Dragon’s Dogma 2

Basically a 11/20 turning into a solid 14/20 if bought with a 50% discount, and up to 16/20 with few basic mods to compensate the weird game design choices and micro-transactions.
And I'll even give a short list of the must-have mods in my opinion :
· Updated Seamless Warfarer
· Durnehviir - Dynamic Enemy Encounters
· Weaponlord - Unique Weapons
· Lock-On Combat with Dodge (not for the locking mechanic but for the dodge added to all vocations)
· Stop Selling Yourself
· Infinite Stamina Out of Combat
· Dialogue Auto Advance
· Additional Pawn Commands
Get the game with a good discount, add those mods, and you'll have really good time !

Keeping it short, sweet and simple.
Combat, exploration and raw RPG elements? Best I've ever played, felt incredible and I loved every minute of it.
Story? Awful, actually awful. Just ignore it, focus on the gameplay and make your own story in your head or something.

What a wonderfully imperfect game.
This review contains spoilers.
There's a problem that comes with a cult classic such as Dragon's Dogma; it is a beloved experience from the fans (myself included) but for me to call the first game perfect would be disingenuous. A lot of what the precursor presented on the surface was genuinely subpar; the story was lackluster, characters were average to forgettable, the world was fun to explore but small, and you learned to avoid or cheese tedious parts of the game on subsequent playthroughs.
All of this was carried by the great combat, the fun pawns, the overall charm of the world, the flexibility of approach and freedom it gave the player, and while the story was subpar it’s themes were incredible and allowed the player their own creativity to make a deeper story for themselves. If you enjoy creating stories in your head, Dragon's Dogma let you do that in spades.
And for all the deserved criticism regarding performance, rushed story content, and power creep (all also present in DD1) I also think Dragon's Dogma 2 succeeds at this and more.
My first play through of DD2 took me 96 hours, and might be the best first experience with a single player RPG I've ever had. The inclusion of a camping system as a way to work as checkpoints so one didn't need to return to towns was brilliant; it took me nearly 7 hours to reach Vernworth as I scoured every inch of the map to the East of the city instead of taking the oxcart fast travel when it was first offered. I knew how to effectively forage and combine materials to keep my inventory manageable, my hundreds of hours of DD1 combat came back to me flawlessly, allowing me to fight Cyclops, Griffins, and Drakes by level 15 as I still remembered their attack patterns. By the time I walked into Vernworth, I had nearly 10 hours of playtime.
For the next 30 hours, I hunted every sidequest, location, and unique loot in Vermund without a guide. I was fully engrossed within the same familiar experience of the first game. However, I took a 2 week break after I unknowingly took a pawn with Dragonsplague (which has since been heavily nerfed) and slept in Vernworth minutes later, killing about 90 NPCs including essential ones. For me, it was incredibly frustrating, as DD2 removed quest-giver markers from the map and relied on you running around town and talking to people who you thought might be a quest giver. This incident was the first and only time I used a guide to discover where the Eternal Wakestone was, which taught me that I would need to spend at least the next 15 hours hunting down the Sphinx content, alongside the additional exploration and sidequests that I could still complete. As such a longtime fan of the series, this moment took a lot of wind out of my sails that, in hindsight, was barely an issue, as I had unknowingly completed nearly all the sidequests in Vernworth. Regardless, I needed to take a break to avoid souring my experience.
After I returned to the game, I revived the NPCs who I knew were vital (Captain Brant and Sven) and continued my journey. I fully explored Battahl, completed all it's side content, got my eternal wakestone, got all my maisters, revived Vernworth, and by the time I hit 65 hours of playtime I could no longer ignore the final quest with the dragon.
If you’re observant like me, you’ll probably notice every time you booted the game up on your first playthrough (ignoring the first EVER boot-up) the title said "Dragon's Dogma". I found this appropriate, as even though the story was different from the first, the overall beats were the same. However, heading into the boss fight with the Dragon, I also had a feeling that using the Godbane's Blade would potentially end the game, as in DD1 it was THE final action you performed before finishing the game. I fought Grigori twice, hoping I'd find some alternative to using the blade, and when that failed I relented and finally used it.
