Back-to-back RPGs can be daunting. I finished Baldur's Gate 3 last year, and to date, I've played it to completion roughly six times (and counting). Off the back of such a behemoth experience, let alone one that I enjoyed so aggressively, approaching something like Dragon's Dogma 2 felt more than a little bit intimidating.
Having never played the first game, I went in blind. What I'd read about the game gave me a glimmer of hope since, at face value, it seemed to share a few similarities with my GOTY of 2023. I'm used to exploring and fighting alongside my BG3 companions, so Pawns sounded helpful in their essence. The core four Dragon's Dogma 2 combat classes hold similarities to a few of those in Baldur's Gate 3, making it easy enough to choose the rogue-like Thief vocation as my Arisen's starting point. Hell, even the mind-wiped protagonist hinted at flavors of the BG3 Dark Urge. But after playing Capcom's latest for roughly five hours, I'm starting to see the error in my judgment. These comparisons just served to give me unfair expectations of Dragon's Dogma 2 from the get-go – though thankfully, I'm still having a blast.
