Dragon's Dogma 2 is a pretty comfortable game. It's just pretty relaxing to explore a huge open world filled with dozens of dungeons and caves with your party. The pawn system is one of my favorite things about the game since not only you will be attached to your main pawn the entire time, but you will also run into tons of pawns out of the wild or summon them with a rift crystal.
The pawns can vary in all shapes and sizes and can be one out of six vocations (since the advanced vocations such as mystic sphere and magical archer are exclusive to the Arisen). They come in one of four core personalities with a dozen or so specializations, such as marking down materials or translating elven speak to help with the adventure. Their dialogue is pretty limited and after 10 hours it just becomes very repetitive, but I do like the idea of pawns talking to each other and guiding you to chests or campsites you haven't found yet. Adventuring just never feels stale with pawns even 90 hours in.
The vocation system is nice with plenty of jobs for combat variety. Even the basic vocations such as fighter and mage are fun to use. The only one I personally didn't enjoy was the trickster vocation due to the inability to directly do damage. But otherwise, despite how sloppy the combat can be due to no lock-on or dodge/block mechanics, the action combat stays fresh due to the amount of vocations you can use and thier skills you can use for each vocation as you level them up. Although I wish you had more than four skill slots because you get plenty of skills to choose from by the time you max out a vocation.
Dragon's Dogma 2 got the core idea of party-based action RPG down nicely but I am afraid I feel like there are a lot of cut corners as I play through the game. There is a huge lack of enemy and boss variety and fighting the 50th Orge or Cyclops becomes far less exciting. Also, the dungeons and caves are very repetitive in terms of design and visual presentation. On one hand, I enjoy the size of Dragon's Dogma 2 map but also I understand why some people thought the map was too huge due to the lack of content variation in the world.
The overall story and questing in Dragon's Dogma 2 is nothing groundbreaking either. That is to say, it's still a pretty serviceable, if not rather shockingly short main quest in proving you are the true Arisen to everyone and getting your heart back from the dragon that has taken it. However, I really think the whole concept of the post-game is a really nice mood changer and felt like it has taken inspiration from the World of Ruin from Final Fantasy VI as well as the Souls games as far gameplay becomes more difficult. I just wish the post-game ideas were longer or at least more integrated into the story earlier on.
However, my biggest complaint is player decisions for quests feel weightless. Choices in Dragon's Dogma 2 mostly affect what ending you will get for some side quests. No, you don't even get a choice on whether you want to romance Ulkira or Wilhelmina or not if you complete thier quest lines. The game forces romance at you with no say so and that bothers me if I have to be honest. That said, there are still quite a few side quests I enjoyed that fleshed out the sense of world-building more and will be useful to complete later on in the game despite the writing not being particularly outstanding.
Dragon's Dogma 2 is definitely rough on the edges as far as the ratio between the map and the amount of content variation inside the map, a not-too-amazing main story, and some really questionable decisions as far as questing. But at its core, it's an earnest action RPG that is satisfying to explore and engage in its combat and pawn mechanics. End of the day, while I enjoyed the game for the most part, with some polish, more variety and more involved writing with the main story, Dragon's Dogma 2 could be a very strong contender for GOTY.
The pawns can vary in all shapes and sizes and can be one out of six vocations (since the advanced vocations such as mystic sphere and magical archer are exclusive to the Arisen). They come in one of four core personalities with a dozen or so specializations, such as marking down materials or translating elven speak to help with the adventure. Their dialogue is pretty limited and after 10 hours it just becomes very repetitive, but I do like the idea of pawns talking to each other and guiding you to chests or campsites you haven't found yet. Adventuring just never feels stale with pawns even 90 hours in.
The vocation system is nice with plenty of jobs for combat variety. Even the basic vocations such as fighter and mage are fun to use. The only one I personally didn't enjoy was the trickster vocation due to the inability to directly do damage. But otherwise, despite how sloppy the combat can be due to no lock-on or dodge/block mechanics, the action combat stays fresh due to the amount of vocations you can use and thier skills you can use for each vocation as you level them up. Although I wish you had more than four skill slots because you get plenty of skills to choose from by the time you max out a vocation.
Dragon's Dogma 2 got the core idea of party-based action RPG down nicely but I am afraid I feel like there are a lot of cut corners as I play through the game. There is a huge lack of enemy and boss variety and fighting the 50th Orge or Cyclops becomes far less exciting. Also, the dungeons and caves are very repetitive in terms of design and visual presentation. On one hand, I enjoy the size of Dragon's Dogma 2 map but also I understand why some people thought the map was too huge due to the lack of content variation in the world.
The overall story and questing in Dragon's Dogma 2 is nothing groundbreaking either. That is to say, it's still a pretty serviceable, if not rather shockingly short main quest in proving you are the true Arisen to everyone and getting your heart back from the dragon that has taken it. However, I really think the whole concept of the post-game is a really nice mood changer and felt like it has taken inspiration from the World of Ruin from Final Fantasy VI as well as the Souls games as far gameplay becomes more difficult. I just wish the post-game ideas were longer or at least more integrated into the story earlier on.
However, my biggest complaint is player decisions for quests feel weightless. Choices in Dragon's Dogma 2 mostly affect what ending you will get for some side quests. No, you don't even get a choice on whether you want to romance Ulkira or Wilhelmina or not if you complete thier quest lines. The game forces romance at you with no say so and that bothers me if I have to be honest. That said, there are still quite a few side quests I enjoyed that fleshed out the sense of world-building more and will be useful to complete later on in the game despite the writing not being particularly outstanding.
Dragon's Dogma 2 is definitely rough on the edges as far as the ratio between the map and the amount of content variation inside the map, a not-too-amazing main story, and some really questionable decisions as far as questing. But at its core, it's an earnest action RPG that is satisfying to explore and engage in its combat and pawn mechanics. End of the day, while I enjoyed the game for the most part, with some polish, more variety and more involved writing with the main story, Dragon's Dogma 2 could be a very strong contender for GOTY.