Dragon's Dogma 2: A love letter to the fans
Let's start prefacing that I played a bit of the first Dragon's Dogma and while the game itself is named Dragon's Dogma 2, you can feel in the game's bones and in the starting menu that this is the Dragon's Dogma that the devs wanted to associate with the series.
So, I have been playing the game kinda non stop since the 25th of March and in all my time playing, I have only been exploring a portion of the big map that the game offers.
The game ties some of the progress with the progression of the Main Questline, like the ability to unlock Ox carts for travelling or the entry to the kingdom of Batthal but while the Ox Cart is unlocked quite early in the game, you can enter Battahl via sneaking in trough a tunnel near the border so the game gives you an alternative. The Kingdom of Vermund is gorgeous, with his mountain range and lush forests and it harbours some secrets in out of the way places that can surprise you.
So, let's start with the beginning, Character Creator.
The Character Creator offers you a wide offfers of tools to make your Arisen first and your Pawn truly special, with basic options ranging from rather realistic hair colours to various face morphs and eye colours. There is an hairdresser in game that let's you change your hair colours to something more dye adjecent like bright pink (I saw a pawn with that hair colour) but since this is something I have to yet experience, I cannot say for certain. What I can say for certain is that by using the Art of Methamorphosis to change the apperance of your Arisen and Pawn, you can change Height and Weight and switch bodies form but you can't change from Human to Beastren so that is something to keep in mind. Weight and height determin how fast you can move and how fast your stamina recovers, so it is always good to keep it in mind.
But now, here's one of the strongest features, gameplay wise, classes.
Classes in the game are called Vocations and unlike most RPGs, you can change the Vocation of your Arisen and your Pawn any time you want, provided you have reached a vocation guild or, in small towns, the inn. Each vocation plays differently, with gear and skills avaiable to a specific Vocation, but you can unlock perks for your Arisen and Pawn that you can use even with a different Vocation (The Archer's Explorer perk makes your lantern shine brighter and it reduces the amount of oil used) so the game does encourage you to switch and try new playstyles since it is free and it is not tied with your level progression. Ergo, you won't get back sent to level 1.
Now, to tackle onto a complex topic, gear enhancements.
So far, I have seen that different places (The Sacred Arbor / The Eleven city, The Kingdom of Vermun and The Kingdom of Battahl) focus their enhancements in different statistics, for example in Vermund everything will be upgraded in a more equilibrated way while The Sacred Arbor favours Magick. Unsure about Battahl but I reckon it will be focused on Strenght and physical resistance.
Now, we talked about some of the positives so let's talk about the negatives.
The performance on the Xbox series X is fairly okay but it has noticeable drops, especially in big cities and taverns, with NPCs spawning in that kinda ruin the immersion. The time sensitive quests are fun except one in the Game of Wits series that asks you to go back to the first place you found a Seeker token and take the newfound token which while the series of quest is rather hidden and well executed, that one in particular is a pain. The Logician specialization is not that great, constantly emptying your pack to craft stuff at any occasion and ruining your plans to make better Roburants. The spoiling food is just a personal gripe of mine and I hate it in every game so I have to mention that Dragon's Dogma 2 has it altough it is more lenient.