which to reiterate are not voluntary, where pronouns are bandied and pushups of ignominy occur, are conducted in a setting where the entire land is riven by war, hamlets are set ablaze, lowly peons are dragged away into decrepit burrows to be sacrificed and the nobles enter insidious, clandestine covenants with apparitions of dusk. It is bewildering to contemplate, even momentarily, that pronouns would be acknowledged, let alone be a central plot point in a companions story, whilst the very whims of fire and war ravage the countryside.

Secondly, the identical modern day terminology, proclaimed by Slaneesh enthralled vermin in the modern day, is used in the exact same framework for this fantasy setting. Vernacular such as 'non binary' and 'pronouns' are perpetually repeated in this fictional expanse, being used in an identical manner from what you'd anticipate from a newly indoctrinated, freshly independent adolescent, whose since moved into a university dorm, occupied by three Asiatics and several acolytes of the fermented, malaise ridden, six coloured rainbow. You would presume that the writers, knowing that this is a conspicuous, clearly defined fantasy setting, with a distinct subset of lore, history, culture and norms, would at minimum have the ingenuity to interpose a unique parlance into the game, converting the colloquial LGHDTV orientated phrases into something that is less jarring in contrast to the rest of the setting. An example of what I am alluding too is depicted in Veilguard, when Taash's mother attempts to rationalise her daughter's newfound delusions by referring to the Qunari dialect and customs, yet inexplicably the writers decided to never dwell on that again and reverted back to modern day terminology that denigrates the overarching lore featured in the story. Essentially, if the writers made the effort to morph terms such as 'non binary', 'pronouns' and the idea of transgenderism into something that was at least vaguely applicable to the setting depicted, it may have at the very minimum been rationalised and possibly accepted as reasonable by the most devout of fans. Albeit, currently, this flagrant insertion of the writers personal gender identity is now subject to ridicule and mockery, and has become a catalyst for one of the games most glaring flaws, with that being the poorly woven, uninspired writing, likely derived from tortured interns, fortune cookies, Tumblr blogposts and Discord vent channels.

Summarily, as an avid Dragon Age fan, I’ve seen fanfics treat the lore with more respect. Major reveals that should have been memorable, devolve into shallow manifestations of the writers unintelligible and rainbow encoded balderdash. It is blatantly apparent that fifteen years of punctilious world building has been set alight and morphed into a charred wreckage, a remnant of its former glory, and despite my respect for the initial instalments in this series, it's equally clear that avarice and rampant political lecturing, that comes across as simultaneously condescending and pandering in nature, has ultimately undermined the quality of Veilguard and caused it to besmirch the otherwise pristine reputation fostered over a decade and a half by the previous entries. Candidly, Veilguard does not even remotely do justice to the legacy cultivated and as a result will likely fade into obscurity, being regarded as the black sheep of an otherwise enthralling setting.

I can rebuild Skalitz now.

This game *cough cough OVERPRICED TROY DLC cough cough" is not worth purchasing or playing - certainly not in its current state and to be perfectly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ honest, the suicidal rhetoric coming from the company as a whole is disgusting - the idea that "providing an opinion is a privilege" is completely backwards - all because they feel entitled to good reviews and can't seemingly handle criticism from their player base.

Creative Assembly needs to remember that "good reviews are a privilege, earned by creating good products that are engaging and build upon previous titles and expand on lessons learned from before"

The sad thing is that the developers themselves are more than capable of producing better products than this ♥♥♥♥ they've served up with this - just look at the Warhammer Total War Trilogy - whilst not every historical lovers cup of tea, was arguably one of the best Total War games released.

I wonder if they just thought people forgot how Troy was allegedly supposed to be a 3 part game series - can't help but feel that Pharaoh was meant to be part 2 of that thread and frankly considering they left the development up to the group that created Troy makes this feel more so to be the truth of the matter.

