This review contains spoilers
TLDR; Exploring and combat is fun. Quest design varies greatly, sometimes good, sometimes very bad. Ending came so abruptly I wasn't able to do all that I wanted to do, it also bored me. True ending left me annoyed.
As my first RPG since Bowser's Inside Story, I think Dragon's Dogma 2 served as a great re-entry into the genre. I'd been anticipating this game since January after watching a friend play the first game while describing the sequel as a "re-imagining of that world." While that seems to be the case, I can't help but feel that DD2 is like 80% there. If DD1 suffered from being overambitious in it's vision, then DD2 suffers from being able to nail that vision but now it's weighed down by quest design that felt under-cooked. I can assume that both games share that same problem. It's this feeling of being unfinished that just slowly crept it's way in as I kept playing, but really showed it's ugly head in my last 5 hours or so.
I really can't praise enough how much fun it was to explore this fantasy world. I wouldn't say I'm a huge fan of Open World games but this was the most fun I've had exploring one since BOTW. Couple that world with great combat and monsters that truly feel threatening to fight and it's a fantastic time. There's nothing more "epic" than when you're fighting a cyclops with your pawns and you notice a bird like shadow fly overhead. 10 seconds later you hear a whooshing sound and a griffin lands to 3rd party the fight. The spontaneity of it all is just so good.
And then you enter a town. Your frames decrease. Your mini-map fills with a slew of icons that just BECKON to be interacted with. You're on your way to the icon that looks like a big sword, and then a little girl steals the control of the camera away from you. "Hello Arisen the holy chosen one, gifted powers from the Dragon that my little mind can barely understand, can you do me a favor and pick up my groceries from the store?" A loud sound plays, and there's a prompt in the top right asking if you want to make picking up groceries your focused quest. You deliver her groceries some time later, and she responds with "Thanks for delivering my groceries! Come back in a few days to taste my soup!" The quest updates, "RETURN IN A FEW DAYS TO TRY HER SOUP". You return to try her soup but see a sad look on her face as you walk up. It turns out she was missing garlic for the soup that YOU need to go get. The quest updates. You return with the garlic, she adds it to the soup, and the quest ends. +5000 Coin, +1 Vegetable Soup.
DD2 loves this kind of quest design, and uses it in literally every town at least once. To be fair, this seems to just be an RPG thing™, but I guess I missed the memo and paid the price for it. In general I enjoyed most quests that are like "Go to this place with me there's something freaky over there 👅", but those became rarer by the end of the game, while there was still more map to be explored.
I guess I should say the quest design isn't bad, but just mixed, which still kind of sucks because the bad quests are like pretty bad. It's like the devs couldn't decide if they wanted the player to use context clues to solve the quests or just listen to what the quest menu says. A certain quest about a boy taken by wolves at the Checkpoint Rest Town had me confused on whether I was supposed to listen to the villagers or the quest menu, and in the end I just had to look up a guide for the quest because the flashing clock icon had me tweaking. On top of that, sometimes quests seemingly become stuck, or bugged. In the case of the noble in Vermund who was pretending to be a beggar, I did everything the quest told me to do only for the quest menu to just not change. You find out days later from a random guard walking around that he was killed. An inconsequential end for an inconsequential quest. Anything with escorting is also just plain awful. You can't carry them lest they struggle and you're forced to drop them. You can't sprint because they will just straight up stop moving if you go too far. You can't walk because then they'll just start sprinting. It's just bad.
And the craziest part is that NONE of that is even that bad. No, the reason this game went from a 4 to a 3 is because of the last 4 hours of gameplay and how much they soured the experience. See early in that session I had just switched back to Thief and I was exploring more of Battahl. I was having a great time doing quests as I went. Something the game doesn't tell you is that once you give Ambrosius those 15 wyrmslife crystals, you've already activated the last quest of the game, which THE GAME DOES NOT TELL YOU. Maybe I'm a bit spoiled by Alan Wake II which I had completed prior to this game, because that game straight up tells you at the final quest that this is the end. Dragon's Dogma II tells you nothing. I guess I was the victim of a compounding issue. It's not that the main story quests are badly designed but they don't really have an affect on the outside world. So while I'm out fighting mythical beasts, I had completely forgotten how important Ambrosius and his studies were to the main story. And for that I paid the ultimate price.
Upon receiving the Empowered Godsbane Blade from Ambrosius, the beginning of the end starts, locking you from doing literally anything else. You can't go finish the Sphinx quests, can't complete your map, can't turn in your seekers tokens; etc. You're done. It hurt even more because I was literally on my way to the Volcanic Island camp for the first time to complete a quest, which I couldn't do now. I quickly accepted this blow to the stomach but little did I know there were more strikes on the way.
