Dragon’s Dogma 2

being almost 70 years old normally i cannot play games like this as my manual dexterity just is not on par. however having AI control my partner and my two hirelings allows me to form a well rounded party and when tough fights come they make up for any slack from me. i have over 240 hours in this game and have loved every minute of it. i wish there were more games like this for those of us with physical imitations. this game is completely playable as long as you have a sharp mind more than a sharp sword. Cudos to Capcom. other than thaty i will spend about 10 seconds on saying what every one else has. the graphics are stunning,the gameplay is smooth,the storyline is enticing for me a 11/10

Pros:
- The world looks amazing and stunning. It's huge!
- More options for fast travel, no spoilers, explore it!
- Multiple vocations (classes) than can be changed anytime in cities/villages.
- Combat is fluid, not clunky.
- Lots of items, there are things that can only be found in different places because it's like an exclusive.
- Option to buy stuffs for real money for players that don't want to grind. Everything can be achievable for free so you don't need to pay for it if you like grinding!
- Pawn system is fun, you can meet other players Pawns and when you dismiss them you can even give feedback and a gift to the other player.
- During a sale, it is definitely worth buying, you can have a lot of fun with Dragon's Dogma 2!
Cons:
- Optimization problems mostly in the cities.
- The variety of enemies can get pretty boring if you stay in the same area for long periods of time.
- The dialogues of the Pawns can be repeated several times within a short time, which can frustrate some players.
- Pawns roam the map and different Pawns may repeatedly try to stop you to introduce themselves to you to try to recruit them. Some people are bothered by this, but if you avoid them and not go close to them, this can be avoided.
- It has a hate train because of these: The microtransactions which is optional, bad launch and this is not a sequel of the first game, but rather a reboot. There are things that were in Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen that are missing from Dragon's Dogma 2.
Beside the problems Dragon's Dogma 2 has I really enjoy it's gameplay. Hopefully we'll get a DLC that fixes the existing issues and will arrive with a lot of new content. Thank you for reading!

Exploration? 10/10
Combat? 9/10
Quests? 3/10
Writing? 0/10
Performance? 4/10
There is not a single fun or engaging quest in this game and even the main quests consist of walking somewhere and reporting back, sometimes with unexplained game mechanics such as stealth which isn't really a thing in the game. Some quests just break if you don't do what the game expected you to do and either magically disappear from your quest log without warning or stick around basically forever despite you not being able to complete the quest at all.
Performance while exploring was fine for my Gaming Laptop with an RTX 3070 and intel i7, getting 59 - 60 FPS, but inside cities I was getting 15 - 30 FPS
The dialogue and story are incredibly bad, rarely making sense at all and entirely unintriguing.
Thankfully, however, the story and quests are maybe 10% of the game, if that. I remember 3 or 4 story quests that were actually necessary so you can technically beat the game in a few hours. I explored pretty much every corner after 78 hours of playing.
BUT the exploring and atmosphere during your travels is some of the best I've ever experienced. The limitations can be taxing if you're too used to the comfort of fast travelling anywhere and having a character that can carry the world in their item pouch but if you're willing to work with the limitations this game sets on you it will be an incredible experience. Having to decide how far you can go before having to return to a city or whether it's worth to set up camp to recuperate helps the player feel like a real part of this beautiful but dangerous world.
The enemy variety isn't huge but varied enough that it never bothered me.
TLDR: If you, like me, don't care about story or quests but do love exploring an intricate, beautiful, and atmospheric world with great combat that is hugely varied depending on your Vocation (class) I highly recommend Dragon's Dogma 2.
If you prefer story-driven games or put high value on quests then stay far, far away. Seriously, the worst quests I've ever experienced in a video game with writing you'd expect from a 15€ student's game project after which you'd feel robbed of said 15€.
Quick little edit regarding quests after being halfway through NG+ where I put more effort into trying to experience everything that isn't just exploration:
On my original playthrough, I seem to have missed pretty much all the decent quests due to not talking to the right people or not checking back enough with specific NPCs in far away towns so I pretty much only got the worst quests in the game. This essentially changes my opinion about quests from "worst quests I've ever experienced in a video game" to "the quests are fine but some of them are plain terrible".
Also, because there seem to be some people who question my recommendation of the game when I'm so overly negative in the review and Steam doesn't allow me to answer comments directly: Read the TLDR, it sums up my reasons for recommending the game overall and not recommending it to specific people.