Worse still the fact that they cannot delineate between legitimate feedback stemming from their audience and review bombing and the fact that they seem to believe that any negative feedback is stemming from a malicious place is just insanity.

I will be requesting a refund for this game - I have lost all confidence in this company - if I could request a refund for all the titles I have purchased previously, then I would - how dare this company think they can curtail the voice of their audience and then think they are owed purchases and a player base.

Dear Creative Assembly, PR team and Sofia - kindly go suckle upon a Leprechaun.

Once, when the aeons were just, and years flowed and twirled amongst my fervour infused mind, I was optimistic. I held the distinct, irreproachable belief that the Total War series, churned out en masse by Creative Assembly would remain eternally paramount, as a beacon of ingenuity and innovation for the masses to peruse and enjoy in the decades to ensue. Yet gradually, all began to falter, withering away at the seams.

Rome, Medieval II, Total War Shogun 2, even Total War Empire, the very foundational elements of this revered series became sullied, corrupted by a loathsome tide of Saesneg despots, who malignantly executed, in sanguinary and wholly macabre ways, the visionaries and old guard of Total War. Then, with the dregs of subdued and cowed veteran game developers, who once cultivated a tangible spark of joy, cowed, they wrested control of the helm and emerged from their bogs, with the intent to irrevocably besmirch and mar this cherished series.

Without a moment to brace for impact, newfound games bearing the Total War label began to morph into existence afore our very eyes. Troy, Warhammer III, Three Kingdoms, all hastily concocted and created with sinister magicks and eldritch rituals, involving child sacrifice, yellow fever fuelled rituals and English themed Jubilee's that drove many a man mad. While these newfound games weren't intrinsically atrocious, they were bereft of originality, lacking in uniqueness that propelled their forebearers to greater feats. In sooth, they were ghastly, abominable dregs, plucked from the recesses of avarice that lay nestled in the open maws of the unfathomable abyss. Genuine gameplay and innovation was substituted for an obsessive dependency on nostalgia, coupled in with the inexplicably paramount patience of fans.

Albeit, when morale was virtually extinguished, and men teetered along the precipice of desertion and mouth frothing rage, a howitzer shower of DLC descended from the Heavens, raining down carnage and calamity upon what little remnants of good faith and fealty remained amongst those who once stood valiant and resolute. Soon many loyal and steadfast fanatics, who clung to the past, began to reach the epiphany that their adored series was nowt more than a smouldering ruin. It was as though the mirage had lifted, evincing the charred wreckage and desolation that had been occurring surreptitiously for many a long year. The Daughters of Mars DLC we could abide, Warhammer II we could enjoy, but soon our tolerance, which had withstood all other trials and tribulations, was soon to ebb away and wane in its entirety. Only until the newfound conniving tyrants of Creative Assembly hefted up high the craniums of the old developers, and scrawled crude sigils and vulgar speech into their festering cadavers did we emerge enraged.

Yet despite these kobolds perpetuating their petulant, grievous slights against the legacy of Total War, taunting us further and heralding war, they see fit to drive the seax deeper, hoping to lacerate and leave in tatters any semblance of benevolence that remained in our hearts. They saw fit, in their infinite malice, to create a game related to Ancient Egypt, featuring a Nubian thrall on the front cover, feigning that Nubian's, with all of their lowly calibre, could possess the remotest ability to be a Pharoah, let alone masquerade as one.

This cannot be borne!

This is the most inane, grave and egregious slight that Creative Assembly has committed in the history of their conception. No term in the entirety of the Book of Grudges, or the great tome of jeers, can remotely conjure a description belaying the extent of this most despicable of jibes. They have denigrated not only their reputation for maintaining any regard for historical accuracy, but have simultaneously wrought ruination upon their honour and integrity. It has been blatantly established by the scribes of Cambria, that the Ancient Egyptians were descended from the Hellenists of archaic yore, insinuating that they bore traits reminiscent of Alexander the Great. An austere and august Welsh physiognomy, coupled with flaxen hair and cerulean eyes. It was this Alexander the Great, who bore not a shred of foul, Nubian ichor in his veins, who assembled the Welsh Greco throng, spurring them into a conquest that threatened to place the entirety of the known world under the yoke of Welsh dominion. It was Alexander the Great, not an uncouth Nubian, whose very Cymraeg fire and fervour, propelled him into tactician inspiried frenzy's, ushering an age of flame and war!

