Recent reviews by Buzzkill

Nearing the end of the game now, 70 hours in.
I have explored every dungeon I have come across, tried to find every sidequest (probably missed one or two).
I've fought pretty much every enemy type.

This game, like the first, takes some design choices that many people won't agree with, such as limiting the fast travel or cryptic quests.
Most of the reviews you will see on steam are people being negative over the MTX, it's dumb yeah, but capcom has been doing this for ages, go look at Tales of Arise, you can actually just buy levels in the MTX there.
The MTX items available for Dragon's Dogma 2 are all available in game except for the heartfelt pendant and the explorer's Camping kit, however there are alternates of these items available ingame that are either better, or close.

The combat is superb, just like the first game, some Vocations (Classes) are missing from the first, and were promised to have been represented in some way or two by skills being given to other classes, sadly this is not 100%, for example: The Mystic Knight.
Mystic Knight's Elemental Shield reflecting was given to fighter, but with no way to self buff your shield as a fighter, you have to rely on a mage pawn, so this is already much worse than Mystic Knight, so the Paladin style gameplay is missing.

Thief not having a bow or double jump like Strider did feels a bit limiting, but the thief excels in melee so well that I can accept that.
Now the Archer is a bit controversial to me, In DD1, the Ranger had a longbow AND daggers, where as in dd2, the Archer only gets a bow, your only source of melee is a kick, and your only way to avoid taking damage is to run away or jump kick flip off enemies, where as in DD1, every class that had daggers also got the roll dodge.
This means that if you are caught unaware, and 3 goblins start to smack away at you, you get stunlocked with no way to free yourself other than hoping your pawns help you, or that there is a pause in the stunlock for a sec for you to either kickflip off an enemy or start sprinting.

Sorcerer got gutted, while it still does good damage, it does so in less ways, as all of the fun spells from DD1 were removed, except for Maelstrom and Bolide.
Glicel, Execui, Fulmination, Brontide, Comestion, Miasma, Torpor of all kinds. all gone.

Mage however now feels quite strong, some new support spells makes it one of the most reliable casters you can bring, High Palladium and Celerity feel so strong.

The music is pretty good, I do miss the Leitmotif of the first game, but theres a 2£ dlc for that, I've not bought it, but I might.

Dragon Plauge is a mechanic I wont go into too much, but it could have been much more interactive, like letting the player fight their diseased pawn-turned-dragon, instead of just murdering the whole town in a cutscene and peacing out back to the void.

The Performance at launch right now is abysmal, and some proper implementation of things like Frame Gen or just making sure the game doesnt murder your CPU constantly would make it a lot more playable, as is right now I have to use a mod that enables AMD FSR to double my framerate, and it comes with significant hud glitches as a side effect.

I'm not one for numbering a review, as that doesnt help to speak for all the small things I like or dislike, and ultimately giving something a number just does not convey the actual quality or enjoyment one could get from the game.

DD2 is a must play for anyone who is okay with a game that doesn't want to hold their hand, a game that isn't afraid to put you in a situation you can't just brute force your way through, sometimes you gotta run, or rethink that strategy.
The only thing I feel the game sorely lacks is an endgame activity to grind like DD1's Everfall/Bitterblack Isle.
That and another semi-online Raid like the UR Dragon.

EDIT: I have now beaten the game, true ending and all.
For people who played DD1, this is one of the most incredible experiences.
New players might feel a bit confused, and/or lost.

Laughed at the trailers two years ago, was quite sure it was going to be a unity asset flip game.

Game comes out and it's actually fantastic.
Plays a bit like Conan Exiles (some say ARK as well, but I never tried ARK) mixed with Pokemon.
World feels like LoZ: Breath of the Wild.

Only issues I have with the game at the moment is the Pal AI in your base, sometimes they get stuck outside walls, or cant pathfind to certain objects, they also hate buildings with multiple floors.

As someone who grew up playing Titan Quest, the game that Crate Entertainment made back in the day when they were Iron Lore Entertainment (RIP), I can say that this game is one of the best ARPG's ever made.

Crate is still supporting it even after almost 8 years, and we've got a third expansion coming next year.
Just two weeks ago we got one of the largest updates the game has ever seen with the 1.2 QoL update adding stuff like a dodge button, infinite potions and energy potions and other lovely changes.

This ARPG deals with some of my least favorite aspects of ARPGS in a great way, theres always accessible items for your build that are easy to farm in the form of Monster Infrequents: Items that drop from specific enemies or bosses (now bosses drop them 100%).
These items always come with certain skill modifiers to make your build much stronger, and are easy to target farm.
The second issue this game deals with is Resistances.
I. HATE. capping resists in ARPGS, its always a chore finding a good item with the right resists that your class or setup can wear, especially in PoE.
In Grim Dawn, there's a faction system, each faction sell augments, these can add damage, health or even resists to any piece of your gear, so you can easily fix any low resists you are missing for the higher difficulties like Elite or Ultimate.

The Dual Class system is also great, being brought over from Titan Quest.
You start the game as a generic character, at level 2 you pick your class, and then at level 10 you get to pick a second class to make your own build, combining the two into a powerful combo.

