Dragon's Dogma 2 Review - 160 Hours Later, Here's What I Think. 

I miss the first few hours of the game as a fighter, when I really struggled against even the goblins, really feel like an adventure

I might be spoiled with how much content was in Dark Arisen, but I feel the game (DD2) doesnt have quite the variety of gear or the random loot in chests like DD1. I’m also in need of a hard mode as I’m no longer threatened by anything less than multiple Gore Minotaurs. I’m hoping they do something like Bitter Black in DD1. I need a dungeon full of the worst monsters and a long adventure.

Most games: Quests ARE the game, travel just connects them. This game: Travel IS the game, quests just provide context.

Micros aside, performance aside, I have 130 hours in the game, played all vocations except Trickster, other than testing it; that thing is a meme. I heard somewhere: "DD2 is a flawed masterpiece" and I totally agree. The true and biggest problem with the game is that it is too easy. Magic Archer and Sorcs literally one-shot all and every single boss, including endgame bosses. NG+ does not level scale, and it has no new or stronger monsters. Overall, I think later bosses need more complex mechanics. - Combat is S tier. Some vocations are slow and will feel really bad at the beginning but will pick up after level 6 (early levels go super fast, level 5 goes in no time). Some "Core skills" tool tips are garbage. I spent the whole game without knowing how to make the charge attack for the bow because the game never told me to press randomly R3 to start the charge, like, what the heck. - Traveling in the game is great; the limited fast travel in the game is fine. Going around fighting stuff is the game, and it's great. The problems are monster density; you can't walk more than 10 meters without an ambush, and holy crap, is it goblins, bandits, or lizards. There should be more monster variety. - The game needs a way to not gain XP or lower your level. You over level and power creep yourself by just playing the game; you literally get punished by exploring. You get to a point where you one-shot everything. A good thing about this is that gear doesn't matter at all, so you can just focus on fashion and the best-looking sets, which I have spent a lot of time with. The game is pretty. You should be able to forge/dup armor to make it usable for all vocations, remove the stats or whatever, not that there is anything unique about armors in the game anyway. (Gear should have stats like you find in rings) - There should be a way to make an instance of your pawn, lock it at a lower level, and to a vocation. Like this, there can be like 6 instances of my pawn for every vocation so people can choose what they need. Because I can't stop getting XP, I'm almost level 80, and for my friend, it is not worth it to pay a thousand RC to hire my pawn... I feel level 40 is the sweet spot for the game; over that is just power creep. - Coming from BG3... romance is a joke, not that it matters, but it could have mattered more. - I played only like 10 hours of DD1, but I know the lore and the universe. Holy crap, if you are new, there is absolutely no way for you to know what's going on. There should have been more connection and Easter eggs with DD1. SPOILER: - The dragon plague is an amazing idea executed in the absolute worst way. Such a missed opportunity to make a really involved and cool side quest where you don't have your pawn and you play solo with no pawns for a while. They really wanted to make Dragon Plague something important for the story, especially considering the final cinematic where your pawn turns into a black dragon and helps you. Why this dragon is not a fight. This should have been the way to dump a ton of lore and make the story interesting. - The endgame world is so damn cool. I agree that the world gets "ugly," but all the new paths you now have because there is no water are super cool (should have more dungeons in those areas though). The constant "harder" monsters were great. I was fighting a dragon, and a griffin, and a chimera ambushed me; the MH experience, and it was a great moment. That said... You are rushed in this world; I don't have a problem with it, but the game should have told me, and the quest log should have had the hourglass icon on it. I was taking my time exploring and gathering materials to max-enhance my gear. Boom, a city gets destroyed, and I was planning on getting enhancements from it. You can reset the world save by killing yourself again with the sword, but it was 8 hours of progress gone...

Dude by the end of my last dd1 playthrough i just totally gave in and said that the Arisen is just in love with working class dudes so they always fall for the blacksmith because hes a blue collar chad.

The little things like collisions on monsters after they die is something I really like. The first time i killed an ogre it slumped against the wall in a sitting position instead of clipping through the wall.

Bro wolves have never ran a train on me like they do to you lmao

It does take place after the first game, Gran Soren is the Seafloor Shrine.