All who are sentient, men and squirrels alike, heed not the sychophant's who toil to preserve what little memories whisper in the morning breeze. They are nowt but cravens, who refuse to acknowledge that decimating the vestige of Total War that lingers, is necessary to preserve the monumental accomplishments of yore. While our actions may seem callous, they are wholly just. In smiting this beast, which bears only a faint similarity to its predecessor, we are ensuring that the past remains untainted and pure, a glimmering virtue that shines with a radiant lustre, and enlivens the reverie and exultation we once felt at the mere sight of immense throngs combating one another upon the fields of glory and valiance.

When first gazing upon the Store page of Rust, I was enraptured by delusions of grandeur, revolving around navigating a desolate isle, teeming with quarrelsome creatures, that sought to tear the very appendages from my hearty frame. While I once naively toyed with ideas of leading a throng of warriors to hold uncontested dominion over an island, enthralling the unwary and instilling Welsh valour into the loyal denizens of my internally conjured fantasies, I must confess that my illusions were shattered by the harsh reality that is Rust.

The entire premise of Rust is one of survival, an inane psychological design to gauge the limits of man’s threshold for stress, paranoia and brutality. A sphere of unhinged delusion, where you are coerced to wander aimlessly throughout bogs, radiated patches of greenery and derelict dwellings, until you scavenge enough debris to form a gremlin’s caricature of an abode. In the entirety of my sojourning in Rust, I have ascertained that every single individual you will encounter is tainted with the malefic demeanour of an Englishman. They are unruly, unwashed, show animosity to all forms of life and exist for the sole purpose of invoking harm upon others.

Even the youth and womenfolk harbour a tainted, dilapidated spirit that must be quashed through flame and war, lest you wish for them to run amok, planting the seeds of dissent among the masses and conspiring eternally for your swift and gruesome downfall. If you ever espy one of these wretched kobolds, irrespective of how beguiling they may appear, you must resolve yourself to the grim task of beating them within an inch of their life and bestowing such manners of grisly torment that they quail and plead for clemency. Yet despite their pleas for supplication, the hand of justice must not abate, for every wound you incur, and every strike against the cranium that the bludgeon inflicts, you propel these wretched apparitions closer to the rays of God. Their shrieks of agony are merely indicative of the Devils wails, as his fingers, once enclosed around the necks of the unwary, are now being forcefully loosened, permitting these souls wading through the mires of damnation to finally envisage the light of Duna’s pious rays. In sooth, while some may callously refer to your acts of mercy as ‘torture’ and ‘abuse’, we of the erudite few, ken that such harsh actions emerge merely from the ashes of necessity.

I myself fondly recall holding these youth and maidens steady with an iron grip. There, my associates and I laid in wait, luring unsuspecting and virile youth, via sleeping bags, into spawning inside enclosed metallic cages, where we struck them until they were obedient enough to hearken to our every whim. Then we coerced these often bawling and shrieking adolescent children, into performing gruelling tasks of indentured servitude, hopping at our dictation and doing so with such eagerness, that one could only presume it was because they wished to be unbound from their fetters.

There was one lad, who was particularly loyal. A stout ginger, of 14 years. Initially, we lulled him into a false sense of security, with promises of firearms, ammunition and amicability, luring him ever closer to a gladiatorial pit we concocted for the uninitiated to duel each other with an assortment of hatchets, torches, clubs and swords. When this naïve fledgling stumbled upon the crux of our deceit, his destiny had emerged. We initiated the shaggy, crimson haired lad into the ways of conflict and flame and dubbed him by the sobriquet of ‘Waggles’, for his original epithet was ‘Timothy’, which we perceived as crude and bewraying lechery.