I can only try my best to explain the following moment as I experienced it personally; a longtime fan of DD1, who had played it during the summers between college on my family's 360, dedicating over 300 hours, 20+ playthroughs, and all but 100% the game save a few tedious pawn knowledge checks. Over a decade of waiting for even an announcement of a sequel, to waiting over a year for the final release, and after 65 hours of playtime, that slow tilt reveal to the blood-red clouds swirling over the unmoored world, with the deep building musical strings as I had finally seen what I had waited all this time to see; “Dragon's Dogma 2”. What I had originally thought as the end, began the sequel I spent a decade waiting for.
This may sound pathetic, but the moment hit me so hard I spent about 20 minutes pacing from just pure hype alone, before I had to turn the game off and call it a night, as the decade long buildup of nostalgia had hit me like a freight train and I just needed time to process what I had witnessed.
I'm well aware this is not the same experience people had, even longtime fans. I will also admit that while the flaws in this game are evident, I disagree with other longtime fans that this is a step-back from the first. As I said before, DD1 has a lackluster story but incredible themes; it is about assuming an isolated role as Sovran, leading the land of Gran Soren as an invisible, unappreciated God, only to be usurped when the time is right by a rightful, selfless Arisen. Even your pawn, who assumes your flesh at the end of the first, lives that same isolated sacrifice; apart from you, your pawn, and some select love interests, the world does not celebrate or recognize you or your achievements, and yet a new Arisen and pawn will inevitably fulfill this selfless sacrifice for the good of those who inhabit the world.
DD2 takes that already beautiful theme and makes it even grander; this is a world endlessly trapped by an even higher being who refuses to let oblivion run it's course. It is all a stage on repeat, an endless cycle of the same stories and struggles, inhabited by people who are treated as mere puppets for the entertainment of an unseen being who cannot accept the inevitability of oblivion. Despite the world being a stage and it's peoples "actors", your arisen recognizes that they all have their own lives and stories, independent of what the watcher decrees as 'their stories'. This is not the story of you becoming a Sovran for the people, this is not the tale of the Arisen who bested the dragon, this is the story of an Arisen and their pawn who reject the fallacy of the unending cycle. You do not choose to rule over your compatriots, you choose to give them the freedom they never had. You and your pawn choose to sacrifice everything to overthrow a vengeful, omnipotent tyrant so those who inhabit the world may choose their own fates.
And after 30 hours of unmoored content, I did just that.
I’m aware this isn’t much of a review, and that’s honestly because for a game that is objectively subpar, if it scratches your itch it can subjectively be great, and in my case incredible. I have finished it 5 times, my most recent playthrough using mods that enhanced my experience further and took me about 40 hours. I did about 90% of the side quests, re-explored a good amount of caverns, and for the 5th time straight maxed out my main pawn’s affinity. I made sure to evacuate each area only when they had no time left then summoning each boss, pretending I was holding the brine back so that each town could safely evacuate. I will probably finish a 6th playthrough later this year, and there’s a good chance that won’t be the last either.
If you can enjoy games past their flaws because you value your own experiences, then Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a beautiful game well deserving of your time.
It is not perfect, it is flawed, and it is unfortunately unfinished.
And yet if you asked me on what playthrough that became a hindrance, 5 end credits later, I’ve yet to notice.

If you're looking for an honest unbiased review of the game, I suggest you read this one:
I waited a whole year to play this game do to mixed reviews and issues with the game. I also bought this game when it was on sale which if I recall was about half off. I also did play Dark Arisen, so I am basing my experiences off of that.
One of the biggest hurdles for me was hearing about the performance of the game. It was heavily disappointing to see that a game was released with so many issues so I can understand the negative reviews at the game's launch As of right now I barely have any issues with the game's performance.
Here are my computer specs: 13 Gen Intel(R) Core i7-13700k, 32 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
While there are a few glitches here and there it's nothing that stops my progress of the game. When I enter the towns I actually don't have any problems with lagging or any drops. I optimized my game to make it run with my computer, which I strongly suggest even if you do have to lower the memory and settings a bit. I'm not one of those people that needs heavy graphics to enjoy a game though. Long as it looks good and it's playable is usually enough for me. Even then it still looks great.