What’s with getting 8 million wakestone shards as rewards? I’m at the very endgame and have used 2 and have like 20 wake stones sitting in storage lol… the rewards were also kinda lackluster. Especially since most weapons you can just go get at a store before finding it…

I just learned yesterday that Dd2 has the least amount of people in the credits than all the last Capcom games. If that is true, it explains a lot about the shortcomings that we all had problems with

A ring that stops exp gain would be great. Loving fighting the monsters but you just get too strong and your pawn stops getting hired.

I've been having loads of fun just exploring the map and finding stuff. Not having quest markers and stuff only makes it more exciting. Personally, my top one was finding the Sphinx, which I really liked. Beside getting to another area by the "alternative" passage because there was a gate in the way. Also, no big reason to rush to the end of the game. I'm 72 hours in and still haven't got to the endgame, even if I'm getting there. Sure, I'm getting a bit tired of the game but EVERY game past ~60 hours I start to get a bit tired of it. Except for MH. :P Personally, the story, monsters variety and performance hasn't really impacted how much I've been liking the game. Sure, there's performance issues in the cities which I would like to see fixed but like I said, I've still been liking it.

They could easily fix every issue I have with this game by adding a DLC akin to Dark arisen from DD1, that DLC added hardmode, many new monsters, a huge new dungeon with replayability through the bitterblack system. Although I hope this time they add more skills to each vocation because it feels a little lacking, maybe even more vocations too would be perfect.

I also spent 161 hours picking up the platinum and exploring the world. And I’m still not sick of it. Went back and am halfway through replaying Dark Arisen right now. Really makes me want Capcom to bring back Dragon’s Dogma Online and finally bring it to the west. I bet it would kill it in the live service market. Still not sure why we never got it over here back in the day. I think it lasted for like 4-5 years in Japan.

Scaling enemies is one of the seven deadly sins of game design.

@23:23 Bro the first one was a banger!! Right?! I don't see why we can't switch to that one as well since we have the option to play the DD:DA ost if you bought the DD2 Music & Sound Collection. Its not a collection if they left out the OG title screen

I'm still playing through the game, there's so much I love about it, but my biggest complaint is how narrow the travel paths are. In DD1 I loved going off-road and making my own path. I could either beeline for a destination OR go out of my way to fight everything. In DD2 I know that no matter what direction I go, I'm going to have a small monster encounter every 60 seconds because that's just how the roads are.

I have to agree with your sentiments about the fast traveling around when you were doing the Sphinx riddles. I felt the same way while I was going for the true ending and was using ferrystones to travel to the cities to have them evacuate.

So many people have said this game lacks handholding for quests... no, the quests are broken and underdeveloped. Elden rings quests lack handholding, and allow for multiple ways to discover or randomly uncover the completion. Dragons dogma 2 does not, you either complete it the way the intended, or it breaks, but they also dont specify, or even imply, the apporiate way to complete a quest. You know you need to go somehwere specific to complete a quest? Good, make sure you go in through the right entrance or oops the quest breaks because you didnt hit the interaction zone that triggers the AI system built over 15 years ago...

Very good review, and not just because I agree with pretty much everything you brought up. If you want to start a new game without losing your old save, you should be able to create another Steam account and library share.

One of the big things I wish they would have included is the ability to officially play as more races since Elves and Dwarves are in the game. It is nice we can have the aesthetic of elves and dwarves for our characters, but unless we are addressed as such, our character is still just a human. (unless you play a beastman, but even they are basically just humans that look like cats)

Tbh it was very fun for the first 20 Hours but the constant traveling and the encounters become boring real fast.

Loving the game so far! Only issue on my side on ps5 i’ve been unable to connect with the network to enjoy the pawn system. Was working until 5days ago i’ve tried everything and reinstalled the game doesn’t work :(

I agree with you 😅 Thank you for review and have good days 🍻

I don't have this game but for the first game you can make up to 4or 5 additional steam accounts and enable family sharing and hav more savs that way?

