I base my review on the PS5 experience only.
Started off very bad, the performance was poor - but once they added the graphical options that let us disable raytracing, motion blur etc. the game ran acceptably for me. Now, into the meat of the game - I think it's an awesome game but there are definitely many oversights by the developers, for one it feels like they made no improvements over Dark Arisen, infact sometimes it feels like they made DD2 worse in some areas in comparison.
Main oversights imo:
- Portcrystal placement: Vernworth and.... Harve??? That is it? You could atleast put the Harve crystal somewhere that makes more sense, like Battahl or even the Checkpoint Rest Town.
- Removing Strider in favour of standalone Thief and Archer classes was a big mistake.
- Only being able to assign 4 weapon skills - This is especially bad for mages/sorcerer and warfarer.. seriously, the skill to change weapons takes up a slot for warfarer. Increasing it to 8 would make sense, and adding a smarter way to change weapons with warfarer that doesn't involve assigning a skill would help too.
- The loot is seriously abysmal. Almost nothing you find in the wild asides from upgrade materials or for making gold is exciting. All of the best gear is sold by shopkeepers. For a game with a massive world that forces you to walk everywhere, this has to be the worst decision they made.
- Where is the dragon??? In Dark Arisen, they made the world feel like it was beset by a deadly dragon, in DD2 you run around fighting goblins for 30 hours and probably wont see the dragon in that entire time.
- Barely any enemy variability. Just a few reskinned Saurians, Goblins, Harpys etc.
- Vocation balance. After playing Thief and Magick Archer, I feel like the rest are insanely disadvantaged.
Overall, fun game that sadly fell short on being GOTY.
Started off very bad, the performance was poor - but once they added the graphical options that let us disable raytracing, motion blur etc. the game ran acceptably for me. Now, into the meat of the game - I think it's an awesome game but there are definitely many oversights by the developers, for one it feels like they made no improvements over Dark Arisen, infact sometimes it feels like they made DD2 worse in some areas in comparison.
Main oversights imo:
- Portcrystal placement: Vernworth and.... Harve??? That is it? You could atleast put the Harve crystal somewhere that makes more sense, like Battahl or even the Checkpoint Rest Town.
- Removing Strider in favour of standalone Thief and Archer classes was a big mistake.
- Only being able to assign 4 weapon skills - This is especially bad for mages/sorcerer and warfarer.. seriously, the skill to change weapons takes up a slot for warfarer. Increasing it to 8 would make sense, and adding a smarter way to change weapons with warfarer that doesn't involve assigning a skill would help too.
- The loot is seriously abysmal. Almost nothing you find in the wild asides from upgrade materials or for making gold is exciting. All of the best gear is sold by shopkeepers. For a game with a massive world that forces you to walk everywhere, this has to be the worst decision they made.
- Where is the dragon??? In Dark Arisen, they made the world feel like it was beset by a deadly dragon, in DD2 you run around fighting goblins for 30 hours and probably wont see the dragon in that entire time.
- Barely any enemy variability. Just a few reskinned Saurians, Goblins, Harpys etc.
- Vocation balance. After playing Thief and Magick Archer, I feel like the rest are insanely disadvantaged.
Overall, fun game that sadly fell short on being GOTY.