Dragons Dogma 2 is objectively what any fan of the first DD could've asked in a sequel. In my experience I would say that the dungeons (almost all of them are caves) feel very repetitive and the story until the true ending route doesn't get interesting at all.
Despite this two particlar things the game feels really good to play, with the boss battles in the spotlight that thanks to the physics engine it always feels very organic to combat this giant enemies. The exploration of the map is very rewarding and there are very cool secrets to uncover in the world.
All in all I would say that this is a pretty good game and what I as a fan wanted in the next game of this series.

They really had to release two mid games to make the best of them all. I really liked this game but there are some things that didn't feel right to me, like the omission of characters like MOMO or Chaos for mayor part of the history, and a ton of elements and terms in the universe of the game that they didnt care to explain properly (cause they have a database read the database bro) that, to be honest, didnt care that much in the big picture. Shion was great in this game and its my favorite character of the game along with Jr. and KOSMOS. The music was incredible too (Godsbibb the song of all time) and the character designs this time were all great (Im talking about you xenosaga 2).

So good that it single-handedly made me interested in video games as an art form again. Hysterically good study of

1) depression, the primary killer of player character Harrier du Bois, who spends pretty much the entirety of this game constantly suffering under it in a pretty brutally honest depiction of what it feels like to have no hopes, no happiness, a casual thought that maybe it'd be better if you just died because it's not like anyone really likes you in the first place, or you're ever really going to amount to much anything to make up for the shitshow your life is now, right?

2) politics-another constant, there even before the vision quests. The entire setting is dripping with the political particulars of the situations of Martinaise and Revachol, and how people respond to them, from the complicated, simultaneously self-absorbed and yet truly communist Evrart Claire, to Rene Arnoux, a man who still holds his steadfast opinion that all would be good if only the great cocaine-addicted kings of old hadn't been killed by all that socialist rabble. The plot only happens because a mercenary being killed was enough to force the RCM to engage with a region they usually don't; capital has a power that poverty quite simply doesn't.

3) the illusory greatness of the past-or would it be *a* past? What it is Harry or any other character desires to see returned is dependent entirely on their own ideology and worldview and personal characteristics. Not only is a constant fixation on the past stifling, it is a fixation on only a mind's version of it, not whatever the real thing was in all its actual complexities and horrors.

4) history -history in DE is a material occurrence. Not something the abstract of which can merely be observed in the details of the present, but something tangible, real. The Pale is mankind's collective memory, perhaps a memory of all time, and it is real and so powerful it might eventually destroy it all. The Great Man Theory is frighteningly, intensely real in the form of the Innocences, turning a bogus historical theory into a terrifying, inhumane material reality.

5) failure. Harry is a failed man, with nothing but his job and his alcohol and drugs. Revachol is a city failed by everyone who's ever cared for it, and Martinaise has been failed even more. No single political system has managed to create a better world, and the status quo is blatantly unsatisfactory. Failure permeates this world like an odor.

6) the intersection between all these things. Harry is depressed partially because he can't stop fixating on the past, on a long-dead relationship with a long-gone woman that failed a long time ago; he uses politics as a way of running from his own issues; yet not engaging in politics would be to deny how the status quo in place has turned Revachol, and Martinaise specifically, into more of a horrorshow, and how that in turn affects the politics and mental health of its inhabitants. The paledriver likes the Pale because for her it is an escape from real life, yet the Pale can also be considered a personification of not only an existential threat akin to climate change, but the past literally destroying mankind and perhaps even the planet, the intense power of man's history and corrosive power of overfixating on it here to truly ruin it all. Everything is connected. One of the greatest pieces of art I've ever experienced, better written than most everything else, and one of the few things which make me glad I'm an Estonian. "No truce with the furies".

Bleh. This is the most bleh crpg I've bothered to finish. Crazy production values it might have, but to what end?

The implementation of 5th edition here is slow and clunky, and incredibly unforgiving, even on the lowest difficulty. Sure, it's tactically interesting, but combat takes forever and is filled with tons of tiny little annoyances, and honestly far too swingy for a modern AAA game. Even Troika's Temple of Elemental Evil, which sports a very similar combat system (though it's 3.5 instead of 5) feels faster, though it suffers from many of the same issues regarding clunk. Even rolling skills in dialogue is slow as hell, even when you skip the main part of the animation it's just leagues slower than any other game I've played. The dice rolling animation is cute the first time but my god does it drag on the 500th time.

One thing ToEE didn't suffer from that this does, though, is camera issues! The camera's kinda goofy. When you zoom in, it tries to pull behind your character a bit (or just provide a cinematic viewpoint), but when you zoom out it angles flatter, to be a tactical camera. It only zooms out so far though, and just loves to get stuck on the multileveled terrain battlefields, which are a good idea in concept but really just feel annoying, partially because of this camera.

