DRAGON'S DOGMA 2 IS A QUEEN AMONG PAWNS
Allow me to just get it out of the way. Dragon's Dogma 2 is extremely poorly optimized and borderline unplayable on max settings even on my beastly rig. But it runs amazing on Medium graphics settings so...there you have it.
Now, onto the good stuff (which is pretty much everything else).
Dragon's Dogma 2 is basically a reboot. Hell, even the main title upon starting up the game reads: "Dragon's Dogma". Oh, and before I proceed I just have to gush about how much the character creator FUCKS. Just like with Baldur's Gate 3, I have spent hours just making characters. It's an absolutely robust feature that is so generous they let you do it twice!
At it's core, Dragon's Dogma 2 is an open world action RPG with side quests, crafting, dungeons, loot, etc. In reality, the game exists in a liminal space where this is the first open world action RPG ever made. It actively goes out of its way to thwart the common banalities that have made the "genre" stale and a festering infection on games as a whole for the last decade or so. Fast travel is sparce. You spend preciously rare resources to do so. Some sidequests are timed and will give you a fail state if you are unable to complete them on time. You have only one save file and mostly cannot reload to "make the right decision". I fucking love it.
Speaking of side quests, they are a sumptuous feast of thoughtfully crafted splendor. They do not have "!" markers on your mini map. You actually have to take in your surroundings and talk to people to see if someone needs you to bonk some heads. It's honestly a lot more intuitive than it sounds. I'm pretty sure I engaged with all of the side quests without needing to consult a guide once. Not only that, but the quests are engaging and often times lead to "bigger" picture plots and intrigue. One particular quest was pretty simple: there was an elven dude who wanted me to buy him a bow. Buying a bow for this man lead to multiple map-spanning quests that climaxed with "literally save the elves". Now that's what I call quest design.
Dragon's Dogma 2 is a "Pawnlike" RPG. The company you keep will be comprised of your own personal pawn as well as two others you borrow from other players. Entering the pawn-zone to find new members for your crew is like shopping for friends. And amidst the sea of same-faced women whose creators didn't even bother editing the default head and just wanted a lady in bikini armor, there are some real gems. In my playthrough, I romped around the world with Gandalf, Lae'zel, Nero from DMC, and GARFIELD. Without the technical fuckery, this alone would've earned the game a 5 star rating from me. And no matter how many times I heard the same lines of dialogue uttered from these devoted freaks, I never grew tired of it (because of the different personality types you can choose for them). It always got a chuckle from me hearing my calm, calculated pawn chiding one of the simpleton pawns that "You are going to kill yourself because you're constantly tripping over your own feet. Get it the fuck together, dude".
Just a quick shout out to whoever made Gina, the seven foot tall beastren archer who didn't take shit from anyone...and Arthas, my sweet golden retriever of a man who literally did not know what pain was when face-tanking dragonfire to protect me. I was with these guys most of my journey and I loved and cherished them dearly.
The Vocation system is real neat. Whenever you're in a city or town, you can change you and your pawn's class as you see fit. And all of them are really fun and play in completely unique ways (yes, even the trickster for the most part). In general, fighting gobloids and big monsters is a ton of fun and is absolutely rife with texture and potential comedy. Throwing a deer into an explosive barrel near your foe; sky-launching your pawn onto an ogre's back with your shield; making a cyclops fall near a broken bridge and then using his body to cross...oh what a thrill. And there are so many fun little touches I continued to discover all the way until the endgame. For example, about halfway through the game I was riding on a the back of a drake as it soared in the sky. After shaking me off, I was in freefall and thought "Welp, time to be dead". But no. Just as I was about to hit the ground, Nero caught me in his arms like a princess and saved me.
The game is made of these memorable moments. Not from predetermined quest designs. Not from calculated world events. You make them yourself with the tools they give you. I cannot tell you how awesome it was to slay a griffin, and then proceed to high five Gandalf.
Do I wish the main story was slightly more than just "whatever"? Sure. Do I wish there were just a feeeew more big monster types to fight? Yeah. Are there some side quests that end with "Wait, there's definitely still more to this, right?" while there is unfortunately no more to it? Mhmm. But those are just drops of water in a bucket compared to what makes this game just so damn unique and fun.
In the middle of my playthrough, I was pitching the game to a good friend of mine. I told them that, "It's like the Baldur's Gate 3 of action RPGs". And while that's definitely a bit of an overstatement, I stand by it. Dragon's Dogma 2 has so much depth and texture in the ways you can interact with the world, much like the original. Only more. It's just really such a shame it's so hampered with optimization issues on every platform. I guess the extremely good RE Engine finally showed its limitations by not exactly being ideal for such a sprawling open-world RPG (I'm reminded of EA's insistence on making BioWare use the Frostbyte engine...dear lord I remember the devs in the break room tearing their hairs out because making a simple inventory screen was apparently a nightmare).
There are still some things I would very much like to see added as well, and hopefully will in the inevitable DLC. Just like with Dark Arisen for the original.
But I mean...come on. Any game that let's me fist-pump with a great-sword wielding Peter Griffin after slaying a literal griffin as he tells me what a sick warrior I am is at least a little bit of a masterpiece.
