dragons dogma has a fully actualized world and a clear vision of what it is. when you set out somewhere, you actually feel like youre out on a quest into a deadly world where you must come prepared. its slow and its repetitive at times, but if you enjoy this gameplay loop and you're excited to gain more in skills and discover more secrets, youre going to feel the magic of it.

if this isn't your kind of thing and you're not in love with the combat, its going to feel like a chore and youre going to think the game is burdensome just to annoy you.

its not an experience for everyone. when it works, it really works. if you are the intended audience, there is a wealth of things to experience and find in this world.

the true joy is in how the dynamic world creates happenings for you. many of them challenging fights or laugh out loud funny moments with your pawns , the monsters you encounter and the physics engine. the framework, the quests , the story, its just the excuse to put you on the path. if you don't understand that, and you lament the scarcity of fast travel options, you will be wishing for a very shallow experience. you will be missing the point.

(I am deliberately ignoring the controversy. Obviously, don't buy the micro transactions; they pervert the intended experience, they go against what the devs had in mind and that's why they sabotaged them deliberately. They're just something Capcom added to exploit you, and yes you should be angry at them. But it's a good game. A solid experience, and the devs don't deserve your hate (Capcom dies, obviously). Other players don't deserve to be pushed away from this experience of it's one they would enjoy. But I understand being soured by the way capitalism ruins everything)

Reached the post-game and am now deciding whether or not to keep playing or switch to something else. Overall, it's a really great ARPG that nails the basics and avoids bloat by staying focused on exploration, questing, and combat. Some of the boss fights are wonderfully fun. Capcom learned all the right lessons from Shadow of the Colossus and Monster Hunter.

I have plenty of nitpicks, though: the controls are a bit unresponsive at times, the camera is pretty bad (especially indoors where it's so zoomed in your player character usually takes up a good 60% of the screen), and honestly -- many will disagree with this -- I actually don't like the pawn system very much. I found it mechanically transparent, needlessly complicated, and immersion breaking a good majority of the time. Half of the dialogue my pawns would spout off was so barely related to the surrounding action, I started up my own little meta-game of "guess the dialogue trigger" whenever they started ranting about this, that, or the other. I would have vastly preferred a tailor-made cast of 10 or so side characters to choose from to quest alongside. But hey, I'm the type of RPGamer that selects from pre-made characters whenever possible, so take from that what you will.

3/5

Played on PS5 - about 50 hours.

This is a really split game I think. Extremely imperfect while being an overall good time.

I really enjoyed the combat, tried out a whole bunch of different weapons which combined with the battles against bigger monsters in the game was awesome. This is the core pillar of the game that, if nothing else, will keep you going.

The character progression was just okay. Levelling the vocations and earning the different types of abilities, augments etc. was compelling, but the augments (which are cross-class) are not that impressive? Armour diversity is great but I really think having a linear armour system as opposed to horizontal (think souls), where everything is viable, kills the joy of it. There's no reason to use certain armours other than fashion (which is the best reason). Character creation is excellent.

The story is embarassingly bad. I think an AI wrote this, and not a smart one. There are multiple points in the story which don't make any sense, are written awfully and just screams cut content.

Exploration is compelling. There are heaps of different caves and secrets around the map that you can discover with some curiosity, and a fair amount of armour and weapons you can find. This is cheapened by the fact that all the best armour is in shops which kind makes exploration feel less worthwhile in some instances.

Quest design I felt was overall interesting. I liked that they don't handhold you through quest objectives, and how that integrates really nicely with the pawn system (with pawns knowing how to solve some quests and being able to lead you along). There are these random escort quests you get given which are awful, the escort AI is terrible. The stories of the quests are pretty plain and not interesting. The quests for maister skills are very variable in terms of quality too.

I have a bit of a bone to pick with traversal. Generally the mechanics of it are fine. However before release the developer said something like "travelling isn't boring, developers just have to make it interesting" then released a game where all traversal is is running fighting, the same 3-4 types of enemies on every route. I like the loss guage and how that incentivises camping, I like how at night it's actually properly dark, but there is nothing inherently interesting about this traversal, it's just following paths. Once you make your way somewhere once (which admittedly can be fun, my first time descending into Battahl down cliffs while a dragon awaited was thrilling) there's limited joy in running back and forth over and over, which the game wants you to do. Better off using ferrystones. 3

The pawn system is great, really enjoyed this as an asynchronous multiplayer option. The feeling of setting out with a band of adventurers is nailed as well. Unforunately, over time, with a lack of interesting things around combat and exploration to do, the game gets a little dull and there just isn't anything dragging me forward anymore.

