Dragon's Dogma 2

Since we all know about the elephant in the room, I'm just going to focus on what nobody seems to be talking about because it means a lot to me.

Fashion's Dogma is dead: Under-armor is completely gone (both the chest and legs slot) and so are the gloves. Instead, all you get are a slim number of accessories that you can wear in tandem with your helmet. The cloaks are also unusually large, but their ineffectiveness makes them the most interchangeable slot. The excuse we got was that there would be more armors to choose from, so did we? Hardly, the original game had 68 chest pieces for instance, while this one has 90. But when you include the under-armor, you have 124 pieces to choose from. Now let's include the 70 glove pieces, that's 194 chest options. See what I mean? This game has 68 pieces of the leg armor and the original had 79, when you include under-armor, you have 111. Helmets are comparable in quantity, there's 88 in the original and and 82 here, 97 if you include accessories. Clearly, armor choice is a massive downgrade this time around and it's unjustifiable.

Vocations are disappointing: They just had to restrict this system as well. Is it really okay to only have ten unlockable skills, (plus one mastery skill), when we can't even use two weapons anymore? Especially with so many skills returning, it's a real shame they couldn't come up with more. You only get to unlock 5 augments per class as well; down from six, most of which are useless. Like dealing 5% more damage when hitting a target's vitals or reducing the time it takes to revive a Pawn by 1 second. Not to mention, the game won't even tell you what the values are (that applies to rings as well). The archer is especially affected, since four of the skills require their respective arrow types when they used to require none. You can no longer equip arrows to use on any skill anymore, nor are there status inflicting skills like Invasive Arrow. Mages used to be able to aim their spells and pinpoint a location on the ground, now it's forcibly automatic. When it comes to new classes, trickster makes a jarring addition to the roster because they can't deal any damage. Why isn't this a pawn class? You're going to be much more effective at dealing damage than any pawn. Wayfarer is much worse than the comparable assassin and should have been an opportunity to combine weapons. Instead, you have the ability to switch between two or three vocations, but you only get three ability slots and worse stats. At least the Mystic Spearhand was incredibly unique and fun to play, it's really the only worthwhile addition. I've also got to point out that all the hybrid vocations involve magic, the thief got nothing to mix with.

The gameplay is excellent: Existing skills have been given additional flair and the physics engine will ensure that you can launch your foes straight into the stratosphere. It's very satisfying and fun, especially thanks to the improved AI. Enemies are much more aggressive, have better tracking, quickly gap close, can stunlock you to death, and will chase you to the ends of the earth. They can be genuinely terrifying and you will need your pawns to survive. Going solo is no longer a viable option, especially when most of the classes don't have a basic dodge. Maybe every single hit shouldn't stagger you though, you can only mitigate knockdowns. You can still spam healing items too and it's never been easier to carry more of them (encumbrance increases with levels, items, and rings). But at least they fixed the leveling stats. They're tied exclusively to your vocation, so there's no overlap. The max level is no longer 200 as well, now it's 999; which would have been cool if there were high level monsters. Once you start NG+, there aren't any additional challenges, it's just the same game over again.

The world is epic! Exploration is hollow: It's massive and sprawling, you'll really feel like you're on some sort of grand adventure; but it's landscapes are realistic to a fault; detrimental to the real meat of the game. For instance, every single dungeon is cave and only a handful of them are going to take you a significant amount of time to explore. You're not going to find anything like Bluemoon Tower, the Catacombs, or Watergod's Altar. Puzzles are gone, levers are gone, anything that could have made the locations district is largely missing. You can even see it in their names: "Strange Corridor", "Hidden Cavern", "Forgotten Tunnel" to name a few. Once more, they're not so rewarding either. There are chests absolutely everywhere, but more often than not, you're going to find a wakestone shard or an item you can already buy at the region's blacksmith. There are duplicates of several weapons and armors as well, why? Notable exceptions exist, but they're few and far between. If there were more armor slots to play with, this wouldn't have been a problem. Maybe focus on filling the world with quality content instead of simply making it large, Skyrim was 12 years ago. To make matters worse, enemy variety is about the same as the first game, just spread across a greater distance. If you were hoping for new additions, all you really get are variants of existing ones, slimes, and one-off bosses. Considering an encounter happens about every 15 seconds, it can get pretty exhausting.

Travelling could have been great: The addition of oxcarts is a welcome one, it's so nice to have more options beyond walking and ferrystones. However, the cart moves so slowly that I'm always opting to "doze off", which usually involves an enemy encounter along the way. Problem is, oxcarts are very destructible; I don't even think it's viable to take them without the time skip, because there are so many enemy encounters along the way. The addition of camping is great because you don't have to walk back to an inn whenever night arises. I do think their spread is too generous though, you'll have an easy time finding one when the need arises. Riftstones are everywhere too, so losing a pawn is hardly detrimental. What really bothers me are the portcrystals. Why are there only two naturally occurring ones in the entire game? Here are the places that should have one but don't: Melve, Bakbattahl, Rest Town, Sacred Arbor, Volcanic Island Camp. It's ridiculous, not to mention the non-existence of an eternal ferrystone, which was probably an excuse to fill up chests. Oh, and there's a portcrystal DLC, maybe that's why Bakbattahl doesn't have one.

Questing is better, but the quests aren't good: Quests are no longer tied to stages in the story, so you don't have to worry about automatically failing them. Timed quests will explicitly tell you in the UI, but I'd appreciate having a day counter. Failure was touted as a possibility, but it's not really something to worry about. They're usually started by encounters (you'll run into an NPC or they'll walk up to you) making them feel like a natural occurrence in the world. I appreciate how cryptic they can be, but sometimes the descriptors are unhelpful and you'll have to rely on a pawn's knowledge. Where they falter is in interest, because there aren't any exciting locations to unlock or exclusive rewards. I couldn't tell you a single memorable one, they all felt like a chore.

The plot is dreadful: The main story might just be the laziest I've ever seen in an RPG. It's even more of an afterthought than the first game. All that intrigue and buildup about the false sovran (which is really just a bunch of half-baked stealth missions) is squandered because of some Godsway MacGuffin. Which I thought was just the beginning of the story, turns out it's actually the half-way point. Your search for answers leads you to Bakbattahl, but the actual region is irrelevant to the plot. You'll head to an alter that raises from the sea, but it isn't a dungeon, just a cave with an elevator... Once you reach Moonglint Tower, it's just an elevator again. They seriously couldn't put a single fucking dungeon in this game to save their lives. Once you reach the top, bootleg Jafar accidentally summons the wrong dragon and it ends about the same way as the first game. Only this time, the post-game sucks bigtime. We're talking time limits, checkpoint-only saves, three main quests, an obsession with the color red, and no dungeons. But don't worry, it's all doable in under 4 hours and the ending is just a hint at future DLC. There are a decent amount of new enemies though, as well as some substantial terrain changes. It's just not good enough when you consider the Everfall.

In conclusion, I have a very hard time accepting that this was Itsuno's true vision for Dragon's Dogma because it's worse than Dark Arisen. Not only does it fail to adequately improve on the original's shortcomings, in many ways it has doubled down on them. Meanwhile, its best aspects have been stripped away. Yet again, there's a great system buried beneath a pile of trash, only this time they took more pages from Ubisoft instead of lighting the book on fire. It's emblematic of everything wrong with modern gaming and this massive open world trend needs to stop already.

Goblin Slayer Simulator