Took me an extra week to finish Unicorn Overlord. Wasn't expecting the game to be quite that dense, but I also took my time with it (I got obssessed at one point of beating all the collosseum battles while still 10+ levels below all the teams).
Finally got to start Dragon's Dogma II last night. Had a couple hiccups at first-- didin't realise how gimpy my character's knees would look while running, after a couple hours I decided to just restart fresh, only to realise there's no option to just start a new game from the main menu. So I had to quit the game and delete all save data, which luckily I hadn't done much anyway.
Definitely some notable gameplay differences from the first Dragon's Dogma, mostly that it feels more kinetic. I'm playing Thief for now until I unlock Mystic Spearhand, and my first thought was I'd try to abuse Biting Wind/Cutting Wind to get through hordes of enemies like the first game, but the first time I tried it I got immediately hit mid-action then stunlocked into oblivion. So I'm guessing it doesn't give you full invincibility frames like it seemed to before. Also I tried to leap-frog up the back of an ogre, but physics for some reason get really wonky when trying that and the character kind of floats/spins mid-air (like that shooting stars meme), before just falling down; but the manual climbing actually seems much faster than the first game so the leap-frogging isn't all that necessary anymore.
So outside of a few rough edges I'm absolutely loving it. The long-distance travelling doesn't bother me at all, I actually really embrace the ideas. I never felt like I was in need of ferrystones in the first game. The game made it clear you should plan your journeys accordingly so that's exactly what I did. Even moreso with this game, I love that it actually incentivises you to slow down and ride the ox-carts for long journeys. It makes the game world feel much more immersive, since it's literally giving you the opportunity to slowly soak in the environments which all look beautiful and detailed. These were the kind of things I imagined Cyberpunk 2077 would push, but when that game launched the train ride was literally just a loading screen; only recently did they add an actual train ride, but even that is basically just a glorified cutscene with no control or interactivity (basically the Mass Effect elevator but with a better view).