I hope they do some DLC and I will definitely return.

It's really weird to me that I have so many negative things to say about the game. If I think back to my time with it it really is the good shit that sticks out, but when playing I think the gunk bogs it down. There is a fine line between enjoyable friction in gaming where things are intentionally difficult and a little obtuse and require thought, and tedium. I think this game ventures into tedium a little too often.

A little history, I picked the first game in the series up just a few months after release in 2013 (God I'm old). I struggled with brutal difficulty, ruthless save system, constantly being broke, and terrified of venturing out into the night. I had several people tell me to push through because of how incredible the game was, and I'm glad I listened. DD1 is one of my all time favorite RPGs and probably one of the best games I've ever played.

DD2 improves from the first one in almost every area. More vocations and balance among them (I love the assassin/strider class in the first one, but having daggers and a bow was ridiculously OP), prettier graphics, bigger/more diverse map, a whole new race to play as and interact with. There are a few things I wasn't as happy with (where's my hydra boss?), but as a whole I would highly recommend this game if you enjoyed the first one.

That being said, this game is not for everyone. The people who don't like it are going to hate it, but the people who like it are going to love it. I don't see a lot of middle ground happening here. If you like being ultra powerful from the beginning, this isn't for you. If you're not willing to make and live with mistakes, this isn't for you. If you're gonna be a baby and complain that it runs badly but you refuse to lower your settings, this game isn't for you (side note, I played on PC, can't tell you how console runs).

My highest recommendation is that you pick up the first one and try it. If you love it, play the second. Because CAPCOM did not make this game so that a large group of people could kind of enjoy it. They targeted their specific demographic and made a game they would love. It's fine if you don't like it because it wasn't made for you.

When I played the first Dragon's Dogma, it was the best action RPG I had ever played. That wasn't saying much though because I never cared for the genre because they were never good action games. I love traditional combat styles of regular RPGs, so I don't need them to be action games. I also love action games, so I'm not putting up with 50 hours of bad to mid action combat. Dragon's Dogma was a good action game, but it suffered a bit as an RPG. The closest comparison to its RPG approach was Elder Scrolls, and the world, story, and characters of Dragon's Dogma couldn't compete with those games. Combat and exploration were the saving grace of the game. The same goes of Dragon's Dogma 2.

The downside is that better action RPGs have come out since then. Just finished Rise of the Ronin which I loved, and it's more than just a good action game. It's one of the best. Dragon's Dogma 2 still sticks out though because there's nothing like it. It still hits those highs battling large beasts by climbing up them and stabbing them in the face, and it still has me losing hours just wandering around its world just to discover new areas on the map.

I wish they made improvements since the first game. This game seems impossible to play without a guide as quest instructions are often too vague and pawns aren't always helpful. It's frustrating as I spend too much time trying to figure out what the game wants me to do. The game could also use more enemy variety. Exploration can be deflating when I discover a new cave and travel deep within it only to find a mini boss I've fought plenty of times before. The strange limitations to fast travel lead to long trips through paths I've been through plenty of times before. The game does nothing to make that exciting again, so it's just a time sink.

After a few hundred hours with these games, I have to admit that Dragon's Dogma is an acquired taste. There's nothing else quite like it, especially in the current AAA gaming landscape. Some may think that you really have to know what you're getting into if you want to enjoy it; to an extent, that might also be a good summation of my own perception, but my own experience getting into the series and some anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that a good amount of people would be open to its rather unique way of doing things.

"It's an open world medieval fantasy action RPG" is probably too vague of a description. People might hear that and think of Elder Scrolls, Fable, Elden Ring, or the newer 3D Zeldas— even if there are some similarities, it is none of these things. So what is it? If I had to describe it in a few words I would probably say Dragon's Dogma is a game that's never going to hold your hand, except possibly for a few fugacious moments of explanatory pop-up screens, which will hardly serve to prepare you for the brunt of the experience you are in for. Those little messages won't be much help when you're trying to take an oxcart to the next town and end up assailed by a randy ogre in the dark who proceeds to destroy your ride as you wonder why your equipment and skills loadout is doing no damage because you forgot to unequip the ring from the Sphinx duel trial before you accidentally walk backwards off a cliff and die; or when you go to bed and witness a spooky scene before you wake up to find that a vital quest giver is now dead along with about 20 other people, and are now forced to deal with the situation owing to your single save file (which you can of course circumvent if you really want to, but where's the fun in that?).