Allow me to just get it out of the way. Dragon's Dogma 2 is extremely poorly optimized and borderline unplayable on max settings even on my beastly rig. But it runs amazing on Medium graphics settings so...there you have it.
Now, onto the good stuff (which is pretty much everything else).
Dragon's Dogma 2 is basically a reboot. Hell, even the main title upon starting up the game reads: "Dragon's Dogma". Oh, and before I proceed I just have to gush about how much the character creator FUCKS. Just like with Baldur's Gate 3, I have spent hours just making characters. It's an absolutely robust feature that is so generous they let you do it twice!
At it's core, Dragon's Dogma 2 is an open world action RPG with side quests, crafting, dungeons, loot, etc. In reality, the game exists in a liminal space where this is the first open world action RPG ever made. It actively goes out of its way to thwart the common banalities that have made the "genre" stale and a festering infection on games as a whole for the last decade or so. Fast travel is sparce. You spend preciously rare resources to do so. Some sidequests are timed and will give you a fail state if you are unable to complete them on time. You have only one save file and mostly cannot reload to "make the right decision". I fucking love it.
Speaking of side quests, they are a sumptuous feast of thoughtfully crafted splendor. They do not have "!" markers on your mini map. You actually have to take in your surroundings and talk to people to see if someone needs you to bonk some heads. It's honestly a lot more intuitive than it sounds. I'm pretty sure I engaged with all of the side quests without needing to consult a guide once. Not only that, but the quests are engaging and often times lead to "bigger" picture plots and intrigue. One particular quest was pretty simple: there was an elven dude who wanted me to buy him a bow. Buying a bow for this man lead to multiple map-spanning quests that climaxed with "literally save the elves". Now that's what I call quest design.
Dragon's Dogma 2 is a "Pawnlike" RPG. The company you keep will be comprised of your own personal pawn as well as two others you borrow from other players. Entering the pawn-zone to find new members for your crew is like shopping for friends. And amidst the sea of same-faced women whose creators didn't even bother editing the default head and just wanted a lady in bikini armor, there are some real gems. In my playthrough, I romped around the world with Gandalf, Lae'zel, Nero from DMC, and GARFIELD. Without the technical fuckery, this alone would've earned the game a 5 star rating from me. And no matter how many times I heard the same lines of dialogue uttered from these devoted freaks, I never grew tired of it (because of the different personality types you can choose for them). It always got a chuckle from me hearing my calm, calculated pawn chiding one of the simpleton pawns that "You are going to kill yourself because you're constantly tripping over your own feet. Get it the fuck together, dude".
Just a quick shout out to whoever made Gina, the seven foot tall beastren archer who didn't take shit from anyone...and Arthas, my sweet golden retriever of a man who literally did not know what pain was when face-tanking dragonfire to protect me. I was with these guys most of my journey and I loved and cherished them dearly.
The Vocation system is real neat. Whenever you're in a city or town, you can change you and your pawn's class as you see fit. And all of them are really fun and play in completely unique ways (yes, even the trickster for the most part). In general, fighting gobloids and big monsters is a ton of fun and is absolutely rife with texture and potential comedy. Throwing a deer into an explosive barrel near your foe; sky-launching your pawn onto an ogre's back with your shield; making a cyclops fall near a broken bridge and then using his body to cross...oh what a thrill. And there are so many fun little touches I continued to discover all the way until the endgame. For example, about halfway through the game I was riding on a the back of a drake as it soared in the sky. After shaking me off, I was in freefall and thought "Welp, time to be dead". But no. Just as I was about to hit the ground, Nero caught me in his arms like a princess and saved me.
The game is made of these memorable moments. Not from predetermined quest designs. Not from calculated world events. You make them yourself with the tools they give you. I cannot tell you how awesome it was to slay a griffin, and then proceed to high five Gandalf.
Do I wish the main story was slightly more than just "whatever"? Sure. Do I wish there were just a feeeew more big monster types to fight? Yeah. Are there some side quests that end with "Wait, there's definitely still more to this, right?" while there is unfortunately no more to it? Mhmm. But those are just drops of water in a bucket compared to what makes this game just so damn unique and fun.
In the middle of my playthrough, I was pitching the game to a good friend of mine. I told them that, "It's like the Baldur's Gate 3 of action RPGs". And while that's definitely a bit of an overstatement, I stand by it. Dragon's Dogma 2 has so much depth and texture in the ways you can interact with the world, much like the original. Only more. It's just really such a shame it's so hampered with optimization issues on every platform. I guess the extremely good RE Engine finally showed its limitations by not exactly being ideal for such a sprawling open-world RPG (I'm reminded of EA's insistence on making BioWare use the Frostbyte engine...dear lord I remember the devs in the break room tearing their hairs out because making a simple inventory screen was apparently a nightmare).
There are still some things I would very much like to see added as well, and hopefully will in the inevitable DLC. Just like with Dark Arisen for the original.
But I mean...come on. Any game that let's me fist-pump with a great-sword wielding Peter Griffin after slaying a literal griffin as he tells me what a sick warrior I am is at least a little bit of a masterpiece.