Now as for the game:
It really feels like I am playing Dragon's Dogma 2. The game play, the way it feels, the way it works - I mean it's Dragon's Dogma 2. I know maybe some people were expecting something else - or more, but for me I wanted something like Dark Arisen and I would say that this is it. What makes Dragon's Dogma 2 fun - is how unique it is, the fighting, the pawn system, the monsters. All these things vary to a degree, but still the same in most regards. Are there some things taken away from the first game? The armor and clothing layer for one. Why they removed it - I have no idea. There some of it still present, but not like the first game. The lack of vocations too, but there's still quite a bit to choose from and a different offset for each vocation. The fighting is practically the same as the first game. Whether it's the first or the second game you're still using the same buttons to attack regardless of what your vocation is. Can it be a bit repetitive depending on the vocation? Yeah sure, I play a mage - most of that is spells, standing, and using the same spells. Does it bother me? No. my goal is to stay alive and stand back to deal as much damage as I can while I let my pawns do most of the close combat fighting. You really just have to pick which vocation works for you.
One of the most creative things about Dragon's Dogma was the pawn system, which in this game... is FANTASTIC. I would say a lot more than the first. I'm not sure if maybe a lot of what they did went to the pawn system compared to everything else, but the pawns are so fun, and it's so interesting to see their interactions based on each other. It is incredibly more in depth than it appears, the way they remember quests and other Arisen’s and the things they may have done during the game is phenomenal from an AI standpoint. They feel surprisingly real, I've had a pawn recently tell me how the quest I completed was failed by an arisen they traveled with. They'll tell you who Arisen's travel with, one at the beginning of the game told me someone traveled with only females (lol). I've had my own pawn run around and hail everyone after defeating an ogre. I also had my pawn pick up another pawn and throw them over the cliff when that pawn was down and trying to revive them. Why did she do that? Don't know but it was funny. Can the things they say become repetitive? For sure, they can repeat dialogue, but if you pay attention you'll always see a unique interaction with your pawn or other pawns. And I do enjoy being able to high-five pawns and give them gestures after fights. It's really unique and a great part of the game.
As for the quest; the quest system in the first game wasn't really all that great either. I would say it's about the same. I don't think it's as bad as people make it out to be. A lot of the quests are more direct and this may be due to the fact that in the first game you could fail quests if you didn't do them in a timely manner. While the second game has that same feature, the difference is this time they make you a little more aware of that so you just don't "fail" and wonder.. how did that even happen? In a lot of ways, they still throw quests out just like the first one, it's up to you whether you want to do them or not.
The map, in my opinion, leads for a lot of exploration. I think it's enjoyable, the first one was a lot smaller. This map I do feel like with the little towns, or places, various caves, there's more going on in it. Would it be nice if there was more to some of these areas? Yeah, but do I feel like it ruins the game? No- a lot of these places tend to be for quests/exploration you don't necessarily need to go back to it (if you don't want to) after you're done. Plus, with the ox/ferrystone system, you have a fairly easy time traveling through the majority of the map.
The ox cart system is really unique, and as you progress 200 gold is chump change, you can also save ferrystones and travel to any portcrystal. Truth be told, I find myself using the ox cart system quite a bit.
Which leads to camp/resting/inns. Backpacks are actually fairly easy to come by, and you can use them until they're gone due to a monster attack. In the beginning it can be difficult to sleep and replenish health at inns but once again.. after you progress, spending the money isn't all that bad. Even then I would just find myself sleeping at a camp on purpose to save money. After some point you can buy a house in Vermund and travel and sleep there whenever you want. As far as the health system goes - I don't find myself having all that much trouble with the shortening of the health. I think it makes for good planning/strategy and it's super easy to replenish it by once again going to a campsite/inn if you're already traveling.
The monsters are all the same just like in the first game maybe save for the Hydra and the wyrms. I wish they definitely added more and also the leveling progression was better but that was also an issue with the first game. They're still fun to fight though.
The story; I really enjoy it. I think one of the biggest problems with the story others have is how different it is compared to the first one. It's more political, but I like that sort of setting/premise. I think it's interesting to see how this place built for the arisen to be king is now being usurped from them and it's something that can VERY much happen in something like a monarch. I don't think it's unrealistic - as well as how people don't like pawns or may use them as slaves. The quests also paint a bigger picture of what's going on. It's unfair to say people won't enjoy the story when it really just depends. it may not be for everyone but there's definitely something to get out of it. Plus if you max out your pawns affinity you get one of the better endings of the game which I STRONGLY recommend.
All in all, I think the game is definitely worth playing. I believe most of the negative reviews are unfortunately due to a poorly painted reception due to the launch of the game and what others have to say. Form your own opinion- I was one of those people who thought it must be a terrible game until I played it for myself. I think the other issue is the price. Even then, there's no justifying the price tag and can give more of a negative perception when you're spending so much money. Get it when it's on sale and you'll definitely get your money's worth.
