Dragon's Dogma (the first one) is one of my all-time favourite games. Dragon's Dogma 2 is a weird sequel, in that rather than continuing the first game it's almost like it was designed to replace it, and to me, it falls short of doing that. But it's still good!
My biggest disappointment is the game's handling of its player classes. The whole system has been touched up a lot from its original iteration, with a few classes removed and a few rather painfully gimped. The decision to make non-basic vocations unlockable could've been interesting, but it's poorly executed, and two of the more interesting classes can only be unlocked quite late into the game.
The first game was notable for having some of the most amazing spellcasting in any action game. In the sequel, the wizard classes are weak and unfun, with tons of spells and even basic features missing, and their power level dramatically decreased.
The world here feels significantly less memorable than Gransys, with fewer landmarks and setpieces. The map is larger, but the density of interesting or important locations is lower, and I felt less of a reason to visit them than in the first game. Enemy variety feels like an even greater issue than before.
The writing here feels generally stronger than in the original, but the final segment of the story drops the ball. The end of the game comes swiftly and with next to no build-up, and it fails to reach the highs of the first game's grand finale in the segment after killing the dragon.
The endgame is quite lacking as well, not just in its story but mechanically. Its effect on the geography of the world is really cool, but it adds little content and there's no "endgame loop" like there was in the Everfall, or anything like the Ur-Dragon.
In spite of all that, this is a fun game. The 35 or so hours I spent on my first playthrough were very enjoyable, and I'll be playing through it again soon.
Will I play it for hundreds of hours over years and years like the first one? Probably not. For every step forward DD2 takes relative to DD1 it takes two steps back, and for a game meant to replace its predecessor, this means I'd rather play the original instead.
My biggest disappointment is the game's handling of its player classes. The whole system has been touched up a lot from its original iteration, with a few classes removed and a few rather painfully gimped. The decision to make non-basic vocations unlockable could've been interesting, but it's poorly executed, and two of the more interesting classes can only be unlocked quite late into the game.
The first game was notable for having some of the most amazing spellcasting in any action game. In the sequel, the wizard classes are weak and unfun, with tons of spells and even basic features missing, and their power level dramatically decreased.
The world here feels significantly less memorable than Gransys, with fewer landmarks and setpieces. The map is larger, but the density of interesting or important locations is lower, and I felt less of a reason to visit them than in the first game. Enemy variety feels like an even greater issue than before.
The writing here feels generally stronger than in the original, but the final segment of the story drops the ball. The end of the game comes swiftly and with next to no build-up, and it fails to reach the highs of the first game's grand finale in the segment after killing the dragon.
The endgame is quite lacking as well, not just in its story but mechanically. Its effect on the geography of the world is really cool, but it adds little content and there's no "endgame loop" like there was in the Everfall, or anything like the Ur-Dragon.
In spite of all that, this is a fun game. The 35 or so hours I spent on my first playthrough were very enjoyable, and I'll be playing through it again soon.
Will I play it for hundreds of hours over years and years like the first one? Probably not. For every step forward DD2 takes relative to DD1 it takes two steps back, and for a game meant to replace its predecessor, this means I'd rather play the original instead.