It shall be regaled in the scriptures of yore, that Waggles spent the remainder of his days as an austere champion of the arena, where he engaged in bouts of glory against various thralls, that we held under duress and offered the privilege of freedom if they slew our esteemed paladin. Yet none triumphed against him, for with every pugilist and unruly ragamuffin, brimming with ferocity, he slew with wanton abandon and utter ease. Thus, after two dozen cadavers lay strewn in his wake, we saw fit to release Sir Waggles into the wilds, a land he eternally coveted to capriciously frolic about upon.

This decision was determined, because although Waggles’ heart was once as dark as his pigment, through the seax he emerged as a paragon of morality. Instilled with the virtues of the Welsh, of honour, integrity, dignity and the ability to resist and fend back all manners of insidious temptation. In sooth, he was reborn, resurrected, with his will tempered through trials and tribulations, which many men would quiver and quake afore. Yet he, despite all manners of adversity remained robust and resolute, roaring defiantly against the horde of vermin that challenged him and met their untimely demise.

Earnestly I cherish the memory of rescuing this stripling lad from the clutches of depravity, and many more did I extricate from the perils of debauchery. Thus, I must sincerely appreciate the opportunity that arose, via this game, in being able to enact my visions and desires to liberate those shackled by the faux notions of avarice, wroth and sloth, permitting them to instead travel down into the realm of fortitude and glory.

If you are looking for a new job, Lost Ark is for you! Unlike a normal job where the employer pays you, Lost Ark gives you every opportunity to pay them instead. Excited yet? You'll be expected to donate thousands of dollars AND hours of your life to this new job! Wait, there's more! If you don't, nobody will take you seriously enough to let you do the best end-game content. That's right, not only does this job demand your every waking moment and spare cash, you'll also experience gate-keeping and toxicity on scales you've never before dreamt of! Don't wait, apply today!

Snarky sarcasm aside... This is a pay to win game. That is, they do everything possible to make free to play as absolutely miserable as they can. They want to get your cash, and everything about the game is geared for exactly that. However, even if you pay you'll find it's never enough, unless you've spent thousands. I'm serious, it's beyond insanity.

I have over 2k hours of play time in, and let me tell you: it's just a non-stop rat race of the same monotonous content. You will have to do the same content so much and so often, if you make a mistake or aren't over-geared for it, other players will express their great displeasure at having to spend an extra 45 seconds of their life in that miserable place because YOU screwed up. It's a toxic community, made so by a toxic game system, which itself is framed around a toxic and predatory monetization engine.

The only reason to play this game is for the Legion Raids, which is the only content that provides any actual challenge to players. All the other content is just a grind-fest, some of which is mandatory to get your maximum amount of weekly gold, item currencies, and upgrade tokens that will ensure your further progression. Speaking of progression, you have to advance at least 6 characters in this game, or you'll never keep up the gold generation/farming needed to sustain end-game participation on just 1 character. Which means you'll have to spend a lot of time and resources on those extra characters too. The grind-god is never satisfied.

You'll be spending A LOT of time obtaining currencies, and spending A LOT of currency to progress these alts as well as your main characters to ensure you can get gold. What is gold good for? The Auction House. Upgrade items and gear. Perhaps more importantly, you can convert gold into Blue Crystals. That part is important because Blue Cyrstals are the only way you can obtain Pheons.

What the heck are Pheons? They are a required currency when buying gear and upgrades from the Auction House to wear on your characters. The gear you wear is what determines your item level. After you obtain the gear, the chance you'll have to upgrade it will be very low - at the highest levels, less than 1% chance per upgrade attempt, with each attempt costing tens of thousands of gold in materials. Your item level is what determines what raids and other content you can participate in. So, Pheons and Blue Crystals are essentially a pay-to-win currency that severely stifles free-to-play progression.