My personal thoughts on the game (coming from someone who never played Dragon's Dogma 1), I finished it in 82 hours, no rush >The story is just "Okay" >Combat is cool, but very easy once you understand how it works >The Pawn System was, in my opinion, the highlight of the game, ranging from helping you recover your Stamina when it runs out to saving you from a fall that would kill you and helping you explore the world based on what the Pawn learned from others makes the exploration very organic, I was really surprised and liked it a lot >But personally, I found the rewards for exploring the world TERRIBLE, I expected to find some interesting weapons and armor in chests that were well hidden, but I rarely found any equipment inside a chest, and when I did find them they were worse or THE SAME as the equipment which I had already purchased from the vendor in the area, I think the rarest item I managed to find in a chest were Ferrystones, of which I used a total of 7 in the entire game (27 are still stored in the inventory). >While the highlight of the game is exploration with the Pawns, I see no reason to explore the game >This is the only game where I thought they put too many enemies on a map, I walked around for 30 seconds and a horde of them appeared, maybe the lack of enemy variety was what made this place so boring, fuck Battahln I still enjoyed the experience, my personal rating: 7/10

The amount of hoops I had to jump through to lock in Julien in the first game! I managed to bag the blond elf who we do the archery thing with. I wanted Sven but got the elf. I didn't like how none of the main male characters we interact with had no romance scenes. That kinda failed. I didn't really like Ulrika so all of a sudden she is smooching my arisen and I was like.....ok. Wilhelmina's quest was good. I just wish some of the guys had romance scenes and quests and at least moved into our home with us! I do love the game and just found out there is a hidden pawn affinity system running in the background with our main pawn....for their ending scene in the true ending. I am absolutely talking to him, high fiving him, taking him for beers and haircuts!

Thanks for your final thoughts on the game. I myself am only about 80 hours in on my first playthrough and many of the criticisms and praises you give are indeed valid and warranted. As I've been ranking up every vocation as I travel, probably the biggest criticism I personally have is related to having to purchase inclinations for pawns to change them instead of just switching if you have already unlocked them. My kindhearted pawn got huge praise as an archer, but when they became a warrior, it was like someone hit them with a stupid spell and they kept running around. I know they are cheap and easy to purchase, but I'd rather use rift crystals on other things. Granted, this will be a moot point once I level up every vocation for them and go back to archer, but it would be nice. Same for woodland wordsmith, forger, etc. Minor nitpick, but worth mentioning. Besides that, I am indeed having a blast.

what did you think of enemy density. i loved exploring and actually traveling places but i could only care about goblin and wolf hordes so many times. I feel like enemy density in many places made the issues of variety, overleveling and "exhausting" travel so much more noticeable .

Curious for anyone playing on console (not sure if this is a problem for PC) but more often than not, when ever the game autosaves, it brings down the resolution and pixels in the game. Like all the textures in the environment won’t load in. I’m on Xbox Series S, and I have to press the center button to get into the mini menu, then exit out just so that red save ring goes away and for everything in the environment to pixelize again… hope isn’t confusing, but was just wondering if this is happening to anyone else and if there’s a way to fix it?

Question. Did anyone get a bug on PS5 that causes the game to stutter and moving the camera makes the game freeze for a bit? The first time I got it I just loaded a save from an inn and that seemed to fix it, but now it persists even after I loaded from an inn. I just don't know what to do.

One monster that was in DD1 that I really missed in DD2 was the hydras. I really enjoyed the mechanics of the hydra fights in DD1 with the multiple heads and their potential fast strikes. It was a fun monster that I wish they had kept in DD2.

Eini ended up being the NPC the dragon captured at the end of my playthrough even after I did Ulrika's questline lmao

I play Skyrim on survival legendary difficulty with no HUD. With that being said, I fuckin LOVE this game, and I never played the first one.

Thanks for your thoughts! What did you think of the Trickster? I'm 1/3 of the way through Battahl and pondering whether I should give it a go before Magick Archer but, while the concept does look interesting, I'm not sure I can justify funky, potentially janky illusion gameplay that requires long setup times instead of dealing (large amounts of) damage.

I went back to DD1 and I still the combat is way more fun. Moreover, there are more monster variety. Like the cockatrice, and the Bitterblack isle is so good. I am doing it in hard mode.

I died a few times in the very beginning. Aside from that I agree. So many items and next to no need for them

Though I did try the first Dragon's Dogma I didn't get very far. This time I settled in the let myself experience the game and I now have nearly 200 hours and just completed my first play through. Immediately started NG+ because I just wasn't done. The sense of adventure in this game is world class. There is nothing else out there like it. It definitely has its flaws (the story, the non-pawn npcs are boring, and the performance) but what a masterpiece. I had completely soured on open world games - the endless and repetitive tasks, the feeling that I was just completing a checklist and wondering why I was doing it, I was ready to write them off completely. I went in Dragon's Dogma apprehensively, but my friend who loved the originally kept telling me this one was different and I am so very thankful I did.

