Dragon's Dogma 2 types of enemies
Dragon's Dogma 2 FPS in cities
Dragon's Dogma 2 voice lines for pawns
Dragon's Dogma 2 hours of content padded by 28 hours of walking
Dragon's Dogma 2.99€ to buy a fast travel item
Dragon's Dogma 2 times they've made the exact same mistakes because they've learned nothing at all

After seeing all the twitter soy-facing at this, and the insanely positive reviews here, and the awful three-hour video essay. I gave it a shot with the (pretty awesome) new English translation.

Coming off of MH4U (my first game in the franchise) and Rise (my longest-played one,) it's very difficult to think of this as much more than needless pain. I enjoy the richer mechanics that were stripped down in later entries for 'QoL improvements'-- I really do-- but the difficulty makes engaging with those mechanics feel so much more frustrating.

It's awesome that gathering, cooking, fishing, etc. all take effort. I enjoy the meatier, clunky controls that force you to think through interactions. The village is more alive than ever here, too.

It's not awesome that, for the first ~5 hours of playing, you're still in iron armor territory. I like Monster Hunter as a hopeful game, where even tiny progress counts. In this game, you will find yourself discarding your entire inventory to make room for some bullshit cheap item you need for a subquest.

This game is not for me. A lot of the buzz around this game is just posturing from the 'games-as-punishment' crowd. 4/10

This is the first Monster Hunter I played back when I learned you could play games via pirating ethernet cables on my chipped PS2.

Even then (around 2015-2016) it felt ancient, going through impossible ways to feel awkward and alien to play with an utterly generic aesthetic even for the day, with the monsters being really more of a proof of concept with solely Kirin barely standing out for not being a dragon or dinosaur.

Both of this problems combined made me vibe hard off this game, and knowing this franchise I learned to love and thoroughly enjoy started from this mess of a game is mesmerizing, and it makes me wonder if there even is the possibility of Monster Hunter grognards existing.