How do you get Pheons? You have to buy them from the in-game marketplace with blue crystals. How do you get blue crystals? By spending real cash, or sacrificing massive amounts of the gold you made that week to exchange said gold for blue crystals, just to exchange the crystals for pheons. Every time you exchange one currency for another, the game taxes you through horrible conversion rates or artificially inflated pricing directly for cash.

Of course, many players elect to bypass months of grinding altogether by going to 3rd party gold sellers, who operate swarms of bots on every server. These bots have one goal - farm gold. Unfortunately, this has ruined the economy for anyone who doesn't buy gold, and unforgivably, SmileGate / Amazon have been doing the bare minimum necessary to counter the issue. It really seems to me they have zero ability to control their own in-game economy, and if you aren't a long-time player of MMOs/RPGs let me just say that this is A MAJOR red flag. Buying a solid piece of equipment from the auction house will often cost around 100 gold (which is nothing) but it will cost you 25+ pheons, which is worth about $10 USD.

You see the problem yet? Even if you had millions of gold, it's not the gold that is worth anything - it's their cash shop pheon and blue crystal currencies that hold real value. Also, throw away any thoughts of making millions of gold easily because the game caps you to less than 50k gold PER WEEK, that is unless you sell your time (and have a grossly over-geared character) to bus lower level players through raid content they no longer have the patience or brain cells for doing themselves in normal groups. Time, blue crystals, and pheons are the real currencies of this game.

Which is another point of contention - worthless currencies. There are no less than 2 dozen currencies in this game, at the bare minimum. Maybe as many as 60? I'm not sure anyone has counted all of the tokens, coins, and other crap you need to collect to spend at vendors, but it's just stupid. Almost all of them are unnecessary.

There are so many negatives about this game, such as the card collection system, the tedious and monotonous "I'd rather watch paint dry" progression quests and the hellish time-sink of performing those 6 different times on alt characters, the toxic community that gate-keeps every raid or event you'll try to participate in, and so much more.

Avoid this game like it's a grizzly bear.

12 years and multiple spinoffs, service titles, and threats to Capcom to get this thing made, and it's a let down after all is said and done. Itsuno began his journey to make DD2 by threatening to quit if he couldn't make DMCV and DD2. He proceeded to release DMCV and it was well received among its fanbase with DD fans watering at the mouth for the next entry. Finally, it's revealed the game was under development since 2019 when DMCV was finished and the game proceeds to release into a state I didn't think was possible.

Ignoring the fact REengine chugs to a crawl since it can't handle a load of AI running around a giant world with no loading screens, because Itsuno just needed to have every city/settlement open instead of instanced like the first game. Ignoring the fact the company thought selling more useless MTX over the years was a viable business option in lieu of causing outrage. Or Ignoring the fact someone thought it would be good design to reset your portcrystals you placed all back to storage every playthrough unlike the first one. This game has too many design problems to list.

The biggest issue by far is the enemy variety and the placement of said enemies. There's 5 less enemies then vanilla DD1 even when you split up the recolors and edits. There is barely any variety in the placement of these spawns and you end up just fighting goblins, harpies, saurions, and bandits for 70% of the game. All the interesting enemies are placed near the end of the game for some magical reason. To make matters even worse you cannot walk and enjoy the scenery without running into another group of them every freaking 15 seconds on the road. As soon as you finish one fight and move not even 30 feet another repetitive fight occurs and it never stops when traveling anywhere on the road. There's never any interesting exploration or any good experience with said exploration when you are getting bombarded by copy pasted goblin, harpies, wolves, and bandits most of your time. The only real exploration to be had is exploring dungeons, but most of them just use the exact same cave design and fill them with the same handful of mob enemies you fought 3000 times already. Very seldom will you find any dungeons that contain a boss in them or anything interesting like unique armor, just more hairspuds/potion/food/gear worse then what you have on/etc. The icing on the cake is the size of the map, while being much bigger, also compounds the above issues by making trekking great distances to keep fighting the same enemies constantly, make escort missions and fetch quests a chore. Did I mention the main quest line is the most uneventful experience in the world? There's no variety, it's just paced poorly with constant running around Vernworth back and forth while sneaking/running straight in front of blind guards in the palace who will never arrest you for trespassing unless you talk to them. The game only deviates from this formula slightly when you ignore the main quest and try to run to unexplored areas, but like I said before. It's all nonexistent, and most if not all quests are located inside settlements/cities with a couple anomalies. You'll be stuck in the city until it tells you to go to Bakbattahl/Kuwait and then you'll have a sense of Ahh, before being crushed under the weight of more copy pasted enemies with a different color/weakness. More wolves, goblin edits, harpies, and bandits once again.