Lastly, the Everfall is not in the game, which gave a lot more to the game after you finish the main quest in the first one. Hopefully they’ll have a good DLC to add like BitterBlack Isle

Dragon’s Dogma 2 isn’t a Soulslike, and it isn’t Monster Hunter either. Its closest relative might actually be Dragon Age, but without rows of hotkey skills cluttering the UI. Instead of neat one-button abilities, combat uses button + direction combinations,very Capcom-esque, and the interface stays clean and immersive without MMO-style hotbars. You feel like you’re fighting, not managing a control panel.
What truly sets Dragon’s Dogma apart (both 1 and 2) is that there’s still no other game that plays exactly like it. Other titles may imitate fragments of the experience, but nothing replaces the feeling of climbing a giant monster in real time while your AI companions scream advices and join into the brawl. The sequel expands everything the first game proved was already fun.
Technically, it runs on the RE Engine, which has already been refined by multiple Resident Evil remakes. So the game itself isn’t held back by some experimental tech. If you hit performance issues, enable DLSS (it’s OFF by default), update your driver, and maybe blame Denuvo for minor frame dips. The engine first version itself wasn't really meant for open world and lots of AI characters, so bring a beefy CPU cause this game is hungry for X3D.
Story-wise: don’t expect a Baldur’s Gate–level branching narrative. Expect a linear adventure with possible different endings, focused more on the journey and the vibe than on complex plot branches. I watched the Netflix adaptation ages ago and platinumthe first game, the narrative wasn’t jaw-dropping, but it wasn’t bad either. The game’s strength isn’t its plot, it’s the freedom to explore, experiment, and cause chaos.
Music and voice acting? It’s Capcom. Worrying about that is pointless ! you’ll probably end up searching for the OST later.
A few tips from experience:
The pawn system replaces multiplayer, and the AI companions are legitimately competent.
If you don’t like getting punched in the face, play Mage or Archer, the lock-on system is better than in the first game (and better than Monster Hunter’s).
The game is much easier than Elden Ring or Souls games so you don't need to “get good,” just explore and experiment.
However, this is a single-player adventure. If you only enjoy Monster Hunter or Elden Ring because of multiplayer, think twice. This is a world to explore alone (with AI buddies), at your own pace.
“He who fights monsters becomes the monster”
Final thought:
If you like Elden Ring exploration, combat that feels grounded and physical, or Dragon Age–style adventuring, buy it without hesitation. Just don’t ruin it with cheats, the game’s magic lies in overcoming the journey yourself.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☑ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☑ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ No bugs
☑ Very minor bugs (rare, but still there)
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10
 

A sidegrade by most measures, while I do believe that the reception this game had was an exaggeration born out of misinformation and some poor memory, it is certainly true that this game failed to evolve the series in a meaningful way, and changed Dragon's Dogma reputation from "that unfinished game with lots of potential" to "that unfinished series with lots of potential".
The game improves on a few facets of the original game, the Warrior vocation is a lot better, graphical fidelity of facial features is genuinely impressive, the map is way bigger but does not feel less dense, there's a lot more optional dungeons, I really like some balance changes like the Loss Gauge, and sidequests were all around more interesting.
But there's a few downgrades too, no Mystic Knight, a few less spells, less clothing slots (a change similar to the downgrade from Oblivion to Skyrim), and most notably, the game becomes really easy to tackle very early on compared to DD1, even if DD1 was pretty easy itself.
Most offensively to some though, and with reason, is that the game did not progress meaningfully enough for the long wait that some people went through. It feels incredibly unfinished story wise, it clearly lacks a balance pass for the amount of enemies in some areas, as their overabundance is fatiguing at times, and loot tables make exploring generic dungeons a bit anti-climatic, as all the best gear is in shops anyways.
I still recommend the game, but with a big caveat, all I wanted was more Dragon's Dogma, I like the gameplay loop, I love the pawn system and all of its quirks, I love that it feels like setting out on a genuine adventure where completely unpredictable but cool things can happen, like being flown by a griffin to the other side of the country because you grabbed on to him at the wrong time, or using a Cyclops as a bridge because you knocked him off balance at the right time. It's an unique game and I still think it's worth experiencing what it offers, it's just that unfortunately what it offers should have spent more time in the oven.
The Sphynx is hot