The Devotion tree is also fantastic, throughout the game theres devotion shrines, either combat or donation shrines, once cleansed you are given a devotion point, up to 55 of them, to spend in the Devotion tree.
This is where you can get powerful abilities, big damage increases, useful Circuit breakers for defense, or just flashy abilities.

The crafting system is easy and components drop quite often, it never feels like you HAVE to grind to progress, but you can if you wish.
Grinding out a perfect Monster Infrequent with the specific Double Rare Affix and Suffix for your build, and having it drop with high rolls on its damage and resists and all of that feels great.

Only con is that the multiplayer is slightly buggy, after a long session the game will crash if one of you check your stash, and some report black screen bugs that have been going on for years.
It's the perfect ARPG for those who like a nice solo experience, or are willing to deal with some slight multiplayer shenanigans.

The Videogame Textbook definition of a Time Vampire.

This game will slowly steal your entire afternoon, night, and the morning from you, all before you notice, until the glare of the rising sun hits your eyes at 7 in the morning on a thursday.
This is a common occurence playing this game.

Pretty good.
Never goes on sale though, at least not for much, most you'll see is 15 % off.

All the DLC are worth it.

One of my favorite RPGS.
Early game's slow and methodical, things can kill you very easily, as you explore eventually you find that those enemies are now beatable, and the best part is that instead of scaling all the enemies to you like modern rpgs, they just introduce new enemies when they want to up the challenge, instead of making the low level bandits and goblins scale with you.

Story is very cryptic and at times it can feel hard to keep up with what it is trying to tell you, until finally all makes sense.
On second playthroughs you start to notice little hints to everything you learned at the end of the first run, and you feel stupid for missing the little lore bits and hints.

Combat's fantastic, climbing giant monsters while shanking them in the nads.
Casting Tornados or half of an Iceberg onto your enemies as a Sorcerer, or why not smash your enemies in with a giant hammer as a Warrior, after all, you can do all of these things on a single playthrough, as swapping classes is as easy as visiting the main capital's inn and just picking a diffrent class.

The world is open, yet not empty, its big enough to feel like you can get lost in it, but small enough that theres something to encounter every few minutes.

The Pawn system is fantastic, you may get tired of their repetitive dialogue early on, but that is all due to the fact that Pawns learn from your actions, at the start all they know is that Goblins are weak to fire, and wolves fear it too.
Eventually they will be throwing explosive barrels at the enemy, using launcher skills to propel you into the air to grab flying monsters, using status ailments, and all while you fight with whatever your favored class is.

The Expansion is included in the steam version, and it's my favorite part of the game, do it on NG+ as the world does not become harder on NG+, its just replaying the game again, and the DLC might spoil some of the main game for you otherwise.

Masterwork/10

It's alright, tried it for a little bit, might play more.

Elden Ring is the (current) Culmination of FromSoftware Titles.
It's amazing how vast the game is and how much there is to do in it compared to previous titles, as of writing this i have roughly 150 hours, and i just beat it for the first time, i took my time and explored, crafted, talked to npcs, fought bosses and enjoyed the scenery.

The game plays much like all the other Souls Titles: Stamina Based Melee (or Spells if you wish) Combat with high emphasis on making sure to learn enemy patterns and dodge/block well.
In previous titles, if you were struggling, you would either have to "Git Gud" or summon other players, and these are still options available to you, but there is now another choice in Spirit Ashes, they let you summon all kinds of diffrent AI to help you with Bosses or tough overworld encounters.

There's many questlines and many ways to do them, with many of them leading into secret endings or bosses, some of which are the coolest in the series so far.
I personally did not have much issue running the game, but others have had issues like a White Screen on Launching, major stutters or crashes, i have suffered little of this in my playtime, and it has ran very smooth.

This game has easily taken my Number 1 Spot on the Totem Pole of Souls Games, moving Dark Souls 1 down one slot, right above Bloodborne.
I feel i am going to put hundreds, maybe thousands of hours into this one.
Good Job FromSoftware.

EDIT: Since this review, I have completed the game twice more myself, once in the Seamless Co-op mod, and I've got a save with 99% of all the items in the game, with every achievement now unlocked, truly one of the best games that FromSoftware has released so far.

Fantastic game with great mechanics, don't read too much about it, play it yourself, in a dark room, at night.

Good game, roughly 60-80 hours on your first run, completionists run can take anywhere between 130-200 depending on how thorough you want to get.

Great characters and story, enjoyable.
only gripe is that they couldn't get Troy Baker for the new dialogue scenes.

I'm not even sure what to say about this game.
It took me a few tries to really get it to stick with me, i have a tendency to skip dialogue after an hour or two, getting impatient, but on my 4th attempt, i stuck with it, i told myself to read it all, do all the dialogue choices, and make good decisions based on what i would have done in that situation, and the game finally made sense.

This is one of the best written games, not because of the plot, the murder or the characters you meet, although they're great aswell.
It's you.
The main character (of which i don't want to talk about too much, as even their name would be interesting for you to find out yourself. heck, you might not find out your name for half the game and go by some dumb made up name you come up with in a quick decision.

It's a detective game, you want to find out who hung someone from a tree behind an old hostel, except the real detective work is finding out who you are, and in doing so, uncovering the plot in the meantime.

I can't really say much more without spoiling anything.
If you can handle lots of dialogue, no combat, and some backtracking, then this is a perfect game for you.