I wish the enemy encounters were just a tad more spread out instead of being every other 6sec to 20 sec. Wouldve been neat of there some lovely theme songs playing in places of importance. and would love if they added in a actual dlc the old armor variety system. Loved the Review Ruri and loved the game

How can you make your pawn in to an official pawn?

I am gonna pick it up on a sale as I have a few concerns, but well done review I will definitely play it eventually.

Had a blast with this game. About to finish endgame after watching this. Hard agree on the scaling though. I don't want to play vocations that I have less fun with to kneecap myself enough for a challenge. Thief's Meister skill making them completely invincible if you can handle basic stamina management is also just goofy.

Micro transactions are the absolute least of this games problems.if people had of played the game first before bitching about it they would know.

If the game is too easy, is it possible to only have you and your main pawn (so youre 2 people) to make it harder? Or even olay it alone without pawns? Or do you get staggered every 1 second til you die if youre not 4 party members?

I absolutely agree on traveling being important, having to prepare, plan the route and so on is great but the problem is enemies stop scalling early, and once that happens and that traveling tension is gone all you are left with is waiting on stamina for more sprinting. Should it scale better to remain challenging - and to retain the feeling of being rewarded for mastering the game mechanics, gearing the character. It only works if the content is challenging. And with better monster variety, more unique bosses and more random, vastly different monsters in the areas each time they respawn this game would sustain the intented fantasy, but sadly for me it runs out of possible permutations around 30h in. There is a huge stretch of samey content before Unmoored world. Elden Ring had similar problem, but it only started running out of tricks around 150h for me, meanwhile DG2 started getting repetitiive around 35h in.

Great video, truly glad to have found your channel at the time of scrolling for DD2 before release. I do recommend trying Custom Difficulty Tweaks mod to play around with combat in NG+. Lets you tweak the game hoe'ver you like, have ye grown overpowered.

Exploration in this game is amazing! The landscapes are hella beautiful, combat/skills are 10/10.. only thing lacking is the questing.. 7/10.. the other two make up for it though 💪🏼

Is it true to say that some maister skills are locked behind quests? So far that has been my major issue. Personally I am totally supportive of the journey behind more important than the destination, but the game is designed around you REACHING the destination in order for you to obtain "highest level upgrades" that are otherwise unreachable. That pretty much runs counter to the philosophy.

The final fight with the Dragon was just a basic fight and was way too easy as well.

I agree with most of the criticism, I just think you were too lenient in your critique of the story. I would say the story in Dragon's Dogma 2 is poor, rating it 2/10 with or without prior knowledge of the first game. And I can't soften my opinion with the hope that the story will be improved with DLC.

the resting mechanic basically doesn't matter if you have the explorer camping set

Such a great video!

Hey, how do you feel about most of the best loot being in shops? I'm making a mod now that moves over 130 items from the shops and places them out into the world, and I'm wondering what you're opinion is on shop loot. Would be amazing if you would try the mod too!

I agree with the scaling. I don't mind that enemies don't scale. I love the fantasy of destroying esrly game mobs after becoming stronger. However, leveling up is WAY too fast. I explore a bit and suddenly I'm already overpowered. This is especially true for a DD veteran (I never died against an enemy in this game; only from out-of-combat falls). I wished the leveling was much slower. NG+ definitely doesn't scale in my experience. With a lack of hard mode, I had to use a mod to make enemies tougher without making them too spongey.

You are spot on about the fast travel. It's fine. A little more enemy variety and 2 or 3 more portable port crystals would be welcome tho. Your points about monster and dungeon diversity and scaling are also absolutely spot on.

Can they really not add a % health or damage modifier for the new game plus? That can be coded in over night.

The lack of fast travel wasn’t an issue for me it’s the lack of traversal options - after a while just being on foot got tiring to me especially since you’re going to run through some of the same areas for different quests and the lack of enemy variety doesn’t help. Being a medieval fantasy game they could have got creative with the different classes/vocations like different types of mounts or traversal options to change it up a little it would have really opened up the world.

