The long awaited arrival of Dragon’s Dogma 2 has been a complete failure for the PC fanbase, as the game is teeming with performance issues and greedy microtransactions. Released on March 21 to Mostly Negative reviews on Steam, DD2 has managed to accumulate more than 4,500 negative reviews 8 hours after launch. This comes as a great shock to most of the gaming audience, as the critic reviews of the PC version gave very favorable ratings, with many giving the game 10/10, according to MetaCritic.
Looking through the Steam reviews, it becomes clear why the game has received such backlash on release. Players were first greeted with a long list of microtransactions, which range from $1 to $5. These extra purchases will allow you to pay-to-win by getting items which are all obtainable in game.
The Portcrystal, for example, is a special item that players can place in-game to create fast travel points. These are supposed to be rare items that limit the capability to fast travel and make the player think which locations are worth a fast travel point. However, for $3, you can get one of these Portcrystals and use them at your leisure.
One microtransaction that is incredibly misleading is the one for the Art of the Metamorphosis, an item that allows you to recreate your character. This character creation item costs $2, but, in-game, you can purchase it for 500 Rift Crystals, which cost only $1 in the game shop. So, if you don’t play enough to learn there’s a way to purchase it in-game for 500 RC, you can end up giving Capcom an extra $2, since there’s no way to restart the game and create a new character.
And yes, there is no way to create a new character. Even if you delete your save file, the character is saved on the game’s servers, so you will be stuck with the result that came from the character creation at the start of the game.
Popular streamer and YouTuber, Charles Christopher White Jr., known as penguinz0 on YouTube, streamed the game for 1 hour and 27 minutes, where he couldn’t even get past character creation for the first 30 minutes due to constant crashes.
Other complaints come from poor performance, crashes, and the presence of the Denuvo anti-cheat, which has a track record of significantly lowering average FPS and performance for the games it protects.