John Hetzel

Completed the game and post-game on PS5. Beyond performance (which was generally viable), the game was seriously lacking in a variety of areas. The story was slow and unengaging with no real room for player choice. Lore was sparse and generally hollow and unrelated to game events. Story/quest characters were generally 1-dimensional at best with poor lip syncing, coarse facial animation, and absent body language. Voice acting and dialogue were not compelling and at times downright cringe. Characters who aren’t linked to a quest might as well not exist for how much they contribute to player immersion. In the few, sparing populated cities, you can loot people’s houses (contents generally not helpful), pick up and throw guards, and generally do whatever you want (within the game’s limited scope) without so much as a peep from any NPC. The world is large, and some areas are genuinely pretty, though many are dull. Early exploration had a sense of challenge due to scale and combat interactions. However, after about 15-20 hours, the world began to feel generally flat and repetitive (particularly caves/dungeon areas), and combat did not scale well (too easy; harder stuff generally made difficult by a gimmick). Inventory management was irritating due to weight/stamina being linked and loot (generally random upgrade components) being fairly heavy. UI for inventory was not great. Gear progression was linear and pretty restrictive - helmet, chest, legs, weapon, and 2 rings are the only particularly contributory items. Weapon upgrades were few and far between and often locked behind arbitrary main quest progression checkpoints. Character leveling was linear and involved no player assignment of attributes. Vocation leveling had spikes of power but pretty much permanently plateaued before midway through the game. UI for each of the above was honestly worse than for the inventory in general. Stats were vague and messily done. Pawns, which are the AI companions, were a fascinating take that felt like it had not been fully play tested. They are incredibly chatty, flat, and repetitive (no setting to change this) to an immersion-breaking degree. “A ballista is a weapon. This could be useful in combat.” If you speak to them directly, they have nothing of substance to say. They are directed using a few vague commands on the D-pad (Go, To me, Help, Wait). You only gear and level your “main” pawn. You must hire others from real players via an asynchronous multiplayer system. But beware, pawns can also contract a “disease” through this system that can annihilate (perhaps temporarily?) NPCs (including main ones) in a town that you rest in. There is only one save file. You cannot delete it. You may reload to your most recent save or your most recent inn rest. If the game bugs and you haven’t rested at an inn recently, you can gfys. Quests bugged frequently all the way into the post-game. Wouldn’t recommend unless you’re a Dragon’s Dogma fan or you are willing to accept a flawed, half-finished-feeling product. I’d love my money back.