Recent reviews by Bananathan

Fantastic game - probably the most polished souls like out there. The combat is very tight and you have a lot of options on how you want to approach a fight. It is a great mix of fast paced combo systems with souls like reactivity and balances it amazingly. I'd say it's between Souls and Nioh. With how good the bosses are, it's easily one of the best combat systems I've ever played.

The ability to respec on the fly and have skill loadouts is excellent and really lends itself to experimentation.

The artstyle and graphics are fantastic and the game is very well optimised. I play on a 4k screen with a 4080 and get a smooth 120 fps with DLSS on. I realise that's a decently high end PC, but with games like MH Wilds and AAA titles these days, expectations are low and this game blows them out of the water.

I also played the demo on a 3060ti and at 4k with DLSS. It gave a smooth 60 fps, which is very rare, especially for a game that looks this good.

Level design is mediocre. At least it does not overstay it's welcome, letting you get to the fun fights with bosses and elite enemies quickly. Didn't find anything major to complain about, but wouldn't say it's particularly good.

My biggest gripe is the diablo-like loot system - you'll be drowning in loot for most of the game. Granted, it's easy to dismantle , sell, or turn into lacrima (souls). The ability to lock pieces and then sell all the rest helps if you don't like this kind of loot system. That said, you can use armour pieces you found early on if you prefer them - I never noticed gear being a problem defence-wise. The set bonuses were very helpful though. Luckily, you're not stuck with gear that looks bad, but has good stats as there is a fashion system you unlock early on, so you can prioritise stats and fashion.

Overall a 8/10 for me. Highly recommend playing if you enjoy games like Dark Souls/Elden Ring, Nioh 2 or Devil May Cry. The difficulty is on par with the souls series, but not quite as hard as Nioh 2.

Does not work well at all. Wanted to use this for Haptic feedback in games that don't support it. But it has a full 1s delay between the sounds and the vibration occuring.

This is a tough one. In the end, I would still recommend this game despite the issues I have with it. I've stopped as I've just hit act 3 and don't plan on continuing until a lot of the problems are addressed. I think you could get longer out of the game than me if you explore more in act 1 and 2.

Overall, with 25 hours of gameplay from a game that costs this much, I found it satisfying, hence why I recommend it.
The issues started mid-late act 2 and I just couldn't be arsed to continue after finishing act 2. After i stopped, I wanted to see what others thought and read often that it gets worse in act 3.

Let's start with the good:
1. My God the atmosphere of this game is fantastic. The design of the world and 'feel' when you're knocking about is awesome.

2. Combat feels like Skyrim combat with a bunch of mods, it's got good weighty hits, depth and a devent variety of builds. Magic is awesome, as is melee. Ragdolling enemies with a massive greatsword never gets stale.

3. Quests - the side quests are really interesting and while they are pretty much self contained, they are great.

4. This being made by a smaller studio for what it costs is a great sign, and I'd buy the game just to support the developer. I think the final iteration of this game, and their next game will be fantastic with all the lessons learned from this release. Keep an eye on this studio.

The bad:
1. Weapon/armour variety - it's not bad in act 1 and early act 2, but eventually, I'd settled on 1 or 2 armour sets and barely found anymore worth using. Out of the 4 weapons I used, 3 were from the first couple hours in act 2 and 1 was from the middle. Vendors have very little as well. From what I've read, this is even worse in act 3.

2. Spell variety: I don't care for summons, so I used combat spells. The 2 best spells I got from act 1 and never switched off them. I tried every spell I got, but they just weren't worth it. The combat spells aren't very interesting ir varied.

3. Bugs - I had a few issues, mainly with quests or enemies getting stuck. Also leaving the inventory too quick causes black screen that I had to tab out and in (this one happened constantly)

4. Performance - playing on a 4080 with dlss on 60% and there were still frame drops to ~55 in some areas, and 120 fps in others. After playing for more than a couple hours session, the performance dropped drastically. Not sure what's going on there.

5. Why does everything cost SO much? It's a pain farming and making money and takes ages to be able to upgrade anything past +4 or buy a gear set from a vendor. You can give up some skill points for the bartering skills, but that still doesn't help enough.

6. **mild spoilers** Would have liked to hear King Arthur speak to me more during act 2, especially when relevant ♥♥♥♥ happened.

Buy the game still. It's fun, the devs are worth supporting and it's worth the price imo. Lots of AAA games last ~20-30 hours and provided equal or less fun as this game, and cost significantly more.

Edit: Game is a masterpiece. Play it

2 hours in and I was hooked on this game. Great premise, with well written and voiced characters.