The world is beautifully realized, but feels a bit off, at least from my idea of the forgotten realms. It's been Larianized, I guess? No matter how serious things got, there was just this undercurrent of lightheartedness. Not as bad as their other games, but still not great. The maps don't really draw you in any direction, which made my pass through the underdark feel pretty aimless. It's got a bit of that quest-marker driven map design in it, I guess.

Finally, the story is interesting. Not as a narrative, it's pretty weak, but as an exercise in making a story that adapts to your players. That's the real strength here, right? The game lets you take many different paths through the story, and even story-critical moments are wildly variable. That's a lot of work to build, and it worked out, but not really to the benefit of the story. Player agency is crazy high, but as such the story feels meaningless, just a set of events you go through. The companion stories are a bit better, their issue is kind of a Marvelly quippy writing style (though again, less so than previous games of Larian's).

I've probably been a bit over-mean in this review, so lemme list some things I liked: Being able to go into turn based mode at any time, following multiple sidequest threads in Baldur's Gate (the city), the Gauntlet of Shar dungeon (minus the trials), most of the story beats around ketheric thorm. It's a well made game, it's just horribly uneven and imo hampered by some large issues

It just felt like an exercise in recreating the experience of playing 5e at the table, with a little bit less math and a story that, while free, still can't match the adaptability of a GM or something. It's a frustrating, often unbalanced game, and although it occasionally falls into stride (the city of baldur's gate was fun, though not really well split up) I finished the game glad it was over, with the feeling that nothing here really meant anything, no matter how pretty it looked or free it felt.

Just play fucking 5e

Its destruction mechanics are just incredible and gunplay feels absolutely top notch. But it suffers from severe balance problems across its classes and the content added post launch doesn't feel very substantial.

The use of AI voice acting also just feels icky, and I'll never understand the drive to buy skins for your character when you are playing entirely in first person.

Did I have fun? Absolutely! But right now I don't think this game has the staying power to keep most people's attention.

Expressiveness is the quality that defines roleplaying games: they’re judged by how freely players can assert themselves in a reactive space. Players want to convey their personality and make choices, but while these are the obvious core concepts of the genre, Baldur’s Gate 3 has proven to me that they’re not what makes an RPG great. Having the capacity to make decisions is certainly a necessity, but decisions only matter when players care about the outcomes. Choices surround us in every moment of our lives, but most vanish from our minds within seconds for that very reason; they’re so emotionally inconsequential as to be hardly worthy of notice. So, more fundamental than allowing for choice is providing a real adventure in which to make those choices, and defining a journey which has players encountering challenges, learning, changing, and overcoming. This is the critical component which Baldur’s Gate fails to establish, most glaringly from its narrative structure.

(Minor spoilers through act 2)
In the opening cutscene, your character has a mindflayer tadpole inserted into their head, so your call to adventure is getting it out. This is fine in itself, but the game is quick to tell you that there’s no urgency to this task, relieving you of the burden of care. Every quest you receive to accomplish this goal, across the first ~22 hours of gameplay, results in failure where your party just sorta gives up. It takes another ten hours before the main villains are established, a stale group of evil zealots of evil gods who just love being evil, pursuing an agenda which players can't feel meaningfully aligned against. The simplicity of the central narrative gives the impression it’s just supposed to be a foundation for a character-driven story, but the interpersonal aspect is similarly lacking. In what feels like a symptom of the game's long stay in early-access, your companions put their love and trust in you in act 1, before anyone’s had the chance to organically develop relationships or encounter life-changing struggles. Characters don’t have the time and space to have an arc, and you don’t get the chance to express yourself alongside them, you simply skip to the end for an immediate and vacuous payoff. There’s no journey here, you’re simply being presented with scenes from an adventure without actually going on one.

The same can be said for the mechanics, even when they’re lifted from the tabletop game, thanks to a design philosophy where every playstyle is thoroughly accommodated. This seems like a good strategy in a genre where players want to assert themselves, but the refusal to challenge players leaves unique approaches feeling irrelevant. Even with a party led by a Githyanki barbarian, with very little in the way of charisma, intelligence, or skill, there was never a time I couldn’t overcome a situation in an optimal way. I could pick whatever locks I wanted, disarm whatever traps I wanted, circumvent any barrier I wanted; the game never asked me to think ahead or prepare. I didn’t have to be ready with certain spells or proficiencies, it never demanded more than following a clear path. Even if it did, the cheap respecs mean that you’re a maximum of 400 gold away from having a team perfectly suited to the task at hand, and even if you don’t end up using that option, knowing that your choices are so impermanent is a detriment to any feeling of growth.

That’s the key here: growth. My characters leveled up, but I don't feel like they grew. I traveled, but I don’t feel like I went on a journey. I made choices, but I don’t feel like I went in new directions. After a fifty-hour playthrough, all I remember was that I chilled out, ran around some nice maps, and managed my inventory. I spent all that time relaxing well enough, but I didn’t overcome challenge, feel much, or learn anything. All I could confidently state that the game did for me is live up to its basic selling point, of being an adventure I could take at home, a journey where I go nowhere.