The titan rises from the sea, and the race to the excavation site begins. I would be lying if I said I felt literally any tension from this. I guess I was still stinging from having my game cut early but I thought everything about the moving statue section was so god damn boring. The dragon fight was more fun I guess but it also didn't feel that different from any of the other dragon fights, just more difficult. But fuck it, I killed them both and we're done right? No, I heard there was a true ending so I found out how to get to it and honestly I wish I didn't. I killed the dragon around 5:30 AM, and wasn't done with the true ending until 8:30 AM. I had no idea it was that extensive.
In the true ending you are thrown back into the world but now there's a timer and the end of the world is coming. It was at this point that I was reminded of all that I didn't get to do by the abrupt ending and the kettle is starting to whistle. I'm tired, figured I can't close the game and do the ending without fighting the dragon again, so I thug it out. I'm tasked with going to every town and telling them to evacuate, and that's fine. Almost all of those unfinished quests didn't appear in the quest menu anymore, but there was one that remained from the actual game, talking to fucking Hugo in that prison, WHICH I WASN'T ABLE TO COMPLETE EARLIER BECAUSE HE JUST DISAPPEARED. Why was it here now, at this tumultuous time. It even had a location that I went to to find literally nobody. Come to find out later that he died fighting his old boss, and the quest finally ended. The kettle is whistling a little louder. An inconsequential end for an inconsequential CHARACTER, FUCK HUGO.
Evacuating Bakbattahl reminded me of another inconsequential quest. I traveled there to talk to whoever is in charge after I let the empress die (whoops) only to find out that she's just miraculously alive! WOW. Literally a quest so inconsequential that her death changed nothing about Bakbattahl AND was retconned. And I find out later that she had quests of her own that she gives out. More quests I missed out on. Speaking of missed quests, evacuating the Sacred Arbor genuinely made me so mad. Because I hadn't restored life to the Holy Elven Tree in another side quest given by the leader's daughter, he refused to leave. Mfs on Reddit were saying to just keep sleeping and asking him when you wake up but that didn't work. I literally slept like 9 days in a row, he still refused to leave and at that point I just didn't give a fuck about ANY of it. I got the true ending, and the cherry on top, the game reminds me that my #1 NPC was the Elven dude who can't use Elven bows. I do not give a fuck about that dude.
Those last 5ish hours soured my experience of this game so much that I wanted so badly to give a 3, but I had to remind myself of all the fun I had exploring and calm down a bit. I think with some more time Dragon's Dogma II could've been an all timer but it remains just Good.
P.S. The framerate is a way bigger issue than the micro transactions that people won't shut up about. DMC5 had MTX and you hear no one talking about it, just how motivated Vergil is or whatever the fuck. I was more accepting of the 50 fps out in the world because I had just finished playing AWII which also beat my PC up, but there's no sugar coating it. This game does not run good and I'm not sure if it is something they can fix in a patch.
As my first RPG since Bowser's Inside Story, I think Dragon's Dogma 2 served as a great re-entry into the genre. I'd been anticipating this game since January after watching a friend play the first game while describing the sequel as a "re-imagining of that world." While that seems to be the case, I can't help but feel that DD2 is like 80% there. If DD1 suffered from being overambitious in it's vision, then DD2 suffers from being able to nail that vision but now it's weighed down by quest design that felt under-cooked. I can assume that both games share that same problem. It's this feeling of being unfinished that just slowly crept it's way in as I kept playing, but really showed it's ugly head in my last 5 hours or so.
I really can't praise enough how much fun it was to explore this fantasy world. I wouldn't say I'm a huge fan of Open World games but this was the most fun I've had exploring one since BOTW. Couple that world with great combat and monsters that truly feel threatening to fight and it's a fantastic time. There's nothing more "epic" than when you're fighting a cyclops with your pawns and you notice a bird like shadow fly overhead. 10 seconds later you hear a whooshing sound and a griffin lands to 3rd party the fight. The spontaneity of it all is just so good.
And then you enter a town. Your frames decrease. Your mini-map fills with a slew of icons that just BECKON to be interacted with. You're on your way to the icon that looks like a big sword, and then a little girl steals the control of the camera away from you. "Hello Arisen the holy chosen one, gifted powers from the Dragon that my little mind can barely understand, can you do me a favor and pick up my groceries from the store?" A loud sound plays, and there's a prompt in the top right asking if you want to make picking up groceries your focused quest. You deliver her groceries some time later, and she responds with "Thanks for delivering my groceries! Come back in a few days to taste my soup!" The quest updates, "RETURN IN A FEW DAYS TO TRY HER SOUP". You return to try her soup but see a sad look on her face as you walk up. It turns out she was missing garlic for the soup that YOU need to go get. The quest updates. You return with the garlic, she adds it to the soup, and the quest ends. +5000 Coin, +1 Vegetable Soup.
DD2 loves this kind of quest design, and uses it in literally every town at least once. To be fair, this seems to just be an RPG thing™, but I guess I missed the memo and paid the price for it. In general I enjoyed most quests that are like "Go to this place with me there's something freaky over there 👅", but those became rarer by the end of the game, while there was still more map to be explored.
