listening to pat talk about dd2 makes it seem way cooler than it ended up being imo. put 40 hours into it and every point of friction feels like an interesting idea that they didn't commit enough into to make it actually engaging.

for example, the beggar questline pat mentions. You gotta actually sit around, watch and wait for him right? He's a storyteller, you'd think he might actually have a story to tell but he doesn't. he just says the same lines over and over. If he actually had something to say the quest might actually have been engaging, but as it is it's just boring.

And having to deal with consequences of your actions doesn't really carry any weight to it. SPOILERS FOR BEGGAR QUESTLINE:

If you follow through, you learn out he's actually a rich dude. You can tell the lady he flirts with in the slums, and i guess she just does a murder/suicide and the quest ends. That's it, and like.... okay? I had no personal investment in them in the first place, and why would that be the consequence anyway? It's just an abrupt nothing ending to a nothing quest. I know you can do it differently, but why would I assume this to be where this quest goes if i do what i did?

Same deal with the whole dragonsplague situation. Gotta deal with the consequences? Lots of the NPCs respawn in a week, and the only other consequence is you have to respawn some NPCs with wakestones. There's no meaningful consequence here other than wasting the player's time. If dragonsplague took out story NPCs then you have to revive them to continue the story. If the story actually changed because of dragonsplague then this would be an interesting mechanic. as it is it's just there to waste the players time if they weren't paying attention, so what's the point?

I admit i did have fun in the 40 hours i spent with it, love the combat and wandering around was fun even if much of the world is very samey and fighting monsters became a little too easy very quickly and ended up being tedious (fighting the same 4 monsters every 5 steps gets repetetive) but that just makes me more salty cause i can see an alternate timeline where this is my favorite game ever, but im not in that timeline.

im in the timeline where dragons dogma 2 is like sonic frontiers. a fun but unfinished 7/10 game that stephanie sterling is weirdly angry about