Dragon's Dogma 2: Wakestone - Restore the dead to life! (A)

Critics scored high, players scored low — and that split has to be named

To understand Dragon's Dogma 2 you first have to understand the glaring fault line running through it. On the critics' side: an 88 on Metacritic, 87 on OpenCritic, a 91% recommendation rate. On the players' side: Steam slumped to "Mixed" at launch, and the long-run cumulative positive rate sits at just 61%.

These two verdicts are not measuring the same thing. Critics were grading the completeness and originality of the design — how good the combat-Pawn-exploration loop really is. Player anger was venting a rotten launch-day consumer experience: full price paid, frame drops hit, and a drawer of microtransactions sprung with no warning. So a high score and a wave of pans can coexist without contradiction; they're talking about two different objects. Director Hideaki Itsuno's own line works as a footnote to the whole affair: he said he "didn't make a Nintendo game designed to be liked by everyone." That cuts to it — the game makes clear authorial choices, willing to risk alienating a slice of players to keep its own edges and temper, rather than building something nobody can fault and nobody remembers.

Who should buy it, and who should walk the other way

So who is it for? If what you want is the emergent feel of the road and real depth in the action, if you can stomach a little roughness and don't mind traveling on foot, then Dragon's Dogma 2 is close to irreplaceable — it hands you the kind of live, unscripted adventure other open worlds simply cannot manufacture.

Flip it around: if you want convenience, love teleporting, came for finely-polished story and visuals, hate being interrupted by roadside nonsense, and have limited time and a beeline to the objective, it will probably disappoint or even irritate you. This game has no intention of accommodating that at its core.

Its most direct rival is the same-studio, same-territory Monster Hunter: World — but Monster Hunter is a systematized hunting loop, missing the kind of continuously emergent road-narrative this open world generates, so the two are walking different paths and answering different itches. On the whole, 7.6 is an honest place to land: not a year-dominating masterpiece everyone must play, but a high-quality adventure RPG that swallows you whole once it hits your taste. It sold 2.5 million in week one, cleared 4 million cumulative, and took a Best RPG nomination at TGA 2024 — acclaimed and commercial at the same time, which is rarer than it sounds. You have to accept its imperfection and drop the craving for a flawless experience curve first; only then can you actually enjoy its singular, restless unpredictability. In the end it isn't a game built to please everyone — it's a game that, the moment you stop fighting it and start walking in, pays you back with one unexpected journey after another, none of them quite like the last.