To top it all off, it runs great, looks great and the combat is a unique blend of action and turn based combat. Playing on expert difficulty definitely ramps up the challenge.

The only thing I wish was that normal enemies had more health.

Buy this one, it's worth every penny.

The game is very fun and I will absolutely be carrying on playing it. However I only recommend this if you have a system that can run it - I have a 4080 and 7600x and can just manage around 80-90 fps at 4K with frame gen, DLSS, etc.

If you have a midrange or lower system (which is most people), I don't recommend this until it is better optimised. The graphics are ok, but absolutely not good enough to warrant the poor performance. The frametime dips when turning the camera are abysmal and at anything less than 80 fps will feel like awful stuttering.

Absolutely phenomenal demo, will 100% be getting the full version.

Very polished combat with nice effects, animations and impact. The different choices to approach combat with each weapon is amazing and I found myself dying on purpose to the final boss to try out every weapon over and over.

I'd say this is sort of between Nioh 2 and the Souls games, leaning more towards the souls games. There are combos like a fighting game, but not on the complexity of Nioh 2, while bringing more complexity than the Souls games. The weapons and multiple skill choices for each weapon feel unique and change how you approach combat, but still keep the fundamental parry/dodge/attack cycle.

For how good this games looks, the performance is top notch - I can run this with all settings on high at 4k 60 fps on 3060 ti. Highly recommend trying the demo.

I don't recommend this game, however this game clearly has a lot of love from its fan base and is a successful game.

For me, I've never played a dynasty warriors game before and thought I'd give this a try.

What I liked:
Combat - fluid, satisfying and a decent amount of options to use in a battle.

Performance - I can run this at 4K dlss performance on a 3060ti with 90 fps. Incredible.

English dub - generally better than most games with an English dub

What I didn't like:
Graphics are a bit meh.

While the combat is fun, it got stale very quickly. You have a lot of options to use in a fight, but they all essentially do the same thing. Use a combo over and over again while parrying or dodging every so often. I found it boring after the first 2 hours.

The progression and customization is very lacking. You can't customize your character. The only costumes are DLC or preorder bonuses and at the time of writing, there are only 3 costumes.
Progression is getting new combos or skills for your weapons... however they haven't seemed to make any difference compared to the default skills and combos. They feel the same.

The variety isn't enough to keep it from going stale. I've unlocked 4 of the 9 weapons so far and they are all again, pretty similar. Use combos, parry or dodge.

Overall if you're like me and need more progression in a game with repetitive combat to keep it interesting, this might not be for you.

Feels like a big upgrade over the first game. Recommend giving it a go, it's free. The game is pretty generous for what they give you for free/low cost as well.

Overall Dragons Dogma 2 is a disappointment. The first 20 hours are great while you play the combat and test the vocations out. After that, you've experienced 90% of what the game has to offer.
Half of my playtime was spent travelling and slogging through the boring quests, which I might add, don't involve much of the combat.. you know the best bit of the game..

The good:
Combat is amazing, lots of weight and cinematic animations.
Pawn interactions are cool.
Character customisation.

The rough:
Enemy variety is incredibly poor. I've fought the same enemies over and over again. Cyclops, ogres, drakes, minotaurs and wights are the main big enemies you come across. With goblins, wolves, bandits and harpies the smaller ones. While they were all fun the first few times, it's very stale fighting them again and again. You will fight them a LOT.

The length of the game is atrocious. By the time I've unlocked and levelled the fun vocations I want to play I'm pretty much at the end of the game. The first dragons dogma had the everfall, with challenging enemies and endgame loop to keep things fun followed by Bitterblack Isle in the DLC. How they seemed to learn nothing from the fact that Bitterblack Isle was the majority of players' favourite part is beyond me. This game does not have anything like that.

The nonsensical story and quests took so much time away from playing the fun parts of the game. So many stealth quests and boring setpieces where you don't actually fight anything using the fun combat system.

Loot sucks. The 4 or 5 weapons you buy from the vendors will cover you for the game. I found 2 cool things exploring, while most chests and big monster drops were materials or meat. Pretty disappointing.

This kinda feels like Hogwarts Legacy to me, where the first few hours are amazing.. and after that, becomes boring and shallow quickly. Feels like this game was rushed.

Wait for the DLC launch later this year before buying. Similar to what happened with the first game, I imagine it'll fix most of these issues... though I would have hoped the base game would have taken lessons from the first game.

Negative review for retroactively adding DRM. Great game ruined by greedy wankers in suits