Dragon's Dogma 2 Is Polarizing Its Community, And It's Not Just the Microtransactions

ign.com:

Plenty of big, AAA releases have problems at launch. Overwatch 2, Payday 3, and Redfall all launched to criticism from both reviewers and fans. It's far rarer to see a AAA game's community genuinely divided over whether or not a game is fantastic and groundbreaking, or an utter disaster at launch. But weirdly, that's what's happening with Dragon's Dogma 2.

At the forefront of the "this is terrible" argument are criticisms of the game's performance, which seems to be pretty awful across PC and consoles. Alongside that are complaints about the game's 21 separate microtransactions, almost all of which are specifically designed to ease Dragon's Dogma 2's built-in player antagonism. Lots of players are furious about their inclusion, even moreso because Capcom seems to have sprung them on players day one.

But it's not just microtransactions and performance that have upset the community. Also at the top of the complaint list for Dragon's Dogma 2 is its exploration. While the world is enormous and full of secrets, players complain that it's largely populated by the same enemies, over and over, appearing at high densities every time they try to run from place to place. Sure, the first time you fight a bunch of packs of wolves in a row it's novel, but once you've gone from Vermund to Harve Village a few times, it gets quite repetitive.

The limitations on fast travel — you need a specific item to do it, and they're on the rare-ish side, or available via microtransaction — don't help either. Some towns let you reach them via oxcart ride, but every ride has a chance of being interrupted by enemy attacks that can destroy the cart entirely and force you to walk anyway.

There's more. Players are rolling their eyes at the game's story and writing, arguing that dialogue and plot are shallow, short, and repetitive. Others feel the game didn't evolve enough past its predecessor, while some people are mad about combat and class balance or reduced quality of life features compared to the