Recent reviews by dold

I am having a blast with Wilds. I only got into Monster Hunter after running out of Dragon's Dogma to play, but the Wilds beta got me actually excited to play, and after finishing the "low rank" portion of the story and the game is now opening up a little bit, I'm ready to play it a lot more.

The story in a game like Monster Hunter Wilds really only needs to be functional: easy to follow, reasonable stakes, explain the world a bit, then get out of the way. Wilds mostly does that, but I think the cast does a great job taking characters that are somewhat cardboard cutouts with a boring script and elevating them above that. The pacing doesn't always pair well with the gameplay; some parts feel a bit like a boss rush, because Wilds stripped the slower aspects of what I experienced in MH: World, namely the monster tracking. The story is mostly you running into monsters and not really about picking up a trail of clues, followed by a fight. You do get some time to gather materials via conversations-while-on-mounts-moving-slowly, but the game also gave me a lot of potions and basic materials to start with. But worse for me, it meant that some of the monster reveal cutscenes did not play out as exciting as I hoped, because the rate at which these huge fights occurred was quite fast.

Think of your typical dungeon design, be it in Elden Ring, any Zelda game, whatever. The big fight happens at the end as a climax to the experience before pushing your out into a more mellow part of the game where you pick berries or throw chickens over fences. Monster Hunter Wilds has a lot of climaxes only really spaced out by a cutscene and any time you voluntarily spend away from the story. It is gameplay with no filler, for better and worse.

No complaints about gameplay at all. Maybe it's too easy, but difficulty's function is different from game to game, and I think in Monster Hunter serious challenge is best saved for later, when the story is mostly played out. What is more important to me is that the monsters are fun to fight, and I really enjoyed all of them and look forward to turning all of them into Charge Blades.

I'm not sure if this is my favorite game from Supergiant (I still love Transistor a lot), but it's definitely their best. They are very good at making these isometric punchy punch games and Hades is just the biggest one with the most stuff to do.

That's not on fire.

Dune: Imperium is kind of an absurdly good board game. With my IRL game groups I prefer the new D:I Uprising version, which makes a few tweaks that I prefer, but Uprising is only in my collection because how much I like regular D:I (Plus my most regular game partner owns all the regular stuff anyways, I don't need my own copy).

Dune: Imperium has a lot of elements, which forms one of the main compliments and complaints. There is a lot to consider - what cards to buy, if any at all, the timing of sending troops to the conflict (effectively an auction, which is my favorite kind of board game conflict), and where to send Agents. It's an engrossing puzzle and pretty tightly constructed.

However, the game's scope is not so grand that you can go deep into any given aspect of the game. Most commonly, this is a complaint about the deck-building portion. If you have played a deckbuilder (Slay the Spire, Dominion, Ascension, a million other games), you might be shocked how little time you have to deck build in Dune Imperium. A game is a maximum of 10 rounds, which means 10 fresh draws of five cards, and with a starting deck of 10 cards, you might only do 4-6 reshuffles to have a chance of drawing the cards you just bought. That is much less than a something like Dominion. Dune Imperium is also a bit more stingy about card draw, which plays into the fewer reshuffles.

My friend also complains about how it doesn't feel like a "Dune" experience, but he is also a big fan of the 6 hour, 6 player epic board game from 1980. I am too, but most of the time I'd rather play Imperium.

The best DLC they ever made, except for one thing. It is beautiful, epic in scope, the ending feels great, and Bungie has laid the groundwork for more stories to be told. There is still work to do. But for now, I have not felt so good about a conclusion in a long time. 10/10. Prismatic feels insane, new exotics are awesome, and the new destination is The Land of 10,000 Screenshots. Just incredible work.

Now for that one thing. For the first time, I could really feel parts of the campaign (not the main story, but many small moments involving supporting cast) hitting much differently depending on when you began playing Destiny. I am overall not upset that Bungie has vaulted old content - so much of it just does would not hold up, and they would require a massive amount of work to just be fun and make sense. But it does mean that if you only play Shadowkeep, Beyond Light, Witch Queen, Lightfall, and The Final Shape, you're going to feel some gaps. Nothing actually massive, but they will feel important; every now and then you will hear a voice and their words will ring differently to someone who didn't play the seasons.

To that, I recommend that, as you finish an expansion, learn about the seasonal stories in between the expansions, paying extra attention to the bits about Caital, Crow, and Mithrax. It will not take terribly long, and it is honestly the better experience in 2024 compared to if they kept it all in the game and you grinded repetitive quests designed to be played in small chunks over a couple months in a matter of days. Some of the emotional resonance for me came from hearing voices I've become so familiar with, hearing the same lines of dialog over and over again grinding seasonal content. The 2024 experience will be missing that feature, thank goodness.

Overall, do not worry that you cannot experience the entirety of Destiny. I am so glad that I (mostly) did, but I absolutely do not want to revisit the game structures of the past years, and you shouldn't either.

The adventure of a lifetime.

My ceramic son keeps falling out of the car.

After all these years, there is still some gaming magic only found in Half Life 2.

Absolutely incredible game. I look forward to my next trip through Ravenholm.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is a sequel to Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen. If you didn't play that, just know that DD is a very weird game compared to it's contemporaries. It's a unique flavor!
I got in a tough fight with a roaming dragon. After spending most of the healing items I brought on my journey, the dragon was on its last half of a health bar. The terrain made it tough, no cover from the fire attacks, and at that point I decided I just had to try and slay the dragon by myself instead of reviving my pawns. At that moment, a roaming ox cart and its security team comes to my rescue, keeping the dragon's attention occupied enough for me to finish the job up close.

If you want to wait for patches and/or mods to solve performance issues, go ahead, the game will be worth the slightly longer wait.

A lot hasn't changed from Dogma 1, so if you want to get a feel for how combat works and how the game handles save games, fast travel, storytelling, all of that got carried over from DD1 - go buy that for like three bucks. They are the kind of esoteric choices From Software made in their games in order to convey certain feelings and experiences. So don't expect to have an experience akin to Elden Ring, Skyrim, Elder Scrolls, or Dragon Age. Dragon's Dogma stands apart from them, and I love it for that.

The gold standard for RPGs. Over my time playing, I have imagined so many adventures, so many struggles, such drama, and how it's reflected on my character's lack of dental insurance. Game of the Year!