What Are You Playing: 9 Years since the Last Dragon Age

[Zevox]

Huh. So, turns out beating Stellar Blade came much sooner than I thought: just did it. Things proceeded pretty abruptly after a certain point, and the last few bosses were pretty steep difficulty spikes (though only the last one in a way I wasn't fond of).

Story-wise, yeah, it's not good. There's some ideas in there that would've had some potential in the hands of a better writer, but not with the execution as-is; and oh boy, does it fall apart at the ending. This is up there with Mass Effect 3 as far as the ending coming from nowhere and not making sense goes - though on the strangely plus side, since it doesn't make you care before getting there, that's less of a problem than it was with ME3.

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I really wish my guess about Mother Sphere being the final boss had been accurate, it would've been considerably more satisfying than the random mech.

Honestly, I had half a mind to tell Adam to shove it just because his whole "fuse with me" thing made no damn sense, but I figured that had to be the better ending considering the alternative was doing what Mother Sphere wanted. Wish the game would let me change my final choice there when I reload my completed file so I could fight the other final boss and see that ending without resorting to Youtube or a full second play-through though.

That said, the combat is definitely quite good, and gets better as the game goes on. If the game had a boss rush mode, I'd be quite eager to play that. Honestly, after finishing it, I now wish even more that the game had been a more Bayonetta/DMC-style game: taking its story less seriously and cutting the side-quests and few large maps in favor of more linear levels would play immensely to the game's strengths, as the best parts of the game (the stages leading up to the Alpha Naytiba fights) are already basically designed that way. It wouldn't be as good as Bayonetta/DMC even then, but that's a high bar to clear, so no shame there. And it would be a fair bit better. I'd be much more inclined to do a second play-through to try the New Game+ mode and hard difficulty, for sure.

As-is though, I'm probably done with it for now. Maybe some day I'll come back and replay it to see the other ending and try NG+/hard, but I'm not inclined to do so right now.