Wasn’t dark arisen basically them adding a new game plus and making it harder in dragons dogma 1? If so maybe we will get something like that for DD2

24:23 What is that weird box?!? 😱 52:20 I don't think the game need more monster's type. The game have enough obstacles (monster) to entertain you without distracting you from the main objective. I think the game was well-thought, not like any other souls games. 54:40 Dude! That's the point of the whole game! To be so powerful to even defeat the Gods! What has you been playing? The NG+ is what make this game awesome! ❤

The issue with the system in the game as it pertains to fast travel is the fact that you have to report back in and that sucks. Every time you finish a mission you have to run cross country just to tell this person and then continuously do that over and over. It would have been ok it they just let the mission complete without having to turn every one in unless needed. At first it was cool and then it become tedious.

This game is not for me. No disrespect, but I find it obtuse and boring. It’s not hard, it’s just purposefully getting in your way. I have no problem when what’s getting in your way is fun like a boss, but in my opinion the challenge here lies in kicking you when you’re down. (I didn’t know that all three of my pawns were going to walk off a cliff and then get attacked by 3 large enemies simultaneously and the game quicksave in the middle of that fight then force me to reload 2 hours of gameplay back to an inn. 😂) You’re competing against the games systems - not competing against the game. The pawn system is probably the only thing I commend in this game and is actually doing something new and different. The other 85% of the game is fine, not good, not bad, just fine. When playing it I find myself daydreaming of Elden Ring, Monster Hunter, Tears of the kingdom, Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Forbidden West, Red dead redemption 2 etc. all signs this is just mediocre for me. If it’s for you, it’s for you and I’m happy you’re enjoying it.

Hey Ruri did you have a pawn on ps5? If so could you share its ID?

The story is that I rode a griffin across the map to its nest to petrify it with the head I cut off of medusa because an npc quest dialogue I heard 6 hours before made me think it was a good idea 😂

Great game in the TES vein, like the TES games it has its ups and downs but I really enjoyed how it would create this feeling of setting out on adventures and ending up in wild places. Also all vocations feel good to play imo, even if I have little interest in some. The use of animation and physics is phenomenal to put you in the world. I want more rpgs to take this much care with that, it's just amazing to weave through terrain and settlements and crowds. Would say other than the launch controversies, the downsides for me is that the story team was given about one page to write the story, so even if it's actually got some cool moments it's just not enough. Even for the type of game it's light imo. The other one is that the whole dynamic with new game and saves etc, I don't really know if it's warranted. I've ran into the "issue" that there is a ng+ system but there's 0 reason for me to play it, I am just too overpowered, and I also can't start a new game without losing my save unless I move files around and catalogue them. Imo this is also just something that deters from the game, the way it is now.

Question about the water graphics: I'm playing on PC, am I the only one who gets weird water ghosting and resolution? Something is just off about water when you get close. Am I the only one?

My only big frame drop was when i was fighting a griffin, got ambushed by some raiders, some goblins, and then a golem decided he wanted to get involved. Being yeeted by the golem spanking was surprising, frame drops, were understandable.

I find managing Portcrystals and Ferrystones quite frustrating and I have unlimited patience, so I can't imagine what it's like for less patient players. There are several fairly long and linear stretches of road or path which must be travelled repeatedly as you quest back and forth, particularly between the North and Battahal. I try to think of it as an opportunity to rank vocations but the journey is still very repetitive and tedious when you have already picked over the area with a fine tooth comb once. And I know the Devs didn't have it in mind but I would play a multiplayer version of this game for 1000 hours.. Coop and online. I think not much would have to be changed to make it workable, you could play 2 player coop with a friend taking your main pawn very easily. Maybe Capcom could do a Dragons Dogma Online 2?

I am so tired of people ignoring that not everyone has 60+ hours a week to run around this game. If you don't like fast travel, just don't use it! You don't have to use escalators or elevators in malls either, but loads of people do, because it saves them a limited resource, time. Same thing here. Feel free to walk around the mall all day, I only have an hour before I have to to sleep for my next shift, so I'm going to mod the game to add some basic conveniences to the game.

Game runs pretty good on xbox now since setting to max 30

Most seem to think that DD1 or even DA>DD2 is most area's and I tend to agree. Especially when it comes to music.