I remember finding out about the original Dragon's Dogma (or rather, the Dark Arisen rerelease) probably sometime in the mid-2010s, by specifically searching for games with gameplay similar to Dark Souls which I had gotten fairly hooked on at the time, looking at a screenshot which showed the UI, and thinking "aye, this might be the one". Needless to say, I got quite a bit more than I bargained for, and now, about a decade later, I got all that and probably about 5 times more, with a world map that feels gigantic compared to the first game. Much like the plot and sidequests of Dark Souls, however, the gameplay of Dragon's Dogma is vague, unusual, challenging, unforgiving, yet rewarding and tremendously unique— it scratches the sort of itch that few games can. As befits a game of an open world nature, however, the plot of Dragon's Dogma itself, be it the original or this sequel, ends up feeling a great deal more cursory— you'll more than likely have a hard time thinking of a way to even try and begin explaining it to someone, but that'll hardly stop you from having a good time smacking hobgoblins, shanking cyclopes, high-fiving your pawns and romancing your waifus. Of course, I must also mention that the plot's superficial nature didn't stop me getting a good deal of joy from the realization that the Seafloor Shrine is in fact the Duke's Demesne from the first game, expanding to all of the ruined Gran Soren in the Unmoored World, and when you lead all the evacuated peoples there you're basically bringing the old town back to life for a short while.

If I absolutely had to talk turkey and get down to the nitty-gritty as far as the most significant things that are different between this game and the original, however, I suppose these are the ones that spring to mind:

• The map, as previously mentioned, is massive. Unlike in Dark Arisen, you also no longer have infinite ferrystone uses, but cheap oxcart rides quickly come into the picture (though as previously mentioned, these are also not quite perfect). You can still place custom portcrystals and ferrystones certainly aren't super rare, especially once you've amassed tons of money later on, but there may or may not be a correlation between using them frequently and the aforementioned dragonsplague incidents.
• You no longer regain full health by eating food (magic springs don't exist anymore either); you must rest instead (or use a modestly rare allheal elixir). You can either stay at an inn for a mild sum, or camp by a fire out in the field (only the former will allow you to get updates on your pawn's online activity, however. Or have a super happy fun time getting dragonsplagued). On the flipside, you can now combine old food (now "ripened" instead of "sour") into dehydrated preserves instead of simply letting it rot when it inevitably goes unconsumed.
• The most advanced, Arisen-exclusive vocations must now be unlocked through specific quests instead of simply by mastering the more basic ones. There are also unique master-level skills that must be obtained from particular characters, whether by getting them to like you a lot or through specific quests/interactions.
• There are now multiple different smithing "techniques" you can find for equipment upgrades: Vermundian, Battahli, Elven and Dwarven, the last of which puts all others to shame.
• On that same note, because the world is way bigger now, you can find a bunch of lesser drakes if you look in certain places, and instead of dragonforging simply being "kill the dragon while wearing whatever you want upgraded", they drop wyrmslife crystals which allow you to not only fully upgrade your equipment at your leisure later on, but buy unique stuff from the Dragonforged as well, which is a way better system.
• Dragonsplague now exists, which can be annoying if you're not expecting it.
• Half of the world's population are now furries. You should ask someone who actually cares about that sort of thing to tell you more.

Having finally reached the end screen nearly a year after I first started playing, my full playthrough time clocked in at about 124 hours (about 10 hours shy of the real time I spent playing). Honestly, I feel that a good half of that was spent just getting to the point where I felt sufficiently familiar with the entirety of the game world that I wasn't doomed to get distracted and go junketing off on some unrelated exploration and discovery jaunt while I was attempting a quest— and while this was really part of the experience in the first game as well, it feels way more prominent now that the world is bigger than ever. Once I did get to that point, however, I ended up feeling a renewed desire to try and squeeze as much out of the game as I could, and managed to clear nigh-on every quest and get all three endings in a single run, without even having to manipulate my save files despite the fact that I was ready to do so, as they present things in a way that lets you do that without too much fuss. There have been quite a few updates to the game since launch which have added things that weren't accounted for by the guides that were hurriedly written at the time of its debut, such as the permanent portcrystal just outside Bakbattahl, and this may have been another thing that they addressed— but honestly, if that's the case then I just feel fortunate that I progressed slowly enough to get the less-headachey build for the better part of my playtime.

