Finished the game, ~70 hours, did almost every side quests, true ending and all.
Playing almost non stop since release, trying to ignore all the MTX/performance debacle and internet discourse, I just wanted to play the game and form my own opinion. At first, I was awestruck simply because I was finally playing the sequel to the best ARPG ever after waiting for 6+ years. Then, around 20 hours in, I was dissapointed, because DD2 is DD 1.5. It's the same game. Same story, same writing, same enemies, same NPC interactions. But I could not stop playing, and was still loving it, because I was experiencing the same joy I felt when playing DD:DA the first time. Avoiding travelling in the dark, getting lost exploring some random ass cave, encountering funny pawns on the road. All that with even better combat.
Plenty of people have already explained the big problems this game has. For me, the biggest sins are the dumbing down of the armor system, lack of enemy variety (and fixed spawn points in the map), and no improvements to NPC interactions. I don't care too much about missing vocations, but I do miss some sorcerer skills tho. Everything else is a trade-off, equal, or better than DD:DA.
Now, there is one thing that this game does perfectly and will be unsurpassed for a long time. COMBAT. This game has the best combat in an action RPG ever. No competition comes close. DD2 shits all over Dark Souls/Elden Mid and every other game in existence.
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is still better than Dragon's Dogma 2. The dissapointment comes from that. But hey, DD2 is still the 2nd best ARPG ever. Not bad. And with a BBI-like DLC that focus on the godlike combat, who knows.
Oh and I do love that Itsuno decided to retain those byzantine anti-normie systems like forced auto-saves and 1 save file per copy. It serves to filter the peasants from playing this. Games have gone to shit because we have not gatekeeped enough.
So anyway, gg. Here is my pawn, based on Zeta from Granblue Fantasy. Rent her. Give her some clear space and she will snipe any mob with a .50 cal. I'm working on grinding her NG+ equipment