Trying to focus on your points, Ruri, but all I can think of at 21:15 is WEEEE!!😂

I love this game, lots of things feel natural. I enjoy exploring and soloing bosses. I leave my pawn across the map.

had fornival as my romance in the first game since i completed his questline and purchased tons of piligrim's charm 💀

Wish we got memorable quests like defending a town from a large scale attack or helping them prepare for it, or like in the first game where you liberate a fortress from Goblins...iquests here are more or less talk to people in correct order or escort an npc to this location.

Sphinx , how many quests : getting there counts as a riddle , running away : you just need to pay attention to the quest and notice you cant hit her chest and head.

They knew about Arisen. The whole kingdom of men is for the Arisen. So the lore must been there at start. It was DD1 that had the lore from since there was an Arisen before the main character became on. The actual king was an former Arisen in DD1, so they should have known about the whole concept in DD1.

I’ve been taking my time with the game, not having progressed far enough to get magic archer which I can’t wait to try out. As a normal archer I accidentally fell into a gryphon nest. My pawns didn’t follow me since the drop was too great so I was in for a fight. It wasn’t easy, but I actually killed it with no pawns. It also felt good because it was my first gryphon kill in the game after being harassed by these things for so long

I think this game will be a solid 9 or 10 in a few years after all the updates and dlc much like its predecessor. It's a shame that there are still some areas that don't feel completely realized even though this was supposed to be the game the DD creative team wanted to make 12 years ago. So far my only disappointment is having only four skills per vocation. It's bad enough having only one weapon but only getting four skills feels very limiting especially for my mage main pawn.

Excellent review

No the game did count right with the Sphinx riddle. There is one you "actively" solve but don't at the same time and that one can trip people up with that specific riddle. Also the Eternal Wakestone isn't really the most important reward, it's getting her to dupe a portcrystal especially if you are early on and maybe only have one.

I ended up romancing the Inn keeper in Casardis in DD1 lmao he looks like manny pacquiao

Maaan Caxton scarred me for life. I'm still having visions of the campfire scene.

They do have original music from first game. Change settings on starting menu settings gives u old soundtrack

Wanted to love it but it just becomes easy yet tedious and walking and sorting inventory becomes the whole game. I may play again someday but got burned out around 30 hours in. I got 30 hours out of it at least but I’m done with the time suck inventory and travel system simulator the game becomes.

I enjoyed the game and got a good 40 hours before I started feeling the drag. Overall, DDDA felt more fleshed out.. which is saying a lot. Dragons Dogma was one of my favorite games, and I tore through it top to bottom. A lot of little things, and some big, were left behind for the sequel that just kinda ruined the experience later in the game. One thing I will say is DD2 made me want to play Outward so badly I went and sunk 60 hours into a new Outward playthrough. I'll go back to DD2, I'm sure, but for now, I am gonna need some patches/balancing/updates before I do.

Coming from Skyrim, it’s not called exploring - it’s breaking and entering 😂😂 Looking for those 5 books to bring to that child was literally like searching for a needle in a haystack. 2:29

People in the comments complaining about the difficulty getting easy later on seem to forget that's exactly how it was in the first game, even on hard mode the game got easy by the mid point. You shouldn't have been expecting soulsborne difficulty.

If you'd asked me my opinion of this game when I was 50 hours in and still in Vermund I would've told you this was one of the best games I'd ever played. But man do things go downhill when you get to Battahl. The story, literally and figuratively, goes south after the coronation and the enemy variety problem hits then too as mobs get even more dense. I still loved the hell out of stuff like the Talos battle, and entering the true endgame, but I really wanted a comfy dungeon crawl loop at the end like the Everfall in the first game. The changes to the world and seeing it without the brine was cool af, but then the suddenness of the true ending and the ambiguity it brought with the dragonplague was intriguing, but even briefer than the first game. It's so frustrating because this game is only missing a little connective tissue that would've made it a goat. I'd still give it an 8/10 though because those first 50 hours were a joy.

It doesn't need to be Fromsoft levels of difficulty, but they really need to add Fromsoft difficulty level dungeons and bosses. Thats my only gripe. Performance is fine for me since on Xbox its stable 30 most times after the recent update, and when it dips slightly below, the Xbox VRR makes it unnoticeable

Guilty as charged. "Masterworks all, can't go wrong."