I think that's enough disorganized rambling for now, so let me cap things off by saying that if any of this sounds interesting to you, you really ought to give it a try. You might end up throwing away dozens of hours of your life in exploring the kingdoms of Vermund and Battahl— and you'll not soon regret it.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is basically Dragon's Dogma: let's try it once more. It feels basically like a second iteration of the original, trying to tweak all the systems, keep what worked and remove what didn't. Overall I'd say that it's definitely an improvement in most areas. The pawn's are a bit more useful and a bit more personality. The combat is a bit more fleshed out. The world is more complex. It's still very much an incremental improvement and not a whole new evolution, which is fine, but I still feel that there's room for improvement.

I like these pawns better than in the original. They are smarter and will communicate more useful information, such as location of important NPCs, treasures, caves and other secrets. I'm glad they ditched the whole idea of they learning from the player, which never made sense. Pawns are supposed to be complementary to the player, so they generally should do the opposite; if the player is playing a support role, the pawn should not learn to play support. In this game, you can set the pawn personality and change it with an item. The expansive character customisation is back better than ever and is pivotal in making your pawn feel unique (unless you're terminally horny and create yet another big-bosomed woman in skimpy clothing).

There's a lot of interesting systems and the world if full of stuff. I loved wandering around at the start and mid game and being completely sidetracked by every detour form the main path. This is helped by the rudimentary fast travel, which is tied to a consumable and which only takes you to particular locations. In the late game, when most of the main roads and caves where already explored and I had particular goals in mind the expansive world became a bit of a hindrance, but not too much.

The combat is great. I haven't played all vocations, but most of the once I tried feel good and viable. Letting you change vocations without any penalty is genius and some quests (although not enough) require particular ones. I loved the Mystic Spearhand, which transforms you into essentially a jedi, force push and everything.

There are things to improve, though, which make me want a third instalment.

First, the UI is kind of crap. The low encumbrance limit and 4-person party means you're constantly fiddling with your inventory, but passing things around is uniformly awful. It would be so great to have the option to select a bunch of items to give to a particular pawn instead of going one by one. Or being able to compare stats and equip items directly instead of having to give them to the character first. It's not a major issue, but it's also not hard to fix.

More hard to fix is that the pawns are still a bunch of dullards. Not only they constantly repeat the same meaningless conversations, but they AI is not great. I've had several pawns throw themselves into a lake and die because their path-finding fucked up, or adding fire damage to the party's weapons at the same time that they were informing me that the enemies were resistant to fire damage and we should try something else.

But we know for a fact that this team doesn't do NPC AI very well. Famously, NPC AI is so CPU demanding that the game shutters in big cities, even with the ridiculously short NPC draw distance and aggressive culling. But what's funny is that their AI is nothing special at all. They mostly sit around doing nothing or walk aimlessly doing nothing interesting at all. They bark their nonsense dialogue all at the same time when you are near and shopkeepers will welcome you even if they cannot see you behind a wall.

Another issue is that the magic vocations are not great. The mage is mostly support and relying on your pawns is a fool's errand. The sorcerer is the typical glass cannon but I never felt that I was doing enough damage in spectacular ways to justify the long casting times. Both vocations also miss on the monster climbing mechanic, which can be a lot of fun.

The story is also utterly nonsensical and disjointed. But what's worse is that it actively goes against the core gameplay of exploration. The first few main missions lead you to "sneak" into the castle and the jail instead of pointing you to some far off land so you can have adventures. You quickly realise that the optimal way of playing is ignoring the main story pull completely.

Finally, the endgame is terribly disappointing. The last few missions that lead to it make no sense and there's no closure on the few characters that you might get attached to. There's a "true ending" area that includes literal fetchquests and then a cutscene. And then the new game+ doesn't have any enemy scaling, the map is all explored and there are no new items. So enemies die in one shot, chests and secret areas don't have any meaningful reward, and there's no thrill in uncovering more of the map.

I guess the fact that I'm disappointed in the lack of replayability is a good sign. That after 70 hours of play, I still want more. So yes I want more.