After 66 hours of playtime I have finally beaten Dragons Dogma 2 (True Ending) and to be honest, this game turned out to be way better than I anticipated. Let me preface this review by saying that I've never played the first Dragons Dogma so I had no idea what to expect, the only thing I was aware of were the mediocre reviews which haven't changed in months so I was quite skeptical. However it's been a while since I've played a fantasy RPG and ignoring the reviews, this game looked quite promising so I gave it a shot.



I'll start off with the negative just to get it out of the way:
The story, characters and quest design are utter d@gshit, bottom of the barrel garbage. Considering how seemingly focused this game is on its world building and story telling, it's laughable how little effort they actually put into writing good characters or a coherent story. It starts off somewhat promising with a solid prologue and the lore of the world seems interesting enough, but that's about where it ends. As soon as you reach the capital you quickly start to realize that Capcom must have hired crack addicts to write the story for them, because nothing that characters say or do and nothing that the game tells you to do over the course of the main story is in any way engaging or fun from a story telling or quest design standpoint:

Fetch quest after fetch quest, running from point A to point B etc. etc. and the pay-off is 3 lines of dialogue telling you to go somewhere else again. Nothing interesting happens, ever (until you reach the end, then it gets kinda good-ish). There are barely even any cutscenes, the vast majority of dialogue is accompanied by uninspired, oblivion-style camera zooms toward whoever is currently talking, it makes the already uninteresting dialogue even more boring to listen to PLUS you have to press a button after every single ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ line to progress. Am I playing an MMO? What's going on here?

And yes I have watched lore videos, read articles and explanations about both DD2 and DD1 to try and make sense of the story and while I mostly get it now, other than the overall concept of the world itself and the cycle, I still think it's incredibly uninteresting. I think it's comparable to Fromsoft games in many ways, though the reason why Fromsoft's stories work and Dragon's Dogma's doesn't, is that Fromsoft doesn't try to shove its story down your throat, it's essentially optional, whereas DD2's story is a huge part of the game. And while cryptic, Fromsoft's stories are still well thought out and make sense once you actually try to understand them, even if a lot of it is left up for interpretation, Capcom just didn't even bother thinking about whether or not something actually makes sense but simply expects you to accept it.



Now, story aside, what's the gameplay like? It's absolutely incredible. DD2 genuinely has some of the most fun and engaging gameplay I've ever seen in a video game, the world somehow feels incredibly alive despite it's dull story and characters, the exploration feels rewarding (more on this later) and the combat is so extremely fun I don't know if I'll be able to go back to some of my favorite RPGs like The Witcher 3 or Skyrim again, because it's not even remotely a competition. There are 10 different vocations (I have maxxed out 2 of them) that all play and feel completely differently with a different moveset, playstyle, about a dozen different skills each, different weapons and armor, you can essentially become whoever you want. The character customization is also fantastic.

When I first saw combat of DD2 I thought that climbing on top of enemies looks fun but also feels like a gimmick you'll probably get bored of fairly quickly. I was so wrong. There is nothing more epic than fighting a Griffin, jumping on its back and slamming a huge hammer into the back of its head to make it stagger and fall to the ground, it never gets old. On top of all this there's also the pawn system which essentially allows you to have 1-3 NPC followers at all times. It made exploring the world a lot less lonely, plus they made combat not only easier but also a lot more fun and dynamic, it's a great feature. The movement in DD2 is also incredibly good. The climbing, running, jumping etc. feels just right with the perfect amount of inertia, even simply traversing the world is fun in and of itself.

Now I've seen a lot of people complain about the fact that exploration feels unrewarding and while I get where they're coming from, I can't say I agree. You don't get bombarded with gear in every single cave and outpost like in Elden Ring for example, but instead you'll find a lot of upgrade materials and other useful items with the occasional weapon or piece of armor every few hours, most of your gear you'll have to buy in cities and then upgrade with the materials you found while out exploring. I honestly really like this concept of getting new equipment, it feels more grounded in a way and when you DO find a weapon that also just so happens to belong to the class you're currently using, it feels even more special. One issue I have with the gear system however, is how the game prevents you from wearing armor that belongs to a different class until you get the Warfarer at the end.

Another complaint I've read about a lot is the lack of enemy variety and quite frankly, this has not once bothered me during my entire playthrough. Obviously it's not on Elden Ring's level of enemy variety, but the only reason Elden Ring has so many unique enemies is because its combat is incredibly simple and straightforward. Sure you have hundreds of different weapons, but they don't offer you anywhere near as much variety in playstyle as DD2's class system does. In Elden Ring, the way you fight enemies is dodge, dodge, hit, dodge, dodge, hit, which is completely fine and works well because it makes up for that by just having a sh1t ton of enemies. DD2 does it the opposite way, it doesn't have nearly as many unique enemy types, but instead offers you a combat system that you won't ever get bored of after dozens if not hundreds of hours of gameplay. Keep in mind there are 10 classes and I've only maxxed out 2 after almost 70 hours of playtime.

Before getting to the last popular complaint I quickly want to address how beautiful this game looks. The graphics are just phenomenal, the vegetation looks incredibly realistic and dense, the textures are clean and the particle effects add so much life to the magic, explosions and the like, it truly feels next gen. The game does have some performance issues, but it generally wasn't an issue for me and even in the worst cases didn't drop below 30fps on a 2060S on almost max settings. Really the only problem I've had were the SSR which left some pretty intense artifacts when moving the camera so I had to turn it off.

Lastly, the final complaint I want to talk about is the lack of different biomes and my honest answer to that is: have we played the same game? If you seriously believe that this game is lacking biome variety, then go back to Skyrim, go back to Fallout 4 and go back to The Witcher 3 and tell me how they're any different. Yes half of DD2's map is populated by forests and fields, but so is Skyrim's map and so is The Witcher 3's map, yet they all "make up for this" by having sub-biomes in those forests and fields which despite them generally looking very similar, still manages to give all of them a unique atmosphere and feel, both from a visual- and gameplay standpoint. Not to mention the second country which offers a massive canyon / desert-like area and a volcanic island.



In conclusion: to me who hasn't played the first title, Dragon's Dogma 2 is an incredible game, with fantastic gameplay, exploration, graphics and a sense of adventure that not a lot of RPGs can replicate, but it is unfortunately held back by an utterly atrocious storyline, terrible quest design and forgettable characters. Still-

8/10