Simple but entertaining 40K story, fun visceral combat, gameplay that works well for solo or co-op, a great looking game with a lot going on in its backgrounds that I feel like is also one of the best running big budget releases I've played in some time but has a completely forgettable PVP mode and the Chaos forces just aren't as fun to fight as the Tyranids.

Space Marine 2 is a third person action game that has you controlling Space Marines as they fight off a Tyranid invasion and an incursion by the Tzeentch serving traitor chapter The Thousand Sons with their cultist and demon allies. You are armed with a primary, secondary, and melee weapon often fighting hordes of weaker enemies supported by a few larger and more damaging opponents. Using the right weapon or melee combos for horde clearing before focusing down on the stronger enemies with higher damage attacks and stuns or putting them down early from range (which can defeat the weaker enemies as well in the Tyranid's case) is what you will mainly be doing. You are encouraged to remain in the thick of the fighting because as you take health damage a portion of that lost health can be regained by doing damage back to your enemies, executing stunned and weakened foes regenerates armor while also providing an often satisfying visceral execution, and using your melee weapons to block and parry enemy attacks will not only stop the damage but put enemies in a state where you can quickly draw and fire a shot at their heads with your sidearm for high damage or an instant kill, a perfectly timed dodge can also open up these headshots. The entire campaign, apart from the brief prologue, is playable in three player co-op as you are always fighting alongside your two otherwise AI controlled allies. The environments are large and detailed with a lot going on in the background as you can often witness hordes of enemies in the distance often fighting guardsmen or amongst themselves. I did find fighting the Chaos forces to be less fun than fighting the Tyranids. While still enjoyable, it just becomes less visceral, they seem to react less visually to getting hit, their counterattacks seem more difficult to predict as they come from more docile looking enemies, and the execution moves are a bit more repetitive. The maneuverability or doing things like burrowing underground that a Tyranid can do while fighting you is also a lot more visually interesting than how the Chaos Space Marines are more likely to just practically stand still until taking some hits before instant teleporting somewhere else.

Narratively Space Marine 2 continues the story of the previous game, set 100 years later. Titus' has been resigned to the Ultramarines after spending the past century (and prologue) with the Deathwatch. The story follows a somewhat similar style to the first game where you are paired with two others with one being more open to you and one less trusting and more focused on following the Codex where Titus continues to view it as being more open to interpretation while his hidden past causes mistrust. The story is quick to get and keep you in the action, doing what it needs to progress the story and creates and wrap up some mostly brief character narrative threads without spending too much time on growth, reflection, or exploring the wider setting focusing more on the entertaining spectacle of the battles. One more unfortunate aspect I found was that while you do run into some Cadia guardsmen multiple times throughout the game that are able to show some personality and world design by having them burning bodies, listening to a speech from a Commissar, executing deserters or traitors, feeling the effects of the Chaos force's illusions and warp energy, etc the other Space Marines apart from the main (helmet off) character's are them at their most boring most of the time, fodder, background dressing, or a few generic lines that don't show much personality. A game primarily about the Space Marine makes most of them the least interesting part of the world, which from reading some of the books, is not how they have to be. It would have been nice to see them used a bit more before the game's final section and it was kind of odd that you are put in command of five others and the other three just get sent off to die or do nothing instead of being one of the two three person squads you play as in the co-op Operations mode. Your moments of reprieve from battle are brief and in those moments there can be a bit too much
"I don't think I trust you."
"That is your right, Brother."
"Perhaps you can tell us more of your past to remove his doubt."
"This conversation is over."
It becomes more entertaining and better at showing the world to listen in on the background conversations of the serfs, servitors, and Adeptus Mechanicus members you walk by on your way to your next mission.

The three person co-op based Operations mode greatly increases the playtime of what would have been a good but short single player experience. Each of the six missions has you taking on the roll of one of two three person Space Marine squads with five of the missions being directly related to the single player story with these two teams taking on different objectives than Titus' group simultaneously. While you are controlling named characters that have a few repeated dialogue for narrative sections you can choose between six different classes to play as with each having their own weapons, class perks, special ability, and some voice lines you can have them say specific to their class. For the most part, it just plays like the single player game with less cutscenes and more customization options, the abilities offered by the classes combined with the perks you can get for your class and guns tends to make the mode more mechanically fun to play than if you were playing through the single player game solo or in co-op though you have less scripted moments of spectacle. The objectives even offer some randomization where you might have different side activities to complete or different areas to defend or interact with in each match. This mode can be played with bots if you start a match before connecting with anyone, if someone leaves mid match and are replaced by a bot, or with an option added to create a private lobby for just yourself or for two people.

The controls for the game are one of its weaker areas. The default set controls for the keyboard and mouse is a nonsensical mess that they clearly didn't care about and is likely going to be difficult to make work well unless you have at least 3-4 extra buttons on your mouse. On a controller things are easier to get into (though I will never understand the Dark Souls style right bumper as melee in an action game) but your options to change things are more limited and the poor auto aim can make more precise shots, especially when trying to play as a sniper class in Operations or Eternal War more difficult than it should be.

There are some connections issue, I've never had a problem once in a game (even a few matches showing a red connection warning actually worked fine) but it will just frequently stop looking for a third or sometimes any teammates until you back out to the main menu/different mode and back to Operations/restart the game. There is a fairly thoughtlessly implemented system where you can only have one of each class on each team for some reason, so you might be the only class you have that is level or gear appropriate for a difficulty type only for it to throw you into a game in progress and tell you to change your class. Certainly less annoying than Darktide's problems at launch, but these problems combined with some long load times to get into the game, connect to the servers, and load into a match make what would be -

Full Review: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Kennan/review/1981129/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89sundROmpQ
Screenshots: https://x.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1840469060494213592

Dragon's Dogma 2 does interesting things in a world that is enjoyable to explore but never really goes far enough in any area to be exceptional and has confused people into thinking it is more unforgiving than it is.

