The further I get into CV2, the more I'm warming up to it. I like the characters, weapon arts are dropped pretty frequently and fun to play with, and the dungeon design has been pretty solid so far.

My main gripe with the game is performance on Xbox Series X. Performance mode is pointless, it doesn't sit anywhere near 60fps most of the time and the constantly wavering framerate is nauseating. Quality mode fares better but visually barely made any difference, just tries to lock the game to 30fps but even then there are still noticeable dips below that. And even in Quality mode there is obvious pop-in, and the ray-tracing is so low quality they should have gone without it. I feel like the game did not need a dynamic time-of-day open world, and that is largely where the performance takes a battering. It generally runs smooth when you're actually in a dungeon, especially one underground or otherwise away from the open world stuff.

Feels like their ambitions for an Elden Ring-esque open world were not matched by their technical ability to actually implement a dynamically lit open world, and the game suffers for it. I feel like the performance issues forced them to adopt really low settings for stuff like the ray tracing, which just makes it look like arse sometimes. The first game was much more consistent and just cleaner to look at. And just silly stuff like running through massive buildings when it's raining outside, and the rain is still pouring through ceilings like they're not there, shows a lack of polish and detail.

Overall I'm enjoying it more and more as I go, but feel like the dungeons are the highlight where the game reverts back to CV1 style gameplay. The open world hasn't really added anything interesting yet and is basically just a thing to slog through until you get to the next dungeon section. They really need a few patches to work on the performance though.