I guess I should say the quest design isn't bad, but just mixed, which still kind of sucks because the bad quests are like pretty bad. It's like the devs couldn't decide if they wanted the player to use context clues to solve the quests or just listen to what the quest menu says. A certain quest about a boy taken by wolves at the Checkpoint Rest Town had me confused on whether I was supposed to listen to the villagers or the quest menu, and in the end I just had to look up a guide for the quest because the flashing clock icon had me tweaking. On top of that, sometimes quests seemingly become stuck, or bugged. In the case of the noble in Vermund who was pretending to be a beggar, I did everything the quest told me to do only for the quest menu to just not change. You find out days later from a random guard walking around that he was killed. An inconsequential end for an inconsequential quest. Anything with escorting is also just plain awful. You can't carry them lest they struggle and you're forced to drop them. You can't sprint because they will just straight up stop moving if you go too far. You can't walk because then they'll just start sprinting. It's just bad.
And the craziest part is that NONE of that is even that bad. No, the reason this game went from a 4 to a 3 is because of the last 4 hours of gameplay and how much they soured the experience. See early in that session I had just switched back to Thief and I was exploring more of Battahl. I was having a great time doing quests as I went. Something the game doesn't tell you is that once you give Ambrosius those 15 wyrmslife crystals, you've already activated the last quest of the game, which THE GAME DOES NOT TELL YOU. Maybe I'm a bit spoiled by Alan Wake II which I had completed prior to this game, because that game straight up tells you at the final quest that this is the end. Dragon's Dogma II tells you nothing. I guess I was the victim of a compounding issue. It's not that the main story quests are badly designed but they don't really have an affect on the outside world. So while I'm out fighting mythical beasts, I had completely forgotten how important Ambrosius and his studies were to the main story. And for that I paid the ultimate price.
Upon receiving the Empowered Godsbane Blade from Ambrosius, the beginning of the end starts, locking you from doing literally anything else. You can't go finish the Sphinx quests, can't complete your map, can't turn in your seekers tokens; etc. You're done. It hurt even more because I was literally on my way to the Volcanic Island camp for the first time to complete a quest, which I couldn't do now. I quickly accepted this blow to the stomach but little did I know there were more strikes on the way.
The titan rises from the sea, and the race to the excavation site begins. I would be lying if I said I felt literally any tension from this. I guess I was still stinging from having my game cut early but I thought everything about the moving statue section was so god damn boring. The dragon fight was more fun I guess but it also didn't feel that different from any of the other dragon fights, just more difficult. But fuck it, I killed them both and we're done right? No, I heard there was a true ending so I found out how to get to it and honestly I wish I didn't. I killed the dragon around 5:30 AM, and wasn't done with the true ending until 8:30 AM. I had no idea it was that extensive.
In the true ending you are thrown back into the world but now there's a timer and the end of the world is coming. It was at this point that I was reminded of all that I didn't get to do by the abrupt ending and the kettle is starting to whistle. I'm tired, figured I can't close the game and do the ending without fighting the dragon again, so I thug it out. I'm tasked with going to every town and telling them to evacuate, and that's fine. Almost all of those unfinished quests didn't appear in the quest menu anymore, but there was one that remained from the actual game, talking to fucking Hugo in that prison, WHICH I WASN'T ABLE TO COMPLETE EARLIER BECAUSE HE JUST DISAPPEARED. Why was it here now, at this tumultuous time. It even had a location that I went to to find literally nobody. Come to find out later that he died fighting his old boss, and the quest finally ended. The kettle is whistling a little louder. An inconsequential end for an inconsequential CHARACTER, FUCK HUGO.
Evacuating Bakbattahl reminded me of another inconsequential quest. I traveled there to talk to whoever is in charge after I let the empress die (whoops) only to find out that she's just miraculously alive! WOW. Literally a quest so inconsequential that her death changed nothing about Bakbattahl AND was retconned. And I find out later that she had quests of her own that she gives out. More quests I missed out on. Speaking of missed quests, evacuating the Sacred Arbor genuinely made me so mad. Because I hadn't restored life to the Holy Elven Tree in another side quest given by the leader's daughter, he refused to leave. Mfs on Reddit were saying to just keep sleeping and asking him when you wake up but that didn't work. I literally slept like 9 days in a row, he still refused to leave and at that point I just didn't give a fuck about ANY of it. I got the true ending, and the cherry on top, the game reminds me that my #1 NPC was the Elven dude who can't use Elven bows. I do not give a fuck about that dude.
Those last 5ish hours soured my experience of this game so much that I wanted so badly to give a 3, but I had to remind myself of all the fun I had exploring and calm down a bit. I think with some more time Dragon's Dogma II could've been an all timer but it remains just Good.
P.S. The framerate is a way bigger issue than the micro transactions that people won't shut up about. DMC5 had MTX and you hear no one talking about it, just how motivated Vergil is or whatever the fuck. I was more accepting of the 50 fps out in the world because I had just finished playing AWII which also beat my PC up, but there's no sugar coating it. This game does not run good and I'm not sure if it is something they can fix in a patch.