Reaching the unmoored world was a peak gaming moment for me

Great review. I think the game has many flaws, but it has such a presence and sense of adventure that I love it. I do think I eventually was able to fast travel too easily and some zones just are not nearly as interesting. I think another flaw was not putting more unique elites in each area. When I keep running into goblin variants and the same few elites, it can tire out that joy of exploration. You're totally right with the tile set issue. For classes I think some classes just felt better in general. Warrior is great but loses its playstyle when fighting an elite that can't be knocked down. So elites with specific spots to hit and the like just don't feel right on it. Thief is pretty much good at everything. Fighter feels a bit too weak in general. It doesn't hit hard enough to compete with warrior. It doesn't hit fast enough and doesn't feel as versatile as thief. Heck it's not even as defensive as thief is. Mystic Spearhand also just feels OP with the shield. It's weird that fighter isn't the most defensive at least. I have a little more to do at 87 hours in. I recommend it too but I do feel there are some weaknesses. Notably the lack of follow through on story makes some exploration feel less and less rewarding as you progress. I do really have high hopes for DLC though as the first one created great content.

Think it will port to switch?

I don't get how is it possible for the dev team to have made DD 10 years ago and not make a way better experience with this one. The BIGGEST problem is that the game encourages exploration, but when you actually start exploring this happens 1. You find very few armor / weapons which are better that what you have or you can buy from a vendor. Which is a HUGE HUGE FLAW! Capcom, listen to me! If you want to encourage the player to explore, fucking make it worth while!!! I kept searching cave after cave after cave and mountain top after mountain top hoping and being excited for finding some new gratsword or cool armor for my warrior...and nothing. Disappointment after disappointment until I gave up. There are like 3, 4 interesting / good weapons to be found for a warrior, in the entire game! The rest, you buy. 2. In Battahl especially, you are constantly fighting stupid orcs, harpies, wolves, skeletons, like man...is that a real place where people and beastren live or is it a fucking monster fest? Who is your QA?? Have you never ever wandered how stupid it is that the player needs to have these stupid petty repetitive fights with stupid petty enemies ALL THE FUCKING TIME?? How did you miss this?? There is no sense of adventure, no anxiety, no fear, just stupid fucking orcs and harpies that keep coming and I keep killing them. Please Capcom, listen to me, learn...do you know what makes for a great expericene? ANTICIPATION. Walking through the world, exploring...hearing the birds sing, meeting other people, patrols, and then walking on a side little road that seems to lead somewhere interesting and then silence, something is wrong, no animals, no birds, too silent. Then you get ambushed by a hoard of monsters or some big monster of both! Then you fight for your life! ANTICIPATION CAPCOM! NOTE THIS DOWN! Exploring the world and realising that night is coming and there is where all the biggest dangers come to life. Being afraid because you don't know what's out there! Going on some unbeaten path through ravaged villages, following the tracks of some unknown beast you need to find and kill. Beast being illusive, luring you into a place where it can attack, watching you, stalking you! Have you not played the STALKER, METRO? Have you not felt the fear of going out at night, with monsters sounding in the distance, knowing a chimera could be hiding, watching you? The best part of those games was the atmosphere, the sense of danger, the possibility of being attacked, not knowing when, how, what will come after you next. This is what you could have made, a real masterpiece. What you did with this game is that you "normalized" the danger, which means it no longer feels dangerous. I keep killing everything, is like nothing, just annoying. Another fucking gonblin, wolf, harpie, saurian just wasting my time. It's tedious, boring, unfullfilling, repetitive. How the hell did you missed this?

Great video

What does the deluxe edition have over the standard?

I bought the wakestones and port crystal and i am completely satisfied with my purchases

I do think Dragon's Dogma 2 is a good game, but it never really affected me with the same wonder and amazement as Dark Arisen did. And I say that as someone who had never entered Bluemoon Tower or conquered Bitterblack Isle until the weeks ahead of DD2's release. So much of Dark Arisen blew my mind from the Everfall to the battle with Grigori, and all of Bitterblack Isle. While I enjoyed my time in DD2, it was a much less fulfilling experience.

I'm obsessed by this game. It feels like a D&D session, and with mods it gets even better.

I just passed 100 hrs. this game completely took me by surprise (never played the first one). no end in sight, really taking my time!