I've tried to figure out if this game was a disappointment or not since it came out. A few people I know are pretty firmly in the camp of "yes it is" but I'm quite a bit more torn. In most respects, it is exactly what I expected from a sequel to Dragon's Dogma. The enemy variety is a bit better, the classes are interesting, the pawns are actually less annoying if you can believe that (they are still so annoying though) but is this really enough? I'm not sure, In my country of Canada the game is ninety five dollars. the game is $95. This videogame is five dollars short from being one hundred dollars. and on release I paid that (I didnt feel that bad because I had just gotten my tax refund, but still) Is it worth that? I dont think so. But did I enjoy this game? Yes, quite a lot. Is it repetitive? Yeah, it is, but having just replayed the first game, I felt massive improvements in nearly every single way. The combat is better, the variety of enemies is better, the skills are more interesting. The end game fell short. Its like a reverse Dragon's Dogma. The first game was just OK until the endgame where it becomes something much more, this game is good until the endgame where it falls flat and becomes less. I think this game did disappoint me. But only after 48 hours of playing it. I think thats a lot of value to get out of a game. But its still a bit of a sour aftertaste.

I was really on the fence if I should give a recommendation or not on this game. This is probably both one of the best and most frustrating gaming experiences I have ever had at the same time. I don't think I have experienced a product that is so impressive and at the same time so sloppy.
I absolutely adore the first Dragons Dogma and I actually replayed it again just prior to starting up Dragons Dogma 2. Upon playing the first Dragons Dogma I reflected again over how incredible immersive your companion Pawns where in how they commented on things in the environment in a context dependent manner.
After playing Dragons Dogma 2 though it is just so frustrating to feel like the Pawn behavior is a huge step back from the first game. They CONSTANTLY repeat the same dialogue lines over and over and over again, and most of it is even nonsense and non helpful, like telling you for the 1000 time that you can combine stuff when you are 100 hours into the game and have already done this 1000 times before. I keep saying shut the **** up in annoyance constantly. This never ever happened in the first game even after playing 100 hours and they never annoyed me.
It is really insufferable how much they repeat the same lines over and over again. I also find that there is much less context dependent comments on unique environmental features like in the first game, but that is less of an issue when compared to the constant nag. Also even the context of when they speak is extremely sloppy. Many times I make camp and 3 seconds after having camped some Pawn makes a comment on how we probably are not in need of camping just now. Or they ask if I need guidance to a cave when I stand 1 meter from the opening of it. It is constant and incredibly annoying.
It is such a shame because the game is incredible immersive in most other aspects but this completely and utterly ruin all that illusion of an immersive real world with these Pawns. There are other issues with the game, but for me this is really the main gripe.
Repeating dialogue is really an immersive killer in most games, but it is really critical here since having the Pawns behave in a natural manner is such a big part of the game and something that was really nailed in the first game and such an unique feature of what that game was and how it stood out from other. Just implementing some cooldown on how often dialogue can repeat would go a long way to making the Pawns feel less fake and artificial which is the complete opposite of what should be the goal here.
The game really feels like some masterpiece painting by a great artist and then some clowns come in and throw faeces all over it. The repeating dialogue almost single-handedly takes one of the most immersive worlds I have seen in a game and completely demolish it. Anyhow that is my main gripe.
Some other pros and cons though:
Pros:
- Extremely beautiful graphics with amazing looking animations
- No loading between areas or going into towns or dungeons etc
- Beautiful music when exploring
- Good controls and characters have a sense of physics to their movement
- Quests are not entirely hand holding like in most other games and sometimes you actually have to think for yourself
- No cheap quick travel, and like in the first game the quick travel system is actually implemented in the game world, especially love how when you throw a ferrystone up in the air and it hits a roof it fails to trigger, in-game logic increases believability and immersion in he game world (though I understand if it can be a bit constraining to some players and probably they "nerfed" the portalstones etc to be able to sell them as microtransactions (bad))