Combat has taken a massive downgrade or just never improved at all in the last 12 years. You have less skills, less slots for skills, vocations removed and just deviated instead of improved, and the most useless vocation ever introduced in a video game since it relies almost entirely on your fumbling AI to actually do the damage. Sure you can do fun things like luring enemies off a cliff but it relies on a cliff being there in the first place and becomes useless against arena bosses. Just think resources could have been put into an advanced thief or archer vocation instead of developing a gimmick vocation. Climbing around a monster feels like no improvements have been made whatsoever from the first game, nothing more to say there.

Speaking of poor AI, let me introduce you to the most suicidal AI in the world. Your pawns will fall off cliffs, stay on top of cliffs, teleport their dead bodies around, stand in AOE, stand near telegraphed explosions, you name it. They will actively make your experience worse if you are having them interact with the environment or fighting spell casters. Remember the constant fighting you'll be doing every 20 seconds? They'll keep trying to high five or fist bump you at the end of every encounter which makes your character stop to do the animation. This would be perfectly fine to do in a more grand situation like defeating a boss with a health bar, but it's every single encounter. It's mind numbingly repetitive, just like the constant combat encounters with repetitive enemies. The entire game still uses the same exact same NPC interaction system from the first game, where you just give gifts to get their affection to max while they spew one line at you. No improvement or change from the first game again.

I won't speak on the story because it's subjective, though the new Dragon is a massive let down from the first game. In the first game, he bashes through walls and destroys everything while you jump on his back out of desperation to fight him and he tries to eat you while you're falling and then you end up in a random arena where you end up finishing him.
In the sequel, he just says "Hey bro just get on my back, I'll take you to the arena for free and give you a lengthy speech on motivation and some deep behind the scenes crap and I'm completely harmless during this entire scene. Hey, what are you doing with that sword?"

I will say the endgame equivalent compared to Everfall is a huge downgrade despite working on a larger scale. It's a one and done experience and there's no buildup or any interesting encounters like the Ur dragon. Some materials you need for upgrades from bosses that only spawn once every 2 weeks like the Medusa. You end up killing her in 10 seconds, then teleporting just to spam sit on the bench 56 times to do it again. Itsuno stated something about players having a bit more diversity in regards to end game armor, but it just ends up that each job only has one set of gear that's best alongside a single weapon that's best. So everyone is just running around in the same armor, but now one per vocation.

I understand people just wanted more Dragons Dogma, but waiting 12 years for a downgrade is not more Dragon's Dogma, it's less. There's a new issue that's popped up over the last 10 years where true sequels are not made as much anymore, because of increasing dev cycles between releases. In the past, you would release a game, then for the sequel recycle most of the assets for it and add more and improve on it, so the sequel would have more content. Nowadays, sequels like DD2 start out with everything needing to be made from scratch, even something like a straight port to a new engine of already made art assets like the Monster Hunter series does, eats up dev time and content size, so the end product suffers for it despite being a sequel. So even when some assets are reused like most of DD2's monsters, the game still has less content then the first game, just because all those monsters had to be ported to REengine. Now people disappointed in DD2's content are looking to the future for some magic expansion addon similar to Dark Arisen. But it's never going to fix the base game's content or change some foundational issues in it like the good design of spamming you with enemies every 15 seconds or many mechanics being stuck in 2012. I feel like Itsuno has never actually seen his vision come true with how much is missing from this sequel.