You play as the Arisen, a character meant to battle a certain dragon and rule one of the main kingdoms while also having control over characters called pawns. Pawns are warriors that are said to have no personality or much in the way of reactions to others but travel around fighting hostile monsters, who exist to obey the orders of the Arisen, and who when killed seem to be transported to another place where they might can reappear later through riftstones (never mind that narrative, world design, and mechanics completely clash here as the personality thing is clearly not true and even narratively them going around themselves often defending people doesn't fit that either and it makes even less sense later on that they might allow themselves to be attacked or captured and moved around by random people, or what in the world Pawn Guilds are if pawns were incapable of doing or acting without the current Arisen). You create a main pawn alongside your character who is always with you and you can take two other pawns created by other players or by Capcom to join you in your journey. Pawns can play as six of the game's ten classes, have one of four different personality types that change what they say and some of their combat and exploration AI, and can be given one of a few different skills that might allow them to do things like speak another language so you can talk to certain NPCs or know the locations of rare crafting materials. As you travel the pawns will speak to you and amongst themselves depending on things like their personality, your location, the active quest or world situation, and their class choice which is nice but it does become clear fairly quickly that having some more conversation variety would have been a good thing. Pawns might congratulate or high five you as you walk by them after a battle. They can pick up materials and open chests on their own (with you having access to their inventories, though you can not take the equipment of your guests pawns into your own inventory). They almost always do a good job in battle, in navigating the environment, will often prioritize healing you or carrying another downed pawn to you to be revived, and in general, are probably a hell of a lot more competent than the average PlayStation stoner who doesn't even remember where he is in real life that you often get stuck with if you were playing with real people instead of NPCs.

The entire world not revolving entirely around the player character is felt is felt at times and leads to more interesting world, quest, and combat design than it otherwise would have. Certain quests will give you different outcomes where characters can be saved or killed and character plots can succeed or fail. Characters in the world are each named and do their own thing throughout the day and night and if killed will remain dead unless you revive them with some slightly rare items that you can find in the environment. Pawns aren't the only characters who fight monsters as there are patrols of soldiers and mercenary/adventures that you can frequently run into on the roads fighting enemies and towns themselves can even be attacked where people and soldiers will join in fights against them. At one point a dragon landed in the capital city and was fight be me, my three pawns, another pawn or two who was walking through town but not in my party, a group of soldiers, and random people in the area who either fled or joined in the fight with it ending with the body of the dragon laying upright against a building with its wings spread out over merchant shop stalls, a guard standing on top of its body, and a random passerby stopping to ask "what happened here". And while NPCs can die, the game doesn't make it an overly annoying feature where everyone but you is pathetic, normal soldiers can often hold their own fairly well and do damage to enemies. You won't walk into town one day to find half the people killed because two goblins entered the area.

Fast travel is less prevalent than in most games like this. Early on you will likely need to make trips walking to places and making use of campfires to rest to heal you and your pawns but you can also pay minor fees to ride oxcarts to larger towns that allow you to sleep in the back and hit a button to skip the journey (or to at least move on to a spot where you were attacked before you can get back on and continue on your way). Two of the towns have a portcrystal that you can travel to with the use of a rarer to find and expensive to buy early on ferrystone that will transport you, your pawns, and anyone following you for a quest or escort to that area. As you play you can find or be rewarded with mobile portcrystals that you can place in most areas that give you new fast travel ferrystone locations. The second half of the map has passenger and cargo lifts that go over areas of the environment that have to be cranked as you go by yourself or one of your pawns, this is slower going and frequently might see you attacked by flying enemies (who might grab and throw someone out of it likely to their death) and also requires to to wait to wheel a cart back to your location if it isn't at the spot you are trying to leave from but it is still a way to speed up travel a bit and something different for the game's world.

Quest design can be fairly interesting as it often goes beyond just going to a spot and killing a monster or collecting an item and giving it to someone. There are multiple quests with different outcomes depending on who you give certain information to or how you interreacted with a certain scene or who you agreed with, you might be able to make forgeries of certain items to get a reward from multiple people or to trick people who want something that will be a danger to them (in one cases trying to pass a forgery off to a merchant that might very well know better creates another set of unique circumstances), you might have to dress in a disguise for some, not entirely well done, but different quests involving subterfuge and locating information. There a series of quests that can relocate people to other areas or even free a minor village from a corrupt overseer that has you fighting guards with them after finding their confiscated weapons or buying them new ones before they all relocate to another town. The only disappointing thing with the quest design is that there aren't more of them to give a bit more life to the larger number of named NPCs in the towns and there are certain things you can do that seem like they might lead to more quests later in another area or help an important character who might come back later for new quests or to aid you but this just doesn't really tend to ever happen.

For all the people saying how complicated and difficult the game is, it ends up being very fair and helpful. Your allied pawns are strong and usually perform their roles very well and at times can be almost as strong as you (better if it's a sorcerer with the Meteoron spell). You can lose maximum health over time but this is a fairly slow process and there are camping spots to rest all over the place. Pawns can lead you to quest locations and goals if you take one with you that has done the quest already with their own master. When it comes to upgrading equipment you get full access to your storage while doing it so you don't have to go collect needed items you already own. Money is easy to get rendering things like the fast travel ferrystones extremely easy to get at replenished item shops, oxcarts can easily be taken between different towns-

Full Review: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Kennan/review/1947267/
https://youtu.be/rSAcn3GG_p0?si=fi2Y3j1J1ui3eJ5w