- Nice system I have not seen before where many quest givers actually initiate conversation with you in a natural manner as you go near instead of having a system with fake looking "!" markers above their head like in most other games
- Elves in this game actually look like how Elves are supposed to look like
- Great character creator and from my understanding some of the actual physical elements of your character like their height and weight determine movement speed to some extent
Cons:
- Again the repeating dialogue of the Pawns almost destroy the game but enough said about that
- The game has performance issues (especially in cities) and even DLSS does not seem to make much of a difference
- "Microtransactions"
- Dungeon (cave) design are really really really repetitive and are only caves really in different sizes. One of the best aspects of the original Dragons Dogma was how incredible good the level design was in some of the dungeons with atmospheric elements like flowing streams in the floor or just a huge sense of detail both in design and soundscape to some of them. The lack of variety in dungeons and locations really hurt the sense of wonder and exploration as when you have seen the first cave you have pretty much seen them all
- Difficulty is really trivial and most of the time it feels like just swapping annoying flies when dealing with the enemy mobs (except for some of the huge ones that are more bullet sponges until you have the equipment for them). Having pretty much infinite potential for healing with items does not help with quick buttons that just refills your health instantly without even needing a drink or eat animation etc just destroy all aspects of any difficulty. The developers should really look at implementing something more akin to how healing is handled in Dark Souls/Elden Ring. The permanent reduction of healing that needs to be refilled by sleeping is a good feature though imo.
- The sound mixing is atrocious and probably the worst I have ever seen (heard). You have to constantly adjust the volume down or up as you get your ears blown out with the combat music in battle that drowns out all other sound
- Mobs of enemies are placed way to frequent in the game world which just feels fake and artificial and you can barely move a step until there is another group of enemies are on you. Because the difficulty is so trivial they more become an annoyance than something that feels like a treat as you try to traverse around the environment
- Enemies also respawn way to frequent. It would be nice to actually be able to clear out areas, especially in the routes of the Oxcarts to make travel easier without getting jumped by enemies. It feels like enemies respawns in areas after just a day when really it should be after a week ingame at the least
- Capcom made human Pawns are incredibly ugly and just look unfitting to the game. It does not help that "for some reason" like half of all the names are not matching the genders of the characters so you will have males named Lisa or Sofia and females named Peter and Gregory etc
- While the initiation of dialogue is a great thing for quest givers etc this is also used on Pawns you meet on the road and they interrupt you with a conversation if you get to near which can be extremely annoying
- The game has incredible vistas with huge mountains so it is a massive bummer to discover that much of it has invisible walls that prevents you from going to many places.
- Not a fan how shopkeepers stand in place 24/7 even at night. Some more routine in their behavior would be welcome and having closed at night etc
- The feature of having to have a Pawn that understands Elvish and that can interpret to the player as they speak would be an incredible original idea if implemented right. Imagine as an Elf speaks in a foreign language to the player and your Pawn conveying what is said to you in "real time". It would be really unique idea that would enhance the believability of the game world. However how this was implemented in the game just flushed all that potential down the toilet by just having what they say in text if you have a translator. And you even have to go to options to turn Subtitles on if you have them off or you will not even see what they say anyway.
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This game plays like the devs attempted everything in their power to sabotage themselves and make people hate it. Luckily they even failed at that and accidentally made a fun game. Ignore the mtx, you can find and duplicate every item in a matter of minutes.
Great game but buy it on sale.

They finally did it. It took them 6 months but the game finally runs well. After the latest update my fps at the very least doubled in populated cities