Typing the name of certain "offensive" West African nations, with no other context or words needed, will see your account banned for 15 years. And no, I'm not talking about trying to emulate the N-word, or calling someone a name that looks like it. Ni*eria is apparently a racist word according to DE's censor bot. The name of an actual, real world nation that, yknow, has real living people. If you live there, you cannot answer anyone asking where you are from. You will be banned instantly for 15 years if you say the name of your home.

If you appeal this ban through support, expect several months of delay before being accused of being a racist by someone who didn't even read the appeal message, and having the ban put on your account's record forever so that a single transgression will get you a permaban with no appeal next time.

Also know that the T-word will get you a permaban, even though there are literal, actual traps like death lasers and landmines in the game. Discussing them and strategies to avoid them, or warning people they exist, is a no-no. Instant ban. All in the name of preventing transphobia, instead you aren't allowed to use certain words at all.

The only solution you will ever be given to this problem, is don't communicate with other players. Ever. At all. In a multiplayer game. This is unacceptable.

Remove chat, or ease up, DE. Choose. Because as it is now, it's not fair to the people who get false-positived then blamed by your support staff, called "bigots" and then effectively told to ♥♥♥♥ off.

This report is months after, it did not just happen, so it's not even that I'm actively pissed. I'm wanting to warn people that this ♥♥♥♥ happens, and to not bother with this game until Region Chat's instant ban protocol for a single word is gone.

I went to eat at my favorite restaurant the other day. You know what I ordered? I got a mouth watering hamburger. I waited 20 minutes for it to arrive and they gave me only the damn buns.
I asked them, "What the hell?!"
The waiter responds calmly, "Sir, you must wait the rest of the burger to arrive."
I told him in a annoyed tone, "Fine."
As the evening progressed, I kept getting bits and pieces of the burger. First the lettuce. Then the cheese. Once the patty finally came, they started taking parts like the cheese and the top bun from me.
I ask the waiter in a pissed tone, "What the ♥♥♥♥! Where are my top bun and cheese going?"
He told me, "Since your plate lacks sufficient room and you are no longer enjoying them, we are removing them from your plate."
Now, I'm stuck here with parts of a burger and throughout my service I get different types of the same toppings. First it was romaine lettuce, then it was iceberg. I get basic white bread buns. Now, I have brioche. I have lost all sense of time and understanding of what my meal should look like. The patty has grown cold, and I swear I heard it mooing from how underdone half this ♥♥♥♥ is coming out. I don't know why I stay here paying an annual subscription for new burger parts I can't even enjoy for more than a passing moment at best. The restaurant laid off 8% of their staff due to missing projections by 45% and management is the only thing on this green Earth straying further from God everyday.
I've spent 3.7k hours waiting on this finished product, and the only light at the end of the tunnel is this thing the kitchen is calling, "The Final Patty," whatever the ♥♥♥♥ that means. There is one last hope to bring this meal to a bearable conclusion, and I will jump ship if I lose another ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ piece of cheese for another cheaper kind along the way.
My final warning to anyone wanting to visit this place. DON'T!!! Save yourself while you have your autonomy intact. This burger will be the death of me. I can't take it anymore. I feel the walls of establishment shaking from disrepair. This little song and dance with my waiter is driving me insane. My exhaustion in this review of this putrid establishment is audible in writing. This ruse is impossible to maintain so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bye bye.

Requires you to disable HVCI which protects your Kernal memory from having malicious code inserted. I wouldn't recommend playing this game, there is no reason to force you to disable this function